‘Here’s what you do then. Write this down if you can. Do you have a pen?’
Malorie says yes and reaches for the pen kept by Tom’s phone book.
The babies cry.
‘It sounds like you have a baby with you?’
‘I do.’
‘I imagine that’s your reason for wanting to find a better place. Here’s the information, Malorie. Take the river.’
‘What?’
‘Take the river. Do you know where it is?’
‘Y-yes. I do know where it is. It’s right behind the house. Eighty yards from the well, I’m told.’
‘Good. Take the river. It’s about as dangerous a thing as you can do, but I imagine if you and Tom have made it this long, you can do it. I found you guys on the map and it looks like you’ll have to travel at least twenty miles. Now, the river is going to split –’
‘It’s going to what?’
‘I’m sorry. I’m probably moving too fast. But where I’m directing you is a better place.’
‘How is that?’
‘Well, we don’t have windows for one. We have running water. And we grow our own food. It’s as self-contained as you can find nowadays. There are plenty of bedrooms. Nice ones. Most of us think we’ve got it better now than we did before.’
‘How many of you are there?’
‘One hundred and eight.’
The number could be any for Malorie. Or it could be infinity.
‘But let me tell you how to get here first. It would be a tragedy if the phone line went out before you knew where to go.’
‘All right.’
‘The river is going to split into four channels. The one you want is the second one from the right. So you can’t hug the right bank and expect to make it. It’s tricky. And you’re going to have to open your eyes.’
Malorie slowly shakes her head. No.
Rick continues.
‘And this is how you’ll know when that time comes,’ the man tells her. ‘You’ll hear a recording. A voice. We can’t sit by the river all day every day. It’s just too dangerous. Instead, we’ve got a speaker down there. It’s motion activated. We have a very clear understanding of the woods and water beyond our facility because of devices like it. Once the speaker is activated, the recording plays for thirty minutes, on a loop. You’ll hear it. The same forty-second sound bite repeated. It’s loud. Clear. And when you do, that’s when you’ll have to open your eyes.’
‘Thank you, Rick. But I just can’t do that.’
Her voice is listless. Destroyed.
‘I understand it’s terrifying. Of course it is. But that’s the catch, I suppose. There’s no other way.’
Malorie thinks of hanging up. But Rick continues.
‘We’ve got so many good things happening here. We make progress every day. Of course, we’re nowhere near where we’d like to be. But we’re trying.’
Malorie starts to cry. The words, what this man is telling her – is it hope he gives her? Or is it some deeper variation of the incredible hopelessness she already feels?
‘If I do what you’re telling me to do,’ Malorie says, ‘how will I find you from there?’
‘From the split?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have an alarm system. It’s the same technology used for triggering the recording you’ll hear. Once you take the correct channel, you’ll go another hundred yards. Then you’ll trigger our notification alarm. A fence will be lowered. You’ll be stuck. And we’ll come looking for what got stuck in our fence.’
Malorie shivers.
‘Oh yeah?’ she asks.
‘Yes. You sound sceptical.’
Visions of the old world rush through her mind, but with each memory comes a leash, a chain, and an instinctive feeling that tells her this man and this place might be good, might be bad, might be better than where she is now, might be worse, but she will never be free again.
‘How many of you are there?’ Rick asks.
Malorie listens to the silence of the house. The windows are broken. The door is probably open. She must stand up. Close the door. Cover the windows. But it all feels like it’s happening to someone else.
‘Three,’ she says, lifeless. ‘If the number changes –’
‘Don’t worry about it, Malorie. Any number you come with is fine. We have space enough for a few hundred and we’re working on more. Just come as soon as you can.’
‘Rick, can you come help me now?’
She hears Rick take a deep breath.
‘I’m sorry, Malorie. It’s too much of a risk. I’m needed here. I realize that sounds selfish. But I’m afraid you’ll have to get to us.’
Malorie nods silently. Amidst the gore, the loss, the pain, she respects that this man must stay safe.
Only I can’t open my eyes right now and I have two newborns in my lap who have yet to see the world and the room smells of piss, blood, and death. Air comes in fast from outside. It’s cold and I know that means the window is broken or the front door is open. So dangerously open. So, all this sounds good, Rick, it truly does, but I’m not sure how I’m going to get to the bathroom yet let alone onto a river for forty miles or whatever it was you said.
‘Malorie, I’ll check in on you. I’ll call again. Or do you think you’ll be coming right away?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know when I’ll be able to come.’
‘Okay.’
‘But thank you.’
It feels like the most sincere thank-you Malorie has ever spoken in her life.
‘I’ll call you in a week, Malorie.’
‘Okay.’
‘Malorie?’
‘Yes?’
‘If I don’t call, it could mean the lines have finally died on our end. Or it could mean the lines at your place are out, too. Just trust me when I tell you we will be here. You come anytime. We will be here.’
‘Okay,’ Malorie says.
Rick gives her his phone number. Malorie, using the pen, blindly scribbles the numbers on a page in the open phone book.
‘Good-bye, Malorie.’
‘Good-bye.’
Just a simple, everyday talk on the phone.
Malorie hangs up. Then she hangs her head and cries. The babies shift in her lap. She cries for another twenty minutes, unbroken, until she screams when she hears something scratching at the cellar door. It is Victor. He is barking to be let out. Somehow, he was blessedly locked in the cellar. Maybe Jules, knowing what was coming, did it.
After rehanging the blankets and closing the doors, she will use a broomstick to search every inch of the home for creatures. It will be six hours before she feels safe enough to open her eyes, at which point she will see what went on in the house while she was delivering her baby.
But before then, with her eyes closed tightly, Malorie will stand up and step back through the living room until she reaches the top of the cellar stairs.
And there she will step by Tom’s body.
She will not know it is him, believing it to be a bag of sugar that her foot nudges, as she kneels before the bucket of well water and begins the laborious job of cleaning the children and herself.
She will speak with Rick a number of times in the coming months. But soon the lines reaching the house will die.
It will take her six months to wash the house of the bodies and blood. She will find Don on the kitchen floor, reaching for the cellar. As if he raced there, mad, to ask Gary for his mind back. She will check for Gary. Everywhere. But she will never find a sign of him. She will always be aware of him. The possibility of him. Out there. In the world.
Most of the housemates will be buried in a semicircle around the well out back. She will forever feel the uneven lumps, the graves she dug and filled while blindfolded, whenever she gets water for herself or the children.
Tom will be buried closest to the house. The patch of grass to which she takes the children, blindfolded, as a means of getting them fresh air. A place where, she hopes, th
eir spirits run freest.
It will be four years before she answers yes to whether or not she is coming soon to the place Rick described on the phone.
But now she just washes. Now she just cleans the babies. And the babies cry.
Tom’s recorded voice plays over again.
He is leaving a message.
‘… Two seventy-three Shillingham … my name is Tom … I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine …’
The blindfold is still held an inch from her closed eyes.
She raises a hand and brings her fingers to the black cloth. For a moment, both she and the creature hold the same blindfold. This creature, or ones like it, stole Shannon, her mother, her father, and Tom. This thing, and the things like it, have stolen childhood from the children.
In a way, Malorie is not afraid. They have done everything to her already.
‘No,’ she says, tugging on the cloth. ‘This is mine.’
For a moment, nothing happens. Then something touches her face. Malorie grimaces. But it is only the fold, returning to its place on her nose and temples.
You’re going to have to open your eyes.
It’s true. Tom’s recorded voice means she has arrived where Rick said the channels split. He speaks as he once did, in the living room of the house, when he used to say, Maybe they mean us no harm. Maybe they are surprised by what they do to us. It’s an overlap, Malorie. Their world and ours. Just an accident. Maybe they don’t like hurting us at all.
But whatever their intentions are, Malorie has to open her eyes, and at least one is near.
She has seen the children do incredible things. Once, after flipping through the phone book, the boy called out that she was on page one hundred and six. He was close. And Malorie knows she’s going to need a feat like that, from them, right now.
There is movement in the water to her left. The creature is either no longer curious about the blindfold and is leaving, or it is waiting to see what Malorie does next.
‘Boy?’ she says, and she needs to say no more. He understands the question.
He is quiet at first. Listening. Then he answers.
‘It’s leaving us, Mommy.’
Despite the distant, warring birds and Tom’s beautiful, calming voice coming from the speaker, it feels like a moment of silence is occurring. Silence emanating from this thing.
Where is it now?
The rowboat, released, is being pulled along with the current. Malorie knows that the sound of the water ahead is the sound of the split. She doesn’t have much time.
‘Boy,’ she says, her throat dry. ‘Do you hear anything else?’
The Boy is quiet.
‘Boy?’
‘No, Mommy. I don’t.’
‘Are you certain? Are you absolutely sure?’
She sounds hysterical. Whether or not she is ready, the moment has come.
‘Yes, Mommy. We’re alone again.’
‘Where did it go?’
‘It went away.’
‘Which way?’
Silence. Then, ‘It’s behind us, Mommy.’
‘Girl?’
‘Yes. It’s behind us, Mommy.’
Malorie is quiet.
The children said the thing is behind them.
If there’s one thing she can lean on in the new world, it’s that she has trained them well.
She trusts them.
She has to.
Now they are level with Tom’s voice. It sounds like he is in the boat with them.
Then, suddenly, it feels like a sign to Malorie. Tom is here. Tom is with her. Because of this, she will survive.
She swallows hard.
She wipes tears from her lips.
She breathes deep.
Then she feels it. Just like when they let Tom and Jules back into the house. Just like when they thought they were letting Gary out.
The Moment Between.
Between deciding to open her eyes and doing it.
Malorie turns to face the channels and opens her eyes.
At first, she has to squint. Not from the sunlight, but from the colours.
She gasps, bringing a hand to her mouth.
Her mind is emptied of thoughts, worries, anxieties, and hopes. She knows no words to explain what she sees.
It’s kaleidoscopic. Endless. Magnificent.
Look, Shannon! That cloud looks like Angela Markle from class!
In the old world, she could have looked at a world twice as bright and not had to squint. But now, the beauty hurts her.
She could look forever. Surely another few seconds. But Tom’s voice urges her on.
As if in slow motion, she leans towards where his voice comes from, savouring his every word. It’s like he’s standing there. Telling her she’s so close. Malorie understands that she cannot keep the colours she sees. She must close her eyes again. She must cut herself off from all this wonder, this world.
She closes her eyes.
She returns to the darkness she knows so well now.
She begins rowing.
As she approaches the second channel from the right, it feels like she is rowing with the years. The memories. She rows with the self she was when she found out she was pregnant, when she found Shannon dead, when she answered the ad in the newspaper. She rows with the self she was when she arrived at the house, met the housemates for the first time, and agreed to let Olympia in. She rows with the person she was when Gary arrived. She rows with herself, on a towel in the attic, as Don pulled the blankets from the windows downstairs.
She is stronger now. She is braver. By herself, she has raised two children in this world.
Malorie has changed.
The boat rocks suddenly as it touches one of the banks of the channel. Malorie understands they have entered it.
From here, she rows as the person she was when she had the children alone. Four years. Training them. Raising them. Keeping them safe from an outside world that must have grown more dangerous each day. She rows with Tom, too, and the dozens of things he said, the countless things he did and hoped that inspired her, encouraged her, and made her believe that it’s better to face madness with a plan than to sit still and let it take you in pieces.
The boat is moving fast now. Rick said it was only a hundred yards to the trigger.
She rows with the person she was when she awoke today. The person who thought a fog might hide her and the children from someone like Gary, who could still be out there, still watching them move down the river. She rows with the self she was when the wolf struck. When the man in the boat went mad. When the birds went mad. And when the creature, the thing she fears above all things, toyed with her only form of protection.
The blindfold.
With the thought of the cloth, and all it’s meant to her, Malorie hears what sounds like a loud metallic explosion.
The rowboat crashes into something. Malorie quickly checks the children.
It’s the fence, she knows. They have triggered Rick’s alarm.
Malorie, her heart pounding, no longer needing to row, turns her head towards the sky and yells. It is relief. It is anger. It is everything.
‘We’re here,’ she calls loudly. ‘We’re here!’
From the banks, they hear movement. Something is coming fast towards them.
Malorie is gripping the paddles. It feels like her hands will always be in this position.
As she coils something touches her arm.
‘It’s all right!’ a voice says. ‘My name is Constance. It’s okay. I’m with Rick.’
‘Are your eyes open?!’
‘No. I’m wearing a blindfold.’
Malorie’s mind is flooded with distantly familiar sounds.
This is what a woman sounds like. She hasn’t heard another female voice since Olympia went mad.
‘I have two children with me. It’s just the three of us.’
‘Children?’ Constance says, suddenly excited. ‘Grab my hand,
let’s get you out of the boat. I’ll take you to Tucker.’
‘Tucker?’ Malorie pauses.
‘Yes, I’ll show you – it’s where we live. Our facility.’
Constance helps Malorie grab the children first. Their hands are clasped together as Malorie is pulled out of the boat.
‘You’ll have to excuse me for carrying a gun,’ Constance says timidly.
‘A gun?’
‘You can only imagine the sorts of animals that have triggered our fence.
Are you hurt?’ Constance asks.
‘I am. Yes.’
‘We have medicine. We have doctors.’
Malorie’s lips crack painfully as she smiles bigger than she has in over four years.
‘Medicine?’
‘Yes. Medicine, tools, paper. So much.’
They begin walking, slowly. Malorie’s arm clutches Constance’s shoulders. She cannot walk by herself. The children grip Malorie’s pants, following blindfolded.
‘Two kids,’ Constance says, her voice soothing. ‘I can only imagine what you’ve been through today.’
She says today but both know she means for years.
They are walking uphill and Malorie’s body throbs with pain. Then the ground beneath them changes, suddenly. Concrete. A sidewalk. Malorie hears a light clicking sound.
‘What is that?’
‘That noise?’ Constance asks. ‘It’s a walking stick. But we don’t need it anymore. We’re here.’
Malorie hears her knock quickly on a door.
What sounds like heavy metal creaks open and Constance guides them inside.
The door slams shut behind them.
Malorie smells things she hasn’t smelled in years. Food. Cooked food. Sawdust, as though someone is building something. She can hear it, too. The low hum of a machine. Several machines whirring at once. The air feels clean and fresh, and the sound of conversations echoes far away.
‘It’s okay to open your eyes now,’ Constance says kindly.
‘No!’ Malorie shouts, gripping the Boy and Girl. ‘Not the children! I’ll do it first.’
Someone else approaches. A man.
‘My God,’ he says. ‘Is it really you? Malorie?’
She recognizes a man’s dull, husky voice. Years ago, she heard this voice on the other end of a phone. She has debated, with herself, for four long years, whether or not she’d hear his voice once more.
Bird Box Page 22