She experiences a momentary surge of peace. She knows it won’t last long. The housemates wisp through her mind, their faces, one by one. With each she feels something like love.
My God, she thinks, we’ve been so brave.
‘God!’ Olympia suddenly screams. Cheryl is quickly beside her.
Once, when Tom was up here looking for tape, Malorie watched from the foot of the ladder stairs. But she’s never been up here herself. Now, breathing heavily, she looks to the curtain covering the lone window and she feels a chill. Even the attic has been protected. A room hardly ever used still needs a blanket. Her eyes travel along the wooden window frame, then along the panelled walls, the pointed ceiling, the boxes of things George left behind. Her eyes continue to a stack of blankets piled high. Another box of plastic parts. Old books. Old clothes.
Someone is standing by the old clothes.
It’s Don.
Malorie feels a contraction.
Tom returns with a glass of water and the little radio they play cassettes on.
‘Here, Malorie,’ he says. ‘I found it.’
The sound of crackling violins escapes the small speakers. Malorie thinks it’s perfect.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
Tom’s face looks very tired. His eyes are only half open and puffy. Like he slept for an hour or less.
Malorie feels a cramping so incredible that at first she thinks it isn’t real. It feels like a bear trap has clamped down on her waist.
Voices come from behind her. Down the attic stairs. It’s Cheryl. Jules. She’s hardly aware of who’s up here and who isn’t.
‘Oh God!’ Olympia calls out.
Tom is with her. Felix is by Malorie’s side again.
‘You’re going to make it,’ Malorie calls to Olympia.
As she does, thunder booms outside. Rain falls hard against the roof. Somehow the rain is the exact sound she was looking for. The world outside sounds like how she feels inside. Stormy. Menacing. Foul. The housemates emerge from the shadows, then vanish. Tom looks worried. Olympia is breathing hard, panting. The stairs creak. Someone new is here. It’s Jules, again. Tom is telling him Olympia is farther along than Malorie is. Thunder cracks outside. As lightning strikes, she sees Don in relief, his features sullen, his eyes set deep above dark circles.
There is an unbearable pressing tightness at Malorie’s waist. Her body, it seems, is acting on its own, refuting her mind’s desire for peace. She screams and Cheryl leaves Olympia’s side and comes to her. Malorie didn’t even know Cheryl was still up here.
‘This is awful,’ Olympia hisses.
Malorie thinks of women sharing cycles, women in tune with one another’s bodies. For all their talk about who would go first, neither she nor Olympia ever even joked that both of them might be in labour at the same time.
Oh, how Malorie longed for a traditional birth!
More thunder.
It is darker up here now. Tom brings a second candle, lights it, and sets it on the floor to Malorie’s left. In the flickering flame she sees Felix and Cheryl but Olympia is difficult to make out. Her torso and face are obscured by flickering shadows.
Someone descends the stairs behind her. Is it Don? She doesn’t want to crane her neck. Tom steps through the candlelight and then out of its range. Then Felix, she thinks, then Cheryl. Silhouettes are moving from her to Olympia like phantoms.
The rain comes down harder against the roof.
There is a loud, abrupt commotion downstairs. Malorie can’t be sure but she thinks someone is yelling. Is her tired mind mistaking sounds? Who’s arguing?
It does sound like an argument below.
She can’t think about this right now. She won’t.
‘Malorie?’ Malorie screams as Cheryl’s face suddenly appears beside her. ‘Squeeze my hand. Break it if you need to.’
Malorie wants to say, Get some light in here. Get me a doctor. Deliver this thing for me.
Instead she responds with a grunt.
She is having her baby. There is no longer when.
Will I see things differently now? I’ve seen everything through the prism of this baby. It’s how I saw the house. The housemates. The world. It’s how I saw the news when it first started and how I saw the news when it ended. I’ve been horrified, paranoid, angry, more. When my body returns to the shape it was when I walked the streets freely, will I see things differently again?
What will Tom look like? How will his ideas sound?
‘Malorie!’ Olympia calls in the darkness. ‘I don’t think I can do it!’
Cheryl is telling Olympia she can, she’s almost there.
‘What’s going on downstairs?’ Malorie suddenly asks.
Don is below. She can hear him arguing. Jules, too. Yes, Don and Jules are arguing in the hall beneath the attic. Is Tom with them? Is Felix? No. Felix emerges from the dark and takes her hand.
‘Are you okay, Malorie?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘What’s going on downstairs?’
He pauses, then says, ‘I’m not sure. But you have bigger things to worry about than people getting in each other’s faces.’
‘Is it Don?’ she asks.
‘Don’t worry about it, Malorie.’
It rains harder. It’s as if each drop has its own audible weight.
Malorie lifts her head to see Olympia’s eyes in the shadows, staring at her.
In this moment, Malorie thinks she hears another sound.
Beyond the rain, the arguing, the commotion downstairs, Malorie hears something. Sweeter than violins.
What is it?
‘Oh fuck!’ Olympia screams. ‘Make it stop!’
It’s becoming harder for Malorie to breathe. It feels like the baby is cutting off her air supply. Like it’s crawling up her throat instead.
Tom is here. He is at her side.
‘I’m sorry, Malorie.’
She turns to him. The face she sees, the look on his face, is something she will remember years after this morning.
‘Sorry for what, Tom? Sorry this is how it’s happened?’
Tom’s eyes look sad. He nods yes. They both know he has no reason to apologize but they both know no woman should have to endure her delivery in the stuffy attic of a house she only calls home because she cannot leave.
‘You know what I think?’ he says softly, reaching down to grab her hand. ‘I think you’re going to be a wonderful mother. I think you’re going to raise this child so well it won’t matter if the world continues this way or not.’
To Malorie, it feels like a rusty steel clamp is trying to pull the baby from her now. A tow truck chain from the shadows ahead.
‘Tom,’ she manages to say. ‘What’s wrong down there?’
‘Don’s upset. That’s all.’
She wants to talk more about it. She’s not angry at Don any more. She’s worried about him. Of all the housemates, he’s stricken worst by the new world. He’s lost in it. There is something emptier than hopelessness in his eyes. Malorie wants to tell Tom that she loves Don, that they all do, that he just needs help. But the pain is absolutely all she can process. And words are momentarily impossible. The argument below now sounds like a joke. Like someone’s kidding her. Like the house is telling her, You see? Have a sense of humour despite the unholy pain going on in my attic.
Malorie has known exhaustion and hunger. Physical pain and severe mental fatigue. But she has never known the state she is in now. She not only has the right to be unbothered by a squabble amongst housemates, but she very nearly deserves that they all leave the house entirely and stand out in the yard with their eyes closed for as long as it takes her and Olympia to do what their bodies need to.
Tom stands up.
‘I’ll be right back,’ he says. ‘Do you need some more water?’
Malorie shakes her head no and returns her eyes to the shadows and sheet that is Olympia’s struggle before her.
‘We’re doing it!’ Olympia says, suddenly, maniacally.
‘It’s happening!’
So many sounds. The voices below, the voices in the attic (coming from the shadows and coming from faces emerging from those shadows), the ladder stairs, creaking every time a housemate ascends or descends, assessing the situation up here and then the one (she knows there is a problem downstairs, she just can’t care right now) going on a floor below. The rain falls but there is something else. Another sound. An instrument maybe. The highest keys of the dining room’s piano.
Suddenly, strangely, Malorie feels another wave of peace. Despite the thousand blades that pierce her lungs, neck, and chest, she understands that no matter what she does, no matter what happens, the baby is coming out. What does it matter what kind of world she is bringing this baby into now? Olympia is right. It’s happening. The child is coming, the child is almost out. And he has always been a part of the new world.
He knows anxiety, fear, paranoia. He was worried when Tom and Jules went to find dogs. He was painfully relieved when they returned. He was frightened of the change in Don. The change in the house. As it went from a hopeful haven to a bitter, anxious place. His heart was heavy when I read the ad that led me here, just like it was when I read the notebook in the cellar.
At the word ‘cellar’ Malorie actually hears Don’s voice from below.
He’s yelling.
Yet, something beyond his voice worries her more.
‘Do you hear that sound, Olympia?’
‘What?’ Olympia grumbles. It sounds like she has staples in her throat.
‘That sound. It sounds like …’
‘It’s the rain,’ Olympia says.
‘No, not that. There’s something else. It sounds like we’ve already had our babies.’
‘What?’
To Malorie it does sound like a baby. Something like it, past the housemates at the foot of the ladder stairs. Maybe even on the first floor, the living room, maybe even –
Maybe even outside.
But what does that mean? What is happening? Is someone crying on the front porch?
Impossible. It’s something else.
But it’s alive.
Lightning explodes. The attic is fully visible, nightmarishly, for a flash. The blanket covering the window remains fixed in Malorie’s mind long after the light passes and the thunder rolls. Olympia screams when it happens and Malorie, her eyes closed, sees her friend’s expression of fear frozen in her mind.
But her attention is drawn back to the impossible pressure at her waist. It seems Olympia could be howling for her. Every time Malorie feels the awful knife stabbing in her side, Olympia laments.
Do I howl for her, too?
The cassette tape comes to a stop. Then so does the commotion from below.
Even the rain abates.
The smaller sounds in the attic are more audible now. Malorie listens to herself breathing. The footsteps of the housemates who help them are defined.
Figures emerge. Then vanish.
There’s Tom (she’s sure).
There’s Felix (she thinks).
There’s Jules now at Olympia’s side.
Is the world receding? Or am I sailing farther into this pain?
She hears that noise again. Like an infant on the doorstep. Something young and alive coming from downstairs. Only now it is more pronounced. Only now it doesn’t have to fight through the argument and the music and the rain.
Yes, it is more pronounced now, more defined. As Tom crosses the attic, she can hear the sound between his footsteps. His boot connecting with the wood, then lifting, exposing the youthful notes from below.
Then, very clearly, Malorie recognizes what it is.
It’s the birds. Oh my God. It’s the birds.
The cardboard box beating against the house’s outer wall and the soft sweet cooing of the birds.
‘There is something outside the house,’ she says.
Quietly at first.
Cheryl is a few feet from her.
‘There is something outside the house!’ she yells.
Jules looks up from behind Olympia’s shoulder.
There’s a loud crash from below. Felix yells. Jules rushes past Malorie. His boots are loud and quick on the ladder stairs behind her.
Malorie frantically looks around the attic for Tom. He’s not up here. He’s downstairs.
‘Olympia,’ Malorie says, more to herself. ‘We’re alone up here!’
Olympia does not respond.
Malorie tries not to listen but she can’t stop herself. It sounds like they’re all in the living room now. The first floor for sure. Everybody is yelling. Did Jules just say ‘don’t’?
As the commotion builds, so does the pain at Malorie’s waist.
Malorie, her back to the stairs, cranes her neck. She wants to know what is happening. She wants to tell them to stop. There are two pregnant women in the attic who need your help. Please stop.
Delirious, Malorie lets her chin fall to her chest. Her eyes close. She feels like, if she were to lose focus, she could pass out. Or worse.
The rain returns. Malorie opens her eyes. She sees Olympia, her head bent towards the ceiling. The veins in her neck are showing. Slowly, Malorie scans the attic. Beside Olympia are boxes. Then the window. Then more boxes. Old books. The old clothes.
A flash of lightning from outside illuminates the attic space. Malorie closes her eyes. In her darkness, she sees a frozen image of the attic’s walls.
The window. The boxes.
And a man, standing where Don was standing when she came up here.
It’s not possible, she thinks.
But it is.
And, before her eyes are fully open, she understands who is standing there, who is in the attic with her.
‘Gary,’ Malorie says, a hundred thoughts accosting her. ‘You’ve been hiding in the cellar.’
She thinks of Victor growling at the cellar door.
She thinks of Don, sleeping down there.
As Malorie looks Gary in the eye, the argument downstairs escalates. Jules is hoarse. Don is livid. It sounds like they are exchanging blows.
Gary emerges from the shadows. He is approaching her.
When we closed our eyes and Tom opened the front door, she thinks, knowing it is true, Don snuck him farther into the house.
‘What are you doing here?!’ Olympia suddenly yells. Gary does not look at her. He only comes to Malorie.
‘Stay away from me!’ Malorie screams.
He kneels beside her.
‘You,’ he says. ‘So vulnerable in your present state. I’d have thought you would have had more sympathy than to send someone out into a world like this one.’
Lightning flashes again.
‘Tom! Jules!’
Her baby is not out yet. But he must be close.
‘Don’t yell,’ Gary says. ‘I’m not angry.’
‘Please leave me alone. Please leave us.’
Gary laughs.
‘You keep saying that! You keep wanting me to leave!’
Thunder rolls outside. The housemates are getting louder.
‘You never left,’ Malorie says, each word like removing a small rock from her chest.
‘That’s right, I never did.’
Tears pool in Malorie’s eyes.
‘Don had the heart to lend me a hand, and the foresight to predict I might be voted out.’
Don, she thinks. what have you done?
Gary leans closer.
‘Do you mind if I tell you a story while you do this?’
‘What?’
‘A story. Something to keep your mind off the pain. And let me tell you that you’re doing a wonderful job. Better than my wife did.’
Olympia’s breathing sounds bad, too laboured, like she couldn’t possibly survive this.
‘One of two things is happening here,’ Gary says. ‘Either –’
‘Please,’ Malorie cries. ‘Please leave me alone.’
‘Either my philosophies are right, or, and I hate t
o use this word, or I’m immune.’
It feels like the baby is at the edge of her body. Yet it feels too big to escape. Malorie gasps and closes her eyes. But the pain is everywhere, even in her darkness.
They don’t know he’s up here. Oh my God they don’t know he’s here.
‘I’ve watched this street for a long time,’ Gary says. ‘I watched as Tom and Jules stumbled their way around the block. I was mere inches from Tom as he studied the very tent that sheltered me.’
‘Stop it. STOP IT!’
But yelling only makes the pain worse. Malorie focuses. She pushes. She breathes. But she can’t help but hear.
‘I found it fascinating, the lengths the man would go to, while I watched, unharmed, as the creatures passed daily, nightly, sometimes a dozen at once. It’s the reason I settled on this street, Malorie. You have no idea how busy it can be out there.’
please please please please please please please please PLEASE
From the floor below, she hears Tom’s voice.
‘Jules! I need you!’
Then a thundering of footsteps leading back down.
‘TOM! HELP US! GARY IS UP HERE! TOM!’
‘He’s preoccupied,’ Gary says. ‘There’s a real situation going on down there.’
Gary rises. He steps to the attic door and quietly closes it.
Then he locks it.
‘Is that any better?’ he asks.
‘What have you done?’ Malorie hisses.
More shouting from below now. It sounds like everybody is moving at once. For an instant, she believes she has gone mad. No matter how safe she’s been, it feels like there is no hiding from the insanity of the new world.
Someone screams in the hall below the locked attic door. Malorie thinks it’s Felix.
‘My wife wasn’t prepared,’ Gary says, suddenly beside her. ‘I watched her as she saw one. I didn’t warn her it was coming. I –’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?!’ Malorie asks, crying, pushing.
‘Because,’ Gary says, ‘just like the others, none of you would have believed me. Except Don.’
‘You’re mad.’
Gary laughs, grinning.
‘What is happening downstairs?!’ Olympia yells. ‘Malorie! What is happening downstairs?!’
‘I don’t know!’
‘It’s Don,’ Gary says. ‘He’s trying to convince the others what I’ve taught him.’
Bird Box Page 20