Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  BLACK FEATHERS

  A NOVEL

  Robert J. Wiersema

  Dedication

  For Lex

  Epigraph

  “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

  — L. FRANK BAUM, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five

  Part Six

  After

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Advance Praise for BLACK FEATHERS

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PROLOGUE

  THEN—1988

  “Cassandra.”

  She woke to the sound of her name in the dark. It wasn’t a whisper, but a quiet calling. The voice was familiar, but she couldn’t …

  “Cassandra.”

  There was a sharp click as her door opened. Light from the hallway fell across her, the bright rectangle broken by the black shadow of the figure in her doorway.

  She tried to flinch against the sudden brightness and gasped: she couldn’t move.

  “Cassandra.”

  She tried to roll over from her side, tried to push herself to the far side of the bed, but nothing worked.

  Roll, she told herself. Just roll.

  She could feel her arms, her legs, but she was frozen in place, her muscles not numb, not absent, but actively resisting her brain’s commands.

  All she could do was close her eyes.

  “Cassandra.”

  She knew that voice. Or she knew that she should. The vaguely melodic cadence.

  “Cassandra.”

  Half-whispering, half-singing her name.

  Squeezing her eyes tight, she willed herself to roll away, poured all of her heart and soul and focus into the single thought. Once she broke the spell, it would all be all right. Once she had control of her body again, she would be able to roll, to run, to get away.

  All she had to do was roll.

  She pushed with everything she had, imagining her muscles responding, her body moving.

  Nothing happened.

  Roll. She tried again.

  Her heart was racing, and a choking sob rose in her throat.

  Roll.

  The shadow man took a step into her bedroom.

  “Cassandra.”

  Roll.

  Nothing.

  She sobbed again. Her tears were hot on her face as she opened her eyes.

  The light spilled through the doorway like a path, leading him to her. She could see it on the carpet, the way the light seemed to push everything else out of its way, clearing a path free of Barbies and books and clothes and Lego. Like the light was guiding him to her, showing him the way.

  “Cassandra.”

  She couldn’t see his face, but she didn’t need to. She knew there would be nothing there, a blank mask, a doll’s face, expressionless, hard and cold.

  When he touched her, nothing would change, his face plastic, still.

  That’s how it always was.

  “Cassandra.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut. It was all she could do, her only resistance. She closed her eyes, and she would keep them closed. She wouldn’t look.

  She wouldn’t see.

  In the darkness, there was no sound, save the rough rasp of her breath when she could no longer hold it, the shaky gasp as she breathed in.

  She lay there for a long time, trying not to breathe, listening, trying not to hope.

  She knew better. She knew he wouldn’t just go away. She knew from the stories Daddy read her that monsters and witches and bad things didn’t just go away. You had to fight, or wish, or trick, or run.

  The monsters didn’t just leave.

  But she couldn’t hear anything. Not a movement, not a sound. Maybe … maybe this once …

  And then she heard it breathe. A long, wet sound, a sound that once heard could never be forgotten.

  “Cassandra.”

  The voice was right beside her, sighing its song, the whisper of her name, and she couldn’t help it, her eyes flashed open.

  The shadow loomed over her, etched against the brightness from the hallway. She could see its hair, the outline of ears, of shoulders, of hands. It looked like a man, but it wasn’t. It was something more, something less. Something … else. As if the darkness itself had taken shape, had broken into the sanctity of her dreams.

  “Cassandra,” it said again, a tone like satisfaction creeping into its voice.

  Heart twisting, she turned her eyes to Mr. Monkey, propped up on the pillow next to her head. Mr. Monkey, her oldest friend, close enough to touch. If only she could reach out for him, if only she could hold him, squeeze him tight. Mr. Monkey would protect her. Mr. Monkey would make everything all right.

  “Cassandra,” the shape breathed, and the sock monkey sharing her pillow turned his head and looked into her eyes with his glistening buttons and said simply, “Scream.”

  It was like something was knocked loose inside her, and Cassandra screamed with all her strength, breaking the spell, waking the house.

  NOW—DECEMBER 1997

  PART ONE

  Science is wrong, but that’s no great surprise.

  There are not more than a hundred elements. That’s far too simple, far too reductive. As if all of creation could be reduced to parts, like an engine.

  In the same way, the mystics were wrong in their time. Earth, Air, Fire and Water: these were mere ways of categorizing the world, of struggling, and failing to understand.

  The truth is far more complex, and yet infinitely simpler. It cannot be understood with the rational waking mind.

  It must be experienced to be understood. It must be tasted.

  There are only two elements, eternally opposed, irreconcilable, irreducible.

  Light.

  And Darkness.

  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  And the earth was without form, and void; and the Darkness was upon the face of the deep.

  The notion of God, of course, is a lie, a fiction created by the primitives to help them understand the world around them, within them.

  But the primitives did, in their dim, dismissive way, understand a fundamental truth: the Darkness has been here from the beginning. Before form, the Darkness was there.

  Light came, to attempt to destroy the Darkness.

  Order came, to try to tame it.

  Everything that we have built as a species, everything that we have achieved, has been to try to conquer the Darkness, to curb it, to confine it with rules, to control it with morals.

  And it has all failed.

  The Darkness cannot be conquered. It cannot be vanquished.

  It is eternal.

  It is everywhere.

  “Cassandra.”

  The knocking at the door was soft, the voice almost a whisper, muffled.

  Cassie groaned and burrowed more deeply under the covers, rubbing her head against the pillow, deepening the warm furrow. She tightened her grip around Mr. Monkey, pulled him in closer to her chest.

  “Cassandra.”

  She had no idea how much time had passed. Had she blinked, or had it been five minutes? Or an hour?

  “Cassie, honey—you’re going to be late.”

  “Dad.” She groaned, nestling more deeply under the comforter.

  The knocking at the door was louder this time, more insistent. “Cassandra!” />
  “All right,” she snapped, struggling to wake up. Too bright. Too sunny. Too much morning.

  Mr. Monkey looked up at her from the pillow.

  She pulled him close, trying to drive away the day.

  Something poked roughly at her thigh, and a hard voice was saying, “Hey! Hey!”

  Her eyes flashed open; her entire body stiffened.

  She held her hand up against the bright light.

  Flashlight.

  Two people were looking down on her. Hats. Reflective strips on their coats.

  Police officers, standing down two steps from the doorway of the bookstore, the woman poking at Cassie’s leg with her baton. “Hey,” she repeated, her voice firm and unyielding. “Wake up.”

  “I’m awake.” Cassie groaned, sitting up. Every muscle ached, every joint creaked from the concrete stoop and the cold that had etched deep into her bones over the past several days.

  “Are you all right?” Was the male officer’s voice kinder? It almost seemed like he might actually almost be concerned.

  Cassie nodded. She felt like she would never be warm again, and her breath hung grey and crystalline in front of her face.

  “You can’t sleep here,” the female officer said.

  Her partner shot her a look.

  “She’s just a kid,” he said to her.

  “That doesn’t mean she can sleep wherever she wants,” the woman said, but it was barely an argument.

  “I’ll move,” Cassie said, pulling on the door handle to rise. “I’ll just—”

  She stopped. She turned in a tight circle, her eyes darting to every corner of the alcove. “Shit,” she muttered. Then she turned all the way around again, more slowly this time, methodically examining the space.

  “Shit.”

  “What is it?” The male cop stepped forward.

  “My knapsack,” she said. “Someone stole my knapsack.”

  The woman cop pointed with her baton at the small bag Cassie had been using for a pillow. “Isn’t that it right there?”

  Cassie shook her head and spun again, looking around her. “That’s not—that’s my backpack. Books and stuff. My knapsack, with all my clothes, my—”

  She had been going to say “everything,” but that wasn’t really true. She had lost everything long before.

  “Someone stole it.”

  “Well, that’s—” the female cop started, but her partner cut her off with a sharp shake of his head.

  He took a step toward Cassie and put his hand on her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He was wearing blue plastic gloves, like a doctor might wear. They both were.

  Cassie shook her head. “It had all my—” She stopped herself. She wouldn’t have been able to finish that sentence without crying.

  “Do you want to come to the station?” the cop asked. “We could fill out a report.”

  His partner made a snorting sound and took a couple of steps back onto the sidewalk.

  “I don’t know that it would do any real good,” the male cop admitted.

  “No,” Cassie said. “No, it’s okay.”

  With practised care, she began stuffing the rest of her things into her backpack. She wrapped her blankets around Mr. Monkey as she picked them up, her face burning at what the cops might think if they saw him.

  It almost all fit. When the zipper balked, she pulled out her thinnest blanket and draped it over her shoulders; she could pack better later, and at least it would keep her warm.

  This time the zipper closed.

  “You don’t have to sleep out here,” the male cop said as Cassie straightened up. “There are shelters—”

  “I’m not going back to the shelter,” Cassie snapped.

  The cop held up his blue-gloved hands in surrender. “Okay,” he said. “But listen.” He leaned closer, as if not wanting to be overheard. “I know they … How old are you?”

  Cassie flinched, but she didn’t answer.

  “That’s what I thought,” the cop said. “Listen, why don’t you come back to the station with me? We can contact the Ministry. They’ll have someone for you to talk to, and we can get you out of the cold.”

  “I’m fine,” Cassie said, hefting her backpack onto her shoulder.

  The cop nodded. “I know you think you are,” he said. “But it’s really not safe for a girl out here.” He reached into the pocket of his heavy black patrol jacket and drew out a business card. “Listen, take this.” He pressed the card into Cassie’s hand. “I know you think you’re okay, but if you’re ever not, call me, okay?”

  Cassie looked down at the card; she could barely close her cold fingers around it. Constable Christopher Harrison.

  “I’m Chris,” he said. Then, gesturing at his partner, “That’s Jane Farrow. She’s not as bad as she pretends to be.”

  Cassie looked down at the card again. “Cassie. Cassie Weathers.”

  “Are you going to be all right?” the cop—Constable Harrison—asked. In the dim, Cassie could see a softness in his eyes.

  “They took all my stuff,” Cassie said quietly, not really able to wrap herself around the full significance of what she was saying.

  “I can put you in touch—” Constable Harrison started, but his partner cleared her throat, and he stopped.

  “No,” Cassie said, shaking her head. “No.” It was almost a whisper as she brushed past the officers and hurried down the block.

  It was so early Cassie had to wait outside for the McDonald’s to open. The sidewalk was clotted with shopping carts and sleeping bags and their owners, uniformly brown and grey, drab in the half light. They smoked and cursed one another, pushing and shoving. A cluster almost dissolved into a fight over money and drugs, the violence only staved off when one of the men stalked away, hurling insults back over his shoulder.

  She kept to the shadows, her back to the wall.

  A group of boys, young men, not much older than her, were hitting each other, shoving one another into the street. They were laughing, but it sounded mean, menacing.

  “Fuck you, asshole,” the smallest of them shouted as he staggered back onto the sidewalk.

  The tallest, with dreadlocks down to the small of his back, hacked out a laugh and pushed him again. This time, though, he hooked his foot behind the smaller man’s legs.

  All of them laughed as the smaller man fell into the street.

  “Fuck you, motherfucker,” he shouted as he pulled himself up.

  A chill silence fell as the man with the dreadlocks stepped toward him. “Shut the fuck up, you weaselly little prick, or I’ll fucking curb-stomp you, you got it?”

  Cassie shrank deeper into the shadows.

  When the doors to the restaurant were unlocked, there was a rush for the bathrooms, lines quickly forming outside both doors, and a crowd three deep at the counter.

  Cassie stopped at one of the tables off to the side of the door and slumped her backpack from her shoulder. She unzipped the top, her hands stiff and frozen.

  Without opening it fully and without taking anything out, she sorted through the bag, checking to see what she had lost. She had been pretty careful to keep anything important in the smaller bag she had been using as a pillow, reserving the larger bag for clothes and her bedding and towels, but she had lost her copy of the first Dragonriders of Pern book, her toothbrush and toothpaste, her deodorant and shampoo. She still had her journal, though, her Discman and Mr. Monkey, and her copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. That was something, at least.

  Focus, she thought, on what you have, not what you’ve lost.

  She zipped up the bag and hefted it onto her shoulder again.

  Focus on what you have, and don’t let anyone take that away.

  She ended up in line behind the group of young men. There were four of them, and their shouts and obscenities echoed off the glass and tile. The one with the dreadlocks seemed to be the leader, his laugh a more confident bark, his punches and pushes not responded to in kind.


  Cassie had started to turn away, hoping to find a corner to vanish into to wait them out, when the dreadlocked boy noticed her.

  His smile bared his teeth.

  “Who’s the pretty girl?” His white-blue eyes were cold and unblinking.

  Cassie didn’t say anything. She looked down at the floor.

  “You wanna hang with us, pretty girl?” His friends turned around to look at her, fanning out behind him. “Want me to buy you a hash brown? Egg McMuffin?”

  “No, thank you,” Cassie said, barely above a whisper. She took a small step backward.

  He took a step toward her, closing the distance between them again. “What?” he said loudly, leaning toward her. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Cassie shook her head and took another step back.

  “You don’t want a hash brown?” the kid asked. “You wanna get right to the good stuff?” He glanced at his friends. “We got some rock. You wanna come with us, have a party?”

  His friends were laughing now, nudging each other.

  He reached out and took hold of her arm. “Come on, baby. We’ll have a good time.” His grip was a cold, wiry claw.

  Stepping back, she swatted his hand off her arm. “No,” she said. She looked up at him, met his eye, held her breath.

  Just the way she had been taught in Mrs. Hepnar’s guidance class; basically, it boiled down to letting the bully know that you would stand up for yourself, that you wouldn’t let yourself be pushed around. “Ninety-nine per cent of the time the bully will leave you alone after that,” Mrs. Hepnar had said.

  The kid with the dreadlocks met her eyes and didn’t look away. His smile widened.

  “Another time, then,” he said. “I can’t wait.”

  He turned back to the counter, his friends filling in around him.

  Cassie’s heart was fluttering in her chest, her hands shaking.

  When she got to the counter, she ordered a hot chocolate. Her fingers in her half gloves were red and swollen as she emptied her change out of the small Guatemalan pouch she had bought on one of her first days in Victoria, and counted it out to the penny.