On Blackened Wings

by Michelle Ann King

  ***

  Inside, the pub was just how she’d imagined—chunky tables and tall stools, a few leather sofas, booths around the sides. Rough painted plaster and a curved bar in polished wood, rows of bottles lined up on mirrored shelves. Chalkboards still listed the restaurant’s specials: Grilled trout with almonds, Steak au Poivre. Pecan brownies.

  Julian stood behind the bar, a glass of clear liquid in his hand. ‘Want a drink?’

  The taste in Dionne’s mouth was sharp and metallic. She slid onto one of the stools. ‘Scotch.’

  Julian poured a generous measure. ‘What are we doing, Dionne?’

  A good question. Or bad, depending on your perspective. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Moving. Keeping going. Staying alive.’

  ‘Is that enough?’

  Another bad question. ‘It has to be.’

  She picked up her glass, watched the tawny liquid roll from side to side. Looked at Julian. A good man, really. Just scared. And they were all scared.

  ‘That Ben,’ he said, and stopped.

  ‘He’s saved our lives, Julian. More than once.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe we’ve just been lucky. But he’s...’ He trailed off, looked away.

  ‘What? Different?’

  Julian tapped out an uneven rhythm on the bar’s surface. ‘I’ve got Lucas to think of, that’s all I’m saying. I’ve got to look out for my son.’

  ‘I know. But we’ve all got to look out for each other, now.’

  The words, spoken without thinking, tasted as sour as the alcohol. She glanced at the door, but Rachel and Ben didn’t come in.

  Sin eater. Scapegoat. Sacrifice. Weren’t they better than that? Even now, weren’t they better?

  Yes. They were. They had to be.

  She drained her glass, slammed it down and went back out to the car park.

  Rachel was still standing by the van, the box at her feet.

  ‘Okay,’ Dionne said. ‘Let me try it. Quickly, before I change my mind. What do I have to do?’

  ‘It just takes contact. Touch it, that’s all.’

  Dionne reached inside the box without looking, without stopping to think. Her hands plunged into the tangle of wires and metal. And softer parts.

  Fluid, dark and viscous, burned her skin where it dripped. There was a sense of pressure, of something coiling around her wrist. Around her mind. Hollowness in her stomach, lights behind her eyes.

  The world inverted, blanked out and reappeared in a riot of colour. Shades and folds, layering and overlapping. Solid and dense, open and empty. A faint buzzing at the edge of her hearing, the sense of a vast hive mind. Alien. Wrong. Beautiful.

  She pulled her hands out and stepped back, dizziness threatening to put her down.

  Ben put a hand on her arm, steadying her. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and hoped it was true. She tasted ash and smoke, and spat on the concrete. ‘That’s what it’s like, for you? All the time?’

  She looked into those flat, opaque eyes and saw understanding. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘How do you stand it?’

  ‘You learn.’

  She shivered, then swayed as her vision greyed and fuzzed.

  She woke fully dressed, lying on a bed in a tiny, cramped room with a sloping ceiling. She felt unrested, haunted by dreams—memories?—of dark open spaces and blue fire.

  Outside, the others were already waiting. Julian was loading up his car while Lucas kicked a football against the fence. It rebounded and rolled towards Dionne. She kicked it back and Lucas flicked out his foot, bringing it under control. He grinned, and she smiled back. Was it hardest for the kids, or easiest?

  ‘There’s a garage about half a mile down the road,’ Rachel said. ‘We should fill up before we leave.’

  Julian watched Lucas playing. ‘It’ll run out, eventually,’ he said. ‘The petrol. You know that, don’t you? We can’t keep driving forever.’

  ‘We’ll work it out,’ Dionne said. Hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

  ‘Will we?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ben said. ‘We will.’ He put his hand on the van’s bonnet, and it roared into life.

  For a long moment, there was no sound other than the rumble of the engine. Lucas tucked his ball under his arm and looked up at Ben.

  ‘That was cool,’ he said. ‘How did you do that?’

  Julian stepped in front of him. ‘Go back inside, Lucas.’

  ‘But Dad—’

  ‘I said go, Lucas. Now.’

  The boy grumbled, but did as he was told.

  Julian nodded at the van, still idling. ‘Are you going to answer the question? How did you do that, Ben?’

  ‘We have to adapt,’ Ben said. ‘We have to learn.’

  ‘And what is it, that you’re learning? How to be like them? How to become one of them?’

  Dionne raised her hands, palms outward. ‘Julian, come on.’

  He rounded on her. ‘Come on, what? You saw what he just did. Is that normal?’

  ‘What’s normal, Julian? What does that word even mean, now?’

  Julian shook his head. ‘You can’t be telling me that you—’ He broke off. ‘Dionne, what’s the matter? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dionne said. Had she heard something? The choking, ashy taste was back in her throat. She looked at the sky.

  Ben echoed her movement, cocking his head. ‘They’re coming,’ he said.

  Rachel’s hand went to her throat. ‘The bats? Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Okay, we have to go,’ Dionne said. ‘Julian, get Lucas. I’ll tell the others.’

  Julian’s face paled, but he didn’t move. ‘How do we know we can trust him?’ He also looked up at the sky, empty and quiet. ‘He could be leading us straight to them.’

  Rachel curled her lip. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she said, and threw her bags in the back of the van. ‘We’re getting out of here before they come. You can do what you want.’

  Dionne put her hand on Julian’s arm. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘They’re coming. If you don’t trust Ben, then trust me. Get your boy. We have to go, right now.’

  She left him, ran without looking back. Reached the pub, threw the doors wide and screamed out the alarm. Hammered on doors, yelled out a roll-call of names. Held down panic by force of will. By necessity.

  People fled their rooms, eyes glazed but movements quick and efficient—the desperate resignation of a familiar nightmare.

  The evacuation was complete in under five minutes, car doors slammed and engines running. Hot, metallic-tasting air leaked through the windows as Dionne drove, and the sky darkened to a sepia brown. The colour of old blood.

  In the rear-view mirror, the Willow Tree began to crumble. The chimney wavered and toppled, shattering into rubble. The roof slid down, a slow motion avalanche of slate and dust. In total, eerie silence, the building melted into ruin.

  The air sharpened, smelled like ozone. Through the ringing in Dionne’s ears, a resonant, shrieking cry. Another. A hundred. A thousand.

  Dionne slammed her foot on the accelerator and the van lurched forward. The numbers on the dashboard clock ticked over in a dizzying blur. A huge oak tree at the side of the road blackened and died, fell slowly and silently backwards. Dionne screamed, her head full of wings.

  The harsh blare of a horn penetrated the noise, and Rachel’s van pulled in front of her. Dionne focused on its lights, kept her foot down and followed it through the churning air.

  The road disappeared at some point, but the ground stayed firm under her wheels. They drove through fog that gleamed with a yellowish light, straight through diseased-looking trees and mossy walls that melted away like ghosts.

  Dionne’s arms shook and her eyes stung, but she kept driving. Kept following Rachel. Following Ben.

  After a while—it could have been minutes, it could have been years—the world outside solidified and settled. Became urban. A recognisable landsc
ape, if a broken one.

  Many of the roads they came across were impassable, but they managed to manoeuvre into a residential street lined with tall, four-storey houses that looked mostly intact. Dionne stopped the van, got out and sat on the kerb. She put her head between her knees until the pounding in her temples slowed down and the nausea receded.

  Julian helped Lucas out of the car. ‘Are we safe here?’ he said.

  Dionne was too exhausted to tell if it was concern or sarcasm in his voice. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t even know what that word means any more.’

  ‘We will be,’ Ben said. He had his arm around his sister, who looked pale and sick.

  ‘Is everyone okay?’ she said.

  ‘I think so,’ Dionne said. ‘How about you? How do you feel?’

  ‘Drained. My head hurts. Business as usual, really.’ She gave them a weak smile.

  Dionne helped them carry the bags inside the nearest house. The furnishings looked expensive but old fashioned—dressers and writing desks and a giant claw-footed bath tub. Mottled wallpaper and grey, swirling oil paintings of storms and warships. Stains that could have been memories of mould, or rust. Or blood.

  Claustrophobia quickly drove her outside again. Already, darkness was falling. It seemed as if the nights were twice as long as the days, now. Sunlight was something from a dream.

  Julian was leaning against his car, a cigarette clamped between two fingers.

  ‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I gave up a long time ago. When Lucas was born.’ He held the cigarette up in front of his eyes, turning it from one side to the other. ‘But it hardly seems to matter now, does it? I don’t think it’s going to be lung cancer that kills us.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk like that,’ Dionne said. But she took the cigarette when he offered it, and inhaled deeply.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For the way I am, sometimes. I ought to be thanking you, I know you’re doing your best. Everyone is, I know that. Even—’ he jerked his head at the house behind her. ‘Him. Even if he does scare me shitless.’

  He took another drag on the cigarette. ‘It’s Lucas, that’s the thing. I worry about Lucas, all the time. I worry about how I’m going to look after him, when I don’t understand what’s happened to us, or how the world works, now. I don’t understand anything, any more. We’re just scrabbling around in the dark, here. What are we supposed to do, Dionne? What are we supposed to do?’

  Without waiting for an answer, he dropped the cigarette on the floor, trod on it and went back inside.

  Dionne watched the sky. Heavy clouds obscured the moon, but there was no rain. She couldn’t remember the last time there had been.

  She opened the back door of Rachel’s van, got in and closed the door behind her. The toolbox sat on a pile of rags, pushed up against the side. She sat back on her heels and looked at it.

  What do you do, when you don’t understand? You learn.

  Dionne flipped open the lid and reached inside. Something fluttered against her hand and the familiar sick churning hit hard. The inside of the van lit up, agonisingly bright. She screwed her eyes shut, but the blaze refused to dim. The metal walls fell away, became transparent. The houses beyond were just as ghostly, walls thin and insubstantial. Wavering lines and incorporeal shapes.

  And beyond them, that constant, rolling wave of noise. A vast presence, fractured but coherent. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

  Hot tears scalded her cheeks and sounds brushed at the back of her mind, a symphony of whispers from things that had no voices. She fought the way they burned, and listened.

  Listened, heard. Understood.

  Dionne opened her eyes, wrenched her hands out of the box and scrambled from the van. She fell into the road, scraping and grazing her skin, but felt nothing. Her head was still buzzing.

  Panting, she got to her feet and ran for the house. Rachel was asleep on the sofa, Ben standing by the window.

  ‘There are bats here,’ she said.

  He didn’t turn round. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew. You knew, and yet you brought us here.’ She grabbed his shoulder, made him face her. ‘You said it was clean, Ben.’

  ‘No. I said we’d be safe.’

  ‘Is there supposed to be a difference?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Rachel stirred, lifted herself up. ‘Dionne? What’s happening?’

  ‘Bats. Here.’

  Rachel shot into wakefulness, sitting up and swinging her legs onto the floor. ‘Oh, God. Then we have to go.’

  Dionne reached out to help her stand. ‘Yes.’

  ‘No,’ said Ben.

  Dionne whirled on him. ‘I told the others they were wrong, Ben. They’re scared of you, they don’t trust you, but I defended you. I swore you were on our side. But you brought us right to where they are. Why would you do that? Why?’

  Rachel looked up at her brother, frowning. ‘Ben?’

  ‘Because they’re everywhere,’ he said. He looked at Dionne. ‘You understand that now, don’t you? You felt them. Julian was right, back at the village. We can’t keep running. There’s nowhere left to run to.’

  Dionne curled her hands into fists. ‘Then what? What do you want us to do, Ben? Give up?’

  ‘No. Fight.’

  Dionne laughed, and had to work hard to stop it spiralling away from her into hysteria. ‘How the hell are we supposed to do that?’

  Ben stepped forward and grabbed both her wrists. Where their skin touched, light flared. He raised her hands in his, and blue flame rose up from them. ‘You know how,’ he said.

  The silence spun out, gained a power of its own. Then Rachel said, ‘For God’s sake, you’re going to set the place on fire,’ and the moment was broken.

  Dionne pulled away and they stamped out the smouldering patches on the floor.

  ‘So,’ Rachel said, when the fire was out. ‘Would anyone like to explain what just happened?’

  ‘I wish I could,’ Dionne said, staring at her hands. They were unmarked.

  ‘They’re strong because they’re together,’ Ben said. ‘We can be, too.’

  Rachel stared at him. It was an expression Dionne had seen many times on the others' faces, but never on Rachel's. She watched the girl fight it. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘What we made is more than just a window,’ he said. ‘It’s a conduit. It means we can do more than just find them—we can join with them.’

  ‘And why in God’s name would we want to do that?’

  Ben knelt down beside his sister and took her hand. Dionne saw the effort it took Rachel not to flinch.

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ he said. ‘This is our chance.’

  ‘To do what, Ben?’

  ‘How many times have you said that things have changed? This is their world, now. If we still want to live in it, then we have to change too. All of us.’

  A loud, protracted shriek ripped through the air, and for a long moment Dionne didn’t understand that it wasn’t just in her head. Then Julian appeared in the doorway, his eyes wild.

  ‘Bats,’ he screamed.

  ‘Come on,’ Ben said, and ran outside. Rachel shot Dionne a terrified look, but followed.

  A hot, rank wave of air rolled over them. Rachel gagged and stumbled, but Ben pushed her towards the van. ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Quickly.’

  The shrieking began to break up, lose its cohesion. It became higher, more discordant. Julian grabbed Lucas and threw him on the ground, covering the boy with his own body. Dionne’s ears were ringing, her sense of direction gone—but then she realised the sound was coming not from overhead but from ground level. From close by.

  Ben stood in the middle of the road, his head thrown back and his mouth open wide. The shriek of the bats ripped out from his throat and spiralled upwards.

  He looked at Dionne, and said, ‘Help me.’ Not in words, not out loud. But she heard.


  She struggled to his side and grabbed his hand. Opened her mind and her throat. Lent her voice to his.

  Then Rachel was with them, on her knees, one hand plunged inside the metal box and the other reaching out. Dionne seized her wrist, held on tight.

  Rachel screamed, a human sound that gradually thinned, became harsher. Her eyes darkened and her mouth stretched wide.

  Somewhere behind them Julian’s voice formed a counterpoint, stumbling and hitching but repetitive, a rhythm Dionne eventually recognised as prayer.

  Above, the black air exploded into flame. The bats’ blue fire, which she’d seen scorch the earth so many times, now raked across the sky. Their shriek was answered, doubled, tripled, fractured into a thousand dissonant echoes. The ground shook under her feet, as if trying to tear itself apart.

  Then it was over and there was only silence, and Dionne cried out with the shock of it. The sudden absence was like vertigo, like falling, like the end of the world. Her vision was strobing, flashes of black and blue. Fire fell like rain, and she curled into a ball and put her hands over her head. Cried like a child.

  A hand slid under her arm, helped her to her feet. Rachel.

  ‘They’re gone,’ she said. ‘It’s over.’

  Dionne’s knees buckled, but Rachel caught her and kept her upright. She looked around, saw the same shell-shocked expression on a lot of faces.

  Julian was still crushing Lucas to his body, although the boy was doing his best to squirm free. ‘What did you do?’ Julian said. ‘What the hell did you just do?’

  Rachel answered. The inside of her mouth was black. ‘We didn’t run,’ she said.

  Lucas finally struggled out of Julian’s grip and ran to Dionne. ‘Your eyes,’ he said, reaching up to her. ‘Can you still see?’

  She squatted in front of him and let him touch her face. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘I can see. I can see so much.’

  Julian stared into the sky, his head whipping around in all directions. ‘Are they gone?’

  ‘For now,’ Ben said. ‘And when there are enough of us, for good. They have enough territory of their own. They won’t fight for this.’

  ‘So are we going to stay here?’ Lucas said. ‘Is this where we live, now?’ He craned his head back around to look at Julian. ‘Dad? Can I have my football?’

  Julian said nothing. Dionne followed his gaze to the front garden of the house behind them. There was a dark shape under the hedge, the suggestion of a twisted wing.

  Ben and Rachel, holding hands, crouched beside her. Rachel leant against her back, skin warm through the thin material of Dionne’s shirt.

  Dionne leaned forward and slid her hand under the hedge. The dark shape flared blue and crumbled into ash.

  All three straightened up, and Dionne smiled at Lucas. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is where we live now.’

  About the Author

  Michelle Ann King was born in East London and now lives in Essex. She writes mainly SF, dark fantasy, horror and crime fiction—probably due to a childhood spent reading Stephen King novels and watching zombie films.

  Favourite works of fiction include The Stand, Cloud Atlas, Lost Boys, Galaxy Quest, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Preacher and Locke & Key.

  She has worked as a mortgage underwriter, supermarket cashier, massage therapist, makeup artist and insurance claims handler before having the good fortune to be able to write full-time.

  Feedback on any stories is always welcome. Contact Michelle:

  Email

  Website

  Facebook

  Twitter

  Other Books

  The Transient Tales series: short stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror, ranging from light to dark and all shades in-between.

  TRANSIENT TALES VOLUME 1 features dysfunctional families—some demons, some that don’t have that excuse—monstrous assassins, pragmatic cannibals, time-travelling reality TV shows, zombies, witches, phobias made real, law-breaking love and lessons in post-apocalyptic survival.

  TRANSIENT TALES VOLUME 2 features a Halloween game with a chilling price, a call-centre at the end of the world, an unconventional quest for a portal to fairyland, a mother dealing with the loss—and the return—of a child, a desperate woman’s letter to her future self, a repentant scientist’s lament, an envious boy who gets more than he bargained for, and a misguided attempt to gain closure on a very dead love affair.

  Also available:

  SHALLOW CUTS: a collection of crime flash fiction: 20 bite-sized stories of murder and mayhem. Featuring a would-be comedienne who'll do anything to get a laugh, a fatal case of sibling rivalry, a newly-promoted gang boss who finds that life at the top isn't quite what he imagined, a young boy trying hard to live up to his father's expectations, and many more.

  Thank you for reading!

  On Blackened Wings: Published November 2013

  Copyright (c) Michelle Ann King 2013

  Michelle Ann King has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of these works.

  These stories are works of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Transient Cactus Publications (c) 2013