Leave Your Sleep
Page 24
‘But I’ve given up my job to follow you here, to support you.’
‘Yes, so support me now…We’ll go back to the city and sign the contract on the flat that I liked.’
She sat down on the bed. At that moment there came an odd noise from behind her.
‘What was that?’ he asked.
‘It sounded like a bird, in the wall.’
‘These’ll be solid stone walls. They won’t have a cavity.’
She got up from the bed and walked over, putting her hand on to the wall gently, carefully. As she did so there came a scuffling, almost a fluttering, that did remind her of a trapped bird.
‘We’ve got to get it out of there,’ she said.
‘And how do we do that?’
‘I don’t know.’
She backed away from the wall, glad that for a few moments they were not talking about where to live. She had known John like this before. She knew that he was worried about his new position with the company and she could see the old behaviour returning. She had hoped that moving to a new country would be a fresh start, but was now considering that she might have made a mistake.
‘I’ll bang on the wall,’ he said. ‘If I make a noise just behind where the bird is, it’ll drive it back along to wherever it came in.’
‘But we don’t know where it got in,’ she replied cautiously.
He walked to the window, opened it wide and hung out. However, he could see only a couple of metres of the stone wall before it turned the corner, out of sight. He came back inside the room.
‘It’ll probably have come in through the eaves,’ he suggested. ‘We’d best just leave it.’
‘No, not if the poor thing is trapped.’
‘It’s just a bird.’
‘But it might die in there.’
‘So what? It’s not as though we’re taking this house. If it dies and rots it’s somebody else’s problem.’
‘That’s not good enough. We must get it out.’
She saw the old anger for a moment, but he controlled himself: ‘If we bang on the wall under it, maybe that’ll frighten it back up and out.’
With the flat of his hand he slapped the wall low down, under the spot where he thought they had heard the noise. There was a frantic scrabbling around and the sound of debris falling. He repeated the action twice more.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘You’re frightening it.’
‘That’s the idea, isn’t it?’
When he did it again there was yet more frenetic activity from within the wall, but it appeared to have divided into two distinct sources either side of him.
She put her hands over her ears: ‘I don’t like it. I hate to think of it being so scared.’
‘Them being scared,’ he said. ‘There’s more than one.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘But they’re just birds. They’re not mice or rats.’
‘I’m not scared of them, I’m scared for them. I wouldn’t care about rats. Maybe there was a nest in there and the babies have fallen out and down into the wall?’
The sound continued, although intermittently.
‘No, they’re making far too much noise for babies. Now I come to think of it…of course…this wall is lined. They’re in between the lining and the stone wall.’
He slapped it again in confirmation and the sounds resumed, louder than ever and startling him so much that he took a hasty step back.
‘I think it’s best to leave them,’ he decided. ‘We’ll let them find their own way out. We’re just making things worse.’
‘I’m sure they seemed higher in the wall that time.’
‘I don’t know…’
He walked forward decisively and slapped the wall hard. Maria felt that the whole room had shifted slightly out of alignment at that moment. The noise suddenly intensified and appeared to be coming from all of the walls all around them.
‘Stop it!’ she shouted over the din. ‘You’re upsetting them.’
‘Me?’ he shouted, and this time the sound did not seem to want to die down. ‘Whose idea was it to try and help?’
Now the scuffling, scratching, beating racket seemed not only to be in all the walls, but under the floor and in the ceiling. It was even more insistent, faster, almost enraged. It was as though all the furious activity was actually in the room with them, although there was nothing to be seen.
‘We’ll leave,’ he decided, surprising her by taking her hand and trying to pull her to the door.
She resisted and so he repeated his words, shouting. When she shook her head he threw his hands up and went to the door. It was closed and when he tried to turn the handle it would not move.
‘Just go,’ she insisted, afraid more of his rising anger than of the birds.
‘I can’t,’ he shouted back over his shoulder, furious with her. ‘The bloody thing’s stuck.’
‘Why won’t it open? Is it locked?’
‘It’s wedged in the frame.’
And all the time the sound seemed to become yet louder. He left the door and strode back to the open window. He looked out over the bright, idyllic view and decided that although there was no way down for them (they were four storeys up), he could at least call for help. He had only to wait for somebody to pass in the street down below. It was marginally quieter with his head out of the window but his anger would not subside. He couldn’t see anyone immediately but he shouted for help anyway.
A few moments later Maria tapped him on the shoulder and made him jump.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘You try the door again; you’re stronger. I’ll shout for help.’
He was reluctant to turn back to the room but did so. The noise within the walls seemed to be worse still, the ceaseless scuffling and scrabbling of wings and claws. As he walked to the door his mood shifted finally into its old, familiar deep groove. When he turned the handle and pulled at it roughly he found that the door still would not move, so he pulled at it again with all his strength. He had hurt the muscles in his arm and so kicked at the door, which stayed firm.
He looked around and could see Maria hanging out of the window and could hear her shouting, although her actual words were lost to him. He shouted as well, sudden profanities, but they did not make him feel any better. He couldn’t believe that anyone else in the building hadn’t heard the noise as well.
Maria left the window and came over to him warily. ‘There’s nobody out there to help,’ she shouted, her eyes darting from wall to wall, putting her hands over her ears. ‘We’ve got to do something.’
He looked around and then walked over to where he thought the noise was possibly the most extreme. He kicked the wall with his shoe and decided that the lath-and-plaster really would be quite old and fragile. He turned, and with determination he kicked back at the wall with his heel and felt it give way.
She watched as he kicked again, and twice more, creating a gaping hole. When he bent down and started tugging at the plaster whole sections came away with rotten strips of wood and billows of dust. And then that part of the wall suddenly seemed to explode.
Birds fell and flew out, taking to the air all around them. Large, ungainly, filthy things flapping and churning the dust from rotten wood and plaster in the confined space of the room. Frightened creatures with desperate wings surrounded him. He tried to grab hold of Maria, but she had moved away from his grasp. It was suddenly hot and hard to see or breathe with all the buffeting birds, the feathers and particles of plaster. He instinctively fell to the floor to escape the pandemonium.
He put his hands over his face, head down, trying to filter the air that he strove to breathe calmly and deeply. With his eyes closed against the detritus he relied on hearing and was relieved that almost immediately the sound was reducing. There was still an uproar in one part of the room and he opened his eyes nervously and looked up. He stood carefully, watching as the last few birds were throwing themselves towards the window. In just a few more seconds there
was only one left trying to escape. It was almost white, covered in the dust from the debris. It crashed against the frame, recovered in a confusion of wings and falling feathers and then somehow made it out.
It wasn’t quite quiet in the room; at least three birds were thrashing about on the floor, exhausted and broken, unable to follow the others to freedom. Around him, the fragments of birds and decades of fine litter thinned out and settled over the room.
He wheeled around in a full circle, wondering what was missing, confused. He remembered the need to escape that had so recently preoccupied him and he tried the door again. It was still stuck fast so he directed all of his force into a kick. A panel split but did not immediately give way. It took several more kicks before he had made a gap wide enough to get through. He was about to leave when he remembered the open window.
He did not know why but he felt compelled to go and look at the view one more time. He peered out, uncertain, and it was unchanged. The street immediately below was empty, and the roofs of the town spread out before him haphazardly. Up in the sky there was a flock of birds that were just distant shapes becoming smaller and smaller. All that he could do was watch, alone in the silent room, as they became so distant that they disappeared into the deep blue sky.
LEAVE YOUR SLEEP & OTHER STORIES
Copyright © 2012 by R.B. Russell
The right of R.B. Russell to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Originally published in printed book form by PS Publishing Ltd in 2012. This electronic version published in October 2013 by PS by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved by the author.
‘An Unconventional Exorcism’, The Sixth Black Book of Horror, ed. Charles Black, Mortbury Press, 2010; ‘The Red Rose and the Cross of Gold’, Cinnabar’s Gnosis, ed. Dan Ghetu, Ex Occidente, 2009; ‘The Dress’ (pseud. Elizabeth Brown), Supernatural Tales 17, ed. David Longhorn, 2010; ‘A Woman of the Party’, Strange Tales III, ed. Rosalie Parker, Tartarus Press, 2009; ‘Mathilde’, Delicate Toxins, A Tribute to Hans Heinz Ewers, ed. John Hirschhorn-Smith, Side Real Press, 2011; ‘Gala Gladkov’s Exquisite Process’, The Master in Café Morphine, ed. Dan Ghetu, Ex Occidente, 2011; ‘The Beautiful Room’, Nightjar Press, 2010; all other stories are original to this collection.
FIRST EBOOK EDITION
ISBN 978-1-848632-61-5
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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