Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  Cassie set her binder on a desk in the front row and clicked it open. Retrieving the three sheets of loose-leaf, she snapped it shut again.

  Picking up the binder, she placed the sheets on Mrs. Murrow’s desk.

  “And the note?” the teacher asked. She hadn’t turned around, but Cassie felt like she was watching nonetheless.

  Cassie felt her stomach and legs turn to water.

  Mrs. Murrow turned slowly to face her. “Miss Weathers? Do you, or do you not, have a note to explain your absence yesterday afternoon?” There was a smug, satisfied tone to the teacher’s voice.

  “I … I just …”

  “Miss. Weathers.” She broke Cassie’s name sharply in the middle, like breaking a bone.

  “I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “I—”

  “You don’t,” Mrs. Murrow said, her voice clear and cold.

  Cassie shook her head.

  “No.” The teacher’s thin lips curled around the word. “Of course you don’t.”

  As she spoke, Cassie realized that she had reached into her jacket pocket, curled her fingers around the knife that she had bought at Schmidt’s.

  “And what,” Mrs. Murrow started, “are we going to do about that?”

  Cassie’s lips parted as she slid the knife from her pocket—

  “No,” she said, quietly but firmly.

  “I. Beg. Your. Pardon.”

  But Cassie hadn’t spoken to her.

  “Miss Weathers,” Mrs. Murrow said, stepping toward her desk, her hands on her hips. “I asked you: What are we going to do about this?”

  But Cassie wasn’t listening. She recognized that voice. Why was she having so much trouble placing it?

  When she thought about it, a chill ran through her, a memory of a cold deeper than she had ever felt.

  But she had felt it.

  And then she remembered.

  Victoria. The camp.

  Chilly beans.

  “Nothing,” she said decisively.

  “I beg your—”

  “Nothing,” she repeated. “There’s nothing to do anything about. There’s nothing here.”

  “Miss Weathers—”

  “You’re nothing,” she said, and as soon as she said the words, she knew they were true, and that awareness was like steel in her blood. “You’re a dream. A memory of a woman I met.”

  “A woman you killed.”

  The words were like a slap, and Cassie took a step backward to keep from falling over.

  Mrs. Murrow advanced on her desk, bending toward Cassie. “You cut her throat. You cut her throat and you left her in the snow.” Cassie cowered, tried to protect herself, clutched her binder tightly.

  “You liked it, didn’t you? The power, the strength. You’ve always been such a pathetic little whelp, always mewling and whining. ‘Oh, I have bad dreams. Make them stop. Make them stop.’” Mrs. Murrow came around the desk, her face twisted. “You liked killing that old woman.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “The way the blood sprayed into the snow? The way it sizzled when it hit?”

  “No, I—” Cassie backed up as the teacher towered over, bumping her thighs on the front desk.

  “Did you taste it?” Mrs. Murrow hissed, close enough for Cassie to feel her breath on her face, to smell it, a rank, rotting smell, like garbage, like meat gone bad. “Did you lick her blood off your fingers?”

  Cassie could taste it in the back of her throat, the rich, metallic, musky tang.

  But she shook her head.

  “No,” she gasped.

  Then she stopped.

  She straightened up.

  “No, I didn’t.” Her voice was cold. Calm.

  “You pathetic little bitch.”

  “Shut up,” she said, not breaking down, even as Mrs. Murrow’s face loomed into hers, close enough to kiss.

  That face flashed a deep red. “You can’t talk to me like that. I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Punish me? Send me to the principal’s office?” She took a step forward, and the teacher stepped back. “Nothing. That’s what. You’ll do nothing.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I can do whatever I want,” Cassie said, looking down at the binder against her chest. “Everything here”—she lifted the binder toward the teacher—“is mine.”

  She was holding Mr. Monkey in her hands between herself and the teacher. His button eyes stared sightlessly at the old woman.

  “Just go,” Cassie said.

  And the classroom was empty, an algebra problem half-completed on the blackboard.

  In the bed, Cassie stirred. Ali’s arm tightened around her, and she slipped back into full sleep.

  Footfalls crunched in the fresh snow outside the window.

  Cassie exhaled a long breath and let her body relax.

  She hadn’t been sure that that would work. She hadn’t even been sure what she was doing. But when she recognized Sarah from Edmonton, it had all come rushing back: the camp, the cold, the body in the snow.

  Pieces began to fall into place.

  She had dreamed that she had killed Sarah: that part hadn’t been real. But everything else: Brother Paul and the restaurant and Skylark—

  “Of course I’m real.”

  The voice from the doorway made her jump, but that was purely a reaction to the silence being broken: Cassie had been expecting her.

  “So what should I call you?” she asked as she turned. “Skylark? Laura?”

  The girl shrugged, smiled. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?” She took a step into the room. “It’s your dream, right?”

  She smiled, and Cassie’s heart swelled despite herself.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she said gently, stepping toward her.

  Skylark’s smile showed her teeth. “What you did, you mean?”

  It was like the world stopped. The walls of the classroom seemed to close in on her. Everything seemed to narrow to a single point, a single focus: Her. Skylark. Laura.

  Cassie shook her head. “I didn’t,” she said.

  “They never found the knife that killed me, did they? The knife that you used?”

  “I didn’t—”

  Skylark smiled. It was warm, inviting, the Skylark she remembered. “It’s okay,” she said. “I mean, there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

  “But I—” She shook her head: it couldn’t be, she couldn’t have.

  Skylark wrinkled her lip in an empathetic frown.

  “You don’t remember, do you? That morning? What happened?” She looked sadly at Cassie. “I woke you up, and we ran away from the camp, remember? From the police.”

  Cassie shook her head. That morning was a blur of lights and shouting. And then running.

  Oh, God.

  The running.

  Skylark nodded slowly. “I know this is hard,” she said, her voice gentle.

  The cold, the echoes of running footsteps, shouting in the distance, red lights flashing against the brick fronts of buildings even blocks away.

  “We ran until we couldn’t run anymore,” Skylark said, taking a step toward her. “We hid in that alley—”

  “No.” Tears flowed out of her eyes, left corrosive streaks down her cheeks. “That’s not—”

  “You came up behind me,” Skylark said, like she was describing waiting in the cafeteria line. “I was bent over, out of breath, and you grabbed my hair and pulled me back—” She tilted her head back, stretching her throat taut, pale and fragile. “And then—”

  As she drew her finger across her throat in a slow slitting motion, the skin opened as if cut, the flesh gaping like a wide, obscene mouth. “You killed me, Cassie.” The words bubbled out of her throat in a froth of blood, but Cassie heard the accusation as plain as day.

  Skylark relaxed her neck. The wound had vanished, the blood disappeared, all without leaving a trace. “I’m sorry, Cassie,” she said, and her face radiated a warm sadness. “I know this is hard, but it’s better
if you know, right? Before you hurt anyone else?”

  Cassie thought of Ali, curled on her side in her bed. Looking down at the white plane of her neck, the ridge of her jugular.

  Skylark nodded, slowly. “You don’t want to hurt Ali. She’s been so kind to you.”

  Cassie nodded. Ali. A blur of sensations, of memories: the one crooked tooth in the bottom of her smile, the gleam of sweat on her when she brought food out from the kitchen of the restaurant, the way her eyes had shone in the twinkling lights of the Christmas tree—

  “No,” she said slowly, a realization beginning to form.

  “I’m sorry, Cassie, but you—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “I didn’t.”

  Skylark smiled sadly, pityingly. “Oh, Cassie.”

  “I never would have killed you,” she said, more sure than she had ever been of anything.

  “You did,” Skylark said. “I know you didn’t want to—”

  “I didn’t,” she said, clutching Mr. Monkey. “I couldn’t. I would never have hurt you.”

  “But you did,” she said, and Cassie heard the faintest hint of desperation in her voice. “Just like you killed your father. Just like you almost killed Ali.” Her voice rose slightly.

  “I didn’t kill my father,” she said. “I know the difference between what I dreamed and what really happened. I didn’t kill him.” She took a step toward Skylark.

  “But what about—” Skylark shrank back.

  “What about Ali?” She knew exactly what Skylark was going to ask: of course she did. “I didn’t hurt her. Even when I was fast asleep. Even when I was dreaming. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I woke up before anything happened.”

  “This time.”

  Cassie smiled, suddenly calm, suddenly sure. “Every time. Always.”

  “Because you love her.” She tried to make it sound mocking, her voice rising in a sardonic screech.

  “Yes.”

  Skylark seemed to deflate, to shrink.

  “I really am sorry for what happened to you,” Cassie said. It seemed so little to say. “But I can’t stay here. I need to go.” The door behind Skylark seemed to beckon her, draw her in. “Right through there.”

  As she walked past her, Cassie expected Skylark to touch her, to brush her arm or her shoulder. When she didn’t, she had to fight back a sob: she was really gone. The immense reality of Skylark’s death, the sheer weight of loss, pressed down on her.

  Gone.

  “There’s something you haven’t thought of,” Skylark said, behind her, her voice hushed.

  Cassie tried to resist, but she had to turn, had to look at the shade of her friend.

  Skylark smiled, somewhere between sadness and glee.

  “If you didn’t kill me,” Skylark asked, “who did?”

  As the snow began to blanket the world, he descended upon the house.

  The girls were in the basement, that much was clear. The rest of the house was dark, while the bottom floor had throbbed with light and life as soon as they had returned.

  He had waited, had watched, through the evening, and then the lights had begun to blink out, one by one, until the entire house seemed to be asleep.

  And still, he had waited.

  Yes, there were plans to be made, precautions to be taken, but mostly it was the deliciousness of the anticipation that filled the time. The hunt was always something special, but this hunt, this hunt promised to be extraordinary.

  And then it was time.

  A slow, careful inspection around the house revealed several weak points: the window over the kitchen sink was open a crack, with no lock and nothing to block it sliding. The bedroom window was hidden from prying eyes by a shrub, already sagging under the weight of the snow.

  But most promising was the area around the door itself. The lock was a deadbolt, but the window to the left …

  Cassie took one last look back into the classroom as she reached the doorway. Skylark was gone, and the room was empty.

  It was eerie: too calm, too quiet. Some places were made for people, and when they were empty, they seemed wrong somehow.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned back to the door.

  And stopped.

  The doorway looked the same as it always did, the door the same brown metal with the small window near the top that she saw every day. But outside, where there should have been a corridor lined with lockers, there was a dark stairway, going down.

  She recognized it immediately: the rough, raw wood stairs, the unfinished wall along one side, the shaky railing along the other. She had seen it almost every day of her life.

  It was the stairs from the house, down to the basement. Down to the storage room. Down to the furnace room, with the woodpiles, and the stove.

  Down.

  At the base of the stairs, there was a click, and the single bare light bulb burst into sudden, blinding life.

  Cassie gasped and took a step back.

  There was someone down there, waiting for her.

  Someone, or something.

  She took a deep breath. Of course there was.

  There was always going to be someone waiting at the bottom of those stairs; it was always going to come down to this.

  Clutching Mr. Monkey close with her right arm, she stepped carefully down on the first stair, resting her hand lightly on the railing.

  Down to the second stair: the air was colder, and her breath hung in front of her mouth like a still, grey cloud.

  Third stair.

  With a creak, the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut. He slipped the corner of a black credit card into the narrow seam between the window and the frame, wiggling it and shifting it slightly so the entire edge of the card slid through.

  As the card began to slide down toward the latch, he straightened, a prickling along the back of his neck, a crackling in his ears.

  Had it been the wind? The sound of the falling snow?

  Something …

  Reaching under his coat with his right hand, he curled his fingers around the hilt of the hunting knife on his belt.

  There was something behind him.

  He started to turn as the hand fell onto his shoulder.

  “Don’t. Move.”

  The voice was rough, a breathy snarl through clenched teeth, but he recognized it immediately.

  His fingers tightened around the knife.

  “Turn around. Slowly.”

  As he turned, he slipped the knife out from under his coat, tucked it behind his back, holding it loosely in his right hand, just out of sight.

  The police officer from the morning that woman had died at the camp looked like he was on his last legs. Dressed in a heavy winter coat, a black toque tight over his ears, he looked pale and drawn, his eyes twitching and frantic.

  “Step away from the door.” His voice shook as he spoke.

  The cop was standing less than three feet from him, close enough to cut off any avenue of escape with a single step.

  He looked at him carefully. There was something wrong with this picture, something out of place. Something missing.

  “I’ve got you for breaking and entering. Don’t make it worse. Step away from the door.”

  It was the voice that gave him away, the stressed firmness of it, the sound of authority coming apart, much though he tried to conceal it.

  “Constable Harrison,” he said, drawing his lips back in a smile. “Shouldn’t you be at home with your family?”

  “Step away from the door.”

  “And if you’re going to be out on a night like this—”

  “I’m not going to tell you—”

  “Shouldn’t you be armed?”

  Taking a single step forward, he planted his right foot firmly on the snowy ground and used the momentum to drive the knife deep into the constable’s midsection, bringing his left hand up in the same motion to cover the man’s mouth.

  He could feel the scream against his gloved palm, could see the cop’s eyes wid
en as he struggled against the pain, against falling backward into the snow.

  Pulling the knife from the constable’s body, he took hold of the shoulders of the man’s jacket and dragged him behind the corner of the house. He didn’t do anything else to conceal the body. No one would find it tonight, and by morning he would be gone.

  He wiped the blade against the cop’s legs, held it up to the silvery light.

  It was time.

  It took only a few, silent moments with the edge of the credit card, a small, almost inaudible click, and the window swung open.

  Pushing it slightly, carefully, listening for creaks, he reached through and turned the deadbolt.

  Cassie silently counted each of the stairs as she descended into the basement: nine, ten.

  Her hand was loose on the rickety railing; she knew better than to trust it with any of her weight.

  Eleven.

  The stairs themselves were brightly lit, but outside of that pool of light, the basement was pitch-dark. Cassie tried not to think of what might be lurking in that darkness, afraid that anything she imagined in this place might come to life.

  The phrase “It’s all in your head” had never been so terrifying.

  Twelve.

  Not far to go now.

  Thirteen.

  It had been so cold at the top of the stairs, and now it was sweltering. Sweat dripped down her back and pooled at the base of her spine. Her shirt was soaked.

  Fourteen.

  One more step.

  As her feet touched the concrete floor of the basement, there was an echoing click, and the light flashed out.

  Cassie stumbled in the sudden dark, crashing into the wall with her shoulder. Her breath was ripped from her and it took her a moment to be able to breathe again.

  Her heart racing, she leaned against the wall, willing her eyes to adjust to the dark, counting her breaths.

  In the distance, she could hear the roaring crackle of the fire.

  And footsteps.

  She froze in place and held her breath.

  Nothing.

  No sound save the distant flames.

  But there had been something. She was sure of it.

  “Hello?” she called out, willing her voice not to shake. “Who’s there?”

  There was a slight shuffle, an almost silent rasp that might have been a footfall, or it might have been her imagination.