Black Wings

by Megan Hart

  “Your birthday’s coming up. Do you want a party? Maybe invite some friends from school?” Marian hesitated after she said it. The last time they’d tried to plan a birthday party for Briella, the bullying at Southside had come into the open.

  A crash of thunder made them both jump. A moment after, both laughed. Marian tilted her head, listening if Mikey had woken, but she heard nothing.

  Briella set a steaming mug in front of her. “Yeah, I’d like a party!”

  “Good.” Marian sipped her tea. “Oh, this is good, too.”

  “Is it all right if I take mine up to bed? I want to finish my book before lights out.”

  For a moment, Marian felt a pang that the kid was choosing to be alone rather than with her mother. But that was natural. She’d done the same with her own mother.

  “You’re not too scared of the storm?”

  Briella paused and hugged her. “I am. But I’m too old to be scared of it.”

  “Maybe you’re never too old to hug your mom, though, huh?” Marian let the girl go. “How about I come up in a little bit to tuck you in?”

  Twenty minutes later, Marian’s eyes were drooping so much she had to shake herself to keep from passing out. She heard the stealthy slide of feet on the floor above her head. Briella was awake and moving around. The ceiling creaked.

  Marian sat up, rubbing at her eyes, and headed for the stairs. At the top of them, she looked to the left. The door to the baby’s room was open. Briella’s was closed, without even a strip of light creeping into the hall from beneath.

  Marian stood still, listening. The storm had come on stronger. The hall lit briefly with blue-white light from the baby’s room. Almost at once, the boom of thunder made her jump. It seemed so much closer here on the second floor.

  Inside the baby’s room, Mikey lay sleeping peacefully in his crib, unwoken by the storm. Fierce love burned inside her as she placed a gentle hand on the infant’s back. His soft curls brushed her lips as she bent to kiss the top of his head. The milky smell of him and the softness of his breathing intoxicated her.

  She knocked on Briella’s door. When there was no answer, she pushed it open. The room was dim. The girl had unplugged her night-light, and Marian felt another pang at how quickly she was growing up. A flash of lightning showed the bed.

  Empty.

  “Briella?” Marian hit the light switch, revealing the bed’s tangle of covers but no Briella. She cried the girl’s name again.

  Another burst of storm. The window flung open hard enough to shatter the glass. Rain and wind poured into the room. Marian screamed.

  The raven flew in the window.

  The lights went out.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  The bird was blacker than the night outside, but in the swift strobe flashes of lightning that lit the bedroom, Marian could clearly see every feather. Onyx gave her that head tilt she’d come to loathe, the one that seemed so assessing and judgmental. Marian’s lips skinned back over her teeth in a grimace.

  “Where is she?”

  The bird didn’t answer her, of course, not even with one of the few phrases it had learned to mimic. It didn’t move from its perch on the window seat when Marian stalked toward it. Her fingers curled to grab it, maybe to try again to throttle the fucking thing, but she stopped herself, wary and remembering what that beak could do. In Briella’s small room with its sloping eaves, in the pitch black, Marian would be at a disadvantage, even if it couldn’t see in the dark any better than she could.

  Another flash lit the room. Onyx croaked, like the mutter of a curse under its breath. It wasn’t a word or phrase she’d heard it say before, but she recognized herself in the tone. The damned thing was mimicking her. Fury and disgust rose so fiercely inside her that for a moment the dizziness eased. It was back in a second or so. Her head spun.

  “Where,” she said again, “is Briella?”

  “Briella,” Onyx said. “Briella.”

  Gusts of wind tossed the curtains, soaking them and the window-seat cushion. Her stomach roiled, bitterness at the back of her mouth. Marian put a hand on Briella’s dresser to keep herself from going to her knees.

  The lights came on again, flickering and dim. Her hand hit an orange prescription bottle that fell off the dresser and rolled, popping the lid off. She and the bird dove for it at the same time. Marian caught it up in her fist. She barely had the chance to see Amy Patterson’s name, with ‘…for insomnia’ on the label, before the bird snatched at it. Marian balled her fist and punched the raven as hard as she could. It squawked and landed a few inches out of reach.

  I wanted to try some of your tea. Sit down, Mom. I’ll make you some.

  I’ll make you some.

  The tea in Marian’s stomach churned. She couldn’t keep her eyes focused. She shoved her fingers down her throat, forcing a gag. She bent over the garbage pail, not caring if she vomited into it or onto the floor. She needed to get this out of her system, or she was going to pass out. She might even die.

  The sound of Mikey’s crying forced her to stand. Her nipples ached and burned as her milk began to let down. She didn’t press her fingers to them to stop the flow, too disoriented, too uncoordinated. Her eyes had been closed, and she hadn’t even realized it. Shit, how long had she been like that, hunched over the can with her mouth open, drool and puke hanging in strings off her lips? Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and slid, burning down her cheeks. Mikey was crying, and Briella was still missing.

  Except that it was not her baby who wailed, it was that fucking bird. This time, Marian didn’t stop herself from grabbing it. Onyx took off right before she could get a grip. She snagged it briefly and was left holding a feather. The bird thumped the air with its wings, then hit the sloping ceiling hard enough to make it let out a squawk.

  “Where is my daughter, you filthy piece of road-kill-eating shit?” Marian tried to scream the words, but they came out in a rasp, slurring.

  More rain began to pound the roof and smack the glass as lightning illuminated the room. She could see the slashing torrent in the blue-white light. A moment later, thunder rumbled, but she heard another cry. This time, it was not the mimicking raven. It was Briella.

  “Oh, God, oh no.”

  The kid was on the roof. Marian tugged at the sill, her fingers clumsy and thick, but determined. She yanked it up, but it stuck. She stuck her head out, but that was as far as she could get. She screamed Briella’s name but could see nothing until the next flash of storm light.

  Marian shoved with one shoulder, trying to get the window to open enough for her to get through it. She managed to push it another inch or so, still not enough, but now at least she could twist to see the roof in front of her. A silhouette, hunched and small. Her daughter.

  “Briella! Baby, you need to come back inside, please. Come back to Mama!”

  Briella turned. Marian’s eyes had adjusted a bit to the darkness now. She could make out the wide, dark eyes. The curling hair, limp and straight now from the wet, hanging over Briella’s shoulders and back. She wore the Parkhaven school T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and her tiny hands gripped bony knees. She wore no shoes, and Marian could see her toes crimping into the shingles.

  “Come back inside!”

  Marian strained, reaching, but the girl was a good six inches out of reach. Again, Marian shoved at the window, trying to get it to move just enough so that she could squeeze through it. Either it was too stuck or she was still too drugged to muster the strength, because all she did was send a stab of pain through her back and shoulders. Her breasts, swollen and leaking milk, ached as they pressed against the sill. Another retch struggled out of her, and she spat a mouthful of bile onto the roof.

  Impossibly, the rain got harder. The gutters had started to fill, sending a waterfall over the edge of the roof. More rain cascaded across the faded and worn shingles, a
river diverted by Briella, who hadn’t moved. In the next flash of light, Marian could see her daughter’s face as clearly outlined as though it were a camera’s flash and her mind the film. Except nobody used film anymore, it was all digital, with chips and wires and data, and then she was fading again, her head nodding as she tried so hard to hold on to the edges of the window but found herself on her knees in front of it.

  Digital chips and wires and circuits: that was how people took pictures now, it was how they lived their lives. It was what Briella had put inside the bird’s brain to capture the program she’d designed to recreate herself. It was in there, inside that raven. Her girl was now inside of it. On the roof, in the rain, on a perch, crying like a baby, muttering curses, her girl had wings.…

  Marian bit her tongue hard enough to squirt the copper taste of blood down the back of her throat. She was not going to pass out. She was not going to leave her children alone. Not baby Mikey in his crib with Onyx ready to peck out his eyes. And not Briella, clinging to the slippery, rain-soaked roof in the middle of a storm. Marian was not going to abandon her babies. No.

  She bit again. The pain was thin, exquisite like a burn or the first line of a fresh tattoo; it was nothing like the surging pain of childbirth she had not yet forgotten, but would, over time. She ground the tip of her tongue between her teeth until the urge to scream was bigger and bolder than the desire to let herself fall onto the floor into unconsciousness.

  She stuck her head out the window again. “Briella! What are you doing?”

  “I was trying to catch Onyx, but he wouldn’t let me!”

  “Come here!”

  “No,” Briella said with a shake of her head that sent strands of her black hair slapping her small, rounded cheeks.

  Marian drew in the cold air. She tipped her face to the frigid rain, her eyes closed as it stung her like a thousand needles. She opened her mouth to take in the water, letting it rinse away the taste of sick and blood. She swallowed some, hoping it would make her vomit more to get the drugs out of her, although she feared they were already into her bloodstream, and she might have only a few more minutes before she could no longer fight them.

  The bird landed on her back, and Marian shrieked, humping her body in an arc against the bottom of the window. It still refused to budge. She was stuck there, waiting for the sting of its beak. And where would it stab her? In the back of her neck, the base of her skull? Or would it try for her eyes?

  She reached for Briella, who scooted away. The motion caused her to slip on the roof. The girl didn’t scream, but Marian did.

  “Stay still! Oh, God, Briella, baby, please come here to Mama. Let me bring you inside.”

  “Where’s Onyx? What did you do to him?” Briella cried. “Did you hurt him?”

  Marian wrenched her body again to get the bird off her. The weight lifted but settled again. She felt the press of its beak against her spine, and she tensed. She shook her head.

  “He’s fine. He’s right here. I didn’t hurt him.”

  “You can’t hurt him, Mama. You have to promise me.” Briella got to her feet and slipped again, ending up on hands and knees with her fingers clutching at the roof while her little toes dug in. “You have to keep Onyx safe. You have to promise me you won’t ever hurt him!”

  Marian was going to kill that bird as soon as she had the chance. “I promise, sweet girl. Just…come inside, now.”

  The rain had not let up, but the lightning and thunder were moving away. Briella stood upright, one foot a little higher on the roof. Marian shoved her body harder through the window, and Briella took a step toward her. She slipped, going again to her hands and knees with a cry of pain as the rough shingles tore her flesh.

  With a groan, Marian tried to force her way through the small space, but without the window moving, all she managed to do was get herself wedged in place. She couldn’t get a full breath without everything hurting. Again, Onyx landed on her back. The tickle of its nubbly feet sent a new nausea swelling in her that had nothing to do with what Briella had put in her tea. Marian wrenched herself around, half on her side, her arm still outstretched toward her daughter.

  “You can’t hurt him, because Onyx has me inside him. The way I wanted to have me inside baby Mikey, so I would know how it felt to have you love me the best.”

  Marian’s fingers curled on nothing but the rain. She swallowed, then spat, then spat again. Sickness pounded at her guts and her head, but this time, not from the pills.

  “Briella,” she managed to say, “did you hurt baby Mikey?”

  Briella shook her head and inched closer to Marian. “I wasn’t going to hurt him. I figured out how to do it without hurting him. It wasn’t going to be like with Toby or Rufus…or Grampa. But then I remembered what you said, how you couldn’t forgive someone who hurt baby Mikey, and I…I worried you would find out, so I didn’t do it.”

  It wasn’t going to be like Toby or Rufus or Grampa.

  Marian wanted to recoil, but she was too stuck to do anything. She tried to look into Briella’s eyes, but the darkness and rain made it impossible to see anything in there. And what, she thought with a thin edge of hysteria, what would she see in her daughter’s gaze, even in the brightest of lights, but nothing? Because the truth was something she had never wanted to admit but could no longer pretend she didn’t know – there was a nothingness inside Briella. An empty blackness that held the place where her soul ought to have been.

  “You didn’t do anything to the baby?”

  “No! No!”

  “What did you do to them? To me?”

  “I only wanted to make you sick!” Briella screamed. “The purple berries just made you throw up. It wasn’t like with the pills. I thought if you were sick enough, you’d lose the baby the way you did the other ones, but I’m glad you didn’t! Because I love baby Mikey, I love him! I just wanted to be inside him, so you’d love me the best! So I tried to catch Onyx, but he wouldn’t let me! But I wasn’t going to hurt Mikey!”

  Marian did not believe it. Not for a second. Despair clawed its way up her throat and out her mouth in a low, keening shriek that sounded almost like the wind itself.

  Briella slipped again and let out a cry as her outflung hand at last connected with Marian’s. Her fingers linked with her mother’s. She stood. A far-off lightning bolt lit her in silhouette again.

  Briella’s hand gripped in hers, Marian was no longer afraid the kid was going to slide and fall off the roof, not so long as her mother held her. With her body half in and half out of the window, Marian had the leverage to hold tight enough, although pulling them both back inside was going to be hard with only one hand. The rain poured over them.

  Across the hall, loud enough to be heard over the storm, baby Mikey cried.

  “What did you do to the dog, Briella? What did you do to Toby?”

  “I had to make sure it would work before I could use it on Mikey!”

  The rain was easing. The storm, passing. In Marian’s fist, Briella’s fingers were smooth and cold.

  Those small hands had killed.

  “What…what did you do to Grampa?”

  Briella tugged Marian’s hand, pulling herself closer to the window and safety. “I couldn’t get him into Onyx, but some of Onyx got into him. I didn’t want him to die. That was an accident.”

  “But he did die. You hurt him. You hurt all of them!”

  “Not all experiments work the first time,” Briella said.

  “You can’t do those things, Briella.” Marian’s grip tightened, tugging the girl closer to the window.

  Briella said, “Yes, I can. If I want to.”

  This close, it didn’t matter about the rain and the night. Only an inch or so away from her, Briella’s face was easy to read. Briella’s teeth chattered. Water dripped from her eyelashes and chin.

  “I can if I want to,” she
repeated, her tone the same it had always been when she was proud and showing off to her mother what she was able to do. When she’d finished Gone with the Wind. When she’d painted a Thanksgiving turkey using the outline of her hand. When she’d learned to ride a bike, to tie her shoes.

  When she had murdered.

  The press of the bird on her back loosened Marian’s grip. Marian put her other hand on top of her girl’s head to feel the soaked curls. She cupped her daughter’s soft cheek, chilled with the storm.

  “Briella,” Marian said. “Do you still wish you could fly?”

  Briella smiled.

  Marian shoved her as hard as she could.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The spring returned, because that’s what happened when winter was over. Marian, seeking the sunshine, wrapped her baby son, now eight months old, in a blanket and hefted him onto her hip so they could both go outside into the backyard, where the grass had only just started to grow long again. Mikey chewed on his knuckles. He still hadn’t discovered how to suck his thumb, and Marian hoped he never would – it was hell trying to get a kid to stop, well past the time when they should.

  The new yard furniture she and Dean had put on layaway wouldn’t be paid off for another month or so, but the old picnic table was still out here. She found the two pieces of the broken glass ashtray pushed together on it, empty but for the smudge of old, wet leaves. She didn’t have any cigarettes in the house, but as she settled onto the splintery wooden bench and rested Mikey on the tabletop, Marian didn’t even get the faintest wisp of a craving.

  Some things, she thought, eventually did go away by themselves.

  A flutter at the edge of the tree line turned her head. The raven, glossy and black, left its perch in a pine and circled the picnic table a few times before landing on the edge of it. It wasn’t close enough to the baby to get in a peck, but it shifted from foot to foot as it settled its wings. Marian pulled the small plastic container of chili leftover from last night’s dinner and took off the top. She pushed it toward Onyx.