Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume 5

by Robert Shearman

  He scrambles for his length of metal pipe and squeezes it tightly in both hands, holding it like a comically stubby and ineffective baseball bat. He shouts, “Who’s there?” repeatedly, as though if he shouts it enough times, there will be an unequivocal answer to the query. No answer comes. He runs into the living room shouting, “Marnie?” and opens his bathroom and closet doors and finds no one. He checks the front door. It is unlocked. Did he leave it unlocked last night? He opens it with a deep sense of regret and steps out onto his empty front stoop. Outside his apartment is a different world, one crowded with brick buildings, ceaseless traffic, cars parked end-to-end for as far as he can see, and the sidewalks as rivers of pedestrians who don’t know or care who he is or what has happened. Going outside is a terrible mistake and Ben goes back into his apartment and again shouts, “Who’s there?”

  Ben eventually stops shouting and returns to his bedroom. He circles around to the front of the dresser so as to view the bird head straight on and not in profile. Ben takes a picture with his phone and sends a private group message (photo attached) to a selection of acquaintances within the horror/weird fiction community. He tells them this new photo is not for public consumption. Within thirty minutes he receives responses ranging from “Jealous!” to “Yeah, saw yesterday’s pic, but cool” to “I liked yesterday’s picture better. Can you send that to me?” Not one of them commented on the head’s impossible size, which has to be clear in the photo as it takes up so much of the dresser’s top. Did they assume some sort of photo trickery? Did they assume the bird head in yesterday’s photo (the close of up of the head on the hardwood floor) was the same size? Did this second photo resize the head they first saw in their minds by the new context? He types in response, “The head wasn’t this big yesterday,” but deletes it instead of sending. Ben considers posting the head-on-the-dresser photo to his various social media platforms so that Marnie would return and admonish him again, and then he could ask why she broke into his apartment and left this monstrous bird head behind. This had to be her doing.

  After a lengthy inner dialogue, Ben summons the courage to pick the head up. He’s careful, initially, to not touch the beak. To touch that first would be wrong, disrespectful. Dangerous. He girds himself to lift a great weight, even bending his knees, but the head is surprisingly light. That’s not to say the head feels fragile. He imagines its lightness is by design so that the great bird, despite its size, would be able to fly and strike its prey quickly. With the head in his hands, he scans the dresser’s top for any sign of the small head Mr. Wheatley initially gave him. He cannot find it. He assumes Marnie swapped the smaller head for this one, but he also irrationally fears that the head simply grew to this size overnight.

  The feathers have a slight oily feel to them and he is careful to not inadvertently get any stuck between his fingers as he manipulates the head and turns it over, upside down. He cannot see inside the head, although it is clearly hollow. A thick forest of red feathers obscure the neck’s opening and when he attempts to pull feathers back or push them aside other feathers dutifully move in to block the view. There are tantalizing glimpses of darkness between the feathers, as though the depth contained within is boundless.

  He sends his right hand inside the head expecting to feel plaster, or plastic, or wire mesh perhaps, the inner workings of an intricate mask, or maybe even, impossibly, the hard bone of skull. His fingers gently explore the hidden interior perimeter, and he feels warm, moist, pliant clay, or putty, or flesh. He pulls his hand out and rubs his fingers together, and he watches his fingers, expecting to see evidence of dampness. He’s talking to himself now, asking if one can see dampness, and he wipes his hand on his shorts. He’s nauseous (but pleasantly so), as he imagines his fingers were moments ago exploring the insides of a wound. More boldly, he returns his hand inside the bird head. He presses against the interior walls and those walls yield to his fingers like they’re made of the weakening skin of overripe fruit and vegetables. Fingertips sink deeper into the flesh of the head, and his arm shakes and wrist aches with exertion.

  There’s a wet sucking sound as Ben pulls his hand out. He roughly flips the head over, momentarily forgetting about the size of the great beak and its barbed tip scratches a red furrow into his forearm. He wraps his hand around the beak near its base and his fingers are too small to enclose its circumference. He attempts to separate the two halves of beak, a half-assed lion tamer prying open fearsome jaws, but they are fixed in place, closed tightly, like gritted teeth.

  Ben takes the head out into the living area and gently places it on the floor. He lies down beside it and runs his fingers through its feathers, careful to not touch the beak again. If he stares hard enough, long enough, he sees himself in miniature, curled up like a field mouse, reflected in the black pools of the bird’s eyes.

  *

  BP: A quick summary of the ending. Please stop me if I say anything that’s inaccurate or misleading. The children, lead by The Crow and The Admiral, reappear out of the woods that Mr. H_____ had forbidden them to go into, and you describe The Admiral’s fugue wonderfully: “his new self passing over his old self, as though he were an eclipse.” When asked (we don’t know who the speaker is, do we?) where Kittypants is, The Crow says Kittypants is still in the woods and was waiting to be found and retrieved, he didn’t fly away. Someone (again, the speaker not identified) giggles and says his wings are broken. The other children erupt into sounds, chant, and song, eager to go to Kittypants. The dead bird that they had brought with them is forgotten. I love how it isn’t clear if the kids have finally donned their bird masks or if they’ve had them on the whole time. Or perhaps they have no masks on at all. Mr. H_____ says they may leave him only after they’ve finished digging a hole big enough for the little one to fit inside and not ruffle any feathers. The reader is unsure if Mr. H_____ is referring to the dead bird or, in retrospect, if it’s a sinister reference to Kittypants, the smallest of their party. The kids leave right away and it’s not clear if they have finished digging the hole or not. Perhaps they’re just going home, the funeral or celebration over, the game over. Mr. H_____ goes into the woods after them and finds his gaggle in a clearing, the setting sun throwing everything into shadow, “a living bas relief.” They are leaping high into the air, arms spread out as wide as the world, and then crashing down into what is described from a distance as a pile of leaves no bigger than a curled up, sleeping child. It’s a magnificent image, Mr. Wheatley, one that simultaneously brings to mind the joyous, chaotic, physical play of children and at the same time, resembles a gathering of carrion birds picking apart a carcass in a frenzy. I have to ask, is the leaf pile just a leaf pile, or is Kittypants inside?

  WW: I love that you saw the buzzard imagery in that scene, Benjamin. But, oh, I wouldn’t dream of ever answering your final question, directly. But I’ll play along, a little. Let me ask you this: do you prefer that Kittypants be under the pile of leaves? If so, why?

  *

  Tucked inside the envelope he received from Mr. Wheatley is a typed set of instructions. Benjamin wears black socks, an oxford shirt, and dark pants that were once partners with a double-breasted jacket. He walks twenty-three blocks northwest. He enters the darkened antique store through a back door, and from there he navigates past narrow shelving and various furniture and taxidermy staging to the stairwell that leads to the second floor apartment. He does not call out or say anyone’s name. All in accordance with the instructions.

  The front door to Mr. Wheatley’s apartment is closed. Ben places an ear against the door, listening for other people, for their sounds, as varied as they can be. He doesn’t hear anything. He cradles the bird head in his left arm and has it pressed gently against his side, the beak supported by his ribs. The head is wrapped tightly in a white sheet. The hooked beak tip threatens to rent the cloth.

  Ben opens the door, steps inside the apartment, and closes the door gently behind him, and thus ends the brief set of instructions from the en
velope. Benjamin removes the white cloth and holds the bird head in front of his chest like a shield.

  There is no one in the living room. The curtains are drawn and three walls sconces peppered between the windows and their single bulbs give off a weak, almost sepia light. The doors to the other rooms are all closed. He walks to the circular dining room table, the one at which he sat with Mr. Wheatley only three days ago.

  Ben is unsure of what he’s supposed to do next. His lips and throat are dry, and he’s afraid that he’ll throw up if he opens his mouth to speak. Finally, he calls out: “Hello, Mr. Wheatley? It’s Ben Piotrowsky.”

  There’s no response or even a sense of movement from elsewhere inside the apartment.

  “Our interview went live online already. I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but I hope you like it. The response has been very positive so far.”

  Ben shuffles into the center of the room and it suddenly occurs to him that he could document everything he’s experienced (including what he will experience later this evening) and add it to the interview as a bizarre, playful afterword. It’s a brilliant idea and something that would only enhance his and Mr. Wheatley’s reputation within the weird fiction community. Yes, he would most certainly do this and Ben imagines the online response as being more rabid than the reaction to the picture of the bird head. There will be argument and discussion as to whether the mysterious afterword is fictional or not, and if fictional, had it been written by William Wheatley himself. The interview with afterword will be a perfect extension or companion to “Something About Birds.” Perhaps Ben can even convince Mr. Wheatley to co-write the afterword with him. Or, instead, pitch this idea to Mr. Wheatley not as an afterword, but as a wrap-around story, or framing device, within the interview itself. Yes, not only could this be a new story, but the beginning of a new story cycle, and Ben will be a part of it.

  Ben says, “This bird head is lovely, by the way. I mean that. I assume you made it. I’m no expert but it appears to be masterful work. I’m sure there’s a fascinating story behind it that we could discuss further.” In the silence that follows, Ben adds, “Perhaps your friend Marnie brought it to my apartment. We talked the other night of course.”

  Ben’s spark of new-story-cycle inspiration and surety fades in the continued silence of the apartment. Has he arrived before everyone else or is this some sort of game where the party does not begin until he chooses a door to open, and then—then what? Is this a hazing ritual? Is he to become part of their secret little group? Ben certainly hopes for the latter. Which door of the three will he open first?

  Ben asks, “Am I to put the bird head on, Mr. Wheatley? Is that it?”

  The very idea of being enclosed within the darkness of the bird head, his cheeks and lips and eyelids pressing against the whatever-itis on the inside, is a horror. Yet he also wants nothing more than to put the bird head over his own, to have that great beak spill out before his eyes, a baton with which to conduct the will of others. He won’t put it on, not until he’s sure that is what he’s supposed to do.

  “What am I supposed to do now, Mr. Wheatley?”

  The door to Ben’s left opens and four people—two men and two women—wearing bird masks walk out. They are naked and their bodies are hairless and shaved smooth. In the dim lighting their ages are near impossible to determine. There is a crow with feathers so black its beak appears to spring forth from nothingness, an owl with feathers the color of copper and yellow eyes large enough to swallow the room, a sleek falcon with a beak partially open in an avian grin, and the fourth bird head is a cross between a peacock and a parrot with its garish blue, yellow, and green, the feathers standing high above its eyes like ancient, forbidding towers.

  They fan out and walk toward Ben without speaking and without ceremony. The soles of their bare feet gently slap on the hardwood floor. The man in the brightest colored bird mask must be Mr. Wheatley (and/or Mr. H——–) as there are liver spots, wrinkles, and other evidence of age on his skin, but the muscles beneath are surprisingly taut, defined.

  Mr. Wheatley takes the bird head out of Ben’s hands and forces it over his head. Ben breathes rapidly, as though prepping for a dive into deep water, and the feathers flitter past his eyes, an all encompassing darkness, and a warmth in the darkness, one that both suffocates and caresses, and then he can see, although not like he could see before. While the surrounding environment of the apartment dims, viewed through an ultraviolet, film-negative spectrum, the bird feathers become spectacular firework displays of colors; secret colors that he was blind to only a moment ago, colors beyond description. That Ben might never see those colors again is a sudden and great sadness. As beautiful as the bird heads are, their owners’ naked human bodies, with their jiggling and swaying body parts, are ugly, weak, flawed, illdesigned, and Ben can’t help but think of how he could snatch their tender bits in the vise of his beak.

  The two men and women quickly remove Ben’s clothes. The Crow says, “Kittypants is waiting to be found and retrieved. He didn’t fly away,” and they lead him across the living room and to the door from which they’d emerged. Ben is terrified that she’s talking about him. He is not sure who he is, who he is supposed to be.

  Through the door is a bedroom with a king-sized mattress claiming most of the space. There is no bedframe or boxspring, only the mattress on the floor. The mattress has not been made up; there are no bedcovers. There is a pile of dried leaves in the middle. Ben watches the pile closely and he believes there is a contour of a shape, of something underneath.

  Ben stands at the foot of the mattress while the others move to flank the opposite sides. The lighting is different in the bedroom. Everything is darker but somehow relayed in more detail. Their masks don’t look like masks. There no clear lines of demarcation between head and body, between feather and skin. Is he in fact in the presence of gods? The feather colors have darkened as well, as though they aren’t feathers at all but the skin of chameleons. Ben’s relief at not being the character in the leaf pile is offset with the fear that he won’t ever be able to remove his own bird head.

  The others whisper, titter, and twitch, as though they sense his weakness, or lack of commitment. The Crow asks, “Would you prefer talons or beak?” Her beak is mostly black, but a rough, scratchy brown shows through at the beak edges and its tip, as though the black coloring has been worn away from usage.

  Ben says, “I would still prefer wings.”

  Something moves on the bed. Something rustles.

  The voice of Mr. Wheatley says, “You cannot choose wings.”

  Contributors’ Notes

  Nadia Bulkin writes scary stories about the scary world we live in, thirteen of which appear in her debut collection, She Said Destroy (Word Horde, 2017). Her short stories have been included in editions of The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, The Best Horror of the Year, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. She has been nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award five times, including for “Live Through This.” She grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, with her Javanese father and American mother, before relocating to Lincoln, Nebraska. She has a B.A. in Political Science, an M.A. in International Affairs, and lives in Washington, D.C.

  Daniel Carpenter’s short fiction has been published by Unsung Stories, The Irish Literary Review, and in Unthology, amongst others. He hosts The Paperchain Podcast, which was longlisted in The Saboteur Awards. He lives in London.

  Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to SPY magazine in 1987. His 26 books to date include four Spider-Man novels, 3 novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and 6 middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands And Other Stories (Prime Books). Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain),
the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). He lives in Florida with his wife Judi and either three or four cats, depending on what day you’re counting and whether Gilbert’s escaped this week.

  Claire Dean’s short stories have been widely published and are included in Best British Short Stories 2011, 2014 and 2017 (Salt). Bremen, The Unwish, Marionettes and Into the Penny Arcade are published as chapbooks by Nightjar Press. Her first collection, The Museum of Shadows and Reflections, was published by Unsettling Wonder in 2016. She lives in the North of England with her family.

  Kristi DeMeester is the author of Beneath, a novel published by Word Horde Publications, and Everything That’s Underneath, a short fiction collection from Apex Books. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Ellen Datlow’s The Year’s Best Horror Volume 9, Stephen Jones’ Best New Horror, Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volumes 1, and 3, in addition to publications such as Black Static, The Dark, and several others. In her spare time, she alternates between telling people how to pronounce her last name and how to spell her first. Find her online at www.kristidemeester.com.

  Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection A Collapse of Horses and the novella The Warren. He has been a finalist six times for the Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches in the Critical Studies Program at CalArts.