The Bird Eater (7 page)

“The house.”

“The house,” Eric repeated. The way he said it was ominous, and the way he looked across the fire at Mike didn’t make Aaron feel any better.

“What?” Aaron asked. “This is the second time you’ve made me feel like I should know something I don’t.” Aaron had all but forgotten the weird comment Eric had made at Banner’s—something about the place being the stuff of legend.

Mike looked impressed. “All that obsession with black magic voodoo hocus-pocus crap and you didn’t spill the beans?” he asked Eric. “Outstanding; that must have taken a shitload of self-control.”

“Stop,” Eric said, not looking at all amused.

“Stop what?” Mike asked. “He’s going to find out sooner or later.”

“The house out at the end of Old Mill, right?” Craig cut in. “That house is haunted, man.”

Aaron blinked at that, actually had to stop himself from expelling an incredulous laugh at how serious Craig looked.

Craig snorted. “Just because you don’t believe in something doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

Aaron cracked a helpless grin at that. “Honestly, I—”

“You don’t believe in ghosts,” Craig finished his sentence. “Right?”

Eric chewed on his bottom lip, slowly turning his attention to his old friend, assuring Aaron that it wasn’t a rhetorical question; he was interested in what Aaron had to say.

“You’re living in the wrong house, dude,” Craig assured him. “And you’re hanging out with the wrong guy.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Eric. “He’s been ghost hunting for years.”

“Oh, come on, are you serious?” Aaron blinked at his childhood friend.

Eric shrugged as if to say
guilty as charged
, but he also looked embarrassed, as though his love affair with the paranormal was something he preferred to keep under wraps.

“What’s the organization called?” Craig asked, snapping his fingers, trying to jog his own memory. “Arkansas Ghost Hunter Central or something?”

“Northern Arkansas Paranormal Syndicate,” Eric muttered.

Aaron furrowed his eyebrows. “NAPS?” he asked, desperately trying to keep a straight face.

“Fucking
NAPS
.” Mike laughed, and Aaron was helpless to keep from joining in.

“Okay,” Eric said begrudgingly, looking like he’d had enough of that particular joke.

“Watch out,” Mike said, holding his hands up and giving them a spooky shake. “The ghosts come out when we’re taking afternoon
naps
.”

“I’m feeling a little tired,” Craig chimed in.

“Are you kidding?” Mike asked. “You can’t sleep, goddamn you. Naps are a trigger.”

“You just curl up, go to sleep, set your EVP recorder on blast.” Craig cackled.

“Great,” Eric murmured, looking down at the ground between his feet. “How about we make fun of black holes or supernovas or some other shit we don’t understand?”

“Oh come off it,” Mike said. “We’re just fucking with you. Besides, Aaron here is the one who has the problem.”

Aaron cleared his throat and tried to look serious, but with both Mike and Craig still snickering, it was tough. “You really think the place is haunted?” he asked after a moment. When Eric failed to respond, Craig cut in.

“Everyone believes it,” Craig said. “You can ask them”—he motioned to the girls a dozen yards away—“or anyone else in town. The old folks avoid Old Mill, while the cool kids drive out there to get drunk and wait to see ghosts in the windows.”

That explained it, then—the reason that asshole kid was hanging around the property, giving him a hell of a time. Maybe that was why the little bastard was breaking in, to convince Aaron that the stories were true.

“I can see it in your face,” Craig said after a moment. “Something happened out there and now you’re putting it together. The wheels are turning.”

“No, just…” Aaron leaned back, rolled his sweating bottle of beer between his palms. “I’ve seen kids hanging out around there. I didn’t know what the hell they wanted, but now it makes more sense.”

“Kids?” Eric asked.

“Yeah, I mean, it may just be one kid or it may be more than one, I’m not really sure. But whoever it is, they’re the reason I ended up at Cheri’s shop. Someone slashed my tire.”

“Ghosts,” Mike said. “Next thing you know, they’ll be stealing your spark plugs and siphoning your gas.”

“You know, for a while the rumor was that you were the one who was haunting the place,” Craig said matter-of-factly.

Aaron released a laugh.

“It’s true,” Craig assured him. “Ask Eric.”

Eric shifted uncomfortably upon the knotty log he was sitting on, cleared his throat, and flashed Aaron an apologetic smile. “You weren’t at the funeral. People started to wonder. Word spread that Edie had died and you were missing. As soon as the rumor was out there, people started driving by the ‘death house’ to get an eyeful. And then someone saw something.”

“A kid,” Craig said. “In a window on the upper floor.”

“Then someone else saw it,” Eric continued, “followed by a third person, then a fourth. Suddenly people were camping out on the lawn, crossing their fingers that they’d be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of whoever was still occupying the house.”

“Hoping to see
you
,” Craig clarified. “The story was that you had killed your aunt, and then you had killed yourself, which was why nobody knew where you had gone. And it was weird, man; you had to get the electricity turned on when you got back, right?”

“Sure,” Aaron said. “Water, too. The whole place was off the grid.”

“Except that people said that every now and then, the lights upstairs would come on, then go out again.”

Aaron stared at the three of them, not sure whether to roll his eyes or let the shudder that was crawling across his skin shake him from the inside out.

“Well, I guess I’ve debunked the story,” he finally said.

“How’s that?” Mike asked.

“I’m right here; not a ghost. I can’t haunt the place if I’m still alive.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Craig said. “It just means that
you
aren’t the one who people have seen.”

“You believe this?” Aaron asked Eric.

Eric shrugged faintly, as if not wanting to talk about it despite his expertise.

“You’ll believe, too,” Craig assured him. “You stay anywhere near that house for long enough and you’ll believe it whether you want to or not.”

Seven

Aaron chose not to believe.

Blaming the occurrences back at the house on something paranormal rather than on what they really were—an annoying kid who thought he was being funny—didn’t make sense. Aaron liked to think of himself as a logical creature. The simplest, most obvious explanation was the right explanation. If the cops removed the kid from Aaron’s property and strange things continued to occur, he’d be willing to consider the supernatural, but until then, this was a clear case of a bored adolescent giving the new guy in town a hell of a time.

Returning home, Aaron sat in his car and stared at the sunken roofline of Uncle Fletcher’s shed. He ran the story Craig had related over in his head—the shadowy figure in the upper windows, the lights turning off and on even though the house wasn’t hooked up to Arkansas Electric. The broken window and footprints in the dust confirmed Craig’s story; there was no doubt that high school kids
did
drive out to the end of Old Mill to screw around. But ghosts? Aaron blamed that on the overactive imaginations of kids with nothing better to do.

Shoving his car door open, Aaron stepped around the front bumper and froze. He saw something shift just beyond the tree line. Squinting in the dark, he strained to make out what it was, and after a few seconds of letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, Aaron saw him: that same punk kid.

Every muscle in his body reflexively tensed. He clenched his teeth as he ducked back into the Tercel and grabbed the camcorder off the passenger’s seat. Pointing the camera at the trespasser, this time Aaron made his approach. When the boy disappeared into the overgrowth, Aaron walked faster, nearly breaking into a run, determined to catch up.

“I’ve got you on camera!” he yelled into the dark. “And I’m calling the cops.”

Stopping at the tree line, he glared into the shadows that made it impossible to see. He turned on the camcorder’s built-in light in an attempt to illuminate the unlit forest, but it was no use. The light was weak. It lit up six feet in front of him, if that.

“You’re trespassing,” Aaron said, sure the kid was still within earshot. “And entering someone’s house without their permission is a felony. If you’ve got anything else on your record you’re going straight to juvie, you little shit.”

Backtracking to the house, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed information. “Ironwood Arkansas…the police department,” he murmured into the device. “No, it’s not an emergency.” He rolled his eyes at the woman on the line and sighed. “Sure, I’ll hold.”

He fell asleep while waiting for the police to arrive, the flickering blue shadows of the muted TV playing an old Loony Tunes rerun, the Road Runner outsmarting Wile E. Coyote at every turn. He pictured Ryder sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his legs pretzeled in front of him,

the blue glow replaced by warm, gilded sunlight. Ryder turned his head toward the muffled knock on the front door, jumped to his feet, and skipped across the length of the front room to greet whoever was standing on the front porch in the summer heat. A pair of boys came rambling inside. They were older than Ryder, one dressed in a plaid short-sleeved shirt with mother of pearl snaps for buttons, the other carrying a wooden baseball bat in his right hand, an old oiled glove shoved beneath his left arm. Ryder motioned for the boys to follow him upstairs to his room—to
Aaron’s
room, except that Aaron’s band and movie posters were gone and his furniture had been replaced. The room looked dated with its vintage striped wallpaper. A collection of tin robots was lined up along the top of a pine dresser.

The boy with the baseball bat and glove took a seat on the edge of the bed while the other stuck his head out the window, staring into the branches of a giant oak just beyond the glass. Dozens of starlings chirped and sang, and Ryder showed the boy how they’d come right up onto the windowsill if you spread birdseed onto the ledge. The plaid-shirted boy smiled in delight as a couple of birds swept in and began to peck at the seed. The baseball player looked less-than-impressed, kneading his glove with impatience, apparently having come over to toss the ball around, not screw around with some girlie birds.

But the baseball player’s disinterest waned when, without a hint of warning, Ryder gave the boy at the window a vicious shove. The kid let out a yell as he tumbled forward, his fingers groping for the sill as his sudden shift of weight pulled him out of the room and into the sun. The baseball player jumped off the bed open-mouthed, but he froze where he stood, too shocked to react.

Ryder slowly turned from the open window to his remaining friend, but it wasn’t Ryder any longer. Aaron’s son was suddenly older, his dark hair mussed into a rat’s nest that stood in wild peaks atop his head. It was the kid—the one who had ducked into the trees not an hour before. He canted his head to the right, and with his ear nearly touching his shoulder, allowed his mouth to split into a gruesome leer that exposed too many teeth.

Aaron’s muscles spasmed. His lukewarm beer tumbled to the hardwood floor and rolled beneath the couch, fizzing as it slithered across the wood and collected in the seams between the slats. He winced against the tightness in his chest, pressing his hand to his sternum as he tried to catch his breath in the gloom. What the hell had he just dreamed? He tried to shake it off, angry at himself for imagining Ryder doing something so terrible. But his self-loathing was derailed when a shadow drifted across one of the front windows.

Someone was standing on the porch, a moonlit silhouette creeping across the glass.

Aaron felt like he was choking, unable to swallow against the surprise. He waited for the doorknob to turn as he sat there, his pulse drumming within his head, dulling his ability to think, to plan, to get off the couch and sprint for the kitchen and grab the biggest knife he could find. After what felt like an endless fifteen seconds of doing nothing, logic kicked in.

It was the police.

“Jesus,” he said, gathering himself off the couch. He moved across the room, flipped on the overhead light, and unlocked the front door. When it swung open, a jolt of realization hit him square in the chest.

The porch was abandoned.

Aaron was alone.

But he was sure of what he had seen. Someone had been looking through his front window. And yet it seemed as though the trespasser had simply disappeared.

He stepped out onto the covered patio, his gaze wavering to the oaks that lined the driveway, his Tercel parked beneath their branches. He squinted at the leaves that shivered in the 3 a.m. breeze. He swore he saw someone sitting upon one of the branches, a figure reminiscent of a medieval gargoyle, watching him from a distance. Aaron stepped out on to what had once been the lawn, felt for his phone in his front pocket, and made a slow approach. But the closer he got to the tree, the fainter the shadow became. By the time he was standing directly beneath the oak, it had faded into the canopy completely.

Aaron was alone, left staring at the husk of a house that drew so many to it, a house he never wanted but was his. This was getting ridiculous. He was tempted to booby-trap the place just to catch that little shit in the act. And where the hell were the cops?

He stepped back inside the house, locked the door behind him, and double-checked it to make sure it was secure. But when he turned back to the front room, a yell punched its way out of his throat.

A pile of dead birds sat in the center of the room.

Except that this time there was no way in through the kitchen—the back door was bolted and the new window was latched.

This time, Aaron would have seen the kid if he had run inside the house; he’d only been standing a few hundred feet from the front porch steps.

This time it didn’t make any fucking sense.

“I really don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Holbrook,” the officer explained. “There aren’t any signs of a break-in, and, uh, as I said before, I wasn’t able to locate anyone outside.”

“Of course you weren’t,” Aaron said. “I called you guys twice before anyone bothered to show up.”

The officer frowned at Aaron’s tone.

“Sorry,” Aaron mumbled. “I’m just a little pissed off. This kid has been terrorizing me since I got here. I wouldn’t care so much if he wasn’t coming
inside
, you know? I mean—”

“As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Holbrook,” the officer cut him off. “There’s no sign of a break-in. I can, uh, note it on the police report, but without a positive ID on the youth or anything missing from the house—”

“What about something being
left
in the house?” Aaron asked, motioning to the pile of bird carcasses in the center of the room. “This is the second time.”

The officer sighed and readjusted his belt, his walkie blipping on one hip, his gun holstered on the other. “Mr. Holbrook…”

Mr. Holbrook.
Every time Officer Helpful said it, Aaron wanted to snap.

“I’m sure you’re aware that this particular house has a, uh, reputation.”

“How does that even matter?”

“Perhaps you should put in a security system, maybe put up a fence?”

Aaron gritted his teeth at the suggestion.

Sure,
he thought,
because those options are cheap.

“Either way, I’ll note the…” He motioned to the pile of feathered bodies with his pen, “…the expired animals. But short of calling wildlife removal, I’m not clear on what you’d, uh…” Officer Helpful hesitated, as if searching for the right way to put it, “…on what you’d like us to do.”

“So you can’t help me,” Aaron said flatly.

“Oh, we can help plenty,” the cop assured him. “We just need a little more to work with.” He flashed Aaron a smile that was supposed to be friendly, but came off more as an awkward grimace instead.

“What if the kid decides to set my house on fire?” Aaron asked.

“Well, technically that wouldn’t be breaking and entering,” Officer Helpful explained. “That would be
arson
.”

“But he’d be allowed to do it, right? Because you need a little more to work with?”

“I understand your frustration, Mr. Holbrook. I’m sure it’s upsetting. But you have to understand,” he said, appealing for a little sympathy by holding out his hands. “This place is, uh, this place is ten miles outside of town. It’s on the fringes of what we call our jurisdiction. But because you’re new and we like to show our residents hospitality, I’ll have a, uh, a patrol car cruise up and down Old Mill for you for a few nights, just in case the, uh…” He paused, searching his vocabulary, “…in case the
perpetrator
decides to, uh, cause you any more trouble.”

A patrol car.

Aaron nearly rolled his eyes.

A patrol car wouldn’t do shit. Like the kid he’d been seeing was stupid enough to openly wander the street on his way to vandalize a property.

“Whatever,” Aaron muttered.

“Sir?” The officer peered at him. “Is that a ‘whatever’ as in you want us to patrol the road, or a ‘whatever’ as in you’d rather us not?”

“Whatever,” Aaron repeated. “Do what you want. But do note in my
file
that you were out here and you couldn’t do anything, so that when I drag that little asshole into the station by his ear I don’t get arrested for harassing a minor.”

“Uh…” Officer Helpful frowned at his pad of paper, not sure how to respond to that. “I’m not sure I’d suggest that plan of action. Maybe just talk to him.” He cleared his throat. “From a safe distance, of course.”

“Of course,” Aaron echoed.

“And just, uh, just call in any new occurrences.”

“So you can note them in my file?”

The officer smacked his lips and shoved his pad into the back pocket of his slacks. “That’s right,” he said. “It all goes in the file.”

Aaron moved across the room and opened the front door for Officer Helpful, waiting for him to take his leave.

“You have a good rest of your night, now,” the cop told him.

“Sure,” Aaron said, and closed the door before the officer could make it down the front porch steps.

By the time the cruiser crunched down the gravel driveway, Aaron was grabbing a beer from the fridge. Tomorrow he’d stop at Banner’s for more, if not for something more substantial. But until then, he’d quench his thirst, pop an Ativan, and try to get some sleep.

The picture on the camcorder’s tiny screen tilted and swayed. Aaron’s breathing sounded raspy and disturbed as the camera jerked from one point of reference to the next. There was a brief shot of Aaron’s sneakers as he moved across the kitchen, down the hall, and into the living room, pausing to pull open the front door before stepping onto the porch.

“I can’t fucking believe this,” he said, his voice aggravated, the front lawn unrolling along the bottom of the camcorder’s screen. “I swear to God, if I see that kid again…”

The camera swung wide, bringing the Tercel into view. A few starlings chirped overhead as if disturbed by the angry man beneath the canopy of branches. Aaron stepped around the car to bring the driver’s side into view, capturing a freshly shattered window with the device, safety glass sparkling in the early morning sun.