by Dan Dillard
Chapter 27
The dream started almost immediately. Blackness faded to warming sunshine, streaming through the window in the bedroom. Ethan was back in the house with his dream family. At least he hoped it was a family again. He hoped it would go back to the happy time when they were three, before the little one was ripped from them.
The house was clean again and had that lived-in feeling. The dread from the last dream was gone and he couldn’t feel the pain in his lip, neck, or jaw. Neither could he recall the conversation he had just had with the voice. Perhaps that was the dream and this was real.
He was beginning to lose track.
He looked around for Emily but she wasn’t there, and he was still groggy from waking. Ethan heard laughter from another part of the house and got out of bed to track it down. It sounded like his wife at first, but as he left the bedroom, he realized he was hearing a child, and he felt like he might be smiling, though he hadn’t relaxed enough to be happy.
He walked to the second doorway on the left as he had walked it thousands of times before. There he saw his little angel, younger this time, with a clean face and freshly brushed hair. Her neck was beautiful again. Soft skin that begged for a gentle caress and eyes that were clear and blue. She was wearing yellow pajamas with the feet in them—warm and fuzzy—and looking out the window, laughing deep belly laughs.
“What is so funny, goofball?” Dream-Ethan said.
“Look at the bird, Daddy!”
She pointed out the window, “Isn’t it funny?”
Her laughing relaxed him and made him happy.
Looking out the window toward what should’ve been the backyard, he couldn’t see a bird. He couldn’t make out any details of the outside world, only the bright daylight of what must’ve been the morning sun. He decided to go along with her game, putting a hand over his brow to shield out the sun and peering out the window, mimicking the direction she was facing.
“He is funny, what a thilly bird!” he said, in his best cartoon voice.
She looked up at him in disbelief.
“She is funny, Daddy. It’s a girl bird.”
She called him ‘Daddy’ again, solidifying his belief that this was his family. It felt nice as it settled around his ears, and he was unconditionally in love from that moment on.
The little girl jumped up and ran past him, heading out the door and bounding down the steps as only a child can do. He followed as best he could. It was as if he were being pulled along by the string that was her youthful energy.
Down the staircase and around through the kitchen they went. A child on an adventure to see a funny bird in the backyard, and her father who may or may not have been riding a virtual camera through a dreamland. She led him to a door which he knew led out to the backyard, even though he hadn’t ever seen it.
As they wandered through the kitchen, he saw Emily on the right, busy making breakfast. He could smell bacon and coffee, two of his favorite aromas. The little one opened the door and the world washed over them in a heartbeat.
They didn’t walk through the door. Instead, they instantly stood in a well-manicured and fenced-in backyard. Ethan felt a tug at his sleeve and turned to look down at his little girl, who was frantic to get his attention. She looked at him with brilliant blue eyes that sparkled in the sun; they were a perfect complement to her yellow pajamas.
“See, Daddy? I told you she was a girl bird.”
She was pointing toward the corner of the yard at an older tree, maybe an oak or a maple. He couldn’t see the foliage very clearly, as the sun was too bright. Neither could he see the bird she spoke of, until the tree shook and suddenly a huge winged figure launched out of it. It flapped gently toward the ground in a flurry of feathers and leaves, landing in the yard some thirty feet away. His vision cleared, although he couldn’t define exactly what he was staring at. He half expected to see Big Bird standing there with some of the other Muppets.
“She has boobies, so she has to be a girl bird.”
The innocent girl let go of his hand and walked toward a creature that stood three feet taller than she. It was wrinkled with age, and looked like a vulture with its bald head and long, pink, fleshy neck. Its beak was hooked and close to a foot in length, colored black, and scarred by hundreds—maybe thousands—of years of existence.
There was a collar of scraggly grey feathers about its shoulders. The rest of its plumage was a peppered mix of brown and charcoal grey, with the iridescence of a pigeon showing greens and purples in the early morning sunlight.
He saw what his daughter had seen from her bedroom window. Between the wings on its chest and down the creature’s abdomen hung six breasts, dangling in two rows of three. Their appearance reminded him of the elderly tribal women seen in National Geographic magazine images. The tissue that held them in place was stretched thin from the weight, like water balloons that had been hung by their knots. Nipples on the ends were dark brown and pointed at the earth.
Ethan was horrified, watching his little girl walk towards the animal, but he had become a spectator and had no control over what he saw. His stomach turned over in a sick somersault, the same as when the horrible foul-breathed thing held him in his bed. He wondered if this was that same creature.
Then it spoke…not to Ethan, but to the girl.
“Come to me, my child. Come to me and drink.”
It hissed the words through its beak, speaking like an ancient wise-woman, grandmother to all through the centuries.
“Drink and you will be free.”
The child wandered carefree through her yard, a yard that she trusted, still wearing her fuzzy yellow pajamas with feet in them. She approached the harpy without fear, and all Ethan could do was watch. He was held captive, either by a dream or a reality that he could not control. The dread in his belly returned, and he recalled the last dream where she needed him and he couldn’t help—only this was worse because he was watching—powerless—rather than arriving after the fact.
“Come to me.”
The bird’s gaze fixed on Ethan while it coaxed the girl, who kept walking and finally stepped within the bird’s grasp. The animal opened its stance slightly and then slowly extended one wing just enough so the girl could approach. When she was near enough, it scooped her up gently within its feathers.
He noticed appendages on the wingtips. They looked like fingers with sharp talons. The creature presented little threat aside from the look it gave Ethan, a look that said ‘Don’t try anything stupid, because I’m watching.’ His little girl settled into those wings and they raised her up to the top row of breasts.
“Drink, my sweet child.”
Ethan watched as the girl began to suckle from the beast. He was horrified. The creature appeared to smile and let out a comfortable, wheezy sigh. His little girl’s cheeks flexed inward with each draw from the animal’s nipple and then just a drop of its ‘milk’ trickled down her chin. The other nipples began to leak. The fluid was thick and black and it flowed slowly like oil. Again his baby drew in her cheeks and more of the fluid dripped from her chin.
The hand cradling the breast she drank from fell limp and her mouth opened slightly. Her skin began to darken, and soon turned black. He could see that her lips had blistered from where they had come in contact with the foul substance.
Then the bird-woman dropped the child like a carcass it was finished with, and launched into the air with mighty flaps from giant wings. As it flew into the distance, Ethan focused on the child who lay in a patch of what had become dead grass. The spot where the animal had originally landed was grey and dry. Death washed over the yard, killing all vegetation in the thing’s wake.
Ethan turned his attention to his daughter. She lay black and blistered, poisoned to death and rendered hideous by a winged witch-bird. Again his sweet baby had been taken, and again there was nothing he could do to stop it.
He woke up weeping. Which life was real no longe
r mattered.
Both were Hell.