by Rysa Walker
Daisy nods. “Yeah. I didn’t understand most of her rant, but I’m pretty sure she’d want us to prioritize helping Chase.”
He turns onto the road leading up to the Grimshaw house, which is little more than a rutted path. The cruiser’s tires hit a crater almost instantly, and Tucker curses. “Chief Craven has been trying to get the council to cough up the money to repair this road since I joined the force. We’re constantly getting calls about lights being on up here, even though there hasn’t been power to the place in a decade or more.”
“Pretty sure the place has its own power source,” Daisy says, thinking back to the vivid blue lights she saw coming out of the windows—hell, out of the very woodwork—the day before.
A gust of wind comes from out of nowhere just as Tucker slows to navigate another hole in the road. It still rattles their teeth at five miles per hour. Then a crack of lightning fills the sky behind the Grimshaw house, and they watch as dozens of birds catch fire and fall from the sky. These tiny orange bombs sink out of sight on the other side of the hill.
“Tower Farm will be lucky if the corn maze survives that,” Daisy says. “Assuming it survived the bonfire last night. Do you think Ben and Luke are there yet?”
Another bolt of lightning crackles, sending another batch of flaming birds tumbling to the ground.
“I don’t know.”
“Why would anyone even build a place up here?” Daisy asks as another bump rattles the car.
“The view, maybe? And the privacy. My mom said it was a fancy retreat of some sort back when my grandparents were young.”
“A fancy retreat in Haddonwood?” Daisy snorts. “Not a lot to do around here. Seems like they’d go to the actual mountains.”
“True,” he says. “But I got the sense it was more of a rehab retreat than vacations with the family. Quiet and boring was probably a selling point.”
“So…a mental hospital? What was the name?”
Tucker shrugs, but it was really more of a rhetorical question. Daisy can picture the name perfectly in her mind’s eye, the letters reversed in the massive not-at-all-creepy mirror (that has always and never been) in the hallway of her house. Every Day a Brighter Day at Hillcrest.
The birds are no longer simply circling. Now they form a funnel cloud, the base of which ends at the top of the hill. They swarm in every direction, their paths crisscrossing in an intricate dance to create a swirling cocoon that encases the entire house.
“How the hell are they not colliding with each other?” Tucker asks.
It’s a good question, and one for which Daisy has no answer. Their movements are, in fact, the most convincing argument she’s seen for them currently being inside some sort of a computer game. The flight path of each bird is planned with minute precision, missing a collision with the rest of the flock by what looks like millimeters. She’s even less certain now that Tucker’s plan to startle the birds will work. These aren’t birds, and she doubts that they’ll startle easily.
The smart thing to do would be to take that circular drive around the fountain in the front yard and just keep moving back down the hill. But she knows they can’t, so she begins pulling the blanket out of the cardboard box. “Do I wear the mask or you?”
Tucker hesitates, and she’s pretty sure he’s trying to figure out which option is safer for her. The mask gives her extra protection, but it also means her head will be exposed.
“You know more about those smoke things than I do, Tucker. So you wear the mask. I’ll keep a hand over my eyes and my head under the blanket. I’ll be fine.”
Daisy keeps her tone upbeat. But she can tell that Tucker shares her very real fear that neither of them will be fine. He stops the car in the driveway. A single white-eyed crow breaks from the mass surrounding the house and perches on top of the fountain next to them, staring directly into the car with its viscous white eyes.
Daisy gives the creature the finger. “Do you think we’d get extra points for killing that one? You could crack the window just enough for the barrel of your gun. Maybe this game is one of those quests where if you kill the leader, the minions die off, too.”
“Pretty sure that would be a bad idea. It could just as easily be the variation where you cut off one head and the beast sprouts two more.”
She looks out at the sheer number of birds, both overhead and in the swarm. How many crows would it take to push two people off this hill? To push the entire car over the edge? While she doesn’t know the exact answer, she’s quite certain the odds are not in their favor.
“Good point. I really don’t want to deal with two-headed crows.” She adds a little smile that makes it clear she knows that’s not what he meant, then says, “Okay, then. I guess it’s time to storm the castle.”
He nods, pulling the black gas mask into place. “I’ll get as close to the porch as I can and still leave room to open your door. Once I stop, I’ll slide over beneath you, and we’ll wrap up in the blanket. We’ll move faster and be less likely to trip each other up if you just turn facing me and wrap your legs around my waist.”
Daisy grins. “That would actually be kind of sexy if you didn’t look and sound like Darth Vader right now.”
He presses the accelerator to close the fifty feet or so between the fountain and the porch. About halfway there, however, a cluster of birds peels off from the funnel cloud like a swatch of black cotton candy being pulled from the cone. They pelt the car from all directions, and he loses control.
Is the car moving backward? Daisy’s not entirely sure. It could just be her imagination. But the image from a few minutes ago of the crows shoving the car off the hill suddenly seems like a concrete possibility.
Tucker must be thinking something similar, because instead of slamming on the brakes as the car approaches the porch, he stomps the gas and yells for her to hold on. The right-front bumper crashes into the steps, sending chunks of wood and feathers flying in every direction.
So much for leaving room to open the door.
“You okay?” he asks.
Daisy is clutching the oh-shit handle, wide-eyed and white-knuckled. “Yeah. Maybe…if we get out on your side we can crawl over the top of the car and climb onto the porch?”
“I don’t think there’s much porch left to climb on to,” he says. “But you’re right. It’s the only option.” He pushes the seat back as far as it will go and pulls the smoke grenade from his pocket. Daisy crawls over to his side, facing him, one hand clutching her stake, and presses a kiss to the front of the mask. “Ready, Anakin?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be. Open the door, and then cover your ears.” She cracks the door as he yanks the ring on one of the canisters and hurls it onto the lawn. A loud bang fills the air, followed by a whooshing noise as blue smoke rises up from the ground.
The birds squawk in unison, a sound far more deafening than the grenade. Then Tucker shoves the door open and piles out, wrapping the blanket around them as Daisy pulls herself up and wraps herself around him. This plan had been devised for running up the steps, however, and climbing onto the car like this is practically impossible. Tucker winds up shoving Daisy onto the hood. By the time he joins her, the birds are all over them. Even though the blanket is thick, almost like a tarp, she knows it won’t hold up long under this kind of onslaught.
The weight of the birds on top of them is crushing. Daisy screams. Tucker pulls her down to the hood of the car and clutches her close. She wishes he wasn’t wearing the damn mask so she could kiss him goodbye.
Then a voice, louder than the cry of the birds, booms around her, inside of her. Everywhere.
MINE.
The birds halt for a second, then resume their clawing and pecking. Their beaks are like darts pelting her back.
MINE!
This time the birds don’t simply pause. She feels them fall away. Hears their bodies thud against the hood of the car.
Daisy doesn’t know if they’re dead or merely stunned, but there’s no time to waste. T
ucker half drags her onto what’s left of the porch. The wood cracks, one of the boards splitting in two and tumbling into the blackness below. But the surface holds long enough for them to get through the door and into the foyer.
At first, she thinks the blue color filling the room is from the smoke grenade. But it’s not coming in from outdoors. It’s pouring out of the room on the left side, and it’s not smoke. It’s light. The same shade of light she saw from the school yesterday.
A flutter of wings comes from behind them. Tucker turns, his hand tightening on his gun. Outside, the birds are coming back to life. Not all at once, but a few at a time. They seem disoriented, but she doubts that will last for long.
And beyond that, a dark-blue sedan is cresting the hill.
“Wait here,” Tucker says, his voice distorted by the mask. “And maybe move back a bit. I’m going to toss the other grenade to try and help them get through.”
Daisy nods and steps back, but her focus isn’t on what Tucker is saying. Chase is in here. She’s certain of it. He’s in the room with the blue light.
She calls out his name and gets nothing but a staticky buzz, almost like a whine of feedback. Still clutching the stupid chunk of wood, she takes a few more steps toward the room. She wishes she had a gun, although it would probably be a liability given that she’s fired a weapon exactly twice in her entire life. The pistol belonged to Chad, and she’d gone target shooting with him and Dani last fall.
The instant she thinks Dani’s name, the blue light seems to separate, forming a frame that’s almost blindingly bright around a pitch-black tunnel. Then the blackness closes in on itself, and her sister steps in front of her.
“Daisy, we need to get out of here. This place isn’t safe.”
It’s Dani…only it’s not. She’s dressed in the stupid catsuit thing she wore last night, but it’s torn along one shoulder. The fabric looks thin and threadbare, as if something had been nibbling away at it for a very long time, and her hair hangs in damp clumps over her shoulders.
“You’re supposed to be with Julie,” Daisy says. “Supposed to stay with Julie.”
“Yes, but you’re in trouble. We need to get out!”
“I need to find Chase,” Daisy says, stepping around her sister toward the blue light.
Dani grabs her arm. Her hands are damp and oddly small. Daisy stares down at them. They’re much too small for an eighteen-year-old. But Daisy knows these hands. She’s seen them clasped around the video controls. Snapping together LEGOs at a small plastic table. Pressed against the back window of their mother’s car as it dipped below the water…
And then the hands are full-sized. Fully manicured. Daisy tries to wrench her arm away, but the scarlet nails dig into the flesh of her arm.
“I need to find Chase,” she repeats, gripping the chunk of wood in her right hand.
“Daisy!” Dani pleads. “Come on. Just trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.”
The face in front of her flickers. Dani. MB. Dani. Their voices in stereo.
Trust me, okay? I know what I’m doing.
“You’re not real,” Daisy says, her voice barely a whisper. “Not anymore. And I need to find Chase.”
She raises the stake high above her head and brings it down hard into the chest of the impossibility in front of her, expecting Dani to turn to dust the way Tucker said Marty had. But the image just halts, as if the stake is a wedge Daisy jammed between the gears of some clockwork creation. The stake is the only thing that looks completely solid, and the girl’s face is frozen somewhere between Dani and MB.
Daisy pulls her arm away, thinking she’ll hear a rip as Dani’s nails tear through her blouse. But there’s no resistance at all. And the only thing she hears is the explosion as Tucker lobs the second smoke grenade onto what’s left of the porch.
Eight
TUCKER
Tucker thinks it is highly unlikely that the second smoke bomb will be as effective as the first, and that one hadn’t been nearly as effective as he’d hoped. This one will probably only buy Ben and Luke a few seconds of time. Even ordinary creatures adapt, and these birds are far from ordinary. But either way, he can’t stick around. Daisy is already heading into the room with the pulsing blue light, yelling Chase’s name.
He runs after her, barely noticing the frozen image in the center of the room. When Tucker reaches the doorway, however, he hesitates. The room is some sort of parlor, but it’s shifting, and his eyes have a hard time adjusting as it flickers between three different scenes. One second, the furniture is draped in moldy white sheets. Next, it’s a room with the same furniture, only newer, and the blue glow is brighter. And then it’s a much more familiar room, the one he remembers (but also doesn’t remember) from the other reality, where a wall of glass separates him from Daisy.
Two things unite all three scenes—all three realities, he guesses. The first is the sign over the door. Different fonts and slightly different graphics. In the dust-filled version of the room that seems most real to Tucker, the words are barely even legible. But they always read: Every Day a Brighter Day at Hillcrest.
The second, and far more obvious, similarity is the dark void that he saw behind Zophiel back on the highway. Chase Rey is seated in the very center of that void as the three realities shift around him.
Daisy turns back to Tucker. “Look at his feet.”
At first, he thinks she means the shoes. Chase’s feet are clad in the bright-orange Nikes, dangling beneath his body as he taps the heels together. Even though there’s no chair to support him, the boy is seated with his hands in front, clasping an invisible tablet as his eyes and thumbs move back and forth.
Then Tucker realizes that the room is cycling through the three realities in perfect time with Chase’s feet. Each time his right heel taps against his left, the room shivers and flips the channel.
“Chase!” Daisy yells again, trying to get his attention. When he doesn’t respond, she tells Tucker, “We have to get him out of there.”
On the one hand, he agrees. It doesn’t look…safe. On the other hand, he’s a little worried that Chase might be the glue that is holding things together.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A shotgun blast rings out from the front room. Tucker glances back. It must be Ben, firing at the crows. Tucker can barely see the door from this angle, but he can tell that the wall of birds has begun to take shape around the building again.
Another shotgun blast, and a lone crow, its white eyes eerily bright in the dim room, breaks through the doorway beneath the flickering sign that reads Every Day a Brighter Day at Hillcrest. It heads straight for the void and the boy in the center.
Daisy sees the bird at the same instant that Tucker does. But she’s a good ten steps closer.
Chase’s feet continue their rhythm.
Tap. The parlor is in ruins.
Tucker runs toward the void. He can’t stop the crow, but he can stop Daisy from doing something crazy.
Tap again. The parlor is new.
Daisy stands at the edge of the void, reaching out for Chase’s left foot, which is mere inches from her fingers.
The crow zooms past Tucker’s head, toward Daisy and Chase.
Tap again. The rec room. He can even hear a buzz from the game show.
Tucker smacks into the wall of glass at the same instant that Daisy makes her decision.
Tap.
The wall is gone now. Tucker staggers forward as Daisy’s hand latches on to one of the bright-orange sneakers.
Daisy and Chase fall into the blackness.
The crow follows.
And so does Tucker.
EPILOGUE
Fog.
Heaviness.
Daisy’s mind moves through a cold, liquid film.
She was inside a house.
Tucker. Chase. The game. The birds. Dani…
Now there’s nothing but an inky blackness. And…tapping. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The repetition is comforting, and it almost lures her back into the dark pool of nothing. But then a louder sound breaks through, and she can no longer hear the tapping. Just laughter. Applause.
“Stop,” she mumbles as the rest of her senses slowly engage. Her mouth is dry, and her tongue feels swollen and heavy. “Stop laughing.”
Faint waves of light begin to break through the darkness. She expects to see the parlor of that house…Grim-something. Grimwood? No, Grimshaw. But this room is brighter, with light from a row of windows reflecting off ugly gray-green walls.
Daisy forces her eyes open. Her eyelids are heavy, like window shades threatening to drop at the slightest touch.
More clapping. More laughter. But she can now connect it to the TV. Family Feud. Daisy hates the show, but the other patients love it.
Except Macy. And she’s just a bitch.
She closes her eyes again. Macy? The others?
I’m in the hospital.
Daisy wants to get up. To run. She wills her legs to move, but they don’t obey. They just sit there like lead weights, the muscles barely twitching.
It was a dream. A tear falls down her face. Dani. Tucker. Just a dream.
She can already feel the dream slipping away, erasing itself. The details fade, starting at the edges, but she knows that sooner or later, it will dissolve inward until there’s nothing left but a vague tugging sensation in her mind.
It will disappear. Everything—everyone—disappears sooner or later.
Daisy doesn’t remember making a sound. But she must have, because Macy is in her face now. “Shut the fuck up.”
Macy. Still a bitch. This thought almost coaxes a smile to Daisy’s lips, but she doesn’t want to respond to anything in this world. She wants to crawl back into the dream. The people in her therapy group would probably call it a nightmare, but it wasn’t all bad. In fact—
The room falls quiet for a moment, and she once again picks up the tapping sound. It’s coming from across the room, off to her left, the same rhythmic tap-tap-tap that she heard before the TV chased the dream away.
