Black Feathers

by Robert J. Wiersema

  Cassie shook her head. “It’s awful.”

  “That’s too bad,” the monkey chattered, dancing a bit in place. “You don’t recognize it?”

  Cassie hesitated. It was something she was supposed to know. “No,” she said carefully.

  “It’s you!” the monkey shrieked, turning a hands-free back-flip. “It’s all you!”

  Cassie took a step back.

  “We’re in your heart!” the monkey screamed. “Look around! Don’t you recognize it? Cold and grey. Empty. This is the very heart of you. This is where you live, no matter how far you run!”

  The snow burned against his face, melted against the blood soaking the front of his coat.

  It was all Harrison could do to open his eyes, to pull himself onto his side. There was no hope of standing up. The way the world was swimming around him, shapes twisting and distending, it was almost impossible even to orient himself.

  It wasn’t until he saw the tracks in the snow, the long streak where he had been dragged, that he knew: the door. The door was that way.

  Pressing his left hand as hard as he could against the wound in his belly, he began to follow the footsteps, planting his right elbow in the snow, pulling himself forward, almost collapsing each time.

  He had to get inside. He had to stop him.

  “No,” Cassie said, her voice little more than the bubble of a thought, powerless.

  The monkey leaned in close, close enough for her to smell the rankness of its breath. “Yes,” it whispered.

  “No,” she repeated. “It can’t be. There are people—”

  “What people?” the monkey asked, stepping back.

  Tapping both paws to his chest, the monkey seemed to explode, black fragments spraying into the air, taking wing, a flock of crows, hundreds, thousands, wheeling and arcing and cawing against the white sky, swooping over Cassie, close enough she could feel the breath of their wings, coiling back together, taking on form again.

  “People who love you?” her father asked, standing where the monkey had been a blink before.

  She took a sharp step back.

  “Why do you think anybody would love you?” her father asked, stepping toward her. “You’ve pushed away anyone who’s ever cared for you.” He looked at her sternly. “You told such terrible lies about me, and then you ran away. You left your family to worry about you.”

  “You didn’t even try to help me,” Sarah said, standing where her father had been, her body odour sharp and biting in the empty space. “You left me to die alone in the cold.” Every word she spoke spilled a fresh gout of blood from the slash across her throat, down the front of her drab grey clothes.

  “You said you’d always be there for me,” Heather said.

  Cassie stepped back.

  “You left me to die,” Skylark said, and the look of pain on her face made Cassie’s heart ache. “You ran away, and you left me with him.”

  “Who?” Cassie asked, in a whispered gasp of tears. “Who did this to you?”

  But all Skylark did was smile. “You did,” she said, the sadness at odds with her smile. “If you had stayed … That’s not what you do to someone you love. You fight for them.” She shook her head. “But you ran away.”

  “You ran away,” Heather said.

  Her father.

  Sarah.

  “Stop it,” she cried out, covering her eyes with her hands, trying to block out the images.

  But the voices still drifted around her, echoing her failings in the dark, fathomless void.

  “You tried to kill me.”

  The words were an accusation, but they were spoken gently, sadly.

  When Cassie took her hands from her eyes, Ali was standing in front of her. Ali the way she had first seen her, in the restaurant, her dark hair sleek, her black jeans, the T-shirt that rode up a little when she moved, revealing the pale line of her stomach, the small of her back.

  “I took you into my home, into my life,” Ali said. “I came looking for you, and you tried to kill me.”

  She lifted her hand to Cassie’s gaze—she was holding the knife. The knife that she had bought at the department store downtown. The knife that she had bought at Schmidt’s.

  Cassie took another step back, shaking her head. “No,” she whispered, knowing what was about to happen, but unable to stop it, unable to look away.

  “Is this what you wanted?”

  Ali lifted the knife to her throat. Tilting her head back, she slid the point into the side of her neck. Blood sprayed on the snow as she tugged the knife across her throat, pushing it in deeply, jugular, trachea, carotid, severed in a slow series of dull pops.

  Blood rained from the not-sky, hot and bitter as it splattered on Cassie’s face, in her mouth, in her eyes, soaking her almost instantly, drenching her red.

  Then snow, and Ali speaking in a low, burbling singsong.

  “This is what you wanted, right?” Her head lolled loosely, still tilted back. Her voice came from the wet, red gash across her throat, the blood-rimmed second mouth she had carved into herself.

  Cassie cowered back. “I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  Opening her hand, Ali let the knife fall. Cassie watched it spin slowly down, down, until it disappeared in the snow.

  “No,” Ali said, her head flopping loosely. “But you wanted to. You dreamed about it.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  “It was only a matter of time.”

  Ali raised her hands to her neck, gingerly touched the edges of the gash in her throat with her fingertips. “It doesn’t even hurt,” she said quietly.

  More firmly, she ran the fingertips of her right hand along the top edge of the cut, tracing the full length of it from just under her left ear to just under her right.

  With her left hand, she did the same thing along the bottom edge of the cut. Both her arms were quickly soaked, blood dripping from her elbows onto the snow.

  She slipped the four fingers of each hand into the wound, pressing them in when they met resistance. Past the first knuckles. The second.

  Then, curling her fingers, she tugged. With her right hand pulling up, and her left pulling down, Ali tore the remaining flesh of her neck, a crunching, shredding sound as the wound widened, blood spraying upward as she wrenched back on her own head.

  One final, brutal rip, and a snap echoed through the snowy air as she broke her own neck.

  Cassie tried to hide her eyes, but she couldn’t look away, not even as Ali tore her own head off. Not even as she held it at her side for a moment, fingers clenched deep in its throat, before dropping it into the snow.

  There was a dull thud.

  Cassie doubled over at the waist, gorge rising in her throat, spilling out of her mouth with a sulphurous burning.

  Feathers.

  Black feathers spilling wetly into the snow, steaming yellow in the still air.

  Ali’s sightless eyes stared at her from the snow across the null space, blood soaking the white under the ragged edge of her neck.

  Cassie heaved again. Nothing came up but feathers.

  Ali’s body was still standing, like gravity didn’t exist: the body didn’t waver, didn’t move, simply stood. Snow fell on the bloody stump of her neck, sizzling against the blood.

  All else was still. Silent.

  The snow swirled.

  And then Ali’s hands reached up, began to dig at the bloody meat of her neck, fingers working with wet, squelching noises, pulling at the flesh, tugging at it, yanking it down.

  As she pulled, something seemed to be pushing up, a bubble of what almost looked like skin slowly pushing at the stump, Ali’s hands seeming to guide its rise, pulling down on the flesh.

  It looked like her mother helping Heather pull on a sweater, the collar tight, the head pushing up through the hole—

  Not a head.

  The membrane split, and there was the monkey’s little hat. The hands kept pulling, and the monkey’s head slithered up the bloody rem
nants of Ali’s neck like it was putting on her body.

  And then it was just the monkey, grinning at Cassie from both its faces at once.

  “You see,” it said, every word a laugh. “This is all you. This is your world. You made it.”

  Cassie didn’t move, didn’t speak. She stood helplessly as the monkey danced, as it drew back and kicked Ali’s head, which arced into the non-distance and disappeared.

  “You’ve been building it your whole life. This place”—the monkey stopped dancing, straightened up into a show of respectability and stepped toward her—“is yours.” He leaned in, like he was going to try to kiss her. “And you”—he touched her under the chin with a finger that felt like soft leather—“are mine.”

  She cringed away, tried to pull into herself.

  “No,” said a voice from beside her. “She’s not.”

  Ali took her hand.

  In the bedroom, he watched as the flames roared between the two girls, building from red to orange to blue to a pure white, a fire that lit the room, a heat that warmed even the cold of him.

  Bathing in the heat, the light, he moved toward the bed.

  It was time.

  The world had disappeared. Harrison no longer even registered the falling snow, the bitter cold. Everything had contracted to a single point of focus: the door at the side of the house. Getting there. Getting inside.

  Plant the elbow. Pull.

  Every stretch, every tug pulled at the wound at his side, forced another hot jet of blood against his hand. His vision swam and flickered as he fought against passing out.

  Plant the elbow. Pull.

  The snow looked so welcoming, so warm. He wanted to lower his head to his arm, nestle down in the soft white comfort, let himself float away. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  He just needed to make it to the door. He needed to make it inside.

  Plant the elbow. Pull.

  He thought of Cassandra Weathers, helpless in the dark, not knowing what evil was lurking just outside her dreams.

  He thought of Laura Ensley, her body splayed open on the garbage-strewn ground in that alley, the way her eyes had stared sightlessly toward the sky as the snow fell on them.

  He thought of his daughters, tucked into their beds, thinking of nothing more than their stockings in the morning, full of wishes and dreams.

  Plant the elbow. Pull.

  The door wavered in his awareness. So close.

  Three more stretches.

  Two.

  One.

  Pulling himself down the two short steps to the door, he twisted and stretched, biting back a scream as the knife wound gaped and bled into his hand. He pulled himself so he was partially sitting, leaning against the door frame.

  His hand shook as he reached for the doorknob.

  Please let it be unlocked. Please let it be unlocked.

  The door swung open almost silently, and Harrison allowed himself to fall into the apartment.

  The monkey stared at the two girls.

  For a long moment, it was silent.

  Then: “You … you can’t be here!” Its voice was a petulant squawk.

  Cassie felt Ali squeeze her hand. “But here I am.”

  “How—” The monkey did a backflip, landed and glared at Ali. “This is my place!” The monkey’s voice had no trace of mockery now. Instead, there was anger, frustration. And something else, something it took Cassie a moment to recognize it was so alien, so unexpected.

  Fear.

  “No,” she said slowly, realization only gradually building in her. “This is my place. You just told me.”

  “But this, this—” The monkey stepped toward Cassie. “You’re mine,” he snarled.

  “No, I’m not,” Cassie said, calmly stepping between them. “You stole me when I was a little girl. I was never yours.”

  Ali looked at Cassie and brought her other hand around to cup their two joined hands. Cassie felt a rush of heat, a slow, sure warmth. Ali.

  The monkey’s eyes widened. “You can’t. You can’t.”

  And something began to happen to its face. Its features blurred, flickered, like a television trying to find a distant station, shapes and images shimmering and swimming, never resolving, never settling.

  Lifting her head, Cassie stared directly into the monkey’s eyes. “I was so scared, and you were there. You took me away. You made me think I was safe. But it was you all along. You stole me, and you kept me a prisoner of my own fears. Of things I didn’t understand. You built this place.” She looked around the void. “But it’s not going to work on me anymore.”

  She turned to Ali. “We all have our own darkness,” she said. “We all fight it, every day.”

  And then she turned back to the monkey. “The only power you’ve ever had is what I’ve given you and what you stole from me. And that’s gone.”

  She turned back to Ali again, opened her mouth to speak, but the other girl was gone, the snow swirling like she had never been there at all.

  There was a long moment of silence, then the monkey howled. “You see?” he said, his voice frenetic. “You see what I can do? She’s gone. Just like everyone who ever loved you is gone.”

  But Cassie had seen the look of confusion on the monkey’s face, could hear the frantic edge under its words.

  “No,” she said, and a stark certainty rose in her. “You didn’t do that. You couldn’t.”

  The monkey stared at her. “I made her go away. It’s just you and—”

  “No,” Cassie said again, feeling herself straighten, feeling herself grow strong. “You couldn’t. You didn’t.” She took a step toward the monkey, and the monkey stepped back. “You can’t.”

  The strength vibrated through her, like blood flowing back into a foot that had fallen asleep. She tingled, and it felt like she was expanding. Growing. Already the monkey seemed smaller, weaker.

  “I thought you were my friend,” she said. “And this whole time it was you. You kept me afraid. You made me doubt everything. Even myself.”

  The monkey was small now, no bigger than he had been when she had kept him so close, had clung to him every night.

  Then even smaller.

  “You kept me weak.”

  She was towering over the monkey now, standing between two worlds, inside both the null space that the monkey had built inside her, and the furnace room, the fire crackling nearby.

  She shook her head. “You have no power over me.” She bit her lower lip with the sadness of the realization. “You never did.”

  The monkey looked at the snowy ground, eyes wide and sad.

  Then: buttons.

  The sock monkey had fallen on the red blanket next to the wood stove. Next to it was her battered copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a slip of construction paper marking her place.

  She had always loved the basement; it was always so safe, so warm. She would spend hours down here, reading or drawing pictures. Mom would bring her snacks, and when Dad came down to tend the fire, he would sit with her, read her stories, and they would laugh and talk, and it was the most wonderful thing she could imagine.

  Cassie smiled even as the tears stained her cheeks. That had all changed. Her favourite place in the world had turned into a nightmare. A dream that she had lived through, over and over again, on that blanket, in front of the stove.

  A dream that she had survived.

  She sniffed deeply, suddenly aware of the tears coursing down her cheeks.

  When she left the furnace room, she left the monkey on the blanket, button eyes staring unseeing as she climbed the stairs, her eyes fixed on the rectangle of light at the top.

  She would never come back here again.

  “Cassandra.”

  She stopped, convinced that she was imagining the sound, the singsong cadences of her name.

  “Cassandra.”

  She clutched the railing, knowing better than to trust it with any of her weight as she climbed the stairs.

  “Cassandr
a.”

  She shook her head, tried to will the sound away. “No, no, no,” she muttered.

  She knew that if she reached the light, it would be okay. If she could just get to the light …

  “Cassandra.”

  She climbed faster and faster, counting the stairs as she went, the old habit still there, even in her dreams.

  Nineteen, twenty-three, twenty-eight.

  “Cassandra.”

  Thirty-one, thirty-seven, forty.

  The rectangle of light wasn’t getting any closer, no matter how far she climbed, no matter how fast.

  “Cassandra!”

  Finally, she burst through the doorway at the top of the stairs into—

  For a moment she didn’t know where she was.

  No—she recognized Ali’s pillows, the bedroom, the shelf beside the bed with the alarm clock. It was Ali’s room, she knew that, but something was wrong. The room was too bright. Something was—

  And then her heart stopped.

  Ali was standing in the corner, her eyes wide with fear, staring wordlessly at Cassie.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound.

  Someone was standing behind her, holding the blade of a knife to her throat.

  “I thought you’d never wake up, Cassandra,” Brother Paul said, stretching out the syllables of her name like they were a prize, almost singing them. “Or is it Dorothy?” He smiled, revealing his teeth. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Cassie shook her head, tried to make the image go away, tried to force herself to wake up.

  “Oh, you’re not dreaming,” Brother Paul said. “God knows it was hard enough to wake you.”

  Cassie struggled to rise, but Brother Paul shook his head. “No, no, no,” he said, almost clucking his tongue. He tugged back on Ali’s hair, pressed the knife harder against her throat, drawing a fine line of blood.

  Cassie froze. She held up her hands to reassure him and slowly raised herself to a sitting position.

  “I’m not moving.”

  And then nobody said anything.

  “What … what are you going to do?” Ali said finally. “There’s nothing. Take whatever you want.”