In the Shadow of Blackbirds(66)

“I was just going to say I sometimes wish he had actually found us this way.” He eased himself all the way on top of me and breathed into my hair. “Even though it would have been wrong and it could have led to trouble, it would have been nice to have felt that with you, even just once.”

I closed my eyes and pulled him closer still, until he surrounded me completely. Until I felt him inside my soul.





A NOISE INTERRUPTED US.

A squawk.

Somehow we heard it, beyond the walls and the floor, and the noise sent blood streaming back into my brain. I opened my eyes.

“What was that?” Stephen lifted his head and stared at me as if I had just stabbed him in the gut. His pupils swelled as wide as saucers.

I gulped. “I think it was a bird.”

His lips twitched. “A bird?”

I nodded. “There’s a pet bird downstairs.”

He looked over his shoulder, and the flame of the oil lamp rose and danced, streaking topsy-turvy shadows across the wall. The needle of Uncle Wilfred’s compass quivered beneath the glass.

Stephen’s eyes returned to mine. “We’ve got to kill it.”

Like the lamp and the needle, I trembled with his terror.

The bird squawked again, and we both jumped.

“It hears us,” he said. “Kill it before it finds us.”

“It’s a pet.”

“Have you ever seen what their beaks can do to a person, Shell? Do you know what they’ll do to your eyes?”

I winced.

“It’s either you or him,” he said. “Get a gun.”

“I don’t have a gun.”

“Then get a knife. Or even a pair of scissors.” His hot breath against my face fanned a fire inside me. All I could think of was a crow as large as a bald eagle bearing down on my chest. The stringy taste of feathers filled my mouth.

“Kill it,” he said in a voice that vibrated inside my brain, as if the thought were coming from my own mind instead of his lips. “Hurry.”

I rose from the bed.

Part of me knew what I was doing was wrong—so very wrong—but that other part, the part getting louder and more anxious, powered my feet across the bedroom rug. I peeked over my shoulder and no longer saw Stephen on the bed, but his fear continued to burn in my lungs. He was still with me.

I twisted the doorknob and left the room, tense with anticipation of another sound emerging from the thing downstairs. The pitch-black stairs groaned under my weight, but I kept going, oblivious to anything but that squawking, violent, sharp-beaked creature.

When my feet reached the bottom of the stairs, the house itself seemed to rumble with apprehension. The click click click of talons scuttled somewhere unseen.

“Who’s there?” asked a voice in the dark.

I froze against the banister behind me.

“Who’s there?”

The bird was talking to me. I gagged and clutched my stomach, smelling death and mud and poisonous fumes.

Kill it, Shell.

“There’s a pair of scissors in the sewing box in the living room,” I whispered. “But I have to go past the cage.”

Run past. They’re coming. Hurry!

I leapt into the living room but took a bad step, which sent me crashing against the floorboards on my hands and knees. The thing beneath the covered cage beat its wings and screeched, “Who’s there? Hello. Hello.”

They’re coming. Oh, God, they’re coming.

I scrambled across the room to the shadow of a wooden sewing box next to the rocking chair and dug out a pair of scissors that glinted in the moonlight.

“Who’s there?”

Bile rose in my throat as I tiptoed toward the cage.

“Who’s there? Who’s there? Hello.”

Just do it, Shell! Kill it!

I held my breath and reached out to the beige cloth covering the bronze wires.

“Who’s there?”

Do it!

I pulled. The cloth tumbled down.

An ear-shattering screech pierced the night, and I stumbled backward and fell to the ground in horror. A huge black crow-faced bird with a luminous white beak and hands like a man’s gripped the bronze bars. It raised its back feathers and bit at the cage with its furious mouth, and the air from its wings beat down on me, sending a wall of stinging smoke burning down to my stomach.

“What’s happening?” asked a female voice.

I saw a candle out of the corner of my eye, but all I could do was lean back on my elbows with tremors convulsing my body.

“Mary Shelley?”

“Kill it!” I managed to shout, the scissors feeling sturdier in my hands. “Kill it before it kills me. Shoot it!”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Give me a gun.” I sprang to my feet.

“No.” A woman with short blond hair pulled the cage away from me and swung open a door to a world screaming with ambulance sirens.

My legs gave way and I fell to the ground again. My mouth tasted dirt and blood from a cracked lip. The sound of machine-gun fire reverberated around my head, as well as shouts and commands and the whistle of a shell about to hit. The earth rocked below me. A woman cried and yelled something about telephoning a minister. Nothing made sense. It was far too much to bear—far too much to keep living through, so I shut myself off to the world and curled into a ball until nothing but stark silence echoed in my ears.