Bird box

She is outside, she tells Felix, ready to feed the birds. She is feeling along the wall for the box. In her right hand are apple slices from a can in the cellar. The front door has closed behind her. Jules waits inside. Blindfolded, Cheryl walks slowly, using the house for balance. The bricks are coarse against her fingertips. Soon they will give way to a portion of wood paneling from which a metal hook protrudes. This is where the birds hang.

They are already cooing. They always do when she gets this close. Cheryl heartily volunteered to feed the birds when discussion of the chore came up. She’s been doing it every day since. In a way, it feels like the birds are her own. She speaks to them, filling them in on trivial events from the house. Their sweet response calms her like music once did. She can gauge how close she is to the box, she tells Felix, by how loudly they sing.

But this time she hears something besides their coos.

At the end of the front walk she hears an “abandoned step.” It’s the only way she can explain it to Felix. It sounds to her like someone was walking, was planning to walk farther, then suddenly stopped.

Cheryl, always on high alert whenever she feeds the birds, is surprised to realize she is trembling.

She says, “Is anybody there?”

There is no answer.

She thinks of returning to the front door. She’ll tell the others she’s too freaked out to do this today.

Instead, she waits.

And there is no further sound.

In the box, the birds are active. She calls to them nervously.

“Hey hey, guys. Hey hey.”

The quiver in her voice scares her. Instinctively, she lowers her head and raises the hand holding the apples to protect her, as though something were about to touch her face. She takes a step. Then another. Finally, she reaches the box. Sometimes, she tells Felix, the walk between the front door and the box is like floating in outer space. Anchorless.

Today she feels impossibly far from land.

“Hey hey,” she says, opening the box’s lid just enough to be able to drop a few of the apple slices. Normally she hears the pitter-patter of their tiny feet as they rush for the food. Today she does not.

“Eat up, guys. Aren’t you hungry?”

She opens the lid the tiniest bit again and drops the remaining pieces inside. This, she tells Felix, is always her favorite part. When she closes the lid and presses her ear to the box, listening to their tiny bodies as they eat.

But they do not start eating. Instead, they anxiously coo.

“Hey hey,” Cheryl says, trying to shake off the tremble in her voice. “Eat up, guys.”

She takes her ear from the box, thinking her presence today is making them shy. As she does, she shrieks.

Something has touched her shoulder.

Spinning, blind, Cheryl waves her arms wildly. She touches nothing.

She can’t move her legs. She can’t run inside. Something touched her shoulder and she does not know what it was.

The voices of the birds no longer sound sweet. They sound like what Tom wanted them to be.

An alarm.

“Who’s there?”

She worries someone will answer. She doesn’t want someone to answer.

She decides to yell. One of the housemates can come get her. Pull her back to Earth. But as she takes a step, she hears a leaf crushed beneath her shoe. Frantically, she tries to recall the first time she arrived at the house. She looked at it through the window of her car. Was there a tree? Here by the front walk?

Was there?

Maybe it was only a falling leaf that grazed her.

It would be so easy to find out. If she could just open her eyes for a moment she could see she was alone. She could see it was just a leaf. Nothing more.

But she can’t.

Shaking, she presses her back to the house and slowly slides toward the front door. Her head swivels left, then right, at the slightest sounds. A bird high in the sky. The rustling in a tree across the street. A small gust of warm wind. Sweating, she feels the brick at last and hurriedly makes it to the door.

“Jesus,” Felix says. “Do you really think it could have been a leaf?”

She pauses. Malorie leans farther into the hall.

“Yes,” Cheryl suddenly says. “I do. Playing it back. That’s exactly what it was.”

Malorie steps back into her bedroom and sits upon the bed.

Felix’s story about the well and what he heard out there. Victor barking at the blanketed windows. Cheryl with the birds.

Is it possible, Malorie wonders, that the world out there and the things they hide from are closing in?

thirty-one

To Malorie, since the arrival of Gary, the house feels absolutely different, divided. It’s a small change, but under these circumstances, any change is a big one.

And it’s Don who worries her the most.