The Bird Eater (16 page)

Fifteen

The sheets pooled beneath Cheri’s shoulders as she dragged her fingernails down Aaron’s back. Her hair was a tangle of crimson upon his pillow, and the tip of her tongue left a slick of saliva along the curve of her bottom lip as a purr resonated from the hollow of her throat. She caught his wrists and shifted her weight, rolled on top of him and arched her back, her neck craning like an exotic bird. Aaron’s fingers bit into the curve of her thighs, and when her head lolled forward, the cascade of deep red was replaced by iridescent black that shifted in the light—hints of metallic blues and greens playing within that slick Cimmerian hue.

He blinked up at her, a noxious swirl of confusion coiling inside his chest. Cheri exhaled a moan as her nails dug into his shoulders. Aaron shut his eyes, blotting out her sudden change in appearance, his hands slithering up her bare sides as he moved with her. But the air caught in his throat when her fingers stabbed into his skin, jabbing down so hard they buried themselves up to the first knuckle in his flesh. His eyes grew wide when he saw her hands—no longer hands but scaly four-pronged feet.

Aaron tried to scramble out from under her, the bedsheets suddenly gritty with damp lake sand, but she held him down, her moans replaced by belabored cries of agony as something rippled just beneath her skin. Her flesh raised up in grotesquely pronounced goose bumps. For the briefest of moments the girl above him looked like a reptile, thrashing as if trying to get away, cemented in place by the claws she’d sunk into his shoulders. Her screams reached a fevered pitch as the bumps of her skin sprouted hard, flesh-covered points that laid flat against her flesh. Black, feathery tufts poked out from beyond the hard cuticle that held the pins in place. Her spine elongated, the needle-like probes growing impossibly long along the undersides of her arms.

Aaron thrashed beneath her as her face shifted shape, her nose and mouth fusing together, protruding outward into a beak; a terrifying mask, like the bird doctor of the plagues. She exhaled an ear-piercing squawk, reeling back as if to peck him straight through, but he coiled his legs against his chest and shoved her away with his feet. Her talons ripped from his skin, blood surging from his shoulders. Frantically feeling the shore around him, Aaron’s fingers caught the edge of a large rock. The bird screeched as he brought his arm around in an arch, roundhousing the monstrosity against the side of the head, stone in hand.

The thing fell back, and Aaron threw himself at it, pinning it down. It tried to flap its wings, its beak open wide as it snapped at his face. Aaron reeled back and screamed, smashing the rock against the bird’s massive skull. He pulled back again, and again, and again until he was bludgeoning nothing but pulp and fragments of bone.

When the bird was dead, Aaron slowly looked up at his surroundings. The shore was the dusty floor of his living room. The monstrous bird before him was nothing but an ordinary raven.

Moving away from the carnage, he stared down at his bloodied, feather-covered hands. They were small, a boy’s hands, hands that twitched as he

bolted upright, his book sliding off his chest and tumbling to the bedroom floor. His uncle Fletcher’s voice reverberated against the inside of his skull.

We should cut the damn trees down.

Despite the darkness, the birds still tittered outside his window. There were hundreds of them now, dozens per tree. It was as though the things didn’t sleep, like there were too many of them—feathers tangled together, beaks biting and snapping, feet clawing, wings beating in the breeze.

Aaron pressed his hands over his face, forcing the vision of that massive bird from his mind. He was getting used to the dreams, learning how to ignore them rather than letting them seize up his heart. The visions were decidedly better than the nightmares he’d suffered in Portland—the same dream playing over and over again on a loop: the crush of metal, the splintering of glass. He’d take giant birds over car accidents any night of the week, because giant birds and insane boys and children being pushed out of windows didn’t make sense. As long as it wasn’t Ryder, he could push it to the back of his mind.

Rubbing his eyes, he twisted upon the mattress and let his feet hit the ground. The coolness of the floorboards felt good on his feet: soothing, grounding, reminding him that despite the nightmares in his head, despite the nightmare that had become his life, he was still alive.

Somehow he was still okay.

I’ve always loved you…

That whisper made his heart ache. He only wished the voice had been Evangeline’s, but perhaps it was a sign.

Time to move on,
he told himself.
Time to let go.

It had been too long; it had hurt too much. He wanted to feel better, and because Cheri wanted the same thing for him, somehow that made things feel all right.

Pushing his fingers through his hair, he exhaled a breath and looked across the darkness of the room to his door. But rather than sliding off the bed and heading to the bathroom for a quick gulp of water, he stared at the space beneath the door as his heart sputtered to a stop.

The moonlight shifted across the hardwood in a pale blue glow, darkness cutting through it in two distinct spots—spots where someone’s feet blocked the light.

The surge of adrenaline made him nauseous.

He was sure he was going to vomit as he slid to the ground, his knees whispering against the floorboards, his right arm jabbing into the shadows beneath the bed. His hand grazed the hard plastic of the gun case, pulling the box into view, but the gun wasn’t there. Sudden realization hit him hard: he’d left it downstairs, he’d left the fucking thing on the coffee table for any trespasser to use against him.

He scrambled to his feet.

The shadow that lurked just beyond the door turned and moved, as if ready to run.

Aaron didn’t have a weapon, but he found himself rushing to the door regardless.

No you don’t.

If the kid was inside the house, this was Aaron’s chance to catch him, to end this bullshit once and for all.

Aaron yanked open the door, a gasp of surprise tumbling from his throat. He had expected to see what he always saw—an empty hallway, nothing but his imagination playing tricks. But this time the kid was there.

Standing at the top of the stairs, the boy turned his head to face Aaron in a snap. The kid gave Aaron a sickening smile, a baseball bat hanging heavy from his right hand, gently tapping the toe of his shoe.

Aaron struggled for words, but the kid didn’t give him time to think. He leaped down the steps, taking the risers three by three. He paused long enough to give Aaron time to scramble to the top step, grinning up at him from the middle of the staircase, that baseball bat thump thump thumping against the edge of the stair.

Aaron’s breath hitched in his throat.

He hesitated, though he didn’t know exactly why.

There was something about the kid’s smile that made his blood reverse its current, something about the way he was waiting to be caught, that turned Aaron’s guts inside out. But he couldn’t just stand there open-mouthed and soundless. This was his house now, his property, his kingdom of misery.

Aaron took a slow downward step, his eyes fixed on the kid who was patiently waiting for him to give chase. The boy mimicked Aaron’s step by taking a step down as well, that baseball bat continuing to thump thump thump like a metronome. A second step resulted in the same response, the distance between them remaining constant, steadfast. The kid slowly drew the rounded tip of the baseball bat up the wall in a delicate arc, choked up on the handle without taking his eyes off of Aaron’s face, and with a grimace that was balanced between amusement and disgust, he reeled back and swung at the air.

The bat smashed against the wall in a seemingly aimless act of aggression. It tore into Edie’s wallpaper and knocked a framed picture to the floor. The glass shattered in its frame, Aunt Edie and Uncle Fletcher smiling up at Aaron from next to his feet.

Suddenly, all Aaron’s rage came flooding back. His muscles tensed and his hands curled into fists.

The kid cocked his head toward his right ear, as if sensing Aaron’s ire. But his grin only grew wider, his eyes flashing with spite. And just as Aaron considered dashing back to his bedroom and calling the cops, the kid hissed an insult into the silence.

I fucked your mother, and now she’s burning in hell.

Something snapped within Aaron’s chest.

Had that been real? Had the kid actually said that, or had he dreamed it?

Somehow, it didn’t matter. The last thread of Aaron’s self-restraint unraveled. He let out a yell and rushed down the stairs.

The kid whooped and leapt to the ground floor, swung the bat and smacked the top of the newel post, sending the wooden ball sailing into the front room like an impromptu home run.

Aaron caught the bat, gave it a vicious twist, and wrenched it out of the boy’s hands. Not expecting the move, the kid twisted with it and stumbled backward, holding his hands up to protect himself from Aaron’s swing. But Aaron kept swinging—even when he caught the kid’s hand with the tip of the bat, he swung again; swung when the boy toppled over, scrambling away from him on hands and knees; reeled back after connecting with the little shit’s ribs and swung for a fourth time, bringing the bat down hard against his collarbone, tasting blood when he heard bones snap.

The boy screamed as Aaron bludgeoned him from above, his desperate cries for help dissipating into nothing more than wet gurgles, blood bubbling up from between his lips. Drunk on his own rage, Aaron continued to bring the bat down against the kid’s head, the quiet of the house resonating with sloppy meatpacking thuds—steady, like the tick of a metronome.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

When the bat slid from Aaron’s hands and hit the floor, all that was left of the boy was a gory bloom of red—a meat flower with arms and legs for leaves. Aaron backed away from the body, his eyes wide with horror.

I killed him.

His breaths came in loud, disbelieving gasps.

I KILLED HIM.

He twisted away from the body, stared down the hall and into the kitchen, his mind reeling.

Temporary insanity.

He began to move through the hallway.

I’m fucking crazy.

Stopped to catch himself against the wall.

Doubling over, he waited for bile to bubble up his throat, waited for the sick to come spewing forth onto the floor, the wall, his bare feet.

A sob tore its way out of his chest, amplified in the silence, echoing through empty rooms, joined by soft laughter from the front room. Aaron spun around to see where the laughter had come from, his eyes impossibly wide, his pulse thudding in his ears.

The boy was crouched at the foot of the stairs.

That sinister grin plastered across his face.

He held out his hands, hooked his thumbs together, and flapped his palms like a shadow puppet, then pivoted on the soles of his shoes and darted toward the locked front door.

When Aaron finally gathered up the courage to stagger to the window, he saw the kid running through the weeds of the yard, heading toward the trees that surrounded the house.

He turned away, felt like he was floating as his gaze settled upon the camcorder that sat innocuously upon the coffee table. A vague sense of clarity crystallized within his veins.

He launched himself forward, nearly knocking the device to the floor as he fumbled for it, the relentless hammering of his pulse making him sick. His chest heaved as he pressed
PLAY
, reviewing it in triple-time from the moment he had arrived in Ironwood, watching the images for something, anything that would make sense.

Footage of the house.

Of Ironwood proper.

Of Bennie’s Burgers and the hum of cicadas.

Stopping on the most recent scene, he watched himself on the small screen, the Aaron of a few days ago dropping onto the couch, looking tired, staring into the camera before shoving his hands through his hair.

There’s no silence here.

He slowly lowered himself onto the couch, the camcorder balanced in one hand while the other dug into the upholstery. It was strange how different he looked even to himself, forever plagued by the unseen. The man on the screen released a sigh.

It has to be in my head.

Aaron’s eyes darted from the camcorder to the hall, waiting for that shadow to resurface.

He swallowed against the possibility; still convinced that the appearance of Ryder’s name couldn’t possibly be arbitrary. Ryder was part of this. But maybe if Ryder could reach out to him from beyond the grave, so could someone else. Someone wicked. Someone evil. Someone like the kid who’d been tormenting him from day one.

The man on the screen suddenly looked up at a distant noise. He stood, the camera focusing in on the knees of his jeans. It continued to record as the star of the show moved out of frame.

The camcorder picked up the subtle creaking of floorboards beneath Aaron’s weight.

It picked up the whine of the bottom step of the stairs, focused, then refocused on the crocheted blanket on the back of the sofa. Edie’s circus blanket; her pride and joy.

Aaron’s stomach twisted in on itself, leaving him to choke on air.

The picture went fuzzy, then fixed onto the back wall of the living room.

There was a shadow in one of the corners, one that had been there the entire time.

At first it had looked like nothing but a trick of the light—darkness thrown against the wall by lamplight hitting furniture at weird angles, reflecting off the floor—but the shadow was moving now, growing darker, more pronounced, finding shape in the formless shade.

The thing drifted forward—short, small, a kid.

Aaron mewed deep in his throat, a muffled cry of longing.

Let it be him.