Текст книги "Bird box"

Автор книги: Josh Malerman

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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

eleven

Malorie has been rowing for what feels like three hours. The muscles in her arms burn. Cold water sloshes in the boat’s bottom, water she has splashed, little by little, with each dip of the oars. Moments ago, the Girl told Malorie she had to pee. Malorie told her to do it. Now the Girl’s urine mixes with the river water and it feels warm against Malorie’s shoes. She is thinking about the man in the boat they passed.

The children, Malorie thinks, didn’t take off their blindfolds. That was the first living human voice they’ve ever heard other than one another’s. Yet, they didn’t listen to him.

Yes, she has trained them well. But it’s not a nice thing to think about. Training the children means she has scared them so completely that under no circumstances will they disobey her. As a girl, Malorie rebelled against her parents all the time. Sugar wasn’t allowed in the house. Malorie snuck it in. Scary movies weren’t allowed in the house. Malorie tiptoed downstairs at midnight to watch them on television. When her parents said she wasn’t allowed to sleep on the couch in the living room, she moved her bed in there. These were the thrills of childhood. Malorie’s children don’t know them.

As babies, she trained them to wake with their eyes closed. Standing above their chicken wire beds, flyswatter in hand, she’d wait. As each woke and opened their eyes, she would smack them hard on the arm. They would cry. Malorie would reach down and close their eyes with her fingers. If they kept their eyes closed, she would lift her shirt and feed them. Reward.

“Mommy,” the Girl says, “was that the same man who sings in the radio?”

The Girl is talking about a cassette tape Felix used to like to listen to.

“No,” the Boy says.

“Who was it then?” the Girl asks.

Malorie turns to face the Girl so her voice will be louder.

“I thought we agreed you two wouldn’t ask any questions that have nothing to do with the river. Are we breaking this agreement?”

“No,” the Girl quietly says.

When they were three years old, she trained them to get water from the well. Tying a rope around her waist, she wrapped the other end around the Boy. Then, telling him to feel for the path with his toes, she sent him out there to do it on his own. Malorie would listen to the sound of the bucket clumsily being raised. She listened to him struggle as he carried it back to her. Many times she heard it fall from his hands. Each time it did, she made him go back out there and do it again.

The Girl hated it. She said the ground was “too bumpy” out there around the well. She said it felt like people lived below the grass. Malorie denied the Girl food until she agreed to do it.

When they were toddlers, the children were set at opposite sides of the living room. Malorie would roam the carpet. When she said, “Where am I?” the Boy and Girl would point. Then she’d go upstairs, come back down, and ask them, “Where was I?” The children would point. When they were wrong, Malorie would yell at them.

But they weren’t often wrong. And soon they were never wrong at all.

What would Tom say about that? she thinks. He’d tell you that you were being the best mother on Earth. And you’d believe him.

Without Tom, Malorie only has herself to turn to. And many times, sitting alone at the kitchen table, the children asleep in their bedroom, she asked herself the inevitable question:

Are you a good mother? Does such a thing exist anymore?

Now Malorie feels a soft tap on her knee. She gasps. But it is only the Boy. He is asking for the pouch of food. Midrow, Malorie reaches into her jacket pocket and hands it to him. She hears as his little teeth crunch the once-canned nuts that sat on the cellar shelves for four and a half years before Malorie brought them up this morning.

Then Malorie stops rowing. She is hot. Too hot. She is sweating as much as if it were June. She removes her jacket and places it on the rowboat bench beside her. Then she feels a small tap against her back. The Girl is hungry, too.

Are you a good mother? she asks herself again, handing over a second pouch of food.

How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can’t lift their heads to gaze upon them?

Malorie doesn’t know the answer.

twelve

Tom is building something out of an old soft guitar case and a couch cushion. Olympia is sleeping upstairs in the bedroom next to Malorie’s. Felix gave it to her just like Tom gave his to Malorie. Felix now sleeps on the couch in the living room. The night before, Tom took detailed notes of the items Olympia has in her house when she told him. What began as a hopeful conversation resulted in the housemates’ deciding that the few things they could use weren’t worth the risk of getting them. Paper. Another bucket. Olympia’s husband’s toolbox. Still, as Felix pointed out, if and when the need for these objects outweighed the risk, they could fetch them after all. Some things, Don said, might be needed sooner than later. Canned nuts, tuna, pasta, condiments. While discussing foods, Tom explained to the others how much stock they had remaining in the cellar. Because it was finite, it worried Malorie deeply.

Right now, Jules sleeps down the hall in the den. He is on a mattress on the floor at one end of the room. Don’s mattress is at the other. Between them is a high wooden table that holds their things. Victor is in there with him. Jules snores. Soft music plays on the small cassette-deck radio. It’s coming from the dining room, where Felix and Don are playing euchre with a deck of Pee-wee Herman playing cards. Cheryl is washing clothes in a bucket in the kitchen sink.

Malorie is alone with Tom on the couch in the living room.

“The man who owned the house,” Malorie says. “George, that was his name? He placed the ad? He was here when you got here?”

Tom, who is attempting to make a protective, padded cover for the interior windshield of a car, looks Malorie in the eyes. His hair looks extra sandy in the lamplight.

“I was the first one to answer the ad in the paper,” Tom says. “George was great. He’d asked strangers into his home when everyone was locking their doors. And he was progressive, too, a big thinker. He was constantly presenting ideas. Maybe we could look out the windows through lenses? Refracted glass? Telescopes? Binoculars? That was his big idea. If it’s a matter of sight, maybe what we’d need to do is alter our sight line. Or change the physical ways in which we see something. By looking through an object, maybe the creatures couldn’t hurt us. We were both really looking for a way to solve this. And George, being the kind of man he was, wasn’t satisfied with just talking about it. He wanted us to try these theories out.”

As Tom talks, Malorie pictures the face in the photos along the staircase.

“The night Don arrived, the three of us were sitting in the kitchen, listening to the radio, when George suggested there might be some variety of ‘life’ that was causing this to happen. This is before MSNBC proposed that theory. George said he got the idea from an old book, Possible Impossibilities. It talked about irreconcilable life-forms. Two worlds whose compounds were entirely foreign might cause damage to one another if they were to cross paths. And if this other life-form were somehow able to get here . . . well, that’s what George was saying had happened. That they did figure out a way to travel here, intentionally or not. I loved it. But Don didn’t. He was online a lot back then, researching chemicals, gamma waves, anything unseen that might cause harm if you looked at it because you wouldn’t know you were looking at it. Yeah, Don was pretty hard on us about it. He’s passionate. You can already tell he gets angry. But George was the kind of man who, once he had an idea, was going to see it out, no matter how dangerous it was.

“By the time Felix and Jules arrived, George was ready to test his theory about refracted vision. I read everything with him that he pulled up online. So many websites about eyesight and how the eyes work and optical illusions and refracted light, how exactly telescopes work, and more. We talked about it all the time. When Don, Felix, and Jules were asleep, George and I sat at the kitchen table and drew diagrams. He’d pace back and forth, then he’d stop, turn to me, and ask, ‘Have any of the victims been known to wear glasses? Maybe a closed window could protect us, if certain angles were applied.’ Then we’d talk about that for another hour.

“We all watched the news constantly, hoping for another clue, a piece of information that we’d be able to use to find a way for people to protect themselves. But the reports just started to repeat themselves. And George got impatient. The more he talked about testing his ‘altered vision’ theory, the more he wanted to try it. I was scared, Malorie. But George was like the captain of a sinking ship, and he wasn’t afraid to die. And if it worked? Well, that would mean he’d helped cure the planet of its most terrifying epidemic.”

As Tom speaks, the lamplight dances in his blue eyes.

“What did he use?” Malorie asks.

“A video camera,” Tom says. “He had one upstairs. One of those old VHS cameras. He did it without telling us. One night he set it up behind one of the blankets hanging in the dining room. I woke first that morning and found him asleep on the floor in there. When he heard me, he got up and hurried to the camera. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘I did it. I recorded five hours of footage. It’s right here, here, inside this camera. I could be holding the cure to this thing. Indirect vision. Film. We have to watch this.’

“I told him I thought it was a bad idea. I also thought it wasn’t likely he’d captured anything in just a five-hour span. But he had a plan that he presented to all of us. He said he needed one of us to tie him to a chair in one of the upstairs bedrooms. He’d watch the footage in there. The way he saw it, tied to the chair, he shouldn’t be able to hurt himself if things went badly. Don got really angry. He told George he was a threat to us all. He rightfully said that we had no idea what we were dealing with, and that if something were to happen to George, then something might happen to us all. But Felix and I weren’t opposed. We voted. Don was the only one who didn’t want him to do it. He talked about leaving. We talked him out of it. And finally, George told us that he didn’t need permission in his own house to do what he wanted to do. So, I told him I’d tie him to the chair.”

“And you did?”

“I did.”

Tom’s eyes travel to the carpet.

“It started with George gasping. Like he had something lodged in his throat. He’d been up there two hours and hadn’t made a sound. Then he starting calling to us. ‘Tom! You piece of shit. Get up here. Get up here.’ He would giggle, then scream, then howl. He sounded like a dog. We heard the chair bang hard against the floor. He was screaming profanities. Jules rose to go help him and I grabbed his arm to stop him. There was nothing we could do except listen. And we heard the entire thing. All the way until the crashing of the chair and the screaming stopped. Then we waited. We waited for a long time. Eventually, we went upstairs together. Blindfolded, we turned the VCR off, then opened our eyes. We saw what George had done to himself. He’d pressed so hard against the ropes that they had gone through his muscles all the way to the bone. His entire body looked like cake frosting, blood and skin folded over the ropes in his chest, his belly, his neck, his wrists, his legs. Felix threw up. Don and I knelt beside George and began cleaning. When we were finished, Don insisted we burn the tape. So we did. And while it was burning I couldn’t stop thinking that with it went our first real theory. It seems that no matter what prism you view them through, they’ll hurt you.”

Malorie is silent.

“You know what, though? He was right. In a way. He hypothesized it was creatures long before the news said as much. He was obviously onto something. Maybe if he had gone about it in a different way, George could have been the kind of guy to change the world.”

There are tears in Tom’s eyes.

“You know what worries me most about that story, Malorie?”

“What?”

“The camera was only running for five hours and it caught something. How many of them are out there?”

Malorie looks to the blankets covering the windows. Then she looks back to Tom. He’s adjusting the windshield protector he’s building. The music comes quietly from the dining room.

“Well,” Tom says, lifting the thing in his hands, “hopefully something like this helps. You know, we can’t stop trying just because George died. Sometimes I think it scarred Don. It did something to him for sure.”

Tom rises and holds the big piece before him. Malorie hears something snap, and the thing Tom is building falls to pieces at his feet.

He turns to Malorie.

“We can’t stop trying.”

thirteen

Felix is taking the path toward the well. One of the housemates’ six buckets hangs from his right hand. It’s the wood one. The black iron handle makes it look old. It’s heavier than the others, but Felix doesn’t mind. Rather, he likes it. It keeps him grounded, he says.

The rope is tied around his waist. The other end of it is tied to a steel stake in the dirt, just outside the home’s back door. There is a lot of slack. Some of it rubs against his pant leg and his shoes. He worries about tripping over it, so, with his left hand, he lifts it and holds it away from his body. He is blindfolded. The pieces of old picture frames that outline the path let him know if he’s walking too far to one side or another.

“It’s like Operation!” he calls to Jules, who waits, blindfolded, by the stake. “Do you remember that game? Every time my toe touches the wood I hear a buzzer going off.”

Jules has been talking since Felix started walking toward the well. It’s the way the housemates do it. One fetches the water, the other lets him know how far he is from the house through his voice. Jules hasn’t been saying anything in particular. Reciting grades he got in college. Listing off his first three jobs after he graduated. Felix can hear some words but not others. It doesn’t matter. As long as Jules is talking, Felix feels a little less like he’s out to sea.

But not much less.

He bumps into the well when he reaches it. The cobblestone lip scratches his thigh. It amazes Felix to think how much it hurts, walking this slow, and how much it could hurt if he was running.

“I’m at the well, Jules! Securing the bucket now.”

Jules isn’t the only one waiting for Felix. Cheryl is behind the closed back door of the house. She is standing in the kitchen, listening through the door. The housemate who waits inside the kitchen is only there in case something goes wrong outside. She is hoping her role as a “safety net” won’t mean anything today.

Above the well’s open mouth is a wooden crossbar. At each end is an iron hook. This is why Felix likes bringing the wooden bucket when he goes. It’s the only one that fits perfectly on the hooks. He ties the well rope to the bucket. Once it’s secure, he rotates the crank, making the rope as taut as it can go. His hands free, he wipes them on his jeans.

Then he hears something move out here.

Turning his head quickly, Felix raises his hands in front of his face. But nothing happens. Nothing comes at him. He can hear Jules talking by the back door. Something about a job as a mechanic. Fixing things.

Felix listens.

Breathing hard, he gives the crank one turn in the opposite direction, his ear toward the rest of the yard. The rope is just slack enough now for him to remove the bucket from the hooks and let it hang, suspended, above the stone mouth of the well. He waits another minute. Jules calls to him.

“Everything okay, Felix?”

Felix listens a little longer before responding. As he answers, he feels as if his voice suddenly betrays his exact location.

“Yes. I thought I heard something.”

“What?”

“I thought I heard something! I’m getting the water now.”

Turning the crank, Felix lowers the bucket. He hears it strike the stone sides within. They are followed by hollow echoes. Felix knows that it takes about twenty revolutions of the crank for the bucket to reach the water. He is counting them now.

“That’s eleven, that’s twelve, that’s thirteen . . .”

At nineteen he hears a splash from the bottom of the well. When he thinks the bucket is full, he brings it back up. Securing it to the hooks, he unfastens the rope and begins walking toward Jules again.

He will do this three times.

“I’m bringing back the first one!” Felix calls.

Jules is still talking about fixing cars. When Felix gets to him, Jules touches his shoulder. Usually, here, the housemate who is standing by the stake knocks on the back door, alerting the person waiting inside that the first bucket has been retrieved. But Jules hesitates.

“What did you hear out there?” he asks.

Felix, carrying the heavy bucket, thinks.

“It was probably a deer. I’m not sure.”

“Did it come from the woods?”

“I don’t know where it came from.”

Jules is quiet. Then Felix can hear him moving.

“Are you searching to make sure we’re alone?”

“Yes.”

When he is satisfied, Jules knocks twice on the back door. He takes the bucket from Felix’s hands. Cheryl quickly opens the door and Jules hands it to her. The door closes.

“Here’s the second one,” Jules says, handing Felix another bucket.

Felix is walking toward the well. The bucket he carries now is made of sheet metal. There are three like this in the house. At the bottom of it are two heavy rocks. Tom placed them there after determining the bucket wasn’t quite heavy enough to submerge. It’s heavy, but not as heavy as the wooden one. Jules is talking again. Now he brings up breeds of dogs. Felix has heard this before. Jules once owned a white Lab, Cherry, who he says was the most skittish dog he’s ever known. When his shoe touches the wood in the dirt, Felix almost falls. He’s walking too fast. He knows this. He slows down. This time, at the well, he feels for it with an outstretched hand. He sets the bucket on the cobblestone lip and begins fastening the crossbar rope to the handle.

He hears something. Again. It sounds like wood popping in the distance.

When Felix turns he accidentally knocks the bucket off the well’s lip. It falls in; the crank turns without him. The bucket crashes to the bottom. The loud echoes of metal against stone. Jules calls to him. Felix, turning around, feels incredibly vulnerable. Again, he does not know where the sound has come from. He listens, breathing hard. Leaning against the cobblestones, he waits.

Wind rustles the leaves of the trees.

Nothing else.

“Felix?”

“I dropped the bucket into the well!”

“Was it tied?”

He pauses.

Felix nervously turns toward the well. He pulls on the crossbar’s rope and discovers that, yes, he tied it to the handle before knocking it in. He releases the rope. He turns toward the rest of the yard. He pauses. Then he begins bringing the second bucket back up.

On the walk back toward the house, Jules is asking him questions.

“Are you all right, Felix?”

“Yes.”

“You just dropped it in?”

“I knocked it in. Yes. I thought I heard something again.”

“What did it sound like? A stick breaking?”

“No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

When Felix reaches Jules, Jules takes the bucket.

“Are you sure you’re up for this today?”

“Yes. I’ve already gotten two buckets. It’s all right. I’m just fucking hearing things out there, Jules.”

“Want me to get the last one?”

“No. I can do it.”

Jules knocks on the back door. Cheryl opens it, receives the bucket, then hands Jules the third.

“Are you guys all right?” she asks.

“Yes,” Felix says. “We’re fine.”

Cheryl shuts the door.

“Here you are,” Jules says. “If you need me, tell me. Remember, you’re connected here.”

He tugs on the rope.

“All right.”

On the third trip to the well, Felix has to remind himself to slow down again. He understands why he is rushing. He wants to be back inside, where he can look Jules in the face, where the blankets over the windows make him feel safer. Still, he reaches the well sooner than he expects. Slowly, he ties the crossbar rope to the bucket’s handle. Then he pauses.

There are no sounds out here except the voice of Jules, coming from the other end of the rope.

The world, it seems, is unnaturally quiet.

Felix turns the crank.

“That’s one, that’s two . . .”

Jules is talking. His voice sounds far away. Too far.

“. . . that’s six, that’s seven . . .”

Jules sounds anxious. Why did he sound anxious? Should he?

“. . . that’s ten, that’s eleven . . .”

Sweat forms behind Felix’s blindfold. It slowly travels down the length of his nose.

We’ll be inside in no time, Felix thinks. Just fill the third bucket and get the fuck—

He hears the sound again. For the third time.

But now, he can tell where it is coming from.

It is coming from inside the well.

He releases the crank and steps back. The bucket falls, crashing against the stone, before splashing below.

Something moved. Something moved in the water.

Did something move in the water?

Suddenly he feels cold, too cold. He is shaking.

Jules calls to him but Felix doesn’t want to call back. He doesn’t want to make a sound.

He waits. And the longer he waits, the more scared he gets. Like the silence is getting louder. Like he’s about to hear something he doesn’t want to hear. But when no sound comes, he slowly begins to convince himself that he was wrong. Sure, it could have been something in the well but it could have been something in the river, too. Or the woods. Or the grass.

It could have come from anywhere out here.

He steps toward the well again. Before reaching for the rope, he touches the cobblestone lip. He runs his fingers across it. He is determining how wide it is.

Could you fit in there? Could someone fit in there?

He isn’t sure. He turns toward the house, ready to leave the bucket where it is. Then he turns back to the well and begins turning the crank, fast.

You’re hearing things. You’re losing your marbles, man. Get this thing up. Get back inside. Now.

But as he cranks, Felix feels the very beginning of a fear that could grow too big to handle. The bucket, he thinks, feels the littlest bit heavier than it normally does.

It’s NOT heavier! Get the bucket UP and get BACK inside NOW!!

When the bucket reaches the lip, Felix stops. Slowly, with one hand, he reaches toward it. His hand is shaking. When his fingers touch the wet, steel rim he swallows once, hard. He locks the crank. Then he sticks his hand into the bucket.

“Felix?”

Jules is calling.

Felix feels nothing but water in the bucket.

You see? You’re imagining—

Behind him, he hears wet feet on the grass.

Felix drops the bucket and runs.

He falls.

Get up.

He gets back up and runs.

Jules is calling to him. He is calling back.

He falls again.

Get up. Get up.

He gets up again. He runs.

Jules’s hands are upon him.

The back door is opening. Someone else’s hands are upon him. He is inside. Everyone is talking at once. Don is yelling. Cheryl is yelling. Tom is telling everyone to calm down. The back door is closed. Olympia is asking what is going on. Cheryl is asking what happened. Tom is telling everyone to close their eyes. Somebody is touching Felix. Jules yells at everyone to be quiet.

They are.

Then Tom is speaking, quietly.

“Don, did you search by the back door?”

“How the fuck should I know if I did it right, man?”

“I’m just asking if you searched.”

“I did. Yes. I did.”

Tom says, “Felix, what happened?”

Felix tells them. Every detail he remembers. Tom asks him to go over what happened at the end again. He wants to know more about what occurred at the back door. Before he was let in. As he was let in. Felix tells him again.

“All right,” Tom says again. “I’m opening my eyes.”

Malorie tenses.

“I’m fine,” Tom says. “It’s okay.”

Malorie opens her eyes. On the kitchen counter there are two buckets of well water. Felix is standing blindfolded by the back door. Jules is removing his blindfold.

“Lock that door,” Tom says.

“It is,” Cheryl says.

“Jules,” Tom says, “stack the chairs from the dining room in front of this door. Then block the window in the dining room with the table.”

“Tom,” Olympia says, “you’re scaring me.”

“Don, come with me. We’re going to block the front door with the credenza. Felix, Cheryl, turn the couch in the living room on its side. Block one of the windows. I’ll find something to block the other one with.”

The housemates are staring at Tom.

“Come on,” he says impatiently. “Let’s go!”

As they begin to scatter, Malorie touches Tom’s arm.

“What is it?”

“Olympia and I can help. We’re pregnant, not crippled. We’ll put the mattresses upstairs over the windows.”

“Okay. But do it blindfolded. And be as careful as you’ve ever been in your entire life.”

Then Tom leaves the kitchen. When Malorie and Olympia pass the living room, Don is already in there, moving the couch. Upstairs, the two women delicately place Malorie’s mattress on its side against the blanket covering the window. They do the same in Olympia and Cheryl’s rooms.

Downstairs again, the doors and windows are blockaded.

The housemates are in the living room. They are standing very close together.

“Tom,” Olympia says, “is something out there?”

Tom pauses before answering. Malorie sees something deeper than fear in Olympia’s eyes. She feels it herself, too.

“Maybe.”

Tom is staring at the windows.

“But it could have been . . . a deer, right? Couldn’t it have been a deer?”

“Maybe.”

One by one the housemates sit upon the living room’s carpeted floor. They are shoulder to shoulder, back to back. In the center of the room, the couch against one window, the kitchen chairs stacked against the other, they sit in silence.

They listen.