Nightingale Songs

by Strantzas, Simon

  Downstairs, Jenn had not moved. Nor did she seem surprised by Doyle's reaction -- or otherwise she did not care.

  "Why did you want me to come home?" he asked. He was still wearing his overcoat, but it didn't seem the right time to remove it. He felt chilled.

  "I don't know," she said, though she slurred the words together with a shrug of her shoulders.

  "Did you -- was there something wrong? With Angella?"

  She spoke, but Doyle could not hear what she mumbled. He had to force her to repeat herself.

  "I said I haven't been up there in hours."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know. I just didn't want to see it."

  "See what?"

  She didn't answer and could not be coerced again. Instead, she continued to stare at her fingers, flexing and relaxing them over and over again. Doyle shook his head.

  "If you've seen something, Jenn, you should tell me. I've -- I think I've seen it too."

  "Seen what?"

  Doyle did not know how to explain it. He stalled as he tried to come up with the right words, but Jenn did not appear to be listening any longer. She did nothing but stare at her flexing fingers. Doyle's headache had returned, but worse.

  "There's something going on, Jenn, and I don't know what it is. Something's wrong with that nursery. You can't tell me you haven't felt it."

  She shrugged her shoulders again.

  "I should start making us dinner."

  She stood up but he put his hands on her arms to stop her, using all his strength to resist shaking her.

  "What's wrong with you? Why won't you tell me what you've seen?"

  She struggled free of his grip.

  "If you're not hungry," she said, "then I might as well try and take a nap."

  Doyle let her go, hoping sleep would do her some good. But when she was gone he started to question how comfortable he was sitting alone in the kitchen. He heard her footsteps overhead and shuddered.

  No matter how big the house, one can always tell when he or she is not alone. For Doyle, it was no different. Although there was no noise coming from upstairs beyond the occasional static crackle of the baby monitor, Doyle could feel the presence of both Angella and Jenn in the air, as though the rise and fall of their breathing bodies was enough to disturb the quiet. Doyle thought of all Jenn must be going through, at home all day like a prisoner, unable to do anything but care for their daughter, and he suspected she was having trouble adjusting. His paranoid delusions were doubtlessly adding fuel to the fire. He was just tired and falling victim to stress himself. What other explanation could there be for the waking nightmares he was facing? He vowed to not let his exhaustion undo him, for Jenn's sake if not his own.

  Still, when the sound of Angella's cries resumed an hour later, like an increasing whine, for a moment his body resisted the idea of climbing the stairs. It unnerved him more than he would have liked. And yet, when he finally visited his child, the strange dread was gone. Or, if not gone, then replaced by mere reluctance. It was obvious the room was just that -- a room -- and in the middle of it Angella was on her back and crying, her once smooth face wrinkled with a scowl. He lifted her from the crib and held her close to his chest and whispered sounds like rushing water. He looked down at her serene face pressed against him, and experienced an overwhelming flood of emotion. In his old hands was a person, a tiny person that was a part of him. It was so sublimely ridiculous that it could be true, and yet it was. It was exhausting, but it was the most beautiful pain he'd ever imagined. She really was his little angel, and he knew there was nothing he wouldn't do for her. As he rocked Angella in his arms, his broad smile nearly splitting his face, he glanced at the bathroom door across the room. It looked closed tight, and he put out of his mind the idea that he could see movement in the shadows beneath it.

  Hours later Doyle opened his eyes. Something had roused him in the near darkness. There was only a hint of sunlight left in the nursery, and he realized he'd fallen asleep watching his daughter. He was unusually exhausted, but with great effort he dragged himself to his feet and made his way to the bedroom, almost stumbling on the pile of the carpet. There was a mass of covers curled up on Jenn's side of the bed, and he got in behind her, digging her head out of the sheets so he could lightly stroke it. She let out a small moan, and he stretched over and kissed her forehead. The warmth of her skin lingered on his lips as he lay down beside her and closed his eyes. The baby monitor crackled and quietly whined, its effect on him soporific, and the sound like shuffling he heard seemed most likely to be part of the dream into which he was already falling.

  He awoke with a start later still. The bedroom was pitch black and silent, that horrible dread beginning again in the pit of his stomach. The digital clock on his bedside table flashed as though the power had gone out at some point, leaving him feeling lost in a midnight limbo. He looked at his wife and saw only the tangle of covers that were pulled over her head as she slept. Even with the shape of her back to him, he was glad she was there; the rasp of her breathing was reassuring, even when nothing else was. Something in the air was not quite right though he couldn't put into words what troubled him. He shivered, the room colder without the protection of covers, and as he lay still he heard the sound of dripping quietly echoing through the room, and the simple noise brought with it a tremendous anxiety that lay heavily on Doyle's chest. He felt he was being crushed. Unable to sleep, he slipped out of bed, careful not to wake Jenn. He entered the hallway, and then closed the bedroom door behind him, sealing her in. Or him out.

  The sound of water dripping continued, and his dread only increased. The hallway in the pale light began to focus as his surroundings had before, the little noises becoming bigger, everything else falling away. The dripping, it was the pounding of a drum, a rhythm that was calling Doyle forward like a fakir calling forth a cobra. Yet, despite the absence of all other noise, there was that silent thunderous drone, its volume getting louder as he approached the nursery. Doyle thought he heard mumbling though he wasn't sure, and when he turned the corner he was terrified by what he saw. There was nothing, nothing beyond that crib in an empty room and darkness that overflowed and spread outward in all directions, swallowing him in its rushing wave. He pushed against it, forced his way toward the tiny crib and his darling Angella. He lived in fear the wash would separate them, and every paternal instinct drove him to her side, to ensure she was safe. He was half-crazed when he reached the crib, cold sweat running down his back, his ears humming with horror, but even in the dim moonlight he saw what he most feared, what until then he had refused to contemplate for fear it would drive him over the edge. The crib was empty.

  He was drowning, unable to think straight from terror and dread and doubt. Doyle looked around in the suffocating darkness and saw a sliver of light he had not noticed before, a thin beam that crept from beneath the washroom door, the same door that he saw someone disappear behind hours earlier. A chill ran down his back, the realization of what those footsteps he'd heard for weeks might have been, though he refused to accept it. Yet what other answer could there be? He couldn't breathe, the thought filling his head until it pressed against the inside of his skull, desperately wanting to be birthed into the world, but he would not sire it. Every fiber of his body screamed at him to stay away from that door, from that sliver of light and that dripping, that horrible dripping, that had become like a thunderous pounding in his throbbing head. It was intent on twisting his thoughts but Angella, Doyle's little angel, was behind that door, taken from him by something he refused to name. That door, only a few feet away, might just as well have been thousands, but it had to be opened, and whatever lay beyond faced.

  The knob twisted far more easily than he'd expected, and when the door swung open his eyes were unprepared for the blinding light that would bathe him. His senses screamed in overloaded pain and the pounding and deep vibrating hum intensified exponentially. He grabbed his head in his hands and tried to shake it, shake loose those
sounds and images that had taken him hostage, tried to clear his mind while obliviously blubbering Angella's name repeatedly to ward off whatever horrors were attacking him. He smelled bleach, but it was a rotting smell that burned his sinuses, made his squinting eyes water. He pried them open despite the tears, enough to form slits though which he stared directly into the blinding light, as though it were a burning star. The world was blank and empty and painful, but as that pain began to recede and the darkness crept in, there seemed to be something more in the light, blemishes in the void. First, they were merely shapes, indescribable shapes like Rorschach blots, and he tried through his tears to blink them away. Slowly those shadows took on flesh, took on colors and patterns like those of bedclothes, then the stretch of limbs and legs, and still the thunderous pounding continued and the humming threatened to make his eardrums rupture. And the light dimmed further, revealing more in his blurred vision, and he reached out with his hands, grasping at nothing, trying to make sense of the incomprehensible sight before him. And yet, still, he did not yet understand. His throat was too dry, but he managed to choke out a single unanswerable question: "Jenn," he creaked. "When ... How?"

  But if she could speak, she did not. She sat on the lowered lid of the small toilet, her face twisted in a rictus of silent agony as tears streamed down her face, and in his bafflement Doyle tried to understand how those tears, those small insignificant tears, could make such a sound when they hit the floor that they should pound in his head. How could those tears hit so loud, and be so wet that his wife's thin shaking arms would be soaked to the elbow, the sleeves plastered and dark?

  "Jenn... what are you doing?"

  She did not stop crying, her eyes bruised black and swollen, her thin bloodless lips quivering in the cold that suddenly overtook him.

  "Jenn," he said. "What--"

  But Doyle knew. The small tub beside her had overflowed, spilling water over its edge and onto the floor, pooling around the claw-shaped feet. Such tiny feet. In the tub, trapped like an insect in amber, was an angel, an angel with a beatific smile and cherub features. A tiny angel that for all its beauty did not float. The sight brought him too to tears.

  And after that, there was nothing else.

  WHEN SORROWS COME

  I

  "Where did the sun go?" Liam asked, one hand resting lazily on the wheel, the other across the back of the seat beside him. "We had a good day until now."

  "I think it's going to rain," Marcia said as she watched the horizon through the passenger-side window subtly change from concrete to trees.

  Liam nodded, shifted his body, and exhaled through the side of his mouth. "What time are we supposed to meet again?"

  "Halley said they were going up early. We should call them when we get there."

  Liam didn't like to travel, and he found the whole idea of a weekend away tiresome. He kept it to himself, however, not wanting to spoil Marcia's day. She had been looking forward to it -- to reconnecting with old friends, to reliving some of her past -- and though it did not interest him in the least, he put up no fuss.

  She had been trapped by her schoolwork for over two years, and in that time she had lost contact with many of her closest friends. Holding down her office job during the day and spending her nights in a classroom was far too much work, and it devoured her free time. She saw Liam as often as she could manage, but, even though it left nothing for anybody else, it was not enough for him. Those friends that she had made over her life began to drift away, and she turned her focus more and more upon him. He took as much of her attention as he could -- for him, it was never going to be enough.

  Halley and Ken were all that were left of Marcia's friends. She and Halley had met at the beginning of secondary school, and had remained close ever since. Around her, Marcia seemed happier, livelier, almost a different person -- certainly different than the woman Liam saw at the end of each long day, drained by life and school, often short-fused and grumbling. Around Halley, her cheeks glowed, and her laugh -- that goose-like guffaw he fell so in love with -- became contagious. It consumed the world around her while he silently looked on.

  He was always the quiet one, and had been since the two of them met. At times, he felt as if he had trapped light in a bottle; she was everything he had ever dreamed he could want. Sometimes he woke beside her in disbelief. He would touch her face as she slept and marvel at how his hand, something so familiar and mundane, was upon a creature so perfect. He would have done anything to make her happy, even if it meant spending a long weekend with her friends.

  He had no strong dislike for Halley or Ken, but they were not people he would have befriended on his own. Ken was thick, loud, and his wife coolly dismissive of anything that did not interest her -- including Liam. He was not bothered terribly by the exclusion, but it made things awkward when the four of them were together. He did his best to remain polite, but his lack of interest did not escape Marcia's notice.

  "I hope you're going to try this weekend."

  "Relax, I will. Though, you know it's difficult for me."

  She sighed, and placed her fingers across her lips. "Yes," she said. "I know."

  The hotel was more of a series of cabins grouped around a central building in a rough semi-circle, all dwarfed by old and towering trees that surrounded them. Liam pulled into the small lot out front and parked close to the door. There were only a handful of other cars there, and they all looked rusty and uncared for in the oncoming dusk.

  "I guess it's not a popular place," he said.

  "Halley and Ken heard good things about it from someone."

  Liam had his doubts.

  Inside, the main building was not as bad as Liam feared. It was clean and well lit, at least, though it lacked modern luxuries like a television or even a radio. Instead, there were a few couches and digests nearby for reading. Liam checked the covers; they seemed older than the couches.

  Marcia rang the bell on the front desk, and she and Liam waited. It took two more rings until the desk agent emerged from around a corner, his eyes red and face pink and creased. The man looked bored, and, rubbing the back of his neck to his hairline, asked, "May I help you?"

  Marcia hesitated a moment, and looked at Liam. He stepped back. "We have a reservation," she said. "We're with another couple."

  "What name is it under, please?"

  She gave it to him.

  The man spun the book before him with a flick of his wrist, and the heavy volume stopped perfectly at his hands. "Hm . . . Yes, here it is. Your friends are in Cabin Twelve. You are in Cabin Fourteen. Directly opposite."

  "You're superstitious here, I guess." Liam smiled, but the desk agent was not amused.

  "Hardly. No one will stay in a place numbered thirteen." He took a set of keys from the board behind him and handed them to Marcia. "You'll need to leave the car where it is, but it's not a far walk to your cabin. Follow the blue trail outside the door. It will take you where you need to go."

  They thanked him and returned to the car to retrieve their weekend bags from the trunk.

  "Can you smell that?" Liam asked. Marcia looked at him, but said nothing. "It smells like fresh air." He inhaled deeply. "God, it's just amazing."

  "We should go. It's going to be dark soon and Halley and Ken are waiting for us."

  The blue trail turned out to be more of a scattering of colored stones -- each about the size of Liam's fist -- and it was surprisingly easy to see in the disappearing light. There were other colors mixed into the gravel path, but they soon formed their own trails that split off into a separate direction and snaked between rows of cabins. Eventually, only the blue path remained.

  If not for those colored rocks, Liam felt he and Marcia would have become lost. The layout of the cabins appeared even more complex from inside the cluster of buildings, as though it was a labyrinth of dead ends. The path seemed too long, and though Marcia was quiet, he could feel her frustration. He wondered whether they had somehow made a wrong turn, when the track
curved around a large tree and into a narrow corridor of cabins.

  Of the group, only one showed any sign of life, and Marcia's whole body snapped up when she saw it.

  "Halley and Ken must be over there."

  "Give me your bag. I'll drop off our stuff while you go and say hello."

  "Don't you want my help?"

  "It's okay. Go see them. I'll be over in a minute."

  Marcia slid her bag off her shoulder and handed both it and the key to Liam. They walked in opposite directions, and when he reached the door of their cabin he turned to see Marcia at the other, knocking. The door in front of her swung slowly open, though by whose hand he couldn't tell, and she stepped inside the other cabin. The door shut firmly behind her.

  Liam realized, once he had successfully juggled the key into the lock, that his and Marcia's cabin looked as it did in the photographs on the internet, except it was half the size. Everything was pushed together, which gave the room the illusion of being a confined space. He put the bags down by the door and looked around, not wanting to go over to the other cabin just yet. He needed a moment to himself before he saw Halley and Ken. He would be spending the next three days with them, locked in strained conversation, and he saw no reason to prolong it.

  Wide planks of unfinished wood formed the walls of the cabin, and the rough grain made them look frayed. Only the barest of items accessorized the room: a painting of a bluff, its rocky side dotted with autumn trees, hung on the far wall; a small vase, filled with flowers that only looked real sat upon a small table; and, at the back of the room, there was a door leading to a small bedroom.