Bird box

Tom is building something out of an old soft guitar case and a couch cushion. Olympia is sleeping upstairs in the bedroom next to Malorie’s. Felix gave it to her just like Tom gave his to Malorie. Felix now sleeps on the couch in the living room. The night before, Tom took detailed notes of the items Olympia has in her house when she told him. What began as a hopeful conversation resulted in the housemates’ deciding that the few things they could use weren’t worth the risk of getting them. Paper. Another bucket. Olympia’s husband’s toolbox. Still, as Felix pointed out, if and when the need for these objects outweighed the risk, they could fetch them after all. Some things, Don said, might be needed sooner than later. Canned nuts, tuna, pasta, condiments. While discussing foods, Tom explained to the others how much stock they had remaining in the cellar. Because it was finite, it worried Malorie deeply.

Right now, Jules sleeps down the hall in the den. He is on a mattress on the floor at one end of the room. Don’s mattress is at the other. Between them is a high wooden table that holds their things. Victor is in there with him. Jules snores. Soft music plays on the small cassette-deck radio. It’s coming from the dining room, where Felix and Don are playing euchre with a deck of Pee-wee Herman playing cards. Cheryl is washing clothes in a bucket in the kitchen sink.

Malorie is alone with Tom on the couch in the living room.

“The man who owned the house,” Malorie says. “George, that was his name? He placed the ad? He was here when you got here?”

Tom, who is attempting to make a protective, padded cover for the interior windshield of a car, looks Malorie in the eyes. His hair looks extra sandy in the lamplight.

“I was the first one to answer the ad in the paper,” Tom says. “George was great. He’d asked strangers into his home when everyone was locking their doors. And he was progressive, too, a big thinker. He was constantly presenting ideas. Maybe we could look out the windows through lenses? Refracted glass? Telescopes? Binoculars? That was his big idea. If it’s a matter of sight, maybe what we’d need to do is alter our sight line. Or change the physical ways in which we see something. By looking through an object, maybe the creatures couldn’t hurt us. We were both really looking for a way to solve this. And George, being the kind of man he was, wasn’t satisfied with just talking about it. He wanted us to try these theories out.”

As Tom talks, Malorie pictures the face in the photos along the staircase.

“The night Don arrived, the three of us were sitting in the kitchen, listening to the radio, when George suggested there might be some variety of ‘life’ that was causing this to happen. This is before MSNBC proposed that theory. George said he got the idea from an old book, Possible Impossibilities. It talked about irreconcilable life-forms. Two worlds whose compounds were entirely foreign might cause damage to one another if they were to cross paths. And if this other life-form were somehow able to get here . . . well, that’s what George was saying had happened. That they did figure out a way to travel here, intentionally or not. I loved it. But Don didn’t. He was online a lot back then, researching chemicals, gamma waves, anything unseen that might cause harm if you looked at it because you wouldn’t know you were looking at it. Yeah, Don was pretty hard on us about it. He’s passionate. You can already tell he gets angry. But George was the kind of man who, once he had an idea, was going to see it out, no matter how dangerous it was.

“By the time Felix and Jules arrived, George was ready to test his theory about refracted vision. I read everything with him that he pulled up online. So many websites about eyesight and how the eyes work and optical illusions and refracted light, how exactly telescopes work, and more. We talked about it all the time. When Don, Felix, and Jules were asleep, George and I sat at the kitchen table and drew diagrams. He’d pace back and forth, then he’d stop, turn to me, and ask, ‘Have any of the victims been known to wear glasses? Maybe a closed window could protect us, if certain angles were applied.’ Then we’d talk about that for another hour.

“We all watched the news constantly, hoping for another clue, a piece of information that we’d be able to use to find a way for people to protect themselves. But the reports just started to repeat themselves. And George got impatient. The more he talked about testing his ‘altered vision’ theory, the more he wanted to try it. I was scared, Malorie. But George was like the captain of a sinking ship, and he wasn’t afraid to die. And if it worked? Well, that would mean he’d helped cure the planet of its most terrifying epidemic.”

As Tom speaks, the lamplight dances in his blue eyes.

“What did he use?” Malorie asks.