Oh Pretty Bird

by Seanan McGuire

  Oh Pretty Bird

  by

  Seanan McGuire

  Buckley Township, Michigan

  1940

  It is an interesting function of human-level intelligence that virtually all creatures in possession of it will occasionally look for ways to dull its edges. Sometimes, thinking is too great a burden, and needs to be set aside in favor of the calm blur of non-thought. Many species have their own unique drugs and intoxicants…but alcohol is universal to those with mammalian origins.

  Not that the average bogeyman or Sasquatch could drink freely in most establishments, at least not until the human clientele was drunk enough not to notice who—or what—was sitting at the next table. And where there was a market, someone would find a way to serve it. Hence the Red Angel, one of Buckley’s seedier drinking establishments, built right up on the lake shore and with a semi-secret basement that did not appear on any town records, even though everyone on the town council knew full well that it was there. Favors had been promised and palms had been greased to get the doors open, and now that they were, it seemed as if an act of God would be required to close them.

  The sound of laughter and tinny jukebox music drifted up the stairs as Jonathan Healy staggered out of the Red Angel’s basement. The smell of whiskey hung around him like a veil. Most of it was on him, not in him, thankfully; he straightened up, seeming to grow more sober with every step he took, until the illusion of drunkenness had been completely abandoned. Only then did he break into a run, heading for the Angel’s nearly deserted parking lot. The shape of his father’s truck was like beacon, promising safety, or at least, promising the opportunity to go home and tell the others what was going on.

  They had to move. They had to move before it was too late.

  Alice was sitting in the middle of the floor, industriously gnawing on the antler of her big stuffed jackalope. Fran had initially tried taking it away from her, only to give the idea up as a lost cause when separation from the taxidermy caused Alice—normally a tractable, if somewhat stubborn, baby—to start wailing uncontrollably.

  “You’d better be teething,” said Fran, propping her chin on the heel of her hand. “I don’t think I could take it if you decided you wanted to be a bone-eatin’ monster.”

  “Don’t approve of that as a career path?” asked Enid, passing through the room with a basket of clean laundry under her arm.

  “Nah, I just can’t stand to see good meat go to waste.” Fran sat up straight, letting her hand drop back down to her lap. “What’cha got going on?”

  “Nothing exciting until nightfall, I’m afraid,” said Enid, who knew extreme boredom when she saw it. Most of the time, Alice was the light of everyone’s life. Her laughter brightened the corners of the old house, and when she smiled, it was like everything that had ever happened to them, good or bad, had been intended to get them to that exact point. But then there were the times like these, when Alice didn’t want to take her nap, meaning she had to be supervised, but did want to spend upwards of an hour chewing on the same piece of taxidermy. “She’s not a bone-eating monster, Frannie, she’s just teething. It’ll pass soon enough. Then she’ll probably start biting things, at least for a little while, and you’ll have a whole new set of exciting problems.”

  “That explains why she keeps going for the antlers, at least,” said Fran. “What’s going on tonight?”

  “Peryton herd’s supposed to be passing through. We’re going to keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t raid any of the local flocks. You know how the farmers around here get when skinless flying demon deer drop down out of the sky and carry off their sheep.”

  “I think you could leave the ‘around here’ out of that sentence and still be pretty much accurate,” said Fran. “What time’s the herd supposed to show?”

  Enid, who knew desperation when she heard it, smiled. “Like I said, nightfall. I’ve already dropped by Mary’s house, and she’s available to babysit. Happy to babysit, in fact, since otherwise she’d be spending the evening doing her nails and not making any money.”

  “Why that girl isn’t beating the boys off with a stick is something I’ll never know,” said Fran, glancing to Alice to be sure the toddler was still restricting herself to the relatively harmless pastime of masticating her taxidermy. “Still, it’s good for us. Helps a lot when your best babysitter can be available at a moment’s notice, and doesn’t mind doin’ all the sitting at her place.”

  “That is a good thing,” agreed Enid, glancing around the living room. The monstrous taxidermy was on the verge of taking over again, with Alice’s jackalope representing only the tip of the iceberg. It would have been easier if there had been a cryptid museum of natural history somewhere that they could donate specimens to—but there wasn’t, and if they wanted to study the creatures they were working to preserve, they had to be able to do it in the safety of their own home.

  It was going to be hard, when Alice got older and started making friends at school. She’d never be able to have them over to the house, never be able to fill the eaves with the shriek of sleepovers or pack the kitchen with girls baking cupcakes for the school pep rally. Enid knew it would be hard on her—it would be hard on all of them, really; they already hated telling the girl “no,” and she wasn’t old enough to ask for much beyond piggyback rides and the occasional cookie—but there wasn’t any other way. She just hoped the girl would be strong enough to understand that some things required sacrifice. Some things weren’t really choices, not anymore.

  She’d tell Alexander it was time to shuffle the pieces in the barn and make room for more. That would help, a little, with assuaging the guilt she already felt when she considered the specter of Alice’s teenage years.

  “I’ll just get little miss ready to go on a babysitting adventure, then, shall I?” Fran got out of her chair and crossed the room to crouch down next to Alice. “Howdy, puddin’. You want to go see Mary? I hear she’s pretty lonely, she could use a bright face like yours to make her day a sunny one.”

  “Ask Mary if she can keep Alice overnight.” The voice was Jonathan’s. Fran and Enid both turned to find him standing in the doorway, his hands braced against the frame to either side like it was all that was holding him upright. His normally well-combed hair was ruffled, and his vest was only half-buttoned. He smelled of whiskey.

  Fran blinked. And then, because she was a sensible woman who had known her husband for years, she asked, “You been down at the Angel followin’ something you’ve come to share with the rest of us?”

  “Yes, I—no, there’s no time.” Jonathan shook his head violently. “I’ve already called the library. Father will be home inside of the hour. We need to be packing for the trip.”

  “Jonathan Healy, we are not going anywhere with you until you explain what it is you’re on about,” said Enid, folding her arms and fixing her son with the sort of glare that only a mother can summon on command. “You’re unkempt and you smell of liquor. That’s not a good time to start barking orders, unless you feel like being unkempt, hung over, and in the basement.”

  Fran scooped Alice into her arms, picking up the jackalope for good measure, since having the little girl begin to wail would really do none of them any good. “Did something happen? Is it Arturo?”

  “No, he’s fine.” Jonathan shook his head again, but slower this time, like he was trying to steady himself. He took a deep breath, and said, “I went to the Angel because I was following up on something for Father. He’s been tracking the movement of the Apraxis wasps again.”

  “I hate those things,” said Fran, shuddering and holding Alice a little tighter. Alice stopped chewing on her jackalope in favor of patting her mother reassuringly on the cheek. “Nasty buggers.”

  “
They were responsible for our engagement,” said Jonathan, a flicker of amusement breaking through his grim exterior. “I didn’t send them a wedding invitation, but it would have been reasonable to consider it.”

  “Honey, I love you, and I loved you then, but if you’d invited a swarm of brain-eatin’ bugs to our wedding, we would’ve been divorced before we said our I dos.” Fran frowned. “You still haven’t explained why we’re going somewhere, or what dropped you into the Angel. You can track Apraxis without goin’ drinking with monsters.”

  “Yes, but you can’t confirm what you’ve learnt about the Apraxis without drinking with monsters.” Jonathan stood up a little straighter, trying to smooth his hair with his hands. Alice laughed and reached for him. He glanced to Fran, who nodded, before taking his daughter gingerly out of her mother’s arms. “Father keeps track of the hives as a precaution. We can’t eliminate them, but we can intervene when they come too close to human habitation.”

  “Johnny, please stop trying to teach your mother how to suck eggs.” Enid crossed her arms. “We know about Apraxis wasps. We know why your father monitors them, and we know why we can’t wipe them out. What we don’t know is why you suddenly felt the need to go down to the Red Angel. Have the Apraxis eaten Indiana?”

  “No.” It would almost have been easier if they had. At least that would have been a straightforward problem, and one that could have been solved with a sufficient amount of fire. Perhaps it was unkind to fantasize about burning an entire state, but fire had a tendency to cleanse what it destroyed; Indiana would have risen again, even if it would have been scarred by the process.

  His family had already been scarred. He wasn’t sure they could survive any further damage.

  Fran and Enid were watching him, both of them looking terribly concerned. He focused his gaze on Alice, who didn’t look worried in the least. Daddy was holding her, and she was old enough to understand that Daddy would never let anything happen to her. As long as she was with him, or with her mother, or her well-beloved grandparents, she was perfectly safe, and content to let the world roll by.

  He found it soothing. He found it terrifying. He rather suspected that it was a function of parenthood that these two feelings could exist at the same time, mutually exclusive and connected all the same.

  “I was at the Red Angel because Father needed me to confirm something before we did anything that couldn’t be taken back,” he said, eyes staying on Alice. It was easier, somehow, to speak the words while looking at the one person who wouldn’t really understand them. “It was essential that I make contact with the local bogeyman community.”

  Fran went very still. He saw her stiffen out of the corner of his eye. Voice neutral, she asked, “Why was that?” She hadn’t forgiven the bogeymen for their role in the death of Daniel Healy, Alice’s big brother, who would have been eight years old on his next birthday.

  Jonathan hadn’t forgiven them either, but he had one thing Fran did not: a lifetime of perspective. Sometimes, aiming your rage at the sword meant sparing the swordsman, when he was the one who really deserved to be punished. He…or she.

  “Because I needed to ask them something.” He finally turned back to his wife, Alice seeming to grow heavier in his arms as he held her close to his chest. “I needed to ask them where she went.”

  Enid stepped forward, her heart suddenly beating too fiercely in her chest and her breath seeming heavy in her lungs. There was only one “she” who could have been involved in this conversation, only one woman who had paid an unscrupulous bogeyman an assassin’s fee for a single night’s work that had changed their world forever.

  “Are you sure, then?” Enid asked. “Was it her?”

  “Yes.” Jonathan nodded. Fran stepped forward, arms outstretched, and he handed her the baby without waiting to be asked. She needed to hold their daughter, given what he was about to say.

  Taking a deep breath, he looked into his wife’s eyes, and said, “Heloise Tapper killed Daniel, and I know where she is.”

  Mary Dunlavy was sitting at the kitchen table, looking dully from the power bill to the water bill and trying to decide which one of them could be put off for just one more week, when someone started knocking at the door. She quickly shoved the bills under a placemat, casting an anxious look down the hall toward her father’s room. He wouldn’t be awake—not this early in the day—and she didn’t want to risk waking him.

  The knock came again. Mary rose and hurried to pull it open, revealing Frances Healy standing on the porch, with Alice bundled against her hip. At the sight of Mary, Alice beamed and announced, gleefully, “Mary! Down, Mama, Mary.”

  “We were wondering if you were available to babysit,” said Fran, without preamble.

  Mary looked past Fran and Alice to see Jonathan sitting in their truck, parked up against the curb. The Healy family’s odd reluctance to use the telephone was well-known in Buckley; most thought it had something to do with the elder Healys being foreign and whatnot, although no one could say exactly how that would make a difference—maybe they didn’t have telephones in England. Whatever the reason for the family’s shared reticence, Mary was accustomed to Fran showing up without calling first. The only unusual thing was the small valise settled against Fran’s ankle. Half the girls she knew from school had similar cases, big enough for an overnight trip but not much else.

  “Enid said as she’d already checked with you, and that you were free for the night, but I’m looking for something a trifle more involved,” continued Fran, cheerfully oblivious, as always, to Mary’s slow examination. “Do you think you could handle our little monster for the whole weekend? I promise we’ll be back by Sunday night, ready to reclaim her and let you head off for school like nothing’s happened. We’ll pay double.”

  Mary, who hadn’t been going to school for the better part of a year, hesitated. Her father would be bound to wake up at some point during those three days; he couldn’t help it. A man could spend a lot of time in bed, especially when he was working double shifts at the mill, but there was only so much sleeping anyone could be reasonably expected to do. Still, double pay would mean she wouldn’t have to choose between the bills—and three days! That could put some real food in the pantry, and maybe even get new tires for the car.

  She wanted to refuse; she wanted to come up with an excuse, any excuse, that would let her avoid doing something as risky as taking a little girl for three whole days. But in the end, the lure of that much money was just too much for her to resist. “I’d be happy to,” she said, extending her arms for Fran to drop Alice into. The child laughed in delight, squirming to reach with sticky starfish hands for the improbable silver waves of Mary’s hair.

  “All her things are in the bag,” said Fran, picking it up and offering it to Mary, who shifted Alice to one arm in order to take it. “She’s been sleeping through the night, but if she gets fussy, just give her something she can chew on. A hairbrush should work. If you really get into a pinch, I packed some antlers for her to gnaw. Don’t know why any child of mine should have such a powerful hankering for bone, but it is what it is, and I figure it’s better to indulge her than to listen to her howl all the time.”

  Mary’s father had hunted deer and even the occasional moose when she was younger, before…well, before things went and got complicated on them. There was nothing forced about the smile she directed at Alice before tilting it upward to encompass Fran as well. “Horn’s a good thing for a baby to chew on. Not as soft as wood, not as unnerving for the parents as bone. I’ll keep her happy as a little clam while she’s here with me, don’t you worry.”

  “I never do, when she’s with you,” said Fran. “Thank you again, Mary, you’re a lifesaver.”

  “I do the best I can,” said Mary, her smile fading to a wan outline of itself. She felt sure that she had flickered, but if so, Fran didn’t appear to have noticed; the woman leaned forward, kissed the crown of her baby’s head, and then raced off down the path, slinging herself into the
truck beside her husband. Whatever business they were on, it must have been important; Jonathan didn’t even wait for Fran to shut the door before he was tearing off down the road, leaving Mary staring after him while Alice gathered handfuls of her silvery hair and pulled, laughing as only safe, happy babies can laugh.

  “They’re going to figure it out one day, Ally, and then where are we going to be?” Mary asked, looking down at the little girl in her arms. Alice laughed again. Mary sighed and closed the door, against the prying eyes of her neighbors, and against the future.

  One day soon, Fran would notice that Mary wasn’t getting any older, or Jonathan would be leading a high school field trip at the library and realize that Mary wasn’t there. One day soon, it would become impossible to juggle the lies and small deceptions that she’d been…not living by, exactly, but using to smooth out her existence for the past year. As for what would happen after that, well, she just didn’t know. “How to get on with your life after you’re dead” wasn’t exactly the sort of thing they taught you in homeroom, or even down at the community center. She was pretty sure it included moving on to some afterlife or other, and she couldn’t possibly do that. Her father needed her here.

  In the meantime, she had a baby to look after, and babysitting money to put toward the bills. The future, however uncertain, could wait.

  Fortunately for Mary Dunlavy’s peace of mind, if not for their own, none of the Healys as yet had any inkling that their preferred babysitter was not among the living. If they had known, their plans for the weekend might have been quite different.

  Johnny and Fran returned to the house to find Enid and Alexander sitting on the porch. Three large leather suitcases waited at the base of the steps, their sides bulging with a combination of clothing, weapons, and more esoteric supplies. Enid was holding a small leather case that Fran recognized from previous journeys—although in her experience, Johnny was generally the one carrying it. She cast a curious look in his direction. He shook his head.