Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  “Nice,” Laura said. “Do you mind if I—”

  Cassie rolled her eyes. “Do I ever mind?” she asked, fumbling with the zipper of her backpack. “Maybe you can figure it out.” She wrestled her binder out of her bag, managed to balance everything while she clicked out the homework page. “Here.”

  As Laura reached for the sheet of lined paper, the stark winter light caught the ring on her finger, flashing off the green eyes of the cat.

  “Thanks,” she said, laying the page next to her own. “I’ll give it right back.”

  “Sure.”

  Cassie slouched against the seat, her gaze wandering from her sister’s head to Laura’s hand holding the homework sheet steady, then out the window at the cold, grey world passing by.

  Aside from the single car behind him, the streets were almost deserted all the way home. The farther he got from Rock Bay, the better he felt. The hunger didn’t go away exactly, but instead of overwhelming him, it seemed to be giving him strength, growling within him, rumbling like a force of nature all to itself.

  As he slowed to turn into his cul-de-sac, the car behind him slowed as well. As he turned, he felt almost like waving; there was a surge of comfortable happiness rising in him that he didn’t really understand but that he wasn’t about to argue with.

  Turning into his driveway, pressing the button for the garage door, he glanced out the passenger window. The car that had been behind him had stopped right in front of the entrance to the cul-de-sac, completely blocking it.

  He turned as the garage door rose, as the light flashed on, revealing the four police officers standing inside the garage, their guns drawn, facing the van.

  Spotlights in the rear-view mirror blinded him, and as he cut the engine, he heard running footsteps and shouting.

  Their bus had the earliest drop-off, so the school was mostly empty when they arrived. The busload of kids disappeared into the echoing void and it swallowed them up. Within moments, it was as if Cassie and Laura were the only people in the whole building.

  Even Heather had disappeared, blurring into the crowd and vanishing into the school without a backward glance.

  Cassie could hardly blame her. She knew all too well how powerful dreams could be, the way everything started to bleed together, until she could no longer tell if she was asleep or awake.

  She had never been sure … What if it wasn’t a dream? What if the voice, the shadow, the weight on her, the sound of her name, what if she hadn’t dreamed all that? What if it really was—

  She shrieked and jumped as the boom of Laura’s bookbag hitting the floor echoed up the deserted hall.

  Laura laughed. “Jesus. Why are you such a spaz today?”

  Her heart thrummed like a tiny bird.

  “Are you going to be okay? You look like you’re having a heart attack.” She was still smiling, but there was genuine concern in her eyes.

  Cassie swallowed, nodded. “I’m okay.”

  Laura looked at her. “No, really.”

  “Really.”

  Another long, studying look. “Okay.”

  Laura opened her binder on her lap, took a pencil out of her bag and continued copying Cassie’s homework. Cassie waited, then pulled her journal from her backpack and started to write, the metal of the locker doors cold against her back.

  That evening, Cassie tried to talk to her sister, but she never got a chance. Heather helped their mother with dinner, something that she never did, leaving Cassie and their father with the dishes afterwards. Rather than doing her homework in her room, the way she always did, Heather brought her books downstairs and spread them out on the table in the dining room, one open doorway from where their parents were sitting in the family room watching TV. When she was done, she went into the family room and sat with them.

  Cassie watched for a moment from the doorway, plainly within Heather’s line of sight, but her sister pretended not to notice her.

  At bedtime, Cassie decided to make one last attempt. She waited in her room until she heard Heather next door, then she vaulted off her bed and into the hallway. She closed Heather’s bedroom door behind herself and blocked it with her body.

  Heather snapped around to face her, slamming the dresser drawer shut, clean pyjamas dangling in her hand. Her eyes flashed with fear.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Cassie rushed, before Heather had a chance to say anything.

  Heather scowled at her, but as quickly as it had come, the expression vanished, replaced with a tired heaviness.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, turning to putter with things on the top of her dresser: hair elastics, bottles of nail polish, a brush.

  “I know—” Cassie started.

  “It was just a bad dream,” she said. “I was just a bit freaked out about it, that’s all. I shouldn’t have said anything. I knew you’d freak out.”

  Cassie drew a sharp breath, felt her face burning.

  “You—”

  The expression on her sister’s face stopped her: Heather looked scared. No: terrified. And she was striking out the only way that she could.

  Cassie counted her breath. “It’s okay,” she said, biting back that first flare of anger. “I didn’t freak out. I’m just—”

  Heather’s face was hard, her jaw set. But her eyes were wide.

  “I just wanted you to know …” Cassie took a deep, steadying breath. “If you ever want to talk, about anything—”

  Heather’s jaw relaxed, her eyes softened, but Cassie saw her flinch just the tiniest bit.

  “—you know where to find me.”

  She didn’t give Heather a chance to answer. She turned quickly, pulled the door open and slipped into the hall.

  She replayed the scene over and over in her head as she got ready for bed, thinking of other things that she could have said, better things that she should have said. Her lips moved silently as she washed her face, tried out lines in the mirror that she would never speak.

  Pulling the blankets up high around her neck, she turned off the lamp on her bedside table. The room descended into complete darkness for a moment, then light started to reassert itself: the red glow of her clock radio, the faint aura through the curtains.

  In the darkness, she could hear faint music, the sound of Heather’s radio next door. Cassie couldn’t sleep with music on: she needed to be able to hear. The distant sounds of movement downstairs, her mom and dad, the breeze outside, the light rattling of her window.

  She had spent so many nights lying here, listening, waiting. Dreading the soft creak of the floorboard just outside her door, that singsong whisper of her name. She needed the quiet before she went to sleep, to know that there was nothing out there waiting for her to doze off.

  But this time it wasn’t her name she was waiting to hear.

  She lay in the dark, eyes wide, listening.

  The Darkness waited inside him as the police officers stepped toward the van, the headlights casting long shadows against the garage wall behind them.

  He breathed heavily, almost panting, each breath frail and shaky. The red and blue lights behind the minivan arced and sprayed across the dashboard, swirling and dancing almost hypnotically, almost nauseatingly.

  But he didn’t break.

  Not even when the cop stood outside the driver’s-side door, his feet wide apart, both hands on the pistol that was pointed directly at his head.

  Not even when a second cop yelled at him to put his hands on the dashboard, not to move, just put his hands in front of him in plain sight.

  His breath even slowed when the cop used his name.

  He almost smiled. They knew his name. They knew everything.

  Of course they did.

  Inside, the Darkness smiled. The Darkness fed.

  When the floorboard creaked, it wasn’t outside of Heather’s room.

  Cassie’s eyes snapped open. She hadn’t heard the sound in years, but it all came flooding back to her in a merciless rush.<
br />
  “No,” she sobbed silently.

  She couldn’t move her mouth to cry out. She couldn’t move at all. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and her chest shuddered. A pool of warmth formed under her hips, between her legs.

  “No.”

  She couldn’t breathe through the terror, her throat closed up in fear.

  Not again.

  Please, God, not again.

  “No.”

  But yes, it was happening again. And she lay there listening, waiting, the silence like a rope around her throat, pulling tighter, tighter.

  “Please.”

  Waiting.

  Waiting until it felt like her heart might shred.

  And then—

  “Cassandra …”

  The singsong voice was almost a relief.

  Her doorknob rattled.

  The door swung slowly, silently open.

  “Cassandra.”

  Cassie’s eyes flashed open, her mouth opening in a scream as she glanced sharply around—too bright, too cold.

  Cold.

  The ground hard, unforgiving, the light high above her almost blinding.

  “Are you—”

  That voice.

  She pulled herself back. She could move!

  She pushed herself deeper into a corner.

  “It’s okay.”

  She choked back a sob, glanced around again. Metal. Brass. Almost above her head. Cold ground. Bright light. A face—

  “Cassie, it’s me.”

  —creased in concern.

  She should know. The dislocation, the confusion. She should know.

  Where was she? What—

  “Cassie, it’s okay.”

  It all came back to her in a rush. Concrete steps, bright light, handrail.

  Doorway.

  Victoria.

  That face …

  She dragged herself out of sleep like a swimmer too far from shore, her brain leaden, starved for air.

  Victoria. Doorway. Face.

  “Ali?”

  “It’s me, Cassie. It’s me.”

  Every moment of wakefulness brought more pain. Her back was tied into a tight throbbing knot by the cold concrete and all of her muscles ached. Her hands—

  She looked down.

  Her hands were mottled pink and white. When she flexed her fingers, they roared in pain, waves of burning travelling up her arms.

  Ali’s eyes followed her gaze down to her hands, and when Cassie gasped, Ali’s eyes widened.

  “Come on,” she said, leaning in clumsily and wrapping an arm around Cassie’s back. “We have to get you warm.”

  Her touch inflamed a new burst of pain and Cassie pulled away, scrambling backward into the corner again, bracing herself against the wall next to the door, hands pulled tight to her body.

  Ali jumped back. “I’m sorry. I’m—”

  Cassie shook her head; she didn’t stop. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real,” she whispered, over and over again. “It’s not real.”

  “Cassie, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “It’s not real. It’s not real.”

  “Cassie, we need to get you warmed up. You’ve got frostbite on your hands, and I’m worried about hypo—”

  “It’s not real. It’s not real.”

  “Cassie.” A thin, high sound of desperation threaded into Ali’s voice. “Cassie, please.”

  She leaned forward again, slowly this time, with the careful caution one might use in trying to reach a scared kitten. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Cassie watched the shadow looming over her, coming closer, closer. “It’s not real,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “It’s not real.”

  “Let me help you.”

  She flinched at Ali’s first touch, but she didn’t pull away. There was no place left for her to go.

  “It’s okay,” Ali whispered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She wrapped her arm over Cassie’s shoulders and helped her slowly to her feet. Cassie’s body screamed with pain, every muscle, every joint aching and burning. When her hand brushed the cold brass handrail, she gasped sharply.

  “Here,” Ali said, gently taking Cassie’s forearm and raising it across Cassie’s body. “Tuck your hands under your arms. Try to warm them up a little.”

  Cassie let Ali move her, manipulate her body. She felt like a doll being posed. She could move herself now, not like before, but she didn’t have the strength to do more than breathe.

  “Can you walk?” Ali asked, stepping down to the lower step. “Cassie?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Okay,” Ali said. “You can lean on me.” She guided Cassie toward her, pulling her close along her side, her arm, her shoulder. “Is that okay?”

  Cassie lowered her head to rest it against Ali’s shoulder. “Are you real?” she whispered.

  But Ali didn’t hear. “Okay,” Ali said. “Let’s get you warmed up.”

  They staggered together through the downtown core. The streets were silent, the only people faint shadows picking at garbage cans or wheeling overloaded shopping carts or slumped in doorways. When a car passed, Cassie would flinch at the sudden roar, the blinding flash of lights, and Ali would pull her closer, whisper encouragement.

  “What time is it?” she asked finally, her first words since leaving the doorway of the bookstore. The lights on the Legislature building were reflected in the surface of the Inner Harbour.

  “Around seven, I think,” Ali said, not sounding at all certain.

  “In the morning?”

  Ali smiled. “Yes, in the morning.” Her voice was soft and kind.

  Cassie looked at her. “Why … why are you out so early?”

  Ali looked at her as if the question made no sense.

  “I was looking for you.”

  About fifteen minutes later, past the white-light outline of the Legislature and through the narrow streets on the other side of the Inner Harbour, Ali guided Cassie down the driveway of a three-storey house.

  Rather than going up the front steps, Ali led Cassie to a door around the side, down two steps and flanked with two narrow windows, overhung with a small awning.

  The lock popped open and Ali switched on the light.

  Cassie’s first impression was of warmth, not just the heat that enveloped her as Ali closed the door, but of the apartment itself.

  “This is your place?”

  “Home sweet home,” she said, leading Cassie to a chair at the table, setting her down before pulling off her own coat and draping it over the chair next to her. Ali tugged off her boots and left them crumpled beside the table.

  “Let’s get you warmed up.”

  Stepping into the kitchen area, Ali took a clean towel out of a lower drawer and soaked it under the faucet. After wringing it dry, she refolded it and placed it in the microwave, which she set for one minute.

  As the microwave roared, she stepped back to Cassie. “How are your hands feeling?”

  “They hurt.”

  “They’re probably going to hurt a lot more,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “Here—” Taking Cassie’s sleeves, she gently unfolded the girl’s arms. “Try not to move your hands.” With the gentlest of touches, she helped Cassie back to her feet.

  She reached for the top of the zipper of Cassie’s coat, but stopped. “Can I?”

  Cassie hesitated, nodded.

  Ali unzipped the coat and gently guided it off Cassie’s shoulders, coaxing each arm out of its sleeve, careful to slip the cuffs wide around Cassie’s hands, trying to avoid touching them as much as possible.

  As Ali draped the coat over her own, Cassie shivered and reflexively folded her arms again, tucking her hands back into her armpits.

  She couldn’t stop shivering.

  “Oh God,” Ali said, turning in place to look at the timer on the microwave. “Let me get you a blanket. Here.” And she guided Cassie back down into the chair. “I’ll be right back,” she sa
id, touching Cassie gently on the shoulder before she raced away.

  Cassie closed her eyes, tried to breathe through the waves of pain, but even her lungs were shivering, and her breath came in harsh, brittle jolts. She had thought that teeth chattering was just something you saw in movies or read about in books—the reality was far worse than she had imagined.

  The darkness inside her eyelids burst with red and white spirals, orbs and shadows of colour and light that spun and twisted around one another. It was almost hypnotic, and Cassie felt herself starting to spin and turn. She had to open her eyes to keep from throwing up.

  “Here we go,” Ali said. “I’ve got a blanket for you.”

  She almost dropped the blanket as she reached out for the newspaper on the table beside Cassie, flipping it over and pushing it to the far side of the table almost in a single motion. “Sorry, that’s just—”

  But Cassie had already seen the front page, Skylark’s school picture blown up and blurry under the headline “Runaway Murdered.” She had just had time to read part of the next line, the words “police helpless,” before Ali pulled the newspaper away.

  It’s not real.

  “This should help,” Ali said, as she draped the blanket over Cassie’s shoulders, drew it tight around itself, around her. “I’m sorry about that,” she said quietly as she tucked everything together around Cassie. “I didn’t mean to leave that out.”

  “It’s okay,” Cassie said, feeling helpless herself. “The police—”

  Slipping her arm out from the cocoon, she stretched across the table and pulled the newspaper toward herself, clumsily flipping it over without bending her fingers. The sight of Skylark twisted her heart. She had been so beautiful, so happy.

  “She was my friend,” she said, looking at the picture.

  “I was wondering,” Ali said, fixing the blanket again.

  Cassie looked at her.

  “When I saw the article—that’s why I went looking for you this morning.”

  The microwave finished with three long beeps.

  Ali turned back into the kitchen.

  “To tell me?” Cassie asked, half-turning in the chair. “The police—”

  Ali shook her head as she popped open the door to the microwave. “No,” she said, fumbling with the hot towel, passing it quickly from hand to hand before dropping it on a plastic cutting board that had been leaning against the microwave. “I was worried about you.”