Raccoon or not, I grabbed a two foot long section of lumber that was leaning against the wall to my right and held it up like a baseball bat. The noise came again, twice, and closer. Careful steps took me around the corner, finding an old refrigerator on my left. Its door was mottled with freckles of rust and the long chrome handle begged to be opened. As I gripped the handle, I heard the shuffling again, then a squeaking sound like wet fingers over the skin of a balloon.
“Hello?” I said. The word was weak because I had no desire for an answer.
I removed my hand from the refrigerator handle and took another step toward the darkness. I could just make out a brick archway in the wall, older masonry work, from the original build. Another light bulb hung over head, so I reached for it, finding a pull chain that I yanked to illuminate the room. The bulb swung back and forth on its old wire and in the light I saw strands of wire poking through the brown, rat-chewed insulation. Shadows danced back and forth and made me seasick. I grabbed the bulb to steady it and was staring ahead at a wall that had crumbled and fallen in to raw ground. Brick pillars from the turn of last century held up the ceiling above me. There was litter inside, empty cans and a raggedy old blanket, the camp of a homeless person. It smelled of wet earth and sweat and urine.
When the shuffling sound happened again, it came from my left, beyond the archway. I turned and stepped through the opening, immediately regretting my decision. There was no raccoon. Instead, I saw seven decapitated bodies, each propped into a sitting position against the wall. One had a balloon in place of its head. On the balloon, there was a black smiley face, hand drawn as if by a child. The bodies sat in a pool of water that must’ve been a large sump area overfilled from recent rains. Blood soaked the collar and front of each shirt. Some were fresh, others black and wrinkled and rotted.
I gasped and clutched at my mouth as the shuffling sound came again. And again I felt like I was in some dream as a man stepped out from the darkest corner and sniffed the air.
“Welcome,” he said.
I said nothing in response. He blew up a pink balloon and tied it off. His skin was unnaturally pale and his eyes were glazed over and silvery blue. It reminded me of the cave-dwelling animals that had been blinded from years of darkness—their eyes no longer necessary for survival. Erica and I used to watch nature shows and talk about such things. His red lips, chapped and bleeding, gave him a clownish appearance, as did the wild wisps of dirty hair that encircled his head. He was grimy, and chewed on an unlit cigar.
He produced a magic marker from his pocket and drew a rudimentary smiley face on the balloon without even looking at it. The marker squeaked against the rubber and I caught a hint of its intoxicating chemical smell. His eyes, whether they worked or not, remained fixed on me. I wondered how many times he had drawn such faces on balloons and if he had ever handed them out to children. He wasn’t a clown, but it was a difficult image to shake, even in that terrible setting.
With a slight limp, he approached the second of the bodies and pinned the balloon in place of its missing head. It smiled in gruesome comic fashion, just like the one next to it, and appeared to be staring at me. He blew up another and the marker squeaked as he gave it the same face. I saw bits of rubber on the shoulders, and floating in the water around their legs, broken balloons with other faces he had drawn.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I’ll call you Seventeen because I don’t rightly remember how many have actually come down here. I like the ring of Seventeen.”
He paused to blow up and place another. Transfixed by his odd routine, I was paralyzed. The man scratched at his stubble and rubbed his balding head. He made another face and pinned it in place, then took out his cigar from between his lips and tapped non-existent ash from its unlit end.
“She’ll be happy to have you, either way.”
“Wh-who?” I asked.
“The queen,” he said.
I felt my skin crawl. It started at my shoulders and moved up and over my scalp in a wave. Gooseflesh covered my arms. He made another face, finishing six of the seven. I turned to get away, finally finding myself again amidst all the weirdness, but the exit was blocked. Thousands of cave crickets, spiders, and cockroaches covered the floor, the walls; they were stacked on top of one another, caked on the archway, and bubbling like boiling liquid. The fan upstairs cut off and I heard their chitin bodies scraping against one into the next and so on, the sound of twisting hair between your fingers.
“They’re hungry, you see,” said the strange man. “But the queen…she eats first.”
He dragged the last body—the one without its balloon—to the opening in the wall, beyond the fallen bricks and past my field of view. I took a step, unable to leave without knowing, and heard the shuffling sound again. Then I saw it. Just a glimpse of it, a huge insect the size of a bear reached out its front legs from the darkness and pulled the headless corpse inside. The armored thorax dragged behind it the giant, bulbous sack of its abdomen, and tiny versions of the beast crawled about on its surface.
“Taking the heads off helps them age. I keep them in the fridge,” he said. “But I need someone to talk to, Seventeen. So that’s why I put the heads back on.”
The sea of insects closed in, crawling on my feet, then up my legs, enveloping me in their swarm just like on the nature shows I used to watch. Hundreds of bites stung my extremities, filling me with venom. They held me firm, so I couldn’t move and I couldn’t scream.
But I could see…and I saw that man take a hacksaw from a single hook on the wall and I felt it drag a jagged gash across my neck. Not imagination. Not a dream. For the last few seconds as the life drained out of me, I watched my body get propped against the wall, next to the others, and I saw myself smiling back from a pink balloon.
SPARROWS
I’d heard sparrows were messengers for death. Tiny little banshees that knock at your window when your time—or a loved one’s time—was up. It wasn’t until a few days ago when the little bugger started tapping on the window that I felt the sting of loss. I’m not sure why such a cute, seemingly harmless creature should build dread in the pit of my stomach, yet there it grew like a knot in a shoelace desperately needing to be untied. Poe’s Raven in disguise.
The dog, Barnabas—or Barney as I’d taken to calling him, took leaps at the window, occasionally ducking through his flap-in-the-wall dog door to run the creature off. Seconds later, Barney proudly strutted into the house again and lay down. A few seconds after that came the knocking and scraping of the brown bird, anxious as if to pass through the glass. When I came downstairs in the morning, he was still there at the back window.
The downstairs of my house was an open concept. The kitchen, dining and living room areas were delineated only by the furniture that sat within them. A leather L-shaped couch near the front door faced the television in its corner cabinet. An oblong table with four chairs and, strange as it sounds, a piano made the dining area, and the kitchen was bordered with cabinets and the requisite appliances. Anywhere I sat or stood on that ground level, I could hear if not see my feathered friend beating against that window, if a friend at all.
I stared for a dazed minute, the view of the animal flapping and clawing at the window, the tapping of his beak and tiny feet blurring in my eyes and ears to a fuzzy drone. I hoped it would go away, but it didn’t. I fixed a cup of black coffee and walked to the window and closed the blinds.
As a bachelor, I had little else to occupy my free time, so I obsessed a bit about my feathered visitor. An internet search yielded little in the way of results. One article said male birds might have territorial bouts with their reflections in windows and doors with glass panels, even rear-view mirrors on parked cars, believing them to be other males. Treatments for such an occurrence included hanging something shiny in front of the window of choice, or covering the portal with white paper for a few days until the bird found something else to occupy its fragile time. I began to worry for th
e little thing.
What if it injured its beak, or its wing, or even broke its neck?
I opened the blinds again. Whenever I did so, or opened the back door next to that window, it flew away. Never far, just off to a safe distance where it continued watching the window. It didn’t follow me to other windows, and when I settled back inside the house, he always returned to his tapping and flapping. Tapping and flapping.
Days later, it was still there, still adamant. I’d taken to providing food and water so it wouldn’t starve, as it was so singular in its task that the bird hadn’t left my back yard. It’s concern for whatever was on that window made it a sort of pet, a stray I could take in. I placed a soup bowl full of water on the table normally reserved for cigar smoking or talks with friends when the weather was comfortable. Next to that, I placed another bowl and filled it with bird seed purchased at the local hardware store. It ate and drank and bathed.
Other birds came as well, larger birds. I rousted them, sending them scurrying to flight. Most of the intruders left for good, moving on, I assume, to safer foraging, but my little friend always returned. He whistled a particular tune that I came to know when the window was cracked open and the breeze blew through the screen, and even if I wasn’t watching, I could hear that song, a cry that says “I’m still here.”
I only wish I knew what he wanted.
Two weeks later, I sat at my dining table, adjacent to that window, and watched it as intently as it watched me. It was then I noticed the air in my home had a stale quality, damp even. It wasn’t humid outside, and I was running the air conditioning. A faint, musty odor alarmed me and sent me throughout the cabinets and the refrigerator cleaning and looking for food that may have spoiled. I found nothing. I checked the vents to see if the smell was coming from something in the duct work. I checked the faucets and toilets for mold or mildew and cleaned them with bleach, but found nothing. I brewed a pot of coffee, glad for its aroma, which covered the unpleasant stink nicely.
The odor permeated the entire house, faint, but stronger in my living room area than anywhere else. It was more intense where I could clearly see the bird. I swapped the filter in my central unit and revisited my research, glancing up at my watcher only occasionally, part of me hoping he would be gone, but part of me hoping he wouldn’t. The internet was full, as I said, of stories of pesky birds, cardinals, jays, sparrows, even the occasional crow making temporary homes near reflective surfaces. They all had one thing in common: that the birds eventually moved on, found a mate and built a nest. Most of these encounters lasted only a few days, a few weeks at most. Mine was bordering on a permanent residency, and I decided to name him. George seemed appropriate for no reason at all.
The next day, George seemed agitated. His mood was mirrored by Barney, and Barney’s by me. We sat in our agitated circle, me at my kitchen table watching the dog pace and whine, and the bird bouncing off the window. He had taken to hovering a few feet from the glass, then pouncing, feet first into the barrier like a miniature eagle attempting to pluck a fish from a vertical water surface. His tiny black eyes were wider, more frantic. When he did light, his chest heaved, his beak hung open as he panted in the heat. It bothered me to witness. What was it he wanted?
I noticed the odor had grown stronger, but still couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Odd, off putting yet familiar, I just could not nail it down. Scented candles help some, but it’s still there. I rechecked the cabinets and anywhere else looking for a lost and rotting potato that might have rolled under a cabinet or a sliver of meat that may have fallen and gotten kicked into a dark and hidden place. The refrigerator and the stove were pulled out and I cleaned behind and underneath each. Each vent was checked a second time…a third time…a fourth time, sniffing like a madman, wondering if anyone watching—George and Barney included—would worry for my sanity. I chuckled to myself. Then, having worked up a sweat, I sat back at the dining table and propped up my feet. On the other side of the glass, George was perched on one of my porch chairs, staring back. He hopped side to side and twisted his head with lightning fast movements.
George kept his vigil as I grew sleepy. Barney slept at my feet, raising his head every so often when the bird would scratch or peck, but he’d given up on ridding our home of the little pest. Perhaps he knew I had named the bird, and was beginning to accept him as a brother. I thought about opening the window to let the animal in, if he would come into the house, and see what happened. As I drifted to troubled sleep in the uncomfortable chair, I laughed at the thought, he might have something to say, and George and I might hold a conversation.
Yesterday, I called in sick to work. I didn’t feel sick, but my concern about the animal had exceeded my need for a bank of paid leave. I explained to my boss that whatever was going around had landed squarely on my chest and had me in its clutches. I didn’t tell him that it was actually perched on my back porch table and was named George. He wouldn’t understand. When we hung up our phones, I checked my pulse and took my temperature just in case. Everything seemed in order. The smell is still there. I can’t keep the windows open for the bird’s constant singing. I washed and brushed my teeth in the kitchen sink so as not to stray too far from my little friend.
If George was a friend. The jury was still out.
He flapped and clawed at the glass again, even more animated than previously. His tiny eyes bulged, and when he landed for moments of rest, he paced with his wings at half mast, like he was trying to say something. It was comical to watch, silent on my side of the glass barrier like the cartoons where a mouse or a bird was trapped under a jar as they screamed at the top of their lungs while their captor chuckled. I moved to the floor and sat in front of the window, eye-to-eye with him. I tried to stare him down, but George was too fast, too frantic. It gave me an uneasy motion-sick feeling—a feeling like I might have to vomit. The stench in my house only added to my nausea. Brewing coffee no longer covered it. Lighting candles didn’t cover it. I’d even taken to boiling cinnamon and cloves, but still, the smell overpowered.
As I watched, the bird simply hovered, beating his wings like mad, but not bumping the glass. George just hovered, and looked—not at me, but beyond me.
I ducked to one side and the bird didn’t wince, didn’t follow my motion, not even for a split second. His gaze was set. I moved to the other side and watched his motions. More like a hummingbird than a sparrow, he hovered masterfully in place. I centered myself again, trying to look him in the eyes. He moved to the left, watching past me again. My heart sunk, and the smell in the house grew thicker, richer, and I recognized pieces of its complex reek.
It was the smell of road kill and spoiled milk. The scent of gourds turning to mush on the vine in a neglected field and feces on the wind from a neighboring hog farm, the smell of processing at a paper mill or a steel mill, the smell of death and rot and juicy, wet decay. My guts tumbled and bubbled with sickness.
When I turned, there was something behind me. It was between me and my front door only ten feet away. It was like smoke, only not rising, but swirling. The vortex hovered like a special effect from some late night science fiction film, measuring two feet off the floor up to two feet from the ceiling. Sunlight from the front windows passed through it in dusty beams and at its center, a small mass of dense blackness hung. That mass glowed it was so dark, but glowed with shadow instead of light, eating the light. The smoke that surrounded it encapsulated the mass and emanated from it like ripples from a stone dropped in water.
I knew then I was looking at death and wondered if George had led it to me. I looked back at George with hatred, feeling betrayed.
The pecking sparrow squawked and redoubled his efforts to get into the house. The glass was too thick for a bird that weight only ounces to break. What could it do against the reaper anyway? What could I do for that matter? A hissing sound erupted behind me and I spun, kicking with my feet until I was backed up to the wall underneath the window, staring at my ender, come
to collect me.
The black mass imploded and twisted and tendrils like smoky appendages reached out, darkening my view. I felt their ice-cold hairs touching my arms and legs. My heart pounded and I began to think of all the things I had left to do. All my plans. Boxes going unchecked in my head. The only defense I knew was to pray. I prayed through the perfume of death which overpowered and covered me like a paste, stinging my eyes.
As it poured into my nose and wrapped around my neck, I reached up and flipped the latch on the window hoping for the relief of fresh air. Once open, I pushed it upward by its small brass handle. The bird immediately attacked, driving its beak into the mesh, twisting and thrusting, claws hanging onto screen for leverage, pulling with all of its strength. George pushed and yanked, opening a hole just wide enough for his head to pop through, then his tiny body. He wriggled and squirmed through with an audible chirp of effort, a grunt in bird-speak. Once able, he flew in, a tiny warrior, leaving feathers of armor behind. A sprig of down floated in front of my face, then was eaten, corroded by the terrible black fog of death. I knew at that moment, George was on my side.
I had no idea why a sparrow would come to my aid, but his presence in the house, flapping and flying, circling the smoky embodiment of death, seemed to distract my unwanted visitor. It loosened its grip and apparently lost its focus for a moment. That moment was all I needed. Woozy from choking and from the smell, I struggled free and breathed heavy, sucking in cleaner air from the open window. A few breaths recharged my body, but something toppled at my back and crashed to the floor.
I ducked and crawled to the corner, again putting my back to the wall. The thing, the black smoky thing was dodging the little bird and had sent a vase of dried flowers crashing onto the hardwood. Glass and bits of petal and leaf spread across my floor. George darted one way, then the other, never landing, never giving up. His bright eyes shined as he juked, avoiding the thing in my living room, an improbable David and Goliath.