Black Bird of the Gallows

by Meg Kassel

  Lacey, folded in a corner of the cramped booth, extends a leg and pokes me in the butt with her toe. She points to the discarded boots on the floor with questioning eyes. I wrinkle my nose and try to communicate through my face that they hurt, but she looks out to the floor with a frown, as if my act of shoe shedding is another sign that something just isn’t right tonight.

  I have to agree. Lacey came along for fun, but she is not having any, either. I glance at the time on my tablet: 9:16. Never before have I actively wished for a set to be over. Usually, it’s the total opposite.

  Reece is not here. I’m relieved about that. If he wasn’t impressed with the last show he attended, he’d be sorely underwhelmed by this one. When we spoke before homeroom this morning, he told me his hockey coach wanted him to attend the team’s game tonight before playing in the next one. Without him nearby, I’m scanning for Rafette everywhere. I think I see him everywhere. Slipping around corners, walking through crowds. Even at school, turning down corridors, slinking into classrooms.

  And so, here I am, playing skull-splitting music to a room of people who mostly know my style well enough to forgive me and come back next week. Artie, the guy who does the lighting for all the sets, has set the room at pulsing red with stabbing spotlights on the dance floor. He’s doing his best to create a mood, but I’m not giving him much to work with.

  Tom, one of the bouncers, comes up to the side of the booth and motions to Deno. They talk for a moment, then Deno turns to me.

  “Trouble’s brewing in the parking lot,” he tells me. “Tom asks that you ease things up, Sparo. The testosterone runneth over.”

  I feel terrible about contributing to any issue the bouncers are having. Tom’s never interfered with a set before. Violence on any night is bad, but on all-ages night, with the place packed with teenagers, a fight would be disastrous.

  I bite my lip and switch up the tracks on the fly. Next up will be a chilled-out remix of a Lana Del Rey tune. A tricky little transition takes the beat from hard and driving to slower and melodic.

  The song is in line with Sparo’s usual vibe, but the abrupt shift in tone seems to throw the energy off even more. No one is moving, except toward the walls. I watch from behind my tinted glasses. The reason for the sudden shift becomes clear, and it’s not the music I’m playing. A young man is acting strangely. He pulls at his hair, muttering to himself. The patrons have gone tense, on edge. They move away from the man like a school of fish, instinctively sensing that he is volatile.

  He makes his way toward my booth, cutting a meandering, weaving path through the parting crowd. My pulse spikes. This has never happened before. Where the hell is Tom?

  All at once, the double doors burst open, and a knot of men explodes through. Tom and his fellow bouncer, Justin, are hard at work, trying to break up the fight, but there are more fighters than peacekeepers.

  Lacey is on her feet, hand curled around Deno’s forearm. He sends me a sharp look and slashes his hand in front of his throat: cut the set. I couldn’t agree more. With a flick of a few controls, the music abruptly shuts off, throwing The Strip Mall into silence. Artie hits the houselights, and the room goes white and bright.

  “Show’s over, folks,” I say. “Time for everyone to just chill.” But the tussle is still raging by the door, and that muttering guy is now right in front of the booth. I rear back as he flattens his hands on the mixers and leans forward.

  “It’s coming,” the guy rasps out. His eyes are wide and wild, the whites livid red. “Demons. Coming for all of us. A great wave will swallow us whole. You’ll see!”

  Deno shoves Lacey and me behind him and leans over the mixers toward the guy. Despite the fussy hair and glasses, Deno is quite a force when physically threatened. He stands over six feet tall, and despite never working out (that I know of), he’s a muscular dude. “Get lost,” Deno snarls.

  I can’t drag my gaze away from the advancing guy’s eyes, though. They’re vacant, lost to some unreachable place. On the side of his neck is a red welt that looks as if it’s been scratched at. It could be a beekeeper’s sting, but I’ve never seen anything like it—red, but with strange white striations radiating out from the center.

  Then the guy’s countenance changes completely at Deno’s order. His face twists in rage, and he swipes at Deno. “Did you hear me? We’re going to die. You, me, your girls there.” A demented smile spreads across his lips, which he licks. “Crack your bones and eat the marrow, snap your spines like broken arrows,” he sings, and I’m sure I’ve never heard anything more disturbing in my life.

  Even Deno looks unsure of what to do—he doesn’t want to be bitten by this guy. Luckily, Tom appears behind the man. He plucks up the raving guy and pins him to the floor where he can restrain him. Tom looks up, sweaty, with a fattening lip, and shrugs. “I better get a raise after tonight.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I had no idea—”

  “It wasn’t you.” Tom glances around with a grimace. “Something’s just…wrong these days. Been like this every night for the past four I’ve worked.” He rubs a hand over his jaw thoughtfully, and I’m amazed at how composed he is, after just breaking up a six-man bar fight. “Telling you—it’s because our water comes from that lake right next to the old mines. Not good, with all those heavy metals floating about. What are they—arsenic? Mercury? Makes people not right in the head.”

  I hadn’t heard of either of those things making people act like this. Deathly ill, yes. But I don’t need to be a doctor to know the water didn’t cause this. Suddenly, the danger Rafette poses to the community feels horribly real. Anyone could be stung. Anyone could be infected with this poison and turned into a dangerous, paranoid person. Even someone I love. “Thank you, Tom.”

  The police have arrived. I can’t run away from this one, though. Deno’s phone vibrates. He looks at the screen and turns to Lacey and me. “Let’s pack up and get out of here. Mel’s closing The Strip Mall for a couple of weeks.”

  “Weeks?” Lacey asks.

  Deno nods. “Seems Tom isn’t the only one who thinks something bad is going on in Cadence.” He shrugs. “Maybe there is something in the water.”

  14- the house next door

  School is canceled Monday. It snowed a few inches last night before turning to rain. Then the whole thing froze solid and turned the outside world slippery and crystalline.

  So, no bus stop. No Reece. Probably a good thing, since I’m still trying to work my head around harbingers of death and Beekeepers. Magic and reality. A hot boy who thinks I’m “adorable” and a possible impending apocalypse.

  I sigh over my breakfast choices, longing for Lucky Charms or something equally sugary and brightly colored. The decision goes on hold as my dad flies into the room, iPad in hand. He thrusts the thing at me. “Read this. I think the woman in the article is our neighbor.”

  Oh boy. My gaze falls to the news article that got Dad all worked up.

  Deadly Crash Kills Three

  By Kali Blake, Staff Writer

  A four-car pileup in Windsor County has left three dead and five injured. Two of the injured were brought to Fisher Memorial Hospital and are expected to recover. High speed and ice appear to have been factors.

  Crash survivor Lucia Fernandez, who was the sole occupant of her vehicle, told The Star Press that avoiding the jackknifed tractor trailer was not an option. “There was no escaping it,” said Fernandez, a forty-four-year-old resident of Cadence, who sustained a broken arm…

  I look up at my dad. Keep calm. “This Lucia Fernandez is the lady next door?”

  “It could be.” Dad perches on the stool next to me. “That’s about her age. I don’t see their vehicle in the driveway.”

  My stomach bottoms out as cold sweat covers my suddenly shivering skin. The sole occupant. So no one else was with her. Those sweet little kids, Paxton and Fiona, weren’t hurt. God, Reece wasn’t hurt, but he could have been. He told me once that death is never far behind him. He was not j
ust being dramatic—he meant it, literally.

  Dad pulls back the iPad with a determined look. “I’ve been meaning to go over and introduce myself in person. We’ve spoken on the phone, but this may be a good time to see if they need anything.” He glances at the clock. “It’s nearly ten a.m. Not too early to stop by, right?”

  My gaze falls to the other headlines on the screen. My heart jumps into my throat at the headlines alone:

  Two Dead in Unprovoked Attack

  Kent Taylor, forty-seven, a Cadence resident, attacked Mike Miller, the attendant at Cory’s Cleaners last night in Somerset. Police shot and killed Taylor after he attacked two officers, and Miller died while en route to the hospital. Taylor, a member of the school board and respected businessman, showed no previous signs of psychosis, and witnesses say the attack on Miller was completely unprovoked…

  Police Called to Popular Area Nightclub

  Police were called when a six-person fight broke out at The Strip Mall, an area nightclub popular with all ages. Another man, Andrew Pence, was taken to Somerset General Hospital after suffering a psychotic break and instigating the fight…

  Good thing my father didn’t finish reading the news. I’d be facing a hundred questions right now. And banned for life from The Strip Mall.

  “You’re right. We should go over there.” The words rush out, a little too fast.

  Dad stares at me in surprise, then nods. “Yeah. Okay. Let me get dressed and…” He narrows an eye. “By the way, is anything going on between you and that Reece kid?”

  Whoa. I freeze in the act of closing the web browser. “Going on how?”

  “Don’t even start,” he says mildly, brushing crumbs off his shirt. “You know what ‘going on’ means.”

  I grin, because he looks so darn uncomfortable. “The other night you seemed pleased that a boy came calling.”

  “The other night you didn’t seem so eager.” A flush creeps up his neck. “I’m not trying to be nosy. I just— I’m your father,” he says, because that explains it all.

  “He’s a neighbor. Maybe a friend,” I say. “I don’t know yet.”

  It’s all I’ve got. I don’t know what’s “going on” with Reece. And I won’t until he tells me the truth about himself.

  “Okay.” Dad’s shoulders relax. “I’ll go get ready. You put some boots on—real ones. Not those things you wear to school.”

  Right. Real boots. He means the sassy, zip-back number he bought me for Christmas last year. They’re white with pompons, but I’ll wear them.

  I reopen the iPad’s browser and scroll through the local news. The headlines alone make my skin crawl. Violent incidents are increasing in Somerset County, with Cadence appearing to be at the epicenter. The county jail is extraordinarily busy. So are all the area hospitals’ psychiatric units. Ordinary, everyday people are having full-blown psychotic episodes. There is a petition going around to have the drinking water tested again. The whole county gets water from Lake Serenity, which used to be a river that ran through the valley. It was dammed and a hydroelectric plant put in, but it borders Mount Serenity. Tom isn’t the only one worried that waste from the past mining activities may have contaminated the water.

  Test away. The water’s not causing it.

  Tucked very tiny, at the very bottom, in the “Our Environment” section, is an article on how the bee population seems to have come out of hibernation early this year. It’s one paragraph. No comments at the bottom. I doubt anyone has even read it.

  But there it is. The bees. That’s causing it, and no one would believe me if I told them. Not my dad. No one.

  We walk through the ice-encrusted snow, which breaks like thin glass under our feet. I wear the white boots. And the matching down ski jacket. Had to pull the tags off the jacket, but I must admit, it’s warm. My dad looks like a Macy’s ad in his black double-breasted cashmere coat, leather gloves, and Burberry scarf. So refined. In contrast, my mother was all long, wild hair with wilder eyes. Cigarettes and tattoos. Dad catches my expression and raises his brows.

  “What?” he asks.

  “I just don’t see it—you and Mom, that is.” I gulp down cold air. “You’re like, different species.”

  Dad tries to hide a smile. “Your mom and I met at a Lollapalooza concert. She was sitting up on some guy’s shoulders, arms in the air, blond hair everywhere. She was so beautiful. I was living on a friend’s front porch at the time. Unemployed, with a few bad habits I will never discuss with you.” He raises an eyebrow. “So you see, I wasn’t always so respectable. I caused Grams and Grampa many sleepless nights.”

  I can’t imagine him that way at all. “So what happened?”

  He smiles, full and wide. “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, thankfully. And the realization that sleeping on Egyptian cotton was preferable to my buddy’s nasty couch.”

  My tongue is heavy in my mouth. “But you lost her. She couldn’t do”—I sweep my hand back toward our house—“this.”

  Dad lifts up a pine branch for me as we pass from our lawn into the wooded buffer between our property and the neighbors’. “Your mom was a true free spirit. Too trusting. Selfish. Unstable. But not…destructive. That came later. I’ve spent too many nights wondering why we were always on again, off again and why she took that bad turn after you were born. It crept up on me, on her, and nothing could fix her. The drugs were more than an addiction. There was no way to separate her from them.” He spreads his hands, drops them. “The truth is I didn’t lose her. I never had her.” There is no sadness or reproach in his voice. Just fact.

  The words bump through me, scraping raw spots, touching secret, hidden bruises. “I never had her, either.”

  Dad puts an arm around my shoulders. “You have me.”

  I shove my hands under my armpits and force a grin. “Grams and Grampa are proud of you now.”

  His brows go up. “They said that?”

  “No,” I admit. “But they did say your car was pretentious.”

  “Hmm.” He scratches his chin. “That’s progress. Maybe I should trade it in for a new model. A red convertible.”

  “Grams would die,” I say with a giggle. We cross onto the Fernandez’s property laughing, but immediately sober as we step onto the wide driveway. No one has been outside yet today. The untouched snow glistens like a sheet of diamonds. My gaze catches on the unused doghouse in the backyard. Two crows perch on the peak, watching us in silence.

  “Been seeing more crows around lately,” he says. “This must be part of their migration or something.”

  Or something. I give the crows a knowing look before we slog up the steps to the front door. They are not just birds, but he wouldn’t believe that, either.

  Dad glances down with a grimace. “I should have brought the snow shovel. Could have at least dug out their steps for them.”

  I roll my eyes. “A teenage boy lives here who’s perfectly capable of such manual work.”

  The door opens at the first knock. The woman answering the door is so beautiful, so vibrant, Dad and I both back up a step. Her black hair flows in loose waves past her shoulders. Her figure is a curvy hourglass, and her smooth skin fairly glows. All I can think is, wow. I want to look like this when I’m, you know, old.

  Dad’s recovery is decent. After an initial fumble, he yanks off his glove and extends his hand. “Good morning. I’m Bradley Dovage, your next-door neighbor. We spoke on the phone. Once. About snow removal. And this is my daughter, Angelina.”

  Angelina? I don’t think he’s used my full name since telling the doctor to put it on my birth certificate. He must be nervous.

  The woman smiles. One of her arms is in a sling, but she shakes his hand with the other. My poor dad’s Adam’s apple rocks up and down.

  “Ah, it’s a pleasure to meet you at last.” Her lovely accent has an immediate effect on my father, who starts fidgeting with the fringe on his scarf. “I’m Lucia Fernandez, but please call me Lucy. Come i
n, come in. You’re just in time for breakfast.”

  “Breakfast?” My dad’s eyes go wide. “Oh no. We couldn’t. We just stopped by because we heard about the accident and—”

  Lucy smiles sadly. “My arm will heal, as arms do. I am blessed beyond words to be alive. Others in that accident were not so fortunate.” Her mouth turns down at the corners, before she opens the door wider and steps inside. “Today, we celebrate life. It’s easy to forget how precious it is. Come, come inside. My Brooke makes the best pancakes you will ever eat. And enough to feed an army.” You cannot refuse that kind of invitation. A celebration of life makes polite retreat impossible.

  My dad is no match for this woman. He goes right in like a corralled cow, but I’m not so easily herded. And I’m suddenly not so eager. Reece said it himself: death follows these people, and it’s soaked in the bones of this house. My mind draws up the images released to the media of blood-spattered floors and smeared handprints scrabbling for doorknobs. A crow on the roof above me lets out a noisy kraa. A wave of dizziness washes over me. My dad shoots me a pointed get in here look, so I drag myself inside.

  Lucy studies me with interest and knowledge. “Angelina—or do you prefer Angie? We have heard so much about you.” Her gaze lingers, assesses. I can’t imagine what Reece told her about me. Maybe she knows that I know they’re not quite what they seem.

  “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Fernandez,” I say. “I do prefer Angie.”

  Her smile is warm, lacking even the slightest threat or warning. “And I do prefer Lucy. Now, come inside. Before breakfast gets cold.”

  These people are not entirely human. I must try to remember this, even though standing in this house, hearing the sounds of a typical family, the thought is surreal. It’s difficult to feel menaced here. One look around and my nerves ease. What did I expect? A moldering house with peeling paint and graffitied walls? Not a chance. The sounds of living people pour through the walls. The smell of fresh paint mingles with coffee, maple syrup, and hot butter wafting from the kitchen. The two young children I met with Roger race past. Their footsteps pound down the hallway, until they spot us and stop abruptly.