The house emerged from the gloom like the
face of a cliff. Without a light in any
of its windows, and with no signs of life on its broad front porch, it looked
as if it had been carved by the erosive decades of wind and snow, a product of
the elements rather than anything man-made. It had been painted white with
black shutters, but the cloud cover and the failing light of the day conspired
to turn it into a dull gray. Elizabeth was home.
The cab was idling at the mouth of the
driveway, the driver refusing to go further, fearing he would get stuck in the
oceanic puddle that had collected in the hard-packed dirt. Across the yard, fat
water droplets congregated as they fell, assuming the shape of walls of glass
as they moved across the lawn. Elizabeth tightened the straps on her bulky
backpack, took a deep breath, and plunged into the wet.
Instantly, her arms were stippled with goose
bumps; the rain was far too cold for an early summer shower. She started
running across the lawn, slipped on the grass, and changed to a wide-based
waddle. Her clothes were soaked through by the time she reached the steps to
the porch, the water on her glasses obscuring the details of the path.
Straining on tip-toe, Elizabeth probed the ledge
over the door, skimming through spider-webs and shells of cicadas of summers
past, finally nudging a spare key off of its perch. It struck the wooden boards
with a melodic ‘cling!’, a single tone to counterbalance the staccato drum solo
of the raindrops on the roof. She leaned back out into the rain to wave to
the cabbie. He had already backed into the road, brake lights growing smaller
as he disappeared into the deluge. She opened the screen door—still with the
storm windows, she noted—and stepped into her father’s house.
There was a crinkling from the floor. As she
turned on the light, she saw she had stepped into a pile of mail. Elizabeth
peeled the letter from her shoe and set it on the pile on top of the old
end-table. Several days’ worth of correspondence languished there, tossed and ignored
until gravity had pulled it down in a papery landslide.
Inside was dark and lifeless; even the air
was musty, as though the house had been unoccupied for months. She twisted her
hair to remove the excess water, wiped her glasses off on a corner of shirt
that had somehow remained dry, and called an unanswered greeting out through
the ground floor.
Furniture was arranged haphazardly, and it
was clear that many pieces had been removed and were yet to be replaced.
Looking into each room was like gazing into a child’s mouth, with obvious gaps
where the teeth had once been. Gwen had left her father almost a month ago, had
moved out for parts unknown, taking all of her wares with her. Clearly he had
yet to get back into his bachelor’s rhythm.
The kitchen was the worst of it: dishes
filled the sink and spilled out onto the surrounding counter, garbage
overflowed the can, and, for some reason, the table was littered with tools and
other miscellaneous debris. It looked as though her father had mixed the kitchen
and the garage together and given them a good shaking.
The message light on the phone was blinking.
Elizabeth pressed play and heard her own voice spread out over three
increasingly desperate messages. Her
father had failed to meet her at the train station, and there had been no
answer at his house, nor at the bookshop he owned and spent most of his time
at. She had finally decided to come home and wait for him, maybe fix herself
some dinner, having run through her supply of snacks during the eight-hour train
ride from the city. Lacking a cell phone, her father’s current whereabouts were
anyone’s guess. Maybe he went out for a drink after work, or over to a friend’s
house. Maybe he was still at the store, going over finances with music cranked
so he couldn’t hear the phone. She tried calling him at work again, though it
wouldn’t be open; his gravelly voice popped into her ear, the recording
reminding her that it was after-hours ad to try again in the morning.
The smells from the garbage and the rancid
food encrusting the plates had killed her hunger. She looked helplessly at the
chaos around her, then reached under the sink to find the dish soap. This was
going to be a big job. Might as well get started.
Elizabeth had been sent here for the summer,
to the home and the town where she had spent her first eleven years, for a
number of reasons: she could earn money working at the book store, she rarely
got to see her father anymore, and her mother and Graham were going to be
honeymooning in Europe. But the unspoken impetus had been her father’s breakup
with Gwen. Her mother hadn’t come out and said so, but it seemed she was afraid
that Jacob was falling into a depression; the state of this house would do
nothing to dispel that fear.
A warm fuzziness enveloped her ankles, and
she looked down to see the two cats winding themselves between her legs. Silo
and Halas, corpulent as always but mewing as though missing a meal would kill
them. She dumped food into a bowl and watched their heads bobbing, banging into
one another as they jostled for errant kibble.
A loud noise came from the back staircase: a
cracking thump too close to be thunder, and too dissonant to be someone coming
in. Had a limb fallen off one of the trees and struck the house? Elizabeth
glanced at the cats; they remained unperturbed. “Didn’t you guys hear that?”
She jumped a bit at her own voice, croaky and hesitant from disuse. Silo gazed
up at her, annoyed, then returned to his meal.
She tiptoed to the corner of the kitchen that
bordered the back hallway. It had grown dark outside, but the automatic timer
on the outside floodlight had not kicked in. Elizabeth stepped around the piles
of recyclables that had gathered there, pressed her face up to the window of
the door to the backyard.
Something hurtled out of the dark and collided
with the window. Elizabeth gasped and slipped onto her backside, flailing her
arms and causing an avalanche of cans and bottles from an upset blue bin. Two
more reports sounded from the glass; in each case, she flinched as something
the size of a baseball struck the pane, just barely visible in the darkness.
Her hand, almost of its own accord, patted
through the debris on the floor, exploring for something to use as a bludgeon
against a prowler; it lit on a rock, a fist-sized one her father must have been
using to keep the pile of newspaper in place. She eased back to her feet,
holding it in front of her like a talisman. As a projectile, it might buy her a
few seconds to scramble away and dial 911 on her cell.
Her cell! She used her left hand to pat down
her pockets to see if she was still carrying it. In her borderline panic
she couldn't remember if she’d put it into her backpack or her pants
after its last use in the train station. She found the chunky rectangular shape
in her back left pocket. Now, if it only had enough juice left...it had been in
the red the last time she had checked it.
Elizabeth hadn't taken her eyes off of the window; the only
thing visible through the translucent curtains was the pelting and streaking of
rain on the glass. She watched for what felt like a minute, frozen in a
ready-to-throw position, then decided the not-knowing was going to kill her. If
there was anyone outside, they knew she was there: with all the lights on in
the house anyone could be looking in, and she certainly hadn't been
successful at keeping silent, not with the screaming and the crashing.
She shuffled back to the window and took a deep breath. She
counted to three, then sprang toward the pane of glass to glimpse what could be
out there.
Time seemed to slow down. At first, all she saw was her own
wide-eyed face reflected back, growing larger with her approach. But in the
split-second before she would have smacked her face into the window, three
masses materialized from the darkness, appearing only inches before their
successive collisions against the glass. Elizabeth glimpsed three pairs of
shiny black eyes, each hovering over blunt gray beaks surrounded by dusty blue
and red plumage. She had just enough time to register these details before her
startle reflex took over, manifesting in a scream and a quick close-range toss
of the rock, which struck the upper corner of the window. A sunburst of cracks
spread across the pane.
She jumped back, her heart in her throat. It was a few moments before
she could process what she had seen. Birds? Finches. Finches? Why were finches
attacking the house? Were
finches attacking the house? Were they attacking their reflections? Birds did
that. Did they do it at night? In storms? At night? Was someone throwing birds at the house?
Breathing heavily, Elizabeth retreated to the kitchen. I’ve got to think, she told
herself, have I pissed off any
birds lately? A manic giggle flew out from her lips. She pictured
herself short-changing an owl at the bookstore, cutting in line in front of a
family of sparrows at a movie theater, getting into a shoving match with a
bluejay.
Another loud bang, this time from the front of the house, killed
her laughter. She crouched between the kitchen island and the refrigerator. Despite
the noise, the cats remained at ease; Halas was lounging on a pillowed seat on
a wooden chair, and Silo was currently mid-stretch. “The house is being
dive-bombed by birds,” she hissed at them as another set of bangs emanated from
upstairs. Halas yawned the yawn of the unimpressed. “Presumably lots of
birds. Isn't this where you guys should shine? I’m having have some
serious questions about your worth to this house.”
Okay, she regrouped, birds are attacking the house. Who do I call for help? Animal control?
The police? Or do I wait this out and assume they’ll get bored or concussed
enough to stop?
Elizabeth decided to do another circuit of the house;
it wasn't unthinkable that a larger bird could break through a
window. As far as she could tell, the downstairs had remained unscathed, the
sole exception being the friendly fire she had inflicted on the back door. The
front yard’s floodlight had finally turned on, and she thought she saw some
sort of motion beyond the porch. She shut off the lights in the front room and
crept to a corner near the window, where she could risk a glance through one of
the broad front panes. She widened the crack between the wall and the drapes
just enough to peek outside.
The rain had lessened, but the
wind had intensified; the hanging branches of the giant willow in the front
yard performed a sort of unilateral hula-dance, undulating in a nearly
horizontal position for seconds at a time before falling while the wind caught
its breath for the next gust. As she squinted, Elizabeth could make out a few
duck-like birds camped out at the periphery of the light's influence;
medium-sized birds with strikingly white patches between their eyes and beaks
and slashed across their breasts. With astonishing speed, one of them turned
its head so its eye stared in her direction and, with a quick burst of motion,
it launched itself at the house. Launched
itself at her.
Two others followed suit, then
another pair. Elizabeth had never been afraid of ducks; she was aware they
would bite if you got too close, but always considered them more silly than
dangerous. This particular opinion was doing a rapid about-face: if this group
broke through, there would be nothing preventing anything else from getting in
the house. Her terror had developed an undercurrent of giddy
playfulness since realizing it was birds she was dealing with, a sort of
oh-what-fun-an-adventure sort of play-fear. The gravity of the true danger she
faced was just beginning to dawn on her.
She backpedaled away from the window, scanning her memory for a
room in the house that was windowless; the ground-floor bathroom and the
root-cellar portion of the basement were all that came to mind. The bathroom
was closer, but the root cellar was more--
A thumping split the silence as the first duck hit; she could
see the silhouette flatten against the window, then two more striking just to
either side of the first impact, then two more in approximately the same
locations. A spider web of a crack appeared in the window, widening with each
successive strike.
Elizabeth was done sneaking, and done playing around. She
sprinted to the back hallway, hurdled over the newspaper pile, skidded a few
feet in her socks on the linoleum floor to a stop just shy of the door, and
banked right to fly down the basement steps.
At the bottom of the steps was a door that swung into the
basement. She shoved it open just as she heard the hail of glass shards striking
the hardwood floor from the front of the house. She closed the door behind her,
shrouded in darkness until she was able to unsheath her cell from her pocket to
use as a makeshift flashlight.
The main part of the basement was one large room, though it had been partitioned into
different areas by shelves and boxes. There were windows, but these were
small ones at head-height, protected by dense shrubbery that would prevent any
birds from getting enough momentum to crack the glass. But how long until they call in the
woodpecker brigades? She thought to herself. How long until a regiment of ostriches
bursts through the door?
Deeper in the basement was a smaller room, what her father had
always called the root cellar, though it was largely unused; the humidity in
the room rusted anything you wanted to keep nice, and the spiders had held free
reign of it for as long as Elizabeth could remember. It was, without a doubt,
the spookiest room in the house, and she would never have gone in under normal
circumstances; she had had
recurring nightmares about it when she was a small child, trapped down there
with...what? A monster? A wolf? Something bad.
There were cases of canned goods stacked in the center of the
basement, a small stockpile of nonperishables her father kept in case a heavy
snowstorm or an illness left him unable to leave the property. She cautiously
moved the boxes of canned soups and fruits and vegetables next to the base of
the door, piled to about waist-level, lodging shut the door to the stairs.
A quiet vibration came from the staircase. Curious, she pressed
her ear to the crack between the door and the wall, confident she wouldn't be
visible in the darkness of the basement. The reverberation rose and fell in
pitch and wavered in volume, giving the impression of small helicopters
approaching and retreating. Hummingbirds?,
she wondered, As scouts to search
the house? She pressed her eye against the crack. Through the
narrow space, she could just make out a throng of the small creatures darting
in and out of her view, their blue and green breasts barely bigger than her
smallest finger.
Elizabeth backed up slowly. She started running through all the
species of birds she could think of. She pictured talons and bills tearing her
flesh, and wings beating at her face. Why were they in her house? Why were they
chasing her? What had she done?
Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth tried to calm down; she could
feel herself descending into a state of panic, on the verge of screaming in
frustration. A clear picture of the three finches she had seen at the door in
the back hallway popped into her head; the dusky blue-gray and red pattern of
the faces finally clicking into recognition. Chaffinches. They
were chaffinches. Her thoughts paused. What are chaffinches doing in upstate New
York? Weren't they European?
Her thoughts returned to the hummingbirds she had seen; she
didn't know much about these birds, but was fairly certain the only species
that lived around here were ruby-throated ones. Those outside the door were
smaller, and a different color. Were
they foreign birds as well, like the chaffinches?
She shook herself out of her reverie. Okay, next step. Call for help.
She reached into her pocket, drawing out her phone again. She paused as she was
about to turn it on; there had been a rustling in the bushes outside of the
windows. This noise was joined by a scratching--the sound of a beak against
glass. The window closest to the front of the house had some dim light,
spilling through from the porch’s floodlight. This was enough for her to make
out squat, hunched birds with long beaks, their faces resembling sorrowful
masks. The birds (Kiwis?
she thought with confusion) were scraping at the earth along the wooden border
of the windows. They didn't look like they were trying to get in. More like a patrol, the thought
came to her, and it did seem accurate--their scraping seemed more idle than
purposeful, like soldiers scuffing their boots into the dirt to kill time
waiting for something more interesting to happen.
Chaffinches flying over the ocean was implausible enough, but
kiwis? They couldn’t even fly! Had they tunneled from New Zealand under the
ocean? Was a foreign bird exhibit in town and the escapees using her house as a
hideout? That seemed insane, but...well, so did this whole thing, really.
Comical, if she wasn't scared for her life.
Generating any light seemed like a bad idea with the kiwis at
the windows; she didn't know anything about their night vision, but suspected
it had to be good enough to pick up the glow that would be created by her
phone. But, if I could make it to
the--she shuddered--root
cellar, and if I could get the door open and closed without making too much
noise, I would be able to hide the light. She could think of no
other option, and began edging toward the heavy wooden door that led to the
small room.
With every step across the basement, she had a cringing expectation
that something would be knocked from one of the randomly strewn piles. But luck
was with her, and she made it silently. The area that was around the door,
unlike the rest of the basement, was free of clutter; her father must've needed
to get in and out for some reason.
Gentle tugs failed to budge the door; it almost felt like it was
being held by something on the other side. Elizabeth risked stronger and
stronger pulls, terrified that it would give way and she would be flung to the
floor, but eventually it came free, and without any creaks or scrapings to give
her away. She slipped inside and closed the door behind her, enveloped into
complete darkness.
Elizabeth took a few moments to listen to her new surroundings;
the only sound in this small space was that of her own breathing, which echoed
as though matched by another set of lungs across the room. She could still hear
the scratching of the kiwis' beaks against the windows, muffled by the wood of
the door. She said a quick prayer and turned on her phone.
The sensation was like opening her eyes; the shadows of the
corners seemed to actively retreat behind the paint cans and broken
air-conditioning units that lined the walls of the root cellar. Just as she
remembered, there were no windows or other potential egresses in this room,
which was a mixed blessing: if she was discovered, she was trapped.
Elizabeth had never been particularly claustrophobic. But this
space was...different. It wasn't just the noise coming from upstairs, the
suspicion that creatures from foreign lands were targeting her with motives
unknown, it was being here.
In this room. The pale spiders that
skittered in such numbers that the ceiling and walls rippled in her peripheral
vision. The shadows that wouldn't stay where they were supposed to. The
inexplicable chill that made her feel like she was being stretched thin and
drained at the same time.
She shook her head and tried to focus. The scraping noise
outside wasn't going anywhere; time to do what she had come in here to do, then
she could go back to the basement and wait for the cavalry. She silenced the
phone’s volume, then carefully dialed 911. The rest of the room darkened as she
brought the glowing screen up to her cheek, the shadows encroaching to envelop
her feet and legs.
The female voice on the other end of the phone was calm to the
point of sounding disinterested. Elizabeth made her voice as quiet as she could
while still guaranteeing that it would be discernable. "My name is
Elizabeth Warren-Wilson, I am fourteen years old and calling from my father's
house at 898 Gully Road." Her own voice sounded tinny and raspy in her
ear, like someone else spoke through her. She was amazed she wasn't wavering
more. She licked her dry lips and continued. "Someone has broken into our
house. It might be an animal. I'm...I'm not sure. Yes, I'm in a safe place. I
don't think they know I'm here. Yes, I can stay on the phone until the police
get here."
