The Bellwether Revivals

by Benjamin Wood

  Jane collapsed onto the couch. ‘We have to go to Harvey Road.’

  ‘Already checked there,’ Marcus said. ‘I drove past the house and the lights were all off. Didn’t see your car either.’

  ‘We have to go anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jane didn’t answer. She had a faraway expression, biting down on her lip. The string of pearls around her neck was rising and falling with her short, worried breaths.

  ‘What is it, Jane?’ Oscar said. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

  SEVENTEEN

  New Wrongs

  The sun had not yet risen when they arrived at Harvey Road. Oscar parked the Alfa Romeo and waited with his hands still sweating on the steering wheel, watching as Marcus reversed his car into a space further along the street.

  ‘I’m going to need some help,’ Iris said from the back seat, her leg stretched out on the leather upholstery. He took her weight as she hauled herself out of the car, and helped her up the steps. They stood at the front of the house, breathing hard. ‘I’m afraid,’ she said, taking her crutches from his hand. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The others came traipsing along the pavement, shoes clapping the concrete. Jane bounded up the steps and took out her keys. She unlocked the front door and went inside. ‘Before you see the mess in there,’ she said, turning at the threshold, ‘I want to say it again—’

  ‘You already explained,’ Iris said. ‘Let us in.’

  ‘Okay, but just remember that I found it like this, like you’re all finding it now. There wasn’t anything I could do.’

  They walked in through the porch, single file, and Jane flicked on the light.

  Oscar couldn’t see anything different about the hallway. It was as plain and narrow as it had always been, with the same old pile of shoes near the door and barely a scuff on the hardwood or a fingermark on the dado rail. But he thought he could smell something strange in the air, like clothes left to fester in the washing machine.

  Jane led them towards the living room. They all seemed to hold their breath as she pushed back the door.

  ‘What the hell—?’ Yin said.

  The antique clavichord was a mess of pieces on the floor. Its ivory keys were smashed and spread across the floorboards like punched-out teeth; hunks of varnished teak lay splintered and held together with frayed piano wires. When Jane described the damage to them back at the Bellwether house, she’d made it seem almost cosmetic—fixable, at least. But Oscar could hardly believe the wreckage that was before him now. The instrument was a junkpile of parts, as if Eden had razed it with a bulldozer.

  Yin walked over to survey the ruins, crouching to pick up an ivory and tossing it back onto the pile. ‘Guys,’ he said. ‘This is seriously fucked up.’

  Iris was just standing there with her soft little mouth hanging open. ‘Jane, I can’t believe you didn’t say anything about this.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you. Honest, I did. I was just so upset when I saw what he’d done to it and—’ Jane stopped. She rested her head against the doorframe. ‘I thought maybe it was just one of those things, like he’d needed to let off some steam.’

  Marcus went over and began prodding the clutter with his toes. ‘This is more than letting off steam,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen him do anything as violent as this.’

  ‘It’s like he went at it with a sledgehammer,’ Yin said. ‘You didn’t see what happened?’

  ‘No, I told you. This is how I found it.’

  ‘But … it doesn’t make any sense. He paid a fortune for this thing.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Was he even upset about it?’

  ‘Not remotely,’ Jane said. ‘He wouldn’t even let me clean it up. He said he wanted to keep the mess there forever, as a reminder.’

  ‘A reminder of what?’

  Jane shrugged. ‘I asked the same thing.’ She looked glumly at Iris then, as if apologising. ‘I should’ve said something to your parents the other night—I nearly did. But everybody seemed like they had enough to worry about. And Eden said—’ She trailed off. ‘Never mind.’

  Iris stood upright. ‘Eden said what, Jane? Did he threaten you?’

  Jane could hardly bring herself to glance in her direction. ‘No—well, not exactly. It wasn’t really a threat.’ She turned her head, examining the rug. ‘He said he’d break up with me if I told anyone, that’s all. I don’t know if he was serious or not, but it seemed like it at the time, and I didn’t want to test him. It was weeks ago, before they moved you to the other hospital. He was so mad.’

  Yin stood up, dusting off his hands. ‘We need to find him. I’ve been saying it all year: he’s been acting weird. We better find him before he does any more damage.’

  ‘We should probably take a look around before we go,’ Oscar said.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Marcus replied. ‘He wouldn’t come back here. Why race off at a hundred miles an hour just to go back where you started?’

  ‘We should check anyway,’ Yin said. ‘He’s probably not thinking straight. I’ll start looking upstairs. Who’s coming with me?’

  Oscar volunteered. He followed Yin up the narrow staircase, hearing Marcus’s heavy steps over his shoulder. An acid began to bite at his stomach. His palms were sweating again. Jane and Iris peered up from the hallway, whispering to each other.

  He checked the bathroom. It was empty and undisturbed but for a tiny spider-web crack in the shaving mirror and a shallow pool of dirty water in the bathtub. He came out to find Yin up on the landing, feeling along the wall for the switch. A mild yellow light stammered on. Marcus went straight to Eden’s room, taking bold, purposeful strides, as if to say What’s everyone so afraid of? The handle turned in his fingers but the door wouldn’t move. ‘Huh,’ he said, arms dropping to his sides. ‘It’s locked.’

  ‘It can’t be,’ Yin said. ‘Let me try.’ When it didn’t open at the first attempt, he threw his weight at the bare wood—three short punches of his shoulder—but the lock held firm. ‘Edie! You in there? Eden!’

  Nobody answered.

  Yin pointed across the landing. ‘Try Iggy’s.’

  Oscar went to Iris’s room and twisted the handle. As he pushed back the door, there was a sudden flutter of birds’ wings, loud as applause. He stopped in the threshold, unable to move. A flock of mangy-looking blackbirds flew up from around the feet of the bed, scrambling against the ceiling, rebounding against the walls, shedding their feathers with every frantic burst of their wings. There were at least ten of them, maybe more, and they’d left their mark all over the room: everything was spattered with gobbets of silvery-white bird shit. A single bedside lamp was on, casting a frenzy of shadows against the curtains. The dank, fungal smell of caged animals was everywhere.

  ‘Shut it, man,’ Yin called. ‘Shut it.’

  Oscar pulled the door closed. A wordless shock came over him. He was shaken, repulsed, and when he looked at Marcus and Yin, he saw the full whites of their eyeballs; they were both holding their hands to their mouths as if they might throw up.

  Yin was the first to move. He leaned over the balustrade, shouting down: ‘Iggy! Jane! You better come up here!’

  They had already heard the commotion. Iris was crutch-stepping up the stairs as fast as she could, with Jane holding on to her back, saying: ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Take a look,’ Yin said.

  ‘It’s not pretty in there,’ Oscar warned them. ‘I don’t think you should go in.’

  ‘Let me through,’ Iris said, stepping forwards. ‘I need to see.’

  When Jane opened the door, the noise of the panicked birds came at them with a jolt, and there was that smell again—that awful, mouldering stench. Iris gasped and staggered backwards, and Oscar had to catch her by the shoulders to stop her falling. Jane gave out a shriek and slammed the door. She stayed there with her fingers on the handle, recovering her breath. ‘I swear I didn’t know about this, Iggy,’ she said. ‘I swear on my
life I didn’t.’

  Oscar held onto Iris tightly, kissing the side of her head. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll clean it up. If we open the windows, they should fly right out.’ She didn’t seem able to talk. Her crutches creaked in her grip.

  ‘We can’t get into Eden’s room,’ Marcus said. ‘Where’s the key?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jane said. ‘He keeps it with him.’

  ‘You don’t have a copy?’

  Jane shook her head.

  ‘Maybe we should bust it open,’ Yin said. ‘He could be in there.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s locked? Sometimes it sticks.’

  Yin stood back. ‘Go ahead.’

  Jane went over and jimmied the handle. After a moment of struggle, the door released, and she stepped inside tentatively, clicking on the light.

  ‘Be careful,’ Iris said.

  Oscar had never seen the fullness of Eden’s room before. A few times, he’d peeked in as he went sleepily to the shower, but he’d only ever glimpsed things—a sliver of a bedpost, the corner of a duvet. It wasn’t so different from how he’d pictured it. The floor was a landfill of assembled junk: faded hardbacks, notepads, newspapers and sheet music were stacked in towers around the bed, like some great city of books rising up from the carpet; shirts hung from the windows on wire hangers and dried-out socks were draped over the radiator. Eden was nowhere to be seen. ‘Looks like it always does,’ Jane said, coming out. ‘A total mess.’

  ‘Told you he wasn’t here,’ Marcus said.

  With this, Iris turned on her crutches and headed for the stairs. ‘I need a cigarette.’

  ‘We’ll take care of things up here, don’t worry,’ Yin said. ‘Why don’t you girls go sweep up what’s left of the clavi?’

  ‘Okay,’ Jane said, her voice faltering, ‘okay, yeah. Let’s go, Iggy.’

  Iris lingered on the top step, looking back at Oscar. She held her hand to her breastbone the way she’d done back at Madigan Hall, her eyes teary and reddening. He knew she wasn’t thinking of the blackbirds in her room any more, but of the blackbird squirming from her brother’s hands when she was eight years old. He gave a solemn nod and she carried on down the stairs with Jane’s help.

  ‘Alright,’ Yin said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  The birds were still frantic inside the bedroom. Squawking and screeching, they flapped and scurried away, landing on top of the shelves and the wardrobe, beyond reach. ‘Calm down, little things!’ Marcus called out, stooping to open the curtains. ‘We’re here to help you!’

  Oscar opened the windows as wide as he could. An urgent breeze came sweeping into the room, but the birds didn’t seem to sense the world outside. They didn’t go racing towards the windows, just cawed and jumped and side-stepped, clacking their claws on the wood, pecking everything with their bright yellow beaks.

  ‘What now?’ Yin said.

  ‘It’ll be light soon. They’ll go for the windows then.’

  The three of them went out to the landing. Oscar sat down with his back against the door.

  ‘Shit,’ Yin said, his short laugh hollowed by the cove of the ceiling, ‘you sounded so confident about them flying right out. I thought you did this kind of thing all the time.’ He guffawed nervously. ‘We’re gonna have to call pest control.’

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ Marcus said. ‘Don’t either of you laugh.’ He stood clicking his knuckles. He had a stern, concentrated look about him. ‘Edie’s gone too far this time. I’m not sure he’s thinking straight.’ Marcus directed his words to the floor. ‘We all know the pranks he used to pull back at school, but this—I’ve never seen him do anything like this. I just don’t understand what’s got into him. I mean, that clavichord was one of his favourite things in the world. It cost him a fortune just to ship it over. I don’t understand why he’d trash it unless something was seriously wrong. And I don’t see why he’d speed off like he did tonight, either, just because some old man who he hardly even knew is dead. It doesn’t add up.’

  ‘That’s because you’ve only got half a story,’ Oscar said. ‘It makes sense when you know the rest of it.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Yin said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Marcus said, ‘what do you mean, half a story?’

  Oscar looked at them, blinking. There was something about their faces—about the tightness of Yin’s eyes and the slackness of Marcus’s mouth—that made him feel the need to tell them. They needed to understand who Eden really was. They had seen the blackbirds of the present, but they didn’t know about the blackbirds of the past. And, yes, they might deny the truth once they heard it, but they were his friends—he was sure they were his friends—and they deserved to know.

  He told them everything: from Iris’s childhood stories, to her broken legs, to NPD and Crest’s book, right up to Andrea’s phone call. He didn’t try to spare their feelings or dance around the issue, and he did his best to answer their questions and to calm them when they got angry. It took a long time to get through it all. And by the time he was done, it was light outside and the cawing of the blackbirds had weakened in the room behind his back.

  There were small death notices for Herbert Crest in the Guardian, the Independent, and the Daily Telegraph. Each paper ran a tiny paragraph about him, devoting fewer column inches to the achievements of a man’s entire life than to news of a skimpy dress some actress had worn to some London film premiere. But when Oscar went to the homepage of The New York Times that afternoon, he found a link to a full obituary.

  Herbert M. Crest, Psychologist and Writer, Dies Aged 69

  by Peter McLury

  Herbert M. Crest, a psychologist and writer best known for the intimate portraits he drew of his patients in award-winning volumes of case studies, died on April 28 at his home in London, England.

  Dr. Crest had been fighting cancer since a brain tumor was diagnosed three years ago, and had been receiving treatment from specialists at University College Hospital. He died in his sleep in the early hours of the afternoon, reported his nurse, Ms. Andrea Denny. News of his death received little coverage in the British media, though it was widely discussed in professional circles.

  Dr. Crest was the author of a diverse range of accessible works on psychology, which sought to investigate the foundations of disorders such as Schizophrenia, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. In 1974, he received a gold medal from the American Psychological Foundation for his book The Girl With the God Complex, which developed the ideas of Ernest Jones in detailing the delusions of a young girl convicted of drowning her five-year-old brother. Though the book sold modestly, its publication made Dr. Crest one of the foremost authorities in the study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, precipitating further works on the subject, including Selfhood in the Modern World (1984).

  Herbert Montague Crest was born July 7, 1934, in Harwichport, Mass., to Arthur Crest, a British expatriate and teacher of mathematics, and Katherine, a homemaker. He moved to Boston when he was 11 after his father took a position at MIT. After leaving for England at the age of 18, he graduated from King’s College, Cambridge, in 1961 with first class honors in Philosophy and Psychology, and remained in England to complete his doctorate. During his time at Cambridge, he was convicted of stealing a houseboat owned by an esteemed literature professor at his college; a civil suit was settled out of court before his return to the United States in 1971 when he took a position at the University of Connecticut.

  A proud gay man working in an era of widespread homophobia, Dr. Crest never married and had no children. His younger sister, Tabitha, died aged 14, after falling from her school building in 1950. He is survived by a cousin, Nancy, of Vancouver, WA., and her two children.

  Described by New York Times book critic Marek Stoor as ‘writings of humane eloquence,’ Dr. Crest’s thought-provoking case studies, articles, and essays found a wide lay readership in the United States. At the time of his death, he was working on a new book detailing his battle with cancer,
entitled Delusions of Hope, in which he was investigating the authenticity of alternative therapies. His editor, Diane Rossi at publisher Spector & Tillman, commented: ‘Herbert had an amazing mind, and right to the very end he was making changes to the book, which we all knew would be wonderful. We’re devastated by the news of his death.’ The book was scheduled for release in fall 2003, but it is now unclear if publication will be delayed.

  When Oscar arrived at Golders Green Crematorium, pushing Dr Paulsen down the aisle in his wheelchair, the service was already underway. Turgid organ music was playing—one strained, macabre note after the other—and he couldn’t help but think of Herbert Crest looking down and smiling at the desperate irony of it. The room was only a quarter full. Andrea was sitting on a pew in the front row, and she turned to see him wheeling the old man along the carpet. He parked Dr Paulsen at the front of the chapel, where scarlet drapes hung and a bouquet of white lilies stood in a tall black vase. Crest’s coffin was laid out on the brick altar, polished to an impossible shine, waiting to be disappeared.

  Andrea gave the eulogy. She’d been crying and the chapel lights caught the tracks of her tears as she moved her lips. ‘Herbert didn’t want a religious service,’ she finished by saying, ‘so instead of a Bible passage, I thought I’d leave you with a few of his own words. In his book Unpopular Mechanics he wrote: “My father used to say it’s better to mean something to no one than mean nothing to someone. That’s a maxim I’ve always tried to live by.” I think that gives you a good idea of the man Herbert was.’ With that, she stepped down from the pulpit and took her seat. A Nat King Cole song began to play on the speaker system, and the coffin was lowered into a pit of hidden flames.

  Outside the crematorium, Oscar introduced Dr Paulsen to Andrea. She stooped to shake the old man’s hand, though he didn’t seem to notice her or understand what he was doing outside. ‘So you’re the one, are you?’ she said, winking. ‘You’re the old fool who broke his heart. Don’t worry, he forgave you, I know he did.’ Paulsen peered blankly across the road. Andrea stood up.