Nightingale Songs

by Strantzas, Simon

  "What's it mean?" I asked, but he only shrugged.

  "I need to get inside."

  The cloud of dark butterflies passed over us, and its shadow distracted me, but only for a second. When I looked down, Mitch was no longer beside me. Instead, he was over ten feet away, lying at the front door of the bungalow house. His whole body was shaking with spasms. I screamed his name and ran up to him, but I couldn't stop his body from jumping. His eyes were bloodshot and white, rolled back into his head, and his skin was covered with boils as though he were burning alive. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't think over the sound of his teeth chattering. I started banging on the door of the house, banging and screaming for that girl to open up, but no one answered, no matter how hard I hit it or screamed. The butterflies in the trees around us leapt at the first sound of my pleas, and they were flying wildly overhead and around the house, swirling and twisting in a frenzy, though they didn't make any sound.

  I ran back to the window Mitch and I had been staring in, the window in which I first saw the young girl, and began to knock wildly. I saw a flicker of movement inside, of someone young in a frilly dress, and I knocked harder. She looked at me as though she were a trapped animal, and then she came to the window, shaking her head with terror.

  "You have to open the door!" I screamed. "You need to call a doctor!"

  She shook her head vigorously, waving her arms madly. I could see reflected in the window the small sharp shadows of butterflies swarming behind me. I refused to give in.

  "Open the door! I need help! He's gong to die!"

  But she wouldn't stop shaking her head.

  I went crazy. I don't know how else to explain it. I was so frantic, so desperate, that I was no longer myself. I stood back from the window and looked at Mitch, who had stopped moving, and all I clearly remember is the world turning into a fog of red. I remember the feeling of the blood leaving my face, and dizzily picking a large rock out of the unkempt garden. The girl jumped back from the window, crying noiselessly. With all my might I threw the rock, and thousands of pieces of glass sprayed out, sprayed like tiny slivers of light, and with the shatter came a noise like air filling a void, an awful whoosh of something moving in. Within a second, all the dark insects that had been swarming overhead were rushing through the hole into the house, the stream of them going on and on while I did nothing. Inside, there were screams even louder than my own, and it sounded as though everything was being thrown into the walls.

  There was a sudden crashing noise, and then, to my right, the front door of the house flung open. Through it an old woman came running, swatting at the things circling her head. Then she saw me and began to seethe, her eyes filled with the most awful hatred.

  "What have you done? What have you done?"

  She came at me on her frail legs, and her uncontrollable anger must have blinded her because she stepped right into Mitch's motionless body and fell forward. I saw her face for only an instant as she went down, and the look of disbelief and horror there has become permanently etched into my memory. Then, her head drove into the ground with a dull crack, and she did nothing any longer.

  The dark cloud of butterflies emerged from the house and in a flurry descended upon her. They swarmed over the ground for only a few seconds, but when they dispersed the old woman's body was gone. Only Mitch remained. I ran towards him and shook him, looking for any sign of life. He had turned horribly pale and his body was cool. I looked to the sky but there was nothing there, nothing but daylight. Then, from far behind me, I heard another horrible scream, and I turned to see my mother, newly returned home, running towards me and the body of my best friend. She moved so slowly that I wasn't sure she would ever reach us. It was only then that I started to cry.

  As you can imagine, things were weird for us after that. Mitch's mother had trouble accepting her son had left home on his own. She wanted to believe I had somehow coerced him to leave his protected cocoon and go out into the world. I'd like to think she knew the truth, but she couldn't deal with it. Instead, she needed someone to blame, and I was the only option. I can understand that now, but at the time I couldn't process it. No one believed my stories about the girl I saw inside the house, or the woman who left it, because traces of neither could be found. I was still there when one of the neighbors searched the house, and other than some old dusty furniture and the rock I'd thrown inside, the place was empty. No one ever offered an explanation as to how I'd managed to unlock the door, but I suspect that was chalked up to a mistake by a previous visitor; perhaps a Real Estate broker. And, of course, I never mentioned the things I saw attack the old woman, or that when they left I saw, for a fleeting instant, the outline of her body in an empty space within the swarm.

  My mother stood by me when things were toughest, when I couldn't stop crying, but it proved too much for us to stay in the neighborhood after what had happened and before the year was out we had moved to another part of the city where we could start again.

  I still think about Mitch, even all these years later, and about the house I lived across from for eleven years but never really knew. Sometimes I think I know just what happened there, that if I could have found a way to get Mitch inside it he'd still be there today, ready to play the games we once played. Maybe the answer to everyone's problems was staring us right in the face, and though we were all too blind to see it, I was the only one foolish enough to ruin it. Or, perhaps there are some things that will come for you no matter what you do, no matter where you hide. Some things are inevitable, and you can only hide from them for so long. Eventually they'll find you.

  Then again, maybe it was all nothing. Perhaps the events were fabrications of an eleven-year-old mind, incapable of accepting both the loss of his father and the death of his friend. I’m not sure, but sometimes, when I hold back my curtain and look through the window, I see the shadows of butterflies flitting from flower to flower, and a chill runs through me. I can feel them watching me patiently, waiting for the curtain to finally drop.

  HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER

  She was going to die there by the side of the unlit road, a road so black that time threatened to disappear into its fathoms. At least, that was how it felt as Claire shivered in the front seat, the heater still broken from the previous winter, and looked out at the darkness of unfamiliar farmland.

  The roadwork being done on the highway -- the laying down of a new asphalt layer to conceal the old -- had been too great an impediment to Claire's return homeward from school, and in her wisdom she chose to take a short cut she'd only travelled once before. It made sense at the time, and continued to do so as the paved roads near the campus slowly became unfinished, and the lamps that peppered their sides grew increasingly farther apart before disappearing altogether. She hadn't been fully aware of it, but her trip westbound became an excursion into the void of night, and for the first time in some time she didn't welcome her father's voice in her head relating horror stories about lone women travellers. Had they only followed their own fathers' advice . . . Claire shook her head and laughed to reassure herself things would be fine. It was only when the car sputtered and came to a stop that she realized she was wrong.

  At first, she did not dare leave the safe confines of her automobile. The starless night enveloped her in darkness, and the residual heat from the engine was enough to keep her warm. She retrieved her small cellular telephone from the depths of her school bag and dialed the first number she could think of. Pale blue numbers lit up the LED display, then were replaced with the word "Dad" drawn from her address book. The display promptly flickered as the speaker trilled, but there was no answer. She ended the call and tried the next number on her list, then the next, until all her friends and family had their telephones ring at least once. And yet, no one answered. She paused, looked at the pale blue text at the bottom of her telephone's address book, and marveled at her misfortune. She laughed, but it was dry and rough and the sound scratched the inside of her mouth, but it kept her from scream
ing.

  With only the crackling stereo for company it occurred to Claire that plotting a course away from the highway had been ill-thought at best. Her father would not be pleased to hear how poorly she'd planned her trip; since her mother's passing he'd become increasingly protective, insisting she always be prepared, and she suspected it was against that preparedness that she was rebelling. Nevertheless, in her glovebox he had placed a folded map in case of emergency, and she withdrew it and studied its lines under the small lamp glowing from her rearview mirror. Yet the legend seemed unnecessarily confusing, and the orange light desaturated the colors until the lines tangled and blurred together. Claire tried to see past the front windscreen but saw only her face reflected in the glass. The image wavered, as though it were her spirit staring back with tired and desperate eyes. Claire turned off the map-light and let the car succumb once more to the dark.

  Outside the windows she saw but one light, a tiny square cut in the black muslin sky. It was impossible to gauge just how far away it was, but by its shape she knew it was a window, and by its size one that was not too far away -- within walking distance, at least. She heard her father's warnings once again and tried to push them from her mind. There was little choice but to walk to the farmhouse for help and trust that the darkness would hide her as ably as it might a predator.

  In the chill she hurried towards the small rectangle of light, her footsteps the only sound in the air, but as she drew nearer it fell back as though it had no fixed point on the landscape. It was impossible; the effect was some trick of perspective. Still she worried the light might be extinguished before she found its source. She quickened her pace, and somewhere in the void a dog began to bark. The noise was terrifying. What followed soon behind was a deep rumbling that threatened to rip the world open. It grew, and the asphalt beneath Claire's feet began to vibrate. She looked ahead to see what approached, but there was nothing on the road. The air shook as she stared into the darkness as whatever approached was barreling closer. A wave of cold air passed over her, followed by a high-pitched whine, and instinctively she hunkered down with her arms over her head and closed her eyelids tight. She willed whatever was coming to pass her by, all the while silently mouthing her father's name as if it would invoke him. Whatever it was it arrived with a roar -- the stench of burning gasoline filling her lungs -- and she felt certain her heart would stop. Instead, the noise immediately began to recede, leaving her coughing, stars filling her newly opened eyes. But they lasted for only a moment, and when they were gone she saw nothing but darkness once again. Then, she heard the crash.

  Metal scraped against metal, bending and warping; glass shattered and rained down upon the ground; the horrible noises of something being destroyed in the blind darkness. Claire's body grew cold as she realized things had taken a terrible turn, but as the echoes of the crash faded, leaving only the sound of blood pumping in her ears, she felt something in the cold air, as though a presence stood nearby watching her, but when she inspected the darkness there was no one. All she saw were hints of moonlight reflecting oddly off the surface of her car.

  She couldn't initially pinpoint the problem; all she knew was something was amiss. The vehicle looked wrong to her, as though her mind could not process what she was witnessing. She backtracked, returning to her car slowly, trying to force it into the mold she had for it in her mind, but it was not until she placed her hand upon the hood that the entire image wavered and slipped into place. She recoiled as though she had touched something dead.

  The car was mangled beyond repair. Her father would not react well to the news, regardless of whether or not she'd been near the accident. She could barely look at the wreck herself; the level of damage frightened her.

  Without realizing it, Claire still held her small cellular telephone in her hand, its pale blue light pulsing gently to indicate its charge was nearly depleted. Yet her power cord was trapped inside the car's remains, impossible to reach beneath so much crushed metal. Claire did not know how much longer the charge to her battery would last -- a few minutes? Hours, perhaps? But when it finally depleted she would be left stranded in the darkness without shelter, without hope. There was no sign of life around her, nothing but the dark and that tiny rectangle illuminated in the distance. With no alternative, she began walking towards it with the knowledge that she could let nothing stop her from reaching her goal. Not even the long wire fence that appeared from out of nowhere to block her path.

  Beyond the fence she could see a farmhouse, the lone window illuminated in its second story. She walked along the wire, looking for some break through which she could climb, but instead discovered a gate already swung open and an asphalt driveway that led onward. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, the night growing colder, and trudged toward the light that beckoned her.

  She travelled the length of the unkempt driveway, doing what she could to avoid the obstacles that both nature and neglect had put before her. In the dark she found it difficult to determine what was simply fallen debris and what was a growing crack in the ground underfoot. At one point she felt a chilling fear when she saw a dark figure curled like a killer ready to pounce, only to realize it was a drift of dried fallen leaves, blown into shape by the cold wind. The air carried winter's first chill, and it wheezed from Claire's lungs to hang a fraction too long before her eyes -- like fleeting wisps of her soul escaping. She worried she might never reach the house, condemned to forever walk the long driveway's nightmare landscape, and stopped to look back at how far she had travelled. The road behind her was lost beyond the veil of darkness; her car slowly devoured by the void where Claire could not follow. Ahead was no better: the rectangle of light wavering like a dying star. She continued onward, the narrow stretch of pavement threatening to fade into the inky darkness like an apparition, when without warning the curtain of night was ripped back and there before her Claire found the farmhouse. It stood twice the size of her father's home, wooden slats providing the walls with shape and support. The house's three stories loomed over Claire, eclipsing anything beyond. The wind cut into her where she stood wondering if it was all some figment of her exhausted imagination. The house seemed torn from a book or film -- its angles bent, its windows off center. In the face of that imposing structure Claire realized the tiny prefabricated home she had grown up in -- the same home in which her father would be worrying after her -- had been her prison; a prison with walls which until then she had never before been aware.

  There was no bulb over the door, nothing that might indicate anyone was home except for the lit window above her. She approached the door and knocked, the sound deep and resonant like an echo in an empty cavern. She shivered, waiting for a response, and then stepped back to get a better look at the window above. She hoped for some movement, some semblance of life beyond the sheer curtains, and thought she saw the briefest shadow pass across it, but could not be sure she could trust her tired eyes. As she stared, trying to will something more to happen, she heard the quiet strains of a piano beneath the wind wrapping around the house. Her eyelids became heavy and began to flutter; it was as though the warmth of a dream were washing over her, carried by those notes that floated down from the lit window. She had never heard anything so beautiful, but when it was done her eyelids snapped open and the cold returned. She rapped her frigid knuckles on the door again and heard the music instantly vanish. Mournfully, she waited.

  There was a quiet click amid howls of wind, and though she could not be sure Claire thought she saw the dark gap of the door cracked open.

  "Yes?" The voice was old and careful and Claire worried she had somehow drawn the woman from bed.

  "I'm really sorry to bother you, but there's been an accident and I was hoping--"

  "How on earth did you get past the gate?"

  "The gate?" Claire was confused. "It was open. I hope you don't mind but my f--"

  "Do we mind, Eloise?" the woman said, and Claire heard a shuffling noise that disturbed her come from t
he dark house. The voice repeated itself, and she did not realize there was another person inside until she heard that voice ask, "What does she want?"

  "I just need to borrow the phone," Claire offered, not bothering to disguise the hope in her voice.

  "She needs to borrow the telephone."

  "I need my father to pick me up."

  "Her father was supposed to pick her up."

  "Not exactly," she mumbled, but her words were obscured by the wind. The other voice, Eloise's voice, did not seem to have heard her at least. Instead, it said, "Let her in, Doreen."

  There was a heavy exhale, or perhaps the sound of the nighttime wind against the house, and in the darkness the door closed, leaving Claire nonplussed. She held her breath as she listened to the sound of locks being turned, and when the door finally swung wide, all it revealed was a rectangle of deeper darkness.

  "Please, come in."

  Claire had barely set foot inside the darkness before a lamp was lit, throwing the shadows of her and Doreen against the walls behind them. There they remained, hovering over the two women like spirits. In the light, Doreen looked much as Claire had imagined her: grey hair tied up from her face in a makeshift bun, strands pulled free and dangling above soft features. The woman appeared uncomfortable in her clothing, nervously adjusting them as Claire's eyes were drawn to the series of paintings that ran around the room. All were of the same subjects: two young girls and an older bearded man, all in some idyllic lakeside setting. In the middle of the room stood Doreen, her smile crooked and full of warmth.

  "Let me take your jacket for you."

  "It's okay," Claire said, discreetly clutching it closer. "After I use the phone I should get going."

  "Out there?" she said. "Well, let's see what Eloise has to say before we go making any plans. She doesn't like it when people go out." Doreen laughed a strange titter though Claire did not completely understand the joke. Her mind was distracted by an incongruity, though it took some time to narrow down. On the wall behind Doreen was an empty space without a painting. All that hung there was a bent nail.