Bird Box (7 page)

“Get down, you two,” she says.

She rests the paddle handles across her knees. The rowboat floats.

The Boy heard it
, she tells herself.
The Boy heard it because you raised him well and now he hears better than he will ever see
.

Breathing deep, Malorie waits. The engine grows louder. The boat is traveling upstream.

“Ouch!” the Boy yelps.

“What is it, Boy?”

“My ear! I got hit by a tree.”

Malorie thinks this is good. If a tree touched the Boy, they are likely near one of the banks. Maybe, by some deserved providence, the foliage will provide cover.

The other boat is much closer now. Malorie knows that if she were able to open her eyes, she could see it.

“Do
not
take off your blindfolds,” Malorie says.

And then the boat’s engine is level with them. It does not pass.

Whoever it is
, Malorie thinks,
they can see us
.

The boat’s engine cuts abruptly. The air smells of gasoline. Footsteps cross what must be the deck.

“Hello there!” a voice says. Malorie does not respond. “Hey there! It’s okay. You can remove your blindfolds! I’m just an ordinary man.”

“No you
cannot
,” Malorie says quickly to the children.

“There’s nothing out here with us, miss. Take my word for it. We’re all alone.”

Malorie is still. Finally, feeling there is no alternative, she answers him.

“How do you know?”

“Miss,” he says, “I’m looking right now. I’ve had my eyes open the entire trip today. Yesterday, too.”

“You can’t just
look
,” she says. “You know that.”

The stranger laughs.

“Really,” he says, “there’s nothing to be afraid of. You can trust me. It’s just us two on the river. Just two ordinary people crossing paths.”

“No!” Malorie screams to the children.

She lets go of the Girl and grips the paddle handles again. The man sighs.

“There’s no need to live like this, miss. Consider these children. Would you rob them the chance to view a brisk, beautiful day like this?”

“Stay away from our boat,” Malorie says sternly.

Silence. The man does not answer. Malorie braces herself. She feels trapped. Vulnerable. In the rowboat against the bank. On this river. In this world.

Something splashes in the water. Malorie gasps.

“Miss,” he says, “the view is incredible, if you don’t mind a little fog. When’s the last time you looked outside? Has it been years? Have you
seen
this river? The weather? I bet you don’t even remember what weather looks like.”

She remembers the outside world very well. She remembers walking home as a schoolgirl through a tunnel of autumn leaves. She recalls neighboring yards, gardens, and homes. She remembers lying on the grass in her backyard with Shannon and deciding which clouds looked like which boys and girls from class.

“We are keeping our blindfolds on,” Malorie says.

“I’ve given that up, miss,” he says. “I’ve moved on. Won’t you do the same?”

“Leave us alone now,” she commands.

The man sighs again.

“They can’t haunt you forever,” he says. “They can’t force you to live like this forever. You know that, miss?”

Malorie puts the right paddle into a position where she believes she can push off the bank.

“I ought to remove your blindfolds myself,” the man says suddenly.

Malorie does not move.

He sounds gruff. He sounds a little angry.

“We’re just two people,” he continues. “Meeting on a river. Four if you include the little ones. And they can’t be blamed for how you’re raising them. I’m the only one here with the nerve to look outside. Your worries only keep you safe long enough to worry some more.”

His voice is coming from a different place now. Malorie thinks he has stepped to the front of his boat. She only wants to pass him. She just wants to get farther from the house they left this morning.

“And I’ll tell you what,” the man suddenly says, horribly near, “I’ve
seen
one.”

Malorie grabs for the Boy and pulls him by the back of his shirt. He hits the steel bottom of the rowboat and yelps.

The man laughs.

“They aren’t as ugly as you’d think, miss.”

She shoves the paddle against the bank. She is floundering. It’s hard to find something solid. Feels like twigs and roots. Mud.

He is going to go mad
, Malorie thinks.
And he will hurt you
.

“Where are you going to go?” he yells. “Are you going to cry every time you hear a stick crack?”

Malorie can’t get the rowboat free.

“
Keep your blindfolds on!
” she yells at the children.

The man said he’s seen one. When?
When?

“You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

At last the paddle is planted hard against the earth. Malorie pushes, grunting. The rowboat moves. She thinks it might be free. Then it bangs against the man’s boat and she shrieks.

He’s trapped you
.

Will he force their eyes open?

“Who’s the mad one here? Look at you now. Two people meet on a river . . .”

Malorie rocks back and forth. She senses a gap behind the rowboat, some kind of opening.

“. . . one of them looks to the sky . . .”

Malorie feels the paddle sink into the earth.

“. . . the other tries to steer a boat with a blindfold on.”

The rowboat is almost free.

“So, I have to ask myself . . .”

“
Move!
” she screams.

“. . . who here has gone mad?”

The man cackles. It sounds like his laughter rises toward the sky he speaks of. She thinks to ask,
How far back did you see one
? But she doesn’t.

“
Leave us!
” Malorie yells.

From her struggle, cold river water splashes into the boat. The Girl shrieks. Malorie tells herself,
Ask the man how far back he saw it
. Maybe the madness hasn’t set in. Maybe it’s slower with him. Maybe he will perform one final act of benevolence before he loses all sense of reality.

The rowboat is free.

Tom once said it had to be different for everybody. He said a crazy man might never go any madder. And the sanest might take a long time to get there.

“Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake!” the man shouts.

His voice has changed. He sounds drunk, different.

“Quit running, miss.
Open your eyes!
” he pleads.

“
Don’t listen to him!
” she yells. The Boy is pressed up against her and the Girl whimpers at her back. Malorie shakes.

“Your mother is the mad one, kids. Take off those blindfolds.”

The man suddenly howls, gargling. It sounds like something has died in his throat. How much longer before he strangles himself with the rope rail or lowers himself into the spinning propeller of his boat?

Malorie is paddling furiously. Her blindfold doesn’t feel tight enough.

What he saw is near. What he saw is here on this river
.

“
Do not remove your folds!
” Malorie screams again. She is paddling past the boat now. “Do you two understand me?
Answer
me
.”

“Yes!” the Boy says.

“Yes!” the Girl says.

The man howls again but he is farther behind them now. He sounds as if he’s trying to yell but has forgotten how.

When the rowboat has gone another forty yards, and the sound of the engine behind them is almost out of earshot, Malorie reaches forward and touches the Boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” the Boy says.

Then Malorie reaches behind her and finds the Girl’s hand. She squeezes. Then, letting go of both of them, she takes the paddles again.

“Are you dry?” she asks the Girl.

“No,” the Girl answers.

“Use the blanket to dry yourself off. Now.”

The air smells clean again. The trees. The water.

The gasoline fumes are well behind them.

Do you remember how the house smelled?
Malorie thinks.

Despite the horror of having encountered the man on the boat, she remembers. The stale, stuffy air of the house. It was there the day she arrived. And it never got any better.

She does not hate the man with the boat. She feels only sorrow.

“You did so well,” Malorie says to the children, trembling, paddling deeper down the river.

ten

M
alorie has been living in the house for two weeks. The housemates subsist almost entirely off the canned goods from the cellar, plus whatever frozen meats remain in the freezer. Each morning, Malorie is relieved to find the electricity is still on. The radio is the only source of news anymore, but the last remaining DJ, Rodney Barrett, has nothing new to tell them. Instead, he rambles. He gets angry. He swears. The housemates have heard him sleeping on air before. But despite all this, Malorie understands why they continue to listen to him. Whether his voice is on quietly in the background or fills the dining room where the radio sits, he’s the very last link they have to the outside world.

Already, Malorie feels like she’s inside a vault. The claustrophobia is incredible, weighing in on her and her baby.

Yet, tonight the housemates are throwing something of a party.

The six of them are gathered around the dining room table. Along with the canned goods, toilet paper, batteries, candles, blankets, and tools in the cellar, there are a few bottles of rum—which nicely complement the grass brought by Felix (who sheepishly admitted he expected more of a “hippie” gathering than the clearheaded troupe he met upon arriving). Malorie, out of respect for her condition, is the only one who doesn’t partake in the drinking and smoking. Still, some moods are infectious, and, as Rodney Barrett uncharacteristically plays some soft music, Malorie is able to smile, and sometimes even laugh, despite the unfathomable horrors that have become commonplace.

In the dining room there is a piano. Like the stack of humor books beside the dresser in her bedroom, the piano appears as a remnant, almost out of place, from another lifetime.

Right now, Tom is playing it.

“What key is this song in?” Tom, sweating, is yelling across the dining room to Felix, who sits at the table. “Do you know keys?”

Felix smiles and shakes his head. “How the hell would I know? But I’ll sing with you from here, Tom.”

“Please don’t,” Don says, sipping rum from a drinking glass, smiling.

“No, no,” Felix says, grinning, “I’m really very good!”

Felix stumbles as he stands up. He joins Tom at the piano. Together they sing along to “It’s De-Lovely.” The radio rests on a mirrored credenza. The music Rodney Barrett plays clashes quietly with the Cole Porter song.

“How are you doing, Malorie?” Don, sitting across the table, asks her. “How do you like the place so far?”

“I’m okay,” she says. “I think a lot about the baby.”

Don smiles. When he does, Malorie sees sadness in his features. Don, she knows, lost a sister as well. All the housemates have experienced devastating loss. Cheryl’s parents, scared, drove south. She hasn’t spoken to them since. Felix hopes to hear news of his brothers with every random phone call he makes. Jules often speaks of his fiancée, Sydney, whom he found in the gutter outside their apartment building before answering the same ad Malorie found. Her throat was slit. But Tom’s story, Malorie thinks, is the worst. If such a word applies anymore.

Now, watching him behind the piano, Malorie’s heart breaks for him.

For a moment, when “It’s De-Lovely” comes to an end, the radio is audible again. The song Rodney Barrett is playing ends as well. Then he begins talking.

“Listen, listen,” Cheryl is saying. She is crossing the room to where the radio sits. She crouches before it and turns the volume up. “He sounds more depressed than usual.”

Tom ignores the radio. Sweating, sipping from his drink, he fumbles through the opening chords of Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm.” Don is turning to see what Cheryl is talking about. Jules, stroking Victor, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, turns his head slowly toward the radio.

“Creatures,” Rodney Barrett is saying. His voice drags. “What have you taken from us? What are you doing here? Do you have any purpose at all?”

Don rises from the table and joins Cheryl by the radio. Tom stops playing.

“I’ve never heard him speak directly to the creatures before,” he says from the piano bench.

“We’ve lost mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,” Rodney Barrett is saying. “We’ve lost wives and husbands, lovers and friends. But nothing stings as much as the children you’ve taken from us. How dare you ask a child to look at you?”

Malorie looks to Tom. He is listening. There is distance in his eyes. She rises and walks to him.

“He’s been heavy before,” Cheryl says about Rodney Barrett. “But never like this.”

“No,” Don says. “Sounds like he’s drunker than we are.”

“Tom,” Malorie says, sitting beside him on the bench.

“He’s going to kill himself,” Don suddenly says.

Malorie looks up, wanting to tell Don to shut up, then hears the same thing Don has. The complete desolation in the voice of Rodney Barrett.

“Today I’m gonna cheat you,” Barrett says. “I’m gonna take it first, the one thing I’ve got left that you can take from me.”

“Oh
God
,” Cheryl says.

The radio is silent.

“Turn it off, Cheryl,” Jules says. “Turn it
off
.”

As she reaches for the radio, the sound of a gunshot explodes from the speakers.

Cheryl screams. Victor barks.

“What the
fuck
just happened?” Felix says, staring blankly toward the radio.

“He did it,” Jules says emptily. “I can’t believe this.”

Then silence.

Tom gets up from the piano bench and turns the radio off. Felix sips from his drink. Jules is on one knee, calming Victor.

Then, suddenly, as if an echo of the gunshot, there is a knock at the front door.

A second knock quickly follows.

Felix steps toward the door and Don grabs his arm.

“Do
not
just open that door, man,” he says. “Come on. What’s the matter with you?”