Black Bird of the Gallows

by Meg Kassel

  Tears prick my eyes. I flick the sunglasses down over them, watery from both emotion and that intense spotlight. I glance up toward Artie, and the light fades. Deno’s deft fingers fly over the tablet to start up the next song. It’s another one of ours, a faster, older one, recorded on a day long before we considered doing anything like this. The crowd woots. If Kiera Shaw is out there booing, she’s being drowned out.

  And then I see him.

  Reece.

  Alone in the center rear of the floor. Arms crossed, feet apart. He looks like he’s standing on the deck of a ship. Thank goodness there’re no vocals in this song. I’d never get them out. Our gazes meet through the rush of spinning purple light. He doesn’t smile. There’s an intensity about him that pricks my senses. I push it away. A surge of aimless anger hits me square in the gut. Why did I have to go and fall for a guy like this? Someone unable to stay in one place. Someone who spends his life chasing death. Feeding off it. Having feelings for him has cursed me, too.

  My gaze moves to my laptop. To the floor. To anything but him. I’ve ignored him for the better part of this week. I can do it for a few hours more. From the corner of my eye, I see Lacey pluck Deno’s shirt and point as a shadow falls over the booth.

  Reece leans over the side, head tilted toward me in a distinctly birdlike manner. His eyes are intensely black, and his irises look bigger than usual. The hair on my arms stands up. My fingers tighten around my laptop. “What is it, Reece?”

  He winces at my clipped tone. “The air has changed.” His voice is even, but his face is urgent. The skin around his cheekbones appears pulled taut. Shadows dip under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks. He looks…tired, hungry. He leans forward and drops his voice. “It’s time. You need to get out of here.”

  I set the laptop down with a quickening pulse. “Are you sure?”

  “It smells like it always does right before…” He takes my hand, then drops it like I burned him. Which I kind of did, I guess. “Look, I get that you don’t want anything to do with me. I’m not asking you to leave with me, but you’ve got to leave.”

  “But I’ve finally done it, Reece,” I say, letting his words take their sweet time penetrating. “I’m playing my own music. I’m out here as me, and it’s so amazing I can’t even explain it.”

  The whites of his eyes flash. “Yes, and I’m sorry the timing is bad, but you need to get somewhere safe.”

  I look around at the packed room which I don’t want to leave. Not tonight. “It’s going to happen right now?”

  “I don’t know the exact second.” He takes my hand again and this time, he doesn’t let go. “But you need to go. This is your life, Angie.”

  “Whoa, hey. What’s up, Romeo?” Deno inserts his bulk between us and plucks Reece’s hand off me. “I think you’re the one who’s going.” He signals to Tom across the room.

  “Angie, it’s coming.” Reece’s voice makes my skin prickle. “I wouldn’t bother you for any other reas—”

  A strong hand lands on Reece’s shoulder and swings him away from me. Tom is still sporting the fading bruises he acquired at my last show. “Hey Sparo, is this one giving you problems?”

  “No, I…” My words fade off, along with my musical euphoria. The implications of Reece’s warning drain the blood from my head in a world-tilting bout of vertigo.

  “Yes, he is,” Deno says with a flick of his fingers. “Off you go, sport.”

  Tom nods grimly. Reece’s nostrils flare as Tom jerks him toward the exit.

  My stomach rolls with unease. I sink onto a stool and wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. “We need to get out of here,” I whisper to Lacey.

  “Um, no. You’re not going to let your ex derail your show. You’re stronger than that.” She pumps a fist in the air. “You’re in charge.”

  But I’m not, really. An event outside of my control is. We may be broken up, but Reece wouldn’t come here with such an urgent warning unless he meant it. “We really need to get out of here.”

  Deno takes one look at my face and announces a “quick” break. He puts on a prearranged house mix that will run for a few minutes, and we head for the dressing room. The walls and ceiling are painted black, and it’s as small as a storage closet—which it probably once was. It’s also the only halfway quiet place around here. Inside, I turn to find only Lacey with me. “Where’s Deno?” My jaw clenches. We’re not leaving without him. My head spins with possible options. Can I get the whole place to evacuate? No way: if I told the room out there—half of which have been drinking—to get in their cars right now and head for the interstate, they’d probably think it was part of my act.

  “He stopped to talk to some guy.” Lacey hands me a bottle of water. “Angie, you look like you swallowed a fly. What did Reece say to you?”

  I hold up a shaking hand. How am I going to explain this? “Look, you’re not going to believe this, but—”

  Deno plows inside, bursting with energy. His smile is megawatt as he points at me. “You can lose that terrified look—minds are being blown tonight, girl. Shocked the hell out of our classmates, but they’re all psyched for you. Katie Long wants to interview you for the school newsletter.”

  “Deno—” I start, but he holds up a hand and barrels on.

  “No, no—wait. I gotta tell you the best part. There’s a guy here from a recording studio in Philadelphia who wants to talk to us. Can you believe it? This is really happening.”

  “I can’t—I think I’m going to be sick.” I groan and lean forward, bracing my hands against my thighs. When I tell these two that we need to leave—now—they’re going to want to know why. And if I tell them the truth, they’re going to question my sanity. I won’t blame them.

  “Better not be,” Deno says. “We have to be back out there in two minutes.” He checks his phone. “More like a minute and thirty. Let’s get ready. We don’t want dead air out there.”

  Lacey rests a hand on my back. “What’s wrong, Angie?”

  I get up too fast and close my eyes against a wave of dizziness. “Look guys, you’re not going to believe this, but something much worse than dead air is going to—”

  Crack.

  Thunder with the power of a hundred lightning bolts.

  It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard.

  Ever.

  We go still and silent and waiting. For one horrible, hopeful moment, everything is still. But then, a deafening boom racks the building, makes the floor move beneath our feet. Lacey grabs my arm with a cry. The walls vibrate. Magazines scatter to the floor as the table tips over.

  The lights flick out with a spray of sparks. Our small, windowless room plunges into darkness. Shuffling feet and the confused voices of The Strip Mall’s patrons, pressing for the exit.

  “What’s happening?” Lacey shrieks.

  “I don’t know,” Deno says. “Something.”

  In the dark, tears squeeze out of the corners of my eyes.

  This is it. The. Big. Thing.

  The end.

  27- the end of the world

  I’ve never experienced an earthquake, but I imagine this is one. Or we could be getting bombed. It kind of feels like it could be that, too. What else makes the ground tremble? Of course, it could be hell opening up under Cadence to swallow us whole. Dust and bits of the Styrofoam ceiling rain down on us, thickening the air further.

  The break room feels like a prison cell with no windows. Deno, who is closest to the door, finds the handle in the dark and wrenches it open. This hallway is dark, too, narrow and not open to the public. And like the back of all strip malls, also windowless, leaving whatever is happening outside a mystery.

  Lacey stumbles against me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Loud, ominous rumbling shakes The Strip Mall again. I press against the wall for support. The surface undulates like a ship at sea. The smell of something burning flicks on all our panic switches.

  “Oh! Oh no, no, no.” Lacey yells. “Fire. This is bad.”


  “Stay together.” Deno manages to turn on the flashlight of his phone and shines it into the empty, pitch-black hallway. We stagger through the narrow passage behind the stage, following the emergency lights to the employee exit and the parking lot where the van is parked.

  We plunge into the rain and dash for the van. The air is dense and acrid with smoke. We still can’t see much, enclosed by The Strip Mall on one side, thick trees, and dumpsters, but can’t miss the pillars of smoke billowing lighter gray against the night sky. Deno drags his keys out of his pocket and repeatedly hits the unlock button. All three of us climb in the front seats, with Lacey and me crammed together in the front passenger. We’re practically sitting on each other, but I don’t care. Neither does she. We hold each other tight, breathless with fear.

  “What about our equipment?” Lacey cries. All our stuff is still in the booth.

  “Later.” Deno stabs the key in the ignition, after missing a few times, and throws the van in reverse. His glasses go askew. He rips them off and chucks them to the back of the van. “Hold on.”

  He spins the van around and jerks it into drive with a squeal of tires. The van rockets out of the parking lot and onto the road. We’re not the only erratic cars out here. Traffic laws are not being observed. Deno skids around a fender bender and hits the gas, zooming down Dredge Street in the general direction of his and Lacey’s neighborhood.

  That horrible, deafening rumbling has eased to the sound of rolling thunder. My fear still rides high. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. We just can’t see what, yet.

  I brace a hand on the dash. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. Home.” Panic sends Deno’s voice pitching high.

  “Wait. We don’t know—” what happened. And then we round a curve and the trees clear and the valley comes into view. We can see exactly what happened.

  Any normal night, we would see Mt. Franklin to our left and Mt. Serenity to our right, with the dam branching off the side of Mt. Serenity, holding back the lake waters beyond. But tonight is not normal. Even in the dark, through a rain-splattered windshield, the huge, inverted V scar stands out on the side of Mt. Serenity. The mountain appears to be halved in size.

  My limbs go rubbery as the implications start to dig through my mind. “Half the mountain is gone.”

  “It’s…it’s a landslide.” Deno’s foot slips off the gas, sending the van drifting to the shoulder.

  There are moments when a thing is too impossible to the eye, too surreal to be true, that all you can do is stare as your extremities slowly go numb.

  The mountain, which has been a constant fixture of the landscape since I moved here, is no more. Lights dance at the edges of my vision. There is no air in here. What happened to the air? Nothing. I’d forgotten to breathe. What is causing these sharp pains in my rib cage? It’s my heart breaking for these people, my neighbors, who have lived their last day frightened and suffering and dying in ways my imagination refuses to show me.

  My fingertips splay on the glass. The van is too small—why am I always stuck in a van?—to contain this torrent of emotion. I’m all the way across town, and the impact of this horror is crushing me. What must it be like for the harbingers to experience this up close, time and time again?

  Deno slams on the brakes a moment before rear-ending an uneven backup of stopped cars. Dozens of headlights point toward a slope of rock and debris covering the road.

  “My dad said this could happen. The old miners have always said the mountain wasn’t stable. They said…” Deno’s bottom lip quivers before he sucks it into his mouth and bites down. “My parents—” His voice cracks. He covers his mouth, but the sob slips through.

  “Th-they don’t live over th-there.” Lacey is right. But both of their homes are on the other side of the debris field. Hopefully, clear of it. Her body shakes as she holds out a hand. “Cell phone,” she says to me, and I pull it from my pocket and hand it to her. She places a call, and begins to cry as the phone rings and rings and finally goes to voicemail.

  My throat clamps shut. Guilt twists my guts like a twirling fork. My house, my family, is safe, all because my dad makes a lot of money and bought a house in the Estates. I press away the need to call my father. By now, he’s in Pittsburgh or almost there. Safe.

  “Where…uh, where should we go?” I shouldn’t ask this. Asking any question to my friends, who do not know if their families are safe, is a cruelty right now, but we can’t remain here. The huge fall of rock and earth looks at least twenty feet high. A narrow stretch of it spans straight through the valley, spewing debris nearly straight across to the base of Mt. Franklin. We can’t pass through any of these streets to the other side of the slide, to where Lacey and Deno’s houses lie.

  Deno squeezes through a gap in two cars and turns around in a hair salon parking lot. “I think I know a way around.”

  “Around to where?” Lacey wails. “Does the van suddenly grow wings?”

  All three of us turn around. Behind us is a backed-up Tetris screen of stopped cars. Several are overturned. People are getting out, running erratically. One car is halfway up a telephone pole and on fire. The highway is impassable.

  Lacey takes a death grip on my arm. “What if the rest of the mountain goes?”

  Deno pins her with a look of pure determination. “Screw the mountain.” He reaches out, squeezes her hand. “We’re finding our families.”

  The fight goes right out of Lacey. I hug her as Deno maneuvers the van away from the slide and along the side of the road. He jumps the sidewalk and cuts through another parking lot, into a residential neighborhood. Visibility is crap. The wipers swipe mud and rain and whatever else the wind feels like throwing at the windshield. It doesn’t help that the speed limit is twenty-five and he’s blasting through at fifty.

  My face is wet with tears, even though I’m not aware that I’m crying. Reality feels like a thin, insubstantial thing. There is a small, self-preserving slice of me that desperately wants my head to believe we are actors in an action movie. Because the alternative pushes my sanity to the brink. “Do you know where you’re going?” I ask Deno.

  “There’s a dirt road up here that leads to one of the old mine entrances in Mt. Franklin.” His jaw is set. “We can get close to the edge of the slide and go the rest of the way on foot. I think I remember where it is. It will hopefully bypass most of the debris.”

  I don’t mention how very unsafe this sounds. How much I hate this plan, because, if it were my family down there in the valley, I’d take unwise risks, too. Nothing could change Deno’s course, now, anyway. We bust through someone’s hedges and plunge into the forest. There is a road here. Sort of. It’s full of ruts and rocks and small trees, and it slopes distinctly upward. The aging minivan bounces violently. I drag the seat belt over Lacey and me and click it. Not that it’s going to help us if the van goes tumbling.

  “Slow down, will you please?” I grind out, clinging to the handle above the window. “Losing a wheel isn’t going to help.”

  Deno expels a harsh breath but slows down. Not a lot, but enough so each bounce doesn’t render us airborne. He nurses the van to a rocky area where the slide pushed debris clear across the valley to the foot of Mt. Franklin. Here, he comes to a stop, unable to go farther. I gaze at the blocked road ahead. If we could continue, we’d wind up in the general area of my development. I’m nearly 100 percent sure the north face of Mt. Franklin—where I live—is unscathed.

  “We walk from here.” Deno opens the door and jumps out. “If we just skirt the edge of the slide, it should take us to the center of town. To our…homes.” He doesn’t say families. “Angie, if you don’t want to go…”

  Where else would I go at this point? Trudge home alone to an empty, dark house? Roger’s automatic feeder and water bowl will keep him fed and hydrated for at least a few days. And, in any case, I’m not leaving my friends now, when we need to stay together. When I need to stay with them. I look behind me, no
t for the first time. For something moving in the dark forest. For the Beekeeper who vowed to keep me “safe.” No, I don’t want to be alone.

  For an answer, I start walking. So do they.

  28- into the ruins

  Within moments, we are soaked with chilled, dirty rain. Grit crunches between my teeth and burns my eyes. Sirens scream in the distance, from all directions, and Serenity is still making more rumbling sounds. My nails dig deeper into my palms with each tremor.

  My crow—Hank, I should remember to call him—is nowhere to be found. It’s strange and…lonely, after being followed by him for all this time, to walk without his dark, papery-winged presence in the trees above me. But even he can’t deny the call of fresh death, I suppose. Even misshapen and twisted as he is, he is still a harbinger of death. He still needs to feed on the dead.

  Lacey and I struggle on the wide trail of debris strewn out before us. It’s not just rock. There are whole trees and sections of brick walls, probably from the buildings on Main Street. We are now walking on the disgorged bulk of a mountain that is likely still unstable. I suck air through my teeth and try not to think about that. About what would happen if the rest of the mountain gave way. Twenty feet away, part of a roof protrudes from the rubble. There’re bound to be people, too…or what’s left of them.

  Oh, Reece. Is this your reality? He’s here, somewhere, feeding on all this death. I imagine him crouched over the broken bodies, eyes that horrible red-black, an expression of suppressed ecstasy on his tortured face. Slightly more animal than human.

  The image isn’t romantic. It’s as alien and unnatural as the Beekeeper’s changing face. I should be repulsed. I should be sickened by his true nature, and I suppose I would be if that were his true nature. But right now, he is probably suffering as he takes in all this death just to keep his soul alive.

  Unless he was in the path of the landslide. In which case… No. I won’t think that.