Bird box

In the margins there are numbered notes and corresponding numbers are written painstakingly across the top. Here is note 2,343. Here is 2,344. Ceaseless, endless, brutal.

Malorie turns the page.

A noise comes from upstairs.

She looks to the door. She’s afraid to blink, to move. She waits and stares.

Her eyes on the door, she reaches for the briefcase and slips the notebook back under Gary’s things. Is it facing the right way? Was this how he had it?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know.

She closes the briefcase and pulls the lightbulb’s string.

Malorie closes her eyes and feels the cool earth beneath her feet. She opens her eyes. Absolute blackness is cut only by the stove light from under the cellar door.

Malorie watches it, waiting.

She crosses the cellar, her eyes adjusting to the darkness as she climbs the stairs carefully and presses her ear against the door.

She listens, breathing erratically. The house is silent once again.

Gary is standing at the other end of the kitchen. He is watching the cellar door. When you open it, he will greet you.

She waits. And waits. And hears nothing.

She opens the door. The hinge creaks.

Briefcase in hand, Malorie’s eyes dart into the kitchen. The silence is too loud.

But nobody is there. No one is waiting for her.

Hand on her belly, she squeezes herself through the doorframe and shuts the door behind her.

She looks to the living room. To the dining room.

To the living room.

To the dining room.

On the tips of her toes, she passes through the kitchen and enters the dining room at last.

Gary is still on his back. His chest rises and falls. He groans softly.

She approaches. He moves. She waits.

He moved . . .

It was only his arm.

Malorie watches him, staring at his face, his unopened eyes. Hastily, she kneels over his body, inches from his skin, and places the briefcase back against the wall.

Is this the way it was facing?

She leaves it. Standing, she rushes out of the room. In the kitchen, in the glow of the light, someone’s eyes meet hers.

Malorie freezes.

It’s Olympia.

“What are you doing?” Olympia whispers.

“Nothing,” she says breathlessly. “Thought I left something in there.”

“I had a terrible dream,” Olympia says. Malorie is walking toward her, reaching for her. She leads Olympia back upstairs. They take them together. Once at the top, Malorie looks back down at the staircase.

“I have to tell Tom,” she says.

“About my dream?”

Malorie looks at Olympia and shakes her head.

“No. No. I’m sorry. No.”

“Malorie?”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“Olympia. I need Tom.”

“Well, he’s gone.”

Malorie stares at the foot of the stairs. The stove light is still on. Enough of it splashes across the living room’s entrance that if someone were to enter the kitchen from the dining room, she’d be able to see their shadow.

She is staring fervently into the dim room. Waiting. For the shadow. Certain it’s coming.

As she watches, she thinks of what Olympia just said.

Tom is gone.

She thinks of the house as one big box. She wants out of this box. Tom and Jules, outside, are still in this box. The entire globe is shut in. The world is confined to the same cardboard box that houses the birds outside. Malorie understands that Tom is looking for a way to open the lid. He’s looking for a way out. But she wonders if there’s not a second lid above this one, then a third above that.

Boxed in, she thinks. Forever.

thirty-five

It has been a week since Tom and Jules left for the three-mile walk with the huskies. More than anything, right now, Malorie wants them home. She wants to hear a knock at the door and to feel the relief of having them back again. She wants to hear what they encountered and see what they’ve brought back. She wants to tell Tom what she read in the cellar.

She did not go back to sleep last night. In the darkness of her bedroom, she thought only about Gary’s notebook. She is in the foyer now. Hiding, it seems, from the rest of the house.

She can’t tell Felix. He might do something. He would say something. Malorie wants Tom and Jules here in case he does. Felix would need them.

Who knows what Gary is capable of doing. What he’s done.

She can’t talk to Cheryl. Cheryl is fiery and strong. She gets angry. She would do something before Felix would.

Olympia would only be more scared.

She can’t talk to Gary. She won’t. Not without Tom.

But, despite the change in his affiliation, despite his unpredictable moods, Malorie thinks maybe she can talk to Don.

There is a goodness in him, she thinks. There always has been.

Gary has been the devil on Don’s shoulder for weeks. Don needed someone like this in the house. Someone who sees the world more like him. But couldn’t Don’s skepticism prove to be helpful here? Hasn’t he thought, in all his talks with Gary, that something might be wrong with the newcomer?