Bird Box

by Josh Malerman

  ‘Don?’ Tom calls.

  There is no answer.

  Tom goes first. Then Jules and Victor. Malorie follows.

  Despite the light being on, it feels dark down here. At first, Malorie thinks they are alone. She expected to see Don sitting on the stool. Reading. Thinking. Writing. She almost says that nobody is down here, then she shrieks.

  Don is standing by the thin tapestry, leaning against the washing machine in the shadows.

  ‘What’s gotten into the dog?’ he asks quietly.

  Tom speaks carefully when he responds.

  ‘We don’t know, Don. It’s like he doesn’t like something down here. Is everything okay?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You’ve been down here more than we have lately,’ Tom says. ‘I just want to know if everything is okay.’

  When Don steps forward, into the light, Malorie quietly gasps. He does not look good. Pale. Thin. His dark hair is dirty and thinning. The features of his face are claylike in texture. The dark circles beneath his eyes make it look like he’s taken in some of the darkness he’s been staring into for weeks.

  ‘We called the whole phone book,’ Tom says, attempting, Malorie thinks, something bright in this damp, dark cellar.

  ‘Any luck?’

  ‘None yet. But who knows?’

  ‘Yes. Who knows.’

  Then they are silent. Malorie understands that the divide she sensed growing between them is complete now. They are checking on Don. Checking up on Don. As if he lives somewhere else now. Repair feels impossible.

  ‘Do you want to come upstairs?’ Tom asks gently.

  Malorie experiences a wave of light-headedness. She brings a hand to her belly.

  The baby. She shouldn’t have taken the cellar stairs. But she’s as concerned about Don as anybody.

  ‘What for?’ Don finally answers.

  ‘I don’t know what for,’ Tom says. ‘It might do you some good to be around the rest of us for a night.’

  Don is nodding slowly. He licks his lips. He looks once around the cellar. To the shelves, the boxes, and the stool Malorie sat on, seven weeks ago, when she read the notebook in Gary’s briefcase.

  ‘All right,’ Don whispers. ‘Okay.’

  Tom puts a hand on Don’s shoulder. Don begins crying. He brings a hand to his eyes to hide it.

  ‘I’m sorry, man,’ he says. ‘I’m so confused, Tom.’

  ‘We all are,’ Tom says quietly. ‘Come upstairs. Everyone would love to see you.’

  In the kitchen, Tom pulls the bottle of rum from a cabinet. He pours a drink for himself and then one for Don. The two clink glasses, softly, then sip.

  For a moment, it’s like nothing has changed and nothing ever will. The housemates are together again. Malorie can’t remember the last time she saw Don like this, without Gary crouched beside him, the demon on his shoulder, whispering philosophies, discolouring his mind with the same language she found in the notebook.

  Victor rubs against Malorie’s legs as he heads back into the kitchen. Watching him, she feels a second wave of dizziness.

  I need to lie down, she thinks.

  ‘Then you should,’ Tom says.

  Malorie didn’t realize she said this out loud.

  But she doesn’t want to lie down. She wants to sit with Tom and Don and the others and believe, for a moment, that the house could still be what it set out to be. A place for strangers to meet, to pool their resources, gather strength in numbers, to face the impossible, changing world outside.

  Then, it’s all just too much. A third wave of nausea hits and Malorie, standing, stumbles. Jules appears, suddenly, by her side. He is helping her up the stairs. As she enters her bedroom and lies down, she sees the others are in the room with her. All of them. Don, too. They are watching her, worried about her. Staring. They ask if she is okay. Does she need anything? Water? A wet cloth? She says no, or thinks she says no, but she is drifting. As she falls asleep, she hears a sound, coming through the vent, the sound of Victor again, growling, alone, in the kitchen.

  The last thing she sees before closing her eyes are the housemates in a group. They are watching her closely. They look to her belly.

  They know the moment has come.

  Victor growls again. Don looks towards the stairs.

  Jules leaves the bedroom.

  ‘Thank you, Tom,’ Malorie says. ‘For the bicycle horns.’

  She thinks she hears the bird box, banging lightly against the house. But it is only the wind against the window.

  Then she is asleep. And she dreams of the birds.

  The birds in the trees are restless. It sounds like a thousand branches shaking at once. Like there’s a dangerous wind up there. But Malorie doesn’t feel it down here on the river. No. There is no wind.

  But something is disrupting the birds.

  The pain in her shoulder has reached a level Malorie has never experienced before. She curses herself for not paying more attention to her body these last four years. Instead, she spent her time training the children. Until their abilities transcended the exercises she came up with.

  Mommy, a leaf fell into the well!

  Mommy, it is drizzling down the street and it heads our way!

  Mommy, a bird has landed on the branch beyond our window!

  Will the children hear the recorded voice before she does? They must. And when that happens, it’ll be time to open her eyes. To look at where the river splits into four channels. She’s to pick the second from the right. That’s what she was told to do.

  And soon she’ll have to do it.

  The birds in the trees are cooing. There is activity on the banks. Man, animal, monster. She has no idea.

  The fear she experiences sits firmly upon the centre of her soul.

  And the birds in the branches directly above them are now cooing.

  She thinks of the house. The last night she spent with the housemates, all of them together. The wind was loud against the windows. There was a coming storm. A big one. Maybe the birds in the trees know it. Or maybe they know something else.

  ‘I can’t hear,’ the Girl suddenly says. ‘The birds, Mommy. They’re too loud!’

  Malorie stops rowing. She thinks of Victor.

  ‘What do they sound like to you?’ she asks both children.

  ‘Scared!’ the Girl says.

  ‘Mad!’ says the Boy.

  The closer Malorie listens to the trees, the worse it sounds.

  How many are up there? It sounds like infinity.

  Will the children hear the recording beneath the cacophony above?

  Victor went mad. Animals go mad.

  The birds do not sound sane.

  Slowly, blindly, she looks over her shoulder towards what follows them.

  Your eyes are closed, she thinks. Just like your eyes were closed every time you got water from the well. Every time you attempted to drive to fetch the amplifiers. Your eyes were closed when Victor’s weren’t. What are you worried about? Haven’t you been in close proximity before? Haven’t you been so close to one that you believed you could smell it?

  She has.

  You add the details, she thinks. It’s your idea of what they look like, and details are added to a body and a shape that you have no concept of. To a face that might have no face at all.

  The creatures of her mind walk horizonless, open fields. They stand outside the windows of former homes and gaze curiously at the glass. They study. They examine. They observe. They do the one thing Malorie isn’t allowed to do.

  They look.

  Do they recognize the flowers in the garden as pretty? Do they understand which direction the river flows? Do they?

  ‘Mommy,’ the Boy says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That noise, Mommy. It sounds like someone talking.’

  She thinks of the man in the boat. She thinks of Gary. Even now, so far from the house, she thinks of Gary.

  She tries to ask the Boy what he
means, but the voices of the birds rise in a grotesque wave, nearly symphonic, shrieking.

  It sounds like there are too many for the trees to hold.

  Like they make up the entire sky.

  They sound mad. They sound mad. Oh my God they sound mad.

  Malorie turns her head over her shoulder again, though she cannot see. The Boy heard a voice. The birds are mad. Who follows them?

  But it no longer feels like something is following them. It feels like that something has caught up.

  ‘It’s a voice!’ the Boy yells, as if from a dream, his voice penetrating the impossible noise from above.

  Malorie is sure of it. The birds have seen something below.

  The communal birdsong swells and peaks before it flattens, twists, and the boundaries explode. Malorie hears it like she’s inside of it. Like she’s trapped in an aviary with a thousand madcap birds. It feels like a cage was lowered over them all. A cardboard box. A bird box. Blocking out the sun forever.

  What is it? What is it? What is it?

  Infinity.

  Where did it come from? Where did it come from? Where did it come from?

  Infinity.

  The birds scream. And the noise they make is not a song.

  The Girl shrieks.

  ‘Something hit me, Mommy! Something fell!’

  Malorie feels it, too. She thinks it’s raining.

  Impossibly, the sound of the birds gets louder. They are deafening, screeching. Malorie has to cover her ears. She calls to the children, begging them to do the same.

  Something lands hard against her bad shoulder and she yelps, wincing in pain.

  Wildly, her hand grasping her blindfold, she searches the boat for what struck her.

  The Girl shrieks again.

  ‘Mommy!’

  But Malorie’s found it. Between her forefinger and thumb is not a drop of rain but the broken body of a tiny bird. She feels its delicate wing.

  Malorie knows now.

  In the sky above, where she is forbidden to look, the birds are warring. The birds are killing one another.

  ‘Cover your heads! Hold on to your blindfolds!’

  Then, like a wave, they hit. Feathered bodies hail from above. The river erupts with the weight of thousands of birds splashing into the water. They hit the boat. They plummet. Malorie is struck. They hit her head, her arm. She’s struck again. Again.

  As bird blood courses down her cheeks, she can taste them.

  You can smell it, too. Death. Dying. Decay. The sky is falling, the sky is dying, the sky is dead.

  Malorie calls to the children, but the Boy is already speaking, trying to tell her something.

  ‘Riverbridge,’ he is saying. ‘Two seventy-three Shillingham … my name is …’

  ‘What?’

  Crouched, Malorie leans forward. She presses the Boy’s lips hard to her ear.

  ‘Riverbridge,’ he says. ‘Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom.’

  Malorie sits up, wounded, clutching her blindfold.

  My name is Tom.

  Birds strike her body. They thud against the boat.

  But she is not thinking of them.

  She is thinking of Tom.

  Hello! I’m calling you from Riverbridge. Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom. I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine. It means you still have power. So do we …

  Malorie starts shaking her head.

  no no no no no no no no no no no

  ‘NO!’

  The Boy heard it first. Tom’s voice. Recorded and played on a loop. Motion activated. For her. For Malorie. If ever she decided to take the river. Whenever that day would come. Tom, sweet Tom, speaking out here all these years. Trying to make contact. Trying to reach someone. Trying to build a bridge between their life in the house and a better one, somewhere else.

  They used his voice because they knew you’d recognize it. This is it, Malorie.

  This is the moment you’re supposed to open your eyes.

  How green is the grass? How colorful are the leaves? How red is the blood of the birds that spreads through the river beneath her?

  ‘Mommy!’ the Boy calls.

  Mommy has to open her eyes, she wants to say. Mommy has to look.

  But the birds have gone mad.

  ‘Mommy!’ the Boy says again.

  She answers. She hardly recognizes her own voice.

  ‘What is it, Boy?’

  ‘Something is here with us, Mommy. Something is right here.’

  The rowboat stops.

  Something has stopped it.

  She can hear it move in the water beside them.

  It’s not an animal, she thinks. It’s not Gary. It’s the thing you’ve been hiding from for four and a half years. It’s the thing that won’t let you look outside.

  Malorie readies herself.

  There is something in the water to her left. Inches from her arm.

  The birds above are growing distant. As if rising, rising, in a lunatic rush towards the ends of the sky.

  She can feel the presence of something beside her.

  The birds are growing quieter. Quieting. They fade. Rising. Gone.

  Tom’s voice continues. The river flows around the rowboat.

  Malorie screams when she feels her blindfold being pulled from her face.

  She does not move.

  The blindfold stops an inch from her closed eyes.

  Can she hear it? Breathing? Is that what she hears? Is that it?

  Tom, she thinks, Tom is leaving a message.

  His voice echoes across the river. He sounds so hopeful. Alive.

  Tom. I’m going to have to open my eyes. Talk to me. Please. Tell me what to do. Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

  His voice comes from ahead. He sounds like the sun, the only light in all this darkness.

  The blindfold is pulled an inch farther from her face. The knot presses against the back of her head.

  Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.

  And, so …

  … she does.

  Malorie sits up in bed and grips her belly before she understands that she has been howling for some time already. The bed is soaking wet.

  Two men rush into the room. It is all so dreamy

  (Am I really having a baby? A baby? I was pregnant this whole time?)

  and so frightening

  (Where’s Shannon? Where is Mother?)

  that, at first, she does not recognize them as Felix and Jules.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Felix says. ‘Olympia is already up there. Olympia started maybe two hours ago.’

  Up where? Malorie thinks. Up where?

  The men are careful with her and help her ease to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Are you ready to do this?’ Jules asks anxiously.

  Malorie just looks at him, her brow furrowed, her face pink and pale at once.

  ‘I was sleeping,’ she says. ‘I was just … up where, Felix?’

  ‘She’s ready,’ Jules says, forcing a smile, trying to comfort her. ‘You look wonderful, Malorie. You look ready.’

  She starts to ask, ‘Up –’

  But Felix tells her before she finishes.

  ‘We’re going to do this in the attic. Tom says it’s the safest place in the house. In case something were to happen. But nothing’s going to happen. Olympia’s up there already. She’s been going for two hours. Tom and Cheryl are up there with her. Don’t worry, Malorie. We’ll do everything we can.’

  Malorie doesn’t answer. The feeling of something inside her that must get out is the most horrifying and incredible feeling she’s ever known. The men have her, one under each arm, and they walk her out of the room, over the threshold, and down the hall towards the rear of the house. The attic stairs are already pulled down and as they steady her, Malorie sees the blankets covering the window at the end of the hall. She wonders what time of day it is. If it’s the next night. If it’s a week later.
>
  Am I really having my baby? Now?

  Felix and Jules help her up the old wooden steps. She can hear Olympia upstairs. And Tom’s gentle voice, saying things like breathe, you’ll be fine, you’re okay.

  ‘Maybe it won’t be so different after all,’ she says (the men, thank God, helping her up the creaking steps). ‘Maybe it won’t be so different from how I hoped it would go.’

  There is more room up here than she pictured. A single candle lights the space. Olympia is on a towel on the ground. Cheryl is beside her. Olympia’s knees are lifted and a thin bedsheet covers her from the waist down. Jules helps her onto her own towel facing Olympia. Tom approaches Malorie.

  ‘Oh, Malorie!’ Olympia says. She is out of breath and only part of her exclaims while the rest buckles and contorts. ‘I’m so glad you’re here!’

  Malorie, dazed, can’t help but feel like she’s still sleeping when she looks over her covered knees and sees Olympia set up like a reflection.

  ‘How long have you been here, Olympia?’

  ‘I don’t know. Forever, I think!’

  Felix is talking quietly to Olympia, asking her what she needs. Then he heads downstairs to get it. Tom reminds Cheryl to keep things clean. They’re going to be okay, he says, as long as they’re clean. They’re using clean sheets and towels. Hand sanitizer from Tom’s house. Two buckets of well water.

  Tom appears calm, but Malorie knows he’s not.

  ‘Malorie?’ Tom asks.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What do you need?’

  ‘How about some water? And some music, too, Tom.’

  ‘Music?’

  ‘Yes. Something sweet and soft, you know, something to maybe’ – Something to cover up the sound of my body on the wood floor of an attic – ‘the flute music. That one tape.’

  ‘Okay,’ Tom says. ‘I’ll get it.’

  He does, stepping by her to the stairs that descend directly behind her back. She turns her attention to Olympia. She’s still having trouble shaking the fog of sleep. She sees a small steak knife beside her on a paper towel, less than a foot away. Cheryl just dunked it into the water.

  ‘Jesus!’ Olympia suddenly hollers, and Felix kneels and takes her hand.

  Malorie watches.

  These people, she thinks, the kind of person that would answer an ad like that in the paper. These people are survivors.