The Half That You See
Page 28
Tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
It was coming from the living room.
It was the largest space in the house: rectangular in shape, the walls made of massive pine logs from forests long since decimated, with a huge stone fireplace that the previous owner had capped with a stuffed, snarling bobcat head, the first thing that Donna made him throw out when they moved in.
Gary stretched out his arm as far as it could go; the light from the kerosene lantern was meager and weak. He squinted, trying to make out something, anything foreign that could be causing the sound, and wished for his flashlight buried somewhere in the snow.
“But that’s as good as wishing for a generator. Or a job. Or having your wife back.” Gary’s voice sounded tiny and defeated. He hated it.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. Gary took two steps further into the room. “It’s coming from the fireplace,” he said in a quiet voice, feeling foolish for speaking softly. But what was it? A fallen tree branch moving from a downdraft? “But there’s a cover on the fireplace, right?” Is there? Or is that just another one of your asinine assumptions, like the one about your wife being faithful rather than a sex-crazed slut with a thing for woodcutters with big logs?
There were two more quick taps, then a few seconds of silence before it began again. Gary finally saw it: on the edge of the smoky light, a flash of movement and shadow inside the darkened confines of the fireplace. He took a step back. If there was an animal in there, could it push its way out?
“No,” Gary answered himself, “the panes on that fireplace are heavy and tight as hell, Donna made sure of that, said she didn’t like drafty fireplaces…”
He squinted and cautiously moved toward the glass, then screamed and nearly dropped the lantern when a black mass slammed itself against the panes.
“It’s a bird,” Gary said. “There’s a damned bird in my fireplace.”
It wasn’t a small bird, a sparrow or some such thing. It was black and big. A crow.
“How the hell did you get in my fireplace?”
The bird continued to intermittently tap, its soulless black eyes never wavering from Gary.
"Now what do I do?" Gary said. Well, either open the fireplace, kill the fucking bird, and start a fire, or sit back on your ass and do nothing like you've done your whole pathetic life.
“That’s not true!” Gary countered, his voice angry and bitter. “I’ve done a lot, I put myself through college, I, I was successful as hell as a software designer, I—” You’re a loser, fat boy, and now you’re going to let a little bird put the final cold nail in your coffin!
Gary took a deep breath and stepped closer to the fireplace. Blood from the soaked t-shirt around his hand dripped to the floor and the crow seemed to become more excited, tapping harder and harder on the panes.
What the hell? Does it smell the blood? Can birds smell anything?
It’s a fucking crow, dumb-ass, not a hawk or a vulture or a carnivorous monster from the Jurassic period. It’s got a brain the size of a damn pea. Just fucking kill it!
“It's only a bird,” Gary said. “It's probably more scared of me then I am of it. Maybe if I just knock hard on the panes it'll go back up the chimney.”
When Gary moved closer, the bird attacked the panes with more vigor and beat its wings against the panes in union with its tapping. Gary stepped back and as soon as he had moved away, the bird slowed its tapping.
“Fine. Stay in there and freeze to death.”
The bird blinked its coal-black eyes once, twice, and then stepped back into the darkness of the fireplace.
Gary sipped on the Armagnac, the bottle now half empty. “You shouldn’t drink anymore,” he told himself. “I definitely don’t want to get drunk.” But the truth was—if he was being honest with himself, and wouldn’t that be something new—he did want to get drunk, to get shitfaced and pass out until this night was over and Donna was back in his arms and bed. Except she’s not coming back. She’s at Dougie’s now, all warm and cozy in his cabin with its generator and lights and they’re probably laughing their asses off when he’s not burying his huge cock up her tight slit!
Tap-tap…taptaptaptaptap…taptaptap…
"Shut up!" Gary screamed. Even under all the layers, he could feel the cold work its relentless skeleton fingers into his shivering body. It was getting colder, no doubt about it.
What if the electricity doesn't come back on, shithead? You really gonna die like a pathetic loser just ‘cause you have some phobia about birds?
Gary took another drink from the bottle, then stood on shaking legs. “You gotta do this,” he told himself. “Do it or die.”
Like a man going to his execution, Gary went into the living-room. He was at the point of no return, like when he was a teenager and had decided to call a girl and ask for a date: even if she hung up on him, even if she laughed at him. He could use one of his big heavy blankets to throw over the bird as soon as he opened the panes. If it didn't come out, so much the better: he'd smother the crow right inside the fireplace then beat it to a pulp with the fireplace poker. As he gathered his strength, Gary realized that the tapping had stopped.
"Maybe you decided to leave," Gary said. “Maybe you died. But if you’re not dead when I open those panes, I guarantee you soon will be.”
Three steps away from the fireplace, Gary put down the blanket and pushed the sputtering lantern toward the panes. It took him only a second to see, but it was a second that drained all the resolve from his soul. The fireplace now held at least a dozen crows, all staring at him with vacuous, unblinking eyes. They moved toward the light of the lantern and began to tap, slowly at first but then faster and louder.
“This can’t be real,” Gary moaned. “How can this be happening?” The birds answered by tapping even louder, a dozen beaks smashing like tiny jackhammers against the panes.
With the last of his resolve, Gary threw his blanket against the glass in an attempt to mute the sound of the birds. He stepped back and over the screaming of the wind, swore he could hear the birds hiss at him, a dozen crazed and hateful voices. Gary stood in the near pitch-black darkness, the lantern now almost out of kerosene. Part of him wanted to stay there, to stand and scream at the top of his lungs until he was out of breath, out of oxygen, scream until the sunlight came and washed away all the darkness in his life.
Instead, he walked stiffly to the kitchen for the Armagnac then into his bedroom. He finished the bottle, then passed out on the floor next to the bed just as the crows stopped their tapping.
Gary stood in a large field of knee-high grass and shivered. Gusts of cold wind buffeted him, cutting through his baggy t-shirt and torn jeans; he crossed his arms tight over his skinny, thirteen-year-old chest to try and stay warm. Why didn’t I wear a jacket? he thought, then just as quickly wondered why he would need a jacket in the middle of July in Kentucky. He looked around the rolling hills of his Uncle Jake's and Aunt Mildred's farm, then felt a thick layer of unease descend upon him when he realized he couldn’t remember coming outside, or walking into the fields, or—
“Hey Gary, you gonna stand there holding your weenie all day or are you gonna come and help me find Jackson?"
The loud voice behind him took Gary out of his thoughts. He turned to see his portly, fourteen-year-old cousin Lenny standing at the base of one of the hills. Gary took off in a sprint, running full out in the crunching grass, enjoying the feelings of abandon and freedom that the speed brought to him. Gary felt so alive, even as the cold wind rushed through his hair and across his face, making his eyes water and cheeks burn.
“I’m here,” he said when he reached Lenny. “What’s up with Jackson? Did he take off after some bunny again?” Jackson was his cousin’s beagle, a loud, boisterous dog that lived for two things: to chase rabbits and to cuddle in the lap of whoever would have him.
Lenny, strangely dressed in a faded brown leather jacket and matching snowmobile pants, crossed his arms and starred at his cousin with piercing black eyes.
“What do you mean?” Lenny said, stepping sideways and pointing to the ground. “Jackson is right here.”
In a small, circular space devoid of grass, lay Jackson. His white and brown body was torn apart, intestines and internal organs laying scattered about like broken, bloody toys. Maggots the size of large worms undulated in Jackson’s steaming guts, and in the next instant, a crow was suddenly standing on top of the dog’s body, its sharp beak glistening like a black diamond in the light of the setting sun. The bird looked up at Gary with dead eyes, then, like a rattlesnake striking a cornered rat, it snapped down and tore out the bloated tongue of the dog. The crow made two quick jerks of its head and the piece of meat disappeared down its throat.
"What's the matter, Gary?" Lenny asked in a sickly-sweet voice. "You look kinda sick.” Lenny squatted down beside the prostrate body of the dog and stroked its bloated body. "Hey, maybe you're hungry. I bet that's it.” With one lazy motion, Lenny scooped up a handful of writhing maggots and shoved them in Gary's face. "C'mon now, don't be shy—it’s bad manners to refuse food from your kin.”
Gary wanted to scream, to shove away the stinking, living mass of larvae that his cousin held inches from his mouth and nose, but a total paralysis had taken hold of him.
"I'm hurt," Lenny said. “I offer to share food with you and you snub me." He cocked his head in jerky motions, still staring with lifeless eyes at Gary.
“What’s that saying?” Lenny continued. “Something about a cat having your tongue?” He nudged the crow, which looked up at him. “I think they got it wrong though—it’s not a cat who’s gonna have your tongue!”
The crow spread its wings, caught a gust of freezing wind, and rose slowly in the air like a feathered magician. It levitated in front of Gary, so close that he could see clearly into its eyes, black, soulless orbs that held a malicious hunger. Gary tried to move, to yell, to do anything, but only continued to stand in mute terror as the sound of the screaming wind and crazed laughter from his cousin filled his ears.
The crow’s beak lightly brushed up against Gary’s cheek like the caress of a lover; it was freezing cold and burned his flesh like a long sliver of dry ice. The crow jerked its head towards Gary's ear, and he heard a voice coming from its beak: a voice, deep and seductive; the voice of Doug Freeman. "I'm comin' inside, boy, I'm comin' inside," the Doug Freeman crow-voice said over and over like a scratched CD.
Gary finally managed to scream as the crow’s razor-sharp beak began to viciously dig into the soft flesh of his outer ear.
Gary awoke from the nightmare to the sound of his teeth chattering furiously. He pushed himself up with his good hand and leaned against the bed, his body raked with uncontrollable shivering. His head pounded from the Armagnac and his bladder felt close to bursting. With shaking hands, he pulled whatever covers were left on the bed and wrapped them around himself.
Taking two deep breaths, he stood up. Feeble light shone through the windows, giving everything in the room an ethereal, unreal glow. What day was it? Was it tomorrow? The next day? “It doesn’t fuckin’ matter,” he muttered, his mouth dry and tasting like shit. “I gotta…I gotta piss then I will figure things out…”
Gary stumbled out of the bedroom and into the bathroom and would have achieved his one goal of not pissing his pants if the pipes underneath the sink hadn't burst and covered the floor with water that had turned into ice. His right leg flipped up like a clown at a circus and his injured left leg followed. Gary slammed hard onto the frozen tiles, clipping his forehead on the edge of the sink. The fall knocked the breath away from his lungs and as he lay gasping on the frozen floor, his full bladder released. Blood pooled around his face from the jagged slash on his forehead, his pants steamed from the hot urine, and his left leg screamed out in silent agony.
Tap…taptap…taptaptaptap…
“Fuck you,” he croaked, his voice almost inaudible over the still-present sound of the storm. “Fuck…you…”
It was no use. Gary was spent, defeated, dying of hypothermia in a pool of his own piss and blood. He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable touch of death. The tapping grew louder, as if excited by Gary’s imminent demise. And then, Gary heard it. An undercurrent of sound, something not born of the howling winter winds or crazed avian minds.
Voices.
Gary wiped away the blood from the eyes and slowly, painfully, sat up and listened more intently. He could hear laughter—a cold, malicious sound—coming from the living-room. Laughter at Gary’s life, at all his failures and soon-to-be death.
“Fuck you,” he whispered. He grabbed the sink with his left hand and pulled himself up. “Fuck you!” he screamed, and it was a great and wonderful release, like slicing open an infected boil.
“Fuck-YOU!” he roared with white-hot passion and anger. Maybe the crow with the voice of Doug Freeman had killed and eaten Jackson, but it wouldn’t kill and eat him. Not today or ever.
He stumbled into the living-room, now illuminated with a weak yellow light. "You think you've won, don't you?" he yelled at the fireplace. The blanket he had placed over the panes the night before had fallen off, and Gary could see the fireplace was packed tightly with birds, so many that the entire structure bulged in and out, the solitary black lung of a giant.
Gary squatted, staring into the dozens of black, unblinking eyes behind the furious beaks. He grabbed the fireplace poker and tapped gently on the panes. “You’re not winning. I’m a genius, a certified grade-A fucking genius, and I’ve got the perfect plan for all of you!”
In the utility room, he put on Donna’s old bike helmet and her wood-working goggles, then gathered a hand axe, a box of matches, and every aerosol can they had: paint, deodorant, air fresheners, his arms full of metal cans. Back in the living room, he pulled down all of the drapes from the windows and cleared away a large, circular area free from furniture, paper, anything that could catch on fire in the living room.
The tapping of beaks and beating of wings increased, growing louder and more frantic. Gary tore one of his blankets into crude, wide strips and wrapped them around his hands and face. He reached up on the fireplace mantel next to his wedding picture and grabbed a heavy rectangular-shaped copper ingot. "Donna got this for me in Copper Harbor," he said to the birds, a brief memory rising up in his addled mind. “She said it would bring me luck.”
The picture hovered in his mind, him standing with his stunning new bride on the shores of Lake Superior, watching the sunset, crimson and gold shimmering off the gently rolling waves of the lake, holding each other close and—
Gary slammed the copper ingot hard into the helmet, hearing plastic (or was that bone?) crack as he dropped to his knees. “Gotta stay focused.” His words slurred as he took deep breaths, then stood slowly up, feeling dizzy and weak but with the memories safely knocked away. “It’s time…time for the show.”
Gary placed the ingot down on the couch, and after lighting a match, grabbed an aerosol can and pushed down on the button. The spray ignited into a foot and a half long yellow-blue flame. “You want some shit? Then come and get some!” he screamed at the fireplace, then threw the copper ingot with all his might at the glass. The two rectangular panes exploded outward in a gleaming shower and released the birds in a frenzied rush of beaks, feathers, and claws that headed straight for Gary.
The greater part of the shit lasted for hours.
Gary killed the last crow with his bare hands. He squeezed it tight, felt bones snap and viscera pop even as the bird’s talons imbedded themselves like fishhooks into his exposed forearms. Gary brought the bird close to his face. “I remember now, Doug," he said, like speaking to a lover. “I remember how the poem goes. ‘Want to hear?”
The bird said nothing, blood and shit squirting out of its cloaca as Gary squeezed it tighter.
&nb
sp; “I'll tell you anyway,” Gary said as the bird ceased its struggling.
Alone in the woods
in the deep dark night,
under the stars,
under their light,
which show me the road,
which life my fright,
and guide me to heaven
with warm sunlight.
“With warm sunlight,” he repeated through busted teeth and bleeding gums at the dead bird. He kissed it tenderly on its beak, then let its carcass join the other bodies of the dead crows that littered the floor like beer cans at an outdoor rock concert.
Gary stood for a moment in the middle of the carnage and surveyed the living room, redolent with odors of ignited paint and deodorant; of shit, sweat, and blood. He was bleeding from dozens of tears and lacerations all over his body and couldn’t see out of one eye, but all in all, he felt damn good. He had done what needed to be accomplished, no matter the consequences, for the first time in his life.
“I need new clothes,” Gary said, then slowly walked into his bedroom. He paused to look into the mirror over his dresser; it took him a few long seconds to realize the face he was staring at was his own. The thing in the reflection resembled a surrealistic death’s head mask more than the face of a human being. Long, jagged tears ran in a cross-stitched pattern over blood-caked skin. Cracked and broken teeth smiled out of a mouth only halfway covered by the shredded remains of lips, and the right eye of the face seemed deflated and shrunken, hanging halfway out of the socket over a macerated cheek.
Gary felt light-headed and sat down on the bed. “Some fresh air, that's what I need,” he croaked, then stumbled through the gore of the living room and opened the front door.
The storm was over, leaving a clear sky and brilliant sun. Gary gulped in huge lungfuls of clean, icy-cold air and gazed across the horizon with his one good eye, the sunlight shimmering off the newly fallen white snow, giving the entire scene the appearance of heaven on earth.