In the Shadow of Blackbirds(85)

I staggered forward and reached my hand out to the brown blanket, the same way I’d try to grab a log if I were drowning in a river. Static stung my palm. I knew touching that mattress would give me a shock as potent as the lightning bolt’s, but I bent forward, pushed through the molasses air, and climbed onto that bed.

A jolt of electricity whacked me in the back. I fell and shut my eyes through spine-rattling pain that shuddered through my teeth and made me bite my tongue. The room went black.

When I opened my eyes, I found the world dark and my wrists bound to a bed by coarse ropes that burned through the layers of my skin. I was on my back, and there was whispering near the door.

“Wait until I put on the mask. I don’t want him recognizing me.”

“Who cares if he recognizes you?”

“I don’t want anything in his eyes slowing me down, all right? I didn’t smoke enough dope tonight. I’m losing my nerve.”

“I told you, too much dope might slow us down. What a waste it would be to forget to photograph him.”

“Are you sure something’s going to show up?”

“We’ve got to try, right?”

I struggled against my ropes. Dark figures shuffled around me, guided by the dull light of a single candle. They wore black clothing and kept the flame far enough from their faces for me to see anything but pure-white surgical masks and the glint of their watchful eyes. One of them positioned a camera near the bed. I heard the turning of the tripod’s handle and smelled the firework scent of magnesium powder poured across a flashlamp’s tray. Scuttling noises emanated from everywhere, as if rats were scurrying around the room. Every sound was magnified.

One of the figures turned toward me, and his mask mutated into an enormous white beak. I sucked in my breath and blinked my eyes, but he wouldn’t change—the creature looked like an ungodly bird with the body of a man.

A light flashed, and I was deep in the belly of a trench in France, cradling my rifle, waiting for the sound of artillery fire alongside other panting men. The mixed stink of rotting flesh, cigarettes, sweat, rum, urine, and stagnant mud turned my stomach into mush. I huddled on the ground at the far end of the line, and not more than six feet down from me lay the body of a soldier with reddish-brown hair, his flesh soft and pale, the blood on his face still drying.

A group of cawing carrion crows descended over the poor soul and pecked at his glassy brown eyes with their scissor-sharp beaks jabbing, jabbing, jabbing—fattening themselves on the ruins of war, gorging on a dead nineteen-year-old boy. One of the birds raised its head and stared at me with its beak smeared red and hunger brightening its ravenous eyes. I’d woken with one of its kind pressed against my rib cage before, digging at my uniform, smelling the blood in the fibers until I fought it off me to prove I was still alive.

I aimed my rifle at the crows on the boy and shot the largest bird dead, which sent a flurry of black wings flying past my face and a spray of machine-gun fire raining down upon us.

Then I was back on the bed in the unlit room, and one of the birdmen propped up my head on a pillow and forced the narrow tube of a copper funnel between my teeth. I gagged and struggled to free my wrists and ankles from the ropes. There was so little light; all I saw were those luminous beaks. I heard a bottle uncork and smelled the sting of darkroom chemicals in the air. Panic charged through me. I tried pushing the funnel out of my mouth with my tongue, but the figure shoved the tube farther inside, making me gag all the more.

“I’ll try to keep his head up,” said one of the birdmen in a strained whisper. “Unless … do we want to drown him with the acid? Maybe he’ll look more like a flu victim in the photograph if he’s choking.”

“I don’t know. I just want to get it over with.”

The creature tilted a bottle, and then he poured.

Liquid fire careened down my throat and scorched my insides, burning all the way down to my stomach. I choked and coughed and spit out a substance that seared my face with the pain of a thousand pinpricks.

A light exploded, white and fiery like a bomb. I was back in the trench in France, running through the mud with a rifle in my hands, bullets whizzing overhead, a gas mask covering my head and magnifying my wheezing breaths. The man in front of me went down, collapsing in a spray of blood and muck that splattered across my mask. A green mist settled over me, as poisonous as that liquid the dark birds poured inside me.

I was back on the bed again, and the creatures were arguing over whether a picture had just been taken.

“Was I in that picture?”

“No.”

“Are you sure about that?”

They shoved the copper funnel back in my mouth, and the volcanic river again sloshed down my throat. I turned my head and coughed out the poison into my pillow, burning my own flesh a second time. I cried out in horror.

The figure jumped out of the way. Another flash of light and smoke erupted five feet away, momentarily illuminating the dark human halves of the birds, who watched me from by the camera.

They were photographing me.

“Why are you poisoning me?” I tried to yell, but my larynx had been so burned by chemicals it made my voice coarse and weak. “Don’t peck out my eyes.”

“How long is it going to take?” asked one of the creatures in a deep and whispery voice.

“I have no idea. Have patience. Take some more pictures. He really does look like he’s dying from the flu. I think the choking helps.”