Blackbird

by Abigail Graham

  Whispers pass back and forth. I can’t understand them.

  Oh, they’re loud enough, but they’re in Russian.

  I look at Eve. She looks at me. I motion for her to wait, and she goes stock still. I listen to the creak of feet on old floorboards. Three shadows, three men. I edge closer to the hallway, ready to spring.

  All at once there’s a gun in my face, a sleek black automatic with along cylindrical suppressor.

  “Stand up,” the gunman says, in lightly accented English. He’s wearing a ski mask, as are his two friends. One of them aims at Eve.

  I put my hands up and stand.

  “Put the book on the desk,” the other one says, indicating with his gun.

  Eve rests the scrapbook on the desk and puts her hands up.

  “Very good. You are coming with us now. Quietly.”

  One walks in front and holds the door while the other two walk behind. I can practically feel the guns pointed at my back. There’s a nondescript gray van sitting out front, idling on the street. If somebody would just look they’d see three men with very illegal guns leading us outside, but in cities people have a way of not seeing, if there’s anybody to see at all. The street looks deserted. They push Eve in first, then me. I sit next to her and two gunmen sit a cross from us, pistols resting on their laps, ready to shoot us. The third drives.

  “So,” I say. “Your place, or mine?”

  “Shut up.”

  Turns out they’re going to my place. I don’t mean the apartment. I know as soon as I realize the route we’re taking.

  They’re taking us back to the estate.

  Chapter Twenty

  Evelyn

  Oh God, oh God, Oh God.

  Victor doesn’t move. His face is a frozen mask. I know my own is just as still, but I’m losing my mind. Please, not now. Don’t let me have so short a time with him and take him away again. I press against him as much as I can.

  I don’t remember the ride back to the estate being so short. It feels like five hours. It feels like five minutes. When the van doors open into the dark and they push me out I stumble up the front steps, along with Victor, and into the house.

  My father is sitting in a side chair in the foyer, as still as a statue. He might as well be cut from marble. Seated across from him, smoking a cigar, is a massive slab of a man, bald but with hairy hands and thick sausage fingers. Every one has at least one ring, and he’s wearing gold chains around his neck. Big, ostentatious ones. From the description that Victor gave me, he can only be this Vitali person. He looks at me with something his eyes that makes me shiver. I feel like I’m being undressed. His expression goes flat when my father turns and looks at him over steepled fingers.

  “There you are,” Father says, in his usual expressionless tone.

  “Hello, Martin,” Victor says, his voice edged with malice.

  “You,” Father says. “You don’t know how to behave, do you?”

  “Out,” says Vitali.

  His three men leave, but Vitali pulls out a gun and rests it on his thigh.

  “Do not be getting any ideas, boy.”

  “What’s going on here?” Victor demands. He looks from one to the other. “What the hell?”

  “You’ve been played,” Vitali chuckles.

  “I was willing to let this farce continue. Now it must come to an end. This is your fault, Eve. I want you to understand that.”

  I swallow.

  “What is?”

  “If you’d done as you were told, I’d have been willing to let you run off with him, until he was dealt with. Now you go behind my back, and force my hand.”

  “You two are working together?” Victor says, incredulous.

  “No,” Father says. “Vitali works for me.”

  There’s something wrong with his voice. Father’s diction and enunciation were always so perfect, so practiced. He sounds like a voice coach when he speaks, but his voice… slips.

  He says something to Vitali in Russian and they both start laughing. When he switches back to English, he has an accent.

  “You,” he looks at Victor. “You are no end of trouble. So unpredictable. I should have known giving you two any time alone was a mistake, yes. I cannot have you two going behind our backs, trying to stop me. I had planned a more sophisticated means to deal with our problem, but you force my hand and brute force will have to do.”

  I feel my legs shaking, trying to collapse under me.

  “The problem is this. When Karen died, everything passed to you, as per her will, as Victor had been disinherited. Somehow she grew…” his eyes roll as he searches for the word, “Disenchanted with me and decided she would rather pass all the Amsel holdings to you. Necessitating that I waste years of time working through you. I had hoped to make better use of you. Perhaps even come to trust you, but like your whore mother you are useless and must be gotten rid of.”

  “What?” I blurt out.

  “You’ve pieced it together by now, I’m sure. Yes, I killed your mother. Not with my own hands, of course. I always have clean hands. I tried to teach you that, but you never learned. So long I tried to teach you, and you picked up all the wrong lessons,” he shoots Victor a scathing glance. “You. I keep trying to turn you into an asset but you become a thorn in my side. I can’t have you exposing me or interfering anymore. If you’d cooperated I’d have let you have her. She’d no longer have been any use to me. Truth is, some sentimentality leads me to prefer not to dispose of my only blood, but practicality must overrule sentimentality. You both have to die. With you gone there will be no one to contest my daughter’s last will and testament or my status as her sole beneficiary.”

  “You think you can just get away with killing your own daughter?”

  “No,” he sighs. “You will. Or rather, you will commit murder suicide. You see, you were released from prison and began stalking and harassing her. I have evidence of this, of course. Once it was clear she’d moved on and rejected you, you lost your mind. Unable to cope, you broke in here, killed her, and set the house on fire.”

  “Tragic,” Vitali adds, chuckling.

  “I wait an appropriate time, of course, and after the necessary legal wrangling everything that belongs to your family is now mine.”

  “Why?” Victor says. “What did we ever do to you?”

  Vitali starts laughing.

  Father… Martin doesn’t.

  “You’re expecting me to deliver, what is it, a monologue, yes? I suppose I should tie you up over a shark tank and reveal my entire dastardly plan to take revenge on your family for some slight. No. You were an easy target. This is business. Sentimentality is for idiots.”

  “You,” Victor barks, looking at Vitali. “He sent you to prison.”

  “I make mistake. I do time. I get out. That is how game is played. Sorry boy. You were right not to trust me. Whoever said not to make friends inside, give good advice.”

  “Let’s go,” Martin says, standing.

  Vitali steps behind us, covering our backs with his gun. Martin keeps his distance, and leads us upstairs, to Victor’s father’s office. It still smells the same inside, the air stale from remaining closed up so long. I catch a whiff of a bitter, sulfurous smell and wrinkle my nose.

  “That’s gas,” Victor says, softly.

  Vitali’s men are carrying jerry cans through the house, slopping it everywhere. They throw it on the walls, soak it into the carpet, pour it down the bannisters. The smell is overpowering.

  In the office, they take Victor and shove him down into his father’s chair. Vitali takes a heavy rope while Martin holds the gun on us, and winds it around Victor’s arms.

  “They’ll know he was tied up,” I point out.

  “They will, but they will support my narrative, just like they would have convicted Victor no matter what he said or his lawyers did. Money is power, Eve. I tried to teach you that, but you keep forgetting your lessons. If you’d been more tractable and cooperative, I wouldn’t have to get
rid of you. It’s a pity.”

  He didn’t feel anything for me. I could see it. He was looking at me like I was a potted plant.

  All those times he punished me, hurt me, he didn’t care. Somehow that makes it worse. It must have been like whipping a dog that pissed on the carpet. I feel cold, all through my body, like my blood is freezing in my veins.

  “Still, I’m not cruel. I’m not going to let you burn alive.”

  He turns. He’s going to shoot me in the head instead.

  While he’s not quite facing me, I lunge at him. Caught off guard, he cries out in surprise. I rake my nails down his cheek, and go for his eyes.

  “Get her off me!” he bellows.

  Vitali grabs at me. I get my mouth on the meat of his hand and bite. He howls in pain, and punches me in the stomach. All the wind goes out of my lungs, and I double over in agony and collapse to the floor.

  The big desk turns up with a massive grunt from Victor, topples, and he throws himself at Vitali. Martin, clutching his bleeding face in one hand, searches the room for the gun. He dropped it when I attacked him. He spots it. So do I.

  I leap for it, feel my fingers on the grip. He tromps on my hand and I scream, try to pull out from under his hand, but he grinds his heel and twists his foot. I think I can feel bones breaking. It’s like he’s going to rip my hand right off. He bends, reaches for the gun.

  Vitali crashes into him. Somehow, Victor got the ropes off and has the thick cord looped around Vitali’s neck. He’s clawing at it, turning purple, lying on top of Martin in a heap. Victor has his knee in Vitali’s back, pulling the rope in both hands, twisting it like he means to saw through the man’s neck. Father’s fingers graze the grip of the dropped pistol and he tries to pull it towards him.

  A letter opener glints on the carpet. I snatch it, raise it high and bring it down. The blade punches through the back of Father’s hand and into the floor with a solid thump and he bellows in agony, trying to claw it loose.

  I grab the gun, roll away. Victor pulls aside.

  Martin pulls his hand loose and rolls, just as I pull the trigger. The report rings in my ears, and the gun jumps in my hand. My shot went wild, blew a hole in some books on the shelves. Father is on me before I can aim at him again. He collapses on top of me, pinning my arms to the side, grabs my wrist and squeezes so hard it feels like he’ll put his thumb through the bones. I scream in agony and the gun drops from my limp hand. A savage backhand knocks me away, the world flashing white as his knuckles hit my jaw, and the room tilts and spin when my head hits the edge of a bookcase. My head is wet, and my hand comes away slick. I try to get up but I can’t. Vitali rolls on top of Victor and Martin aims the gun at him.

  Victor lets go, holds his hands apart in surrender.

  Vitali pulls the rope loose and clambers up on all fours, gasping and rasping.

  “Idiot,” Martin barks, and shoots him.

  It comes so fast I don’t know how to process it. There’s a flash and a bang and a wad of Vitali’s head meat hits the books with a loud slap that I can somehow hear despite the gunshot. He flops down limp, and Martin aims the gun at Victor.

  Then swings it over to me.

  “I changed my mind. I will let you burn to death, you annoying little cunt. Make one move, Amsel, and I’ll put a bullet in her hip. Bad way to die.”

  He backs through the door, and slams it closed. Victor is on his feet in an instant, smeared in blood from the huge dead Russian. He shoves the door open but it pushes back, and then there’s a loud whump and flames so hot they’re almost clear lick up under the door.

  “They put gas on the fucking door,” Victor bellows.

  He rushes to my side and cradles my head in his hand. “Eve, Jesus, you’re bleeding.”

  More whumps outside, and the sound of glass breaking.

  I start to get up. “We have to get out of here.”

  He nods, rushes up the ladder to the second level, to the door to the cupola. He throws his full weight against it, over and over, screaming each time.

  “It’s boarded up or something. I can’t get it open.”

  My head is bleeding. I clutch my hand to my scalp, trying to stop it. My other hand is throbbing, already swelling up. I think he broke something. There’s more smoke coming in, rising under the door like vengeful spirits, swirling. It’s starting to darken the air in the room. I cough.

  “Victor, get down here,” I call out, “Smoke rises.”

  “If we don’t get out of here, we’re both dead.”

  He throws himself at the door again.

  There’s something odd. The smoke is swirling, gathering around one of the bookcases. I blink a few times, trying to understand what I’m seeing. It’s flowing between the cracks between the bookcase frames, and there’s a little swirl like a whirlpool around the hole in the book from my wild shot.

  “Victor! Get down here!”

  “Damn it, I’ve almost got the door-“

  “Victor, I think I found a way out.”

  He looks over the railing and rushes down, sliding down the ladder. He stops next to me and stares, as I start coughing.

  “Get down,” he says, almost pushing me to the floor. I breathe a little easier, take a deep breath. Victor sees it, too. He shoves his finger in the bullethole, then rips the book of the shelf, then more.

  “Help me,” he says.

  I lurch to my feet. With my blood-slick hand, I start wrenching books off the shelf, one after another after another, and pile them on the floor. Finally there’s only one left on the shelf. It doesn’t budge when I pull at it.

  “What the hell?”

  “The underground fucking railroad,” Victor almost cheers. “Get ready. We have to run. When I open the door the air is going to feed the fire, it might get through the door. Wait.”

  He runs to the other side of the room, yanks his father’s chair from the floor and smashes open the glass gun cabinet. He pulls out an old double barrel and a box of shells, and tosses another to me. I catch it against my chest. He yanks on the stuck book and it comes loose with a pop and a thunk behind the shelf. It falls open, and there is a solid boom behind us. Victor pushes me inside as the flames road around the door, just eat it, the sides folding in and turning to ash as the fire reaches through, hammering the wood with a burning fist. Victor slams the door shut behind us and braces his shoulder into it as the office lights up like a sunrise, flames rushing up the wall and flowering over the ceiling. It’s almost beautiful. The shock batters at the door and he coughs, hacks, coughs again.

  We’re in some kind of tunnel. The stones are old, part of the structure of the house itself, but they’re getting hot and smoke is pouring in from the false bookcase door. Victor seizes my arm and almost holds me up as we run. The tunnel only goes a few feet to a tight spiral staircase that twists down through what must be one of the big columns outside. I stumble my way down, almost knocking him over when I hit the bottom. Victor pulls me along and we stoop through a narrow, low tunnel barely tall enough to stand in. I don’t know where it goes but I can feel the heat from the flames above. There’s a great crack and behind us stones and dust fall into the tunnel. The staircase folds with a loud groan, and we’re trapped. The only way out is through. Victor grabs my hand and pulls me along. My hand throbs but I don’t care.

  The tunnel goes on, and on, and on. Finally there’s an end, but it’s just dirt. A horrid wave of panic hits me as I realize we’re trapped, we’ve just run from a fiery death into a grave. It might be ten feet of dirt over our heads, ready to collapse. Then Victor slams the butt of the shotgun against something over his head and there’s a sound of wood groaning and shearing and a sudden rush of cool, sweet air. Then Victor is lifting me up and I sit on the edge of a square cut stone pit and roll over the side, just as he pulls himself up beside me. He looks behind me, a look of naked agony on his face.

  The house is burning. Flames lick up through the windows, pour out of the chimneys. The fiery tongues sl
ice the ivy away in burning, charred strands. There is a crack and one of the columns holding up the roof over the terrace gives from the heat, and the whole thing folds and noses in. Victor just stares, the flames painting his face a bruised color, shining in his eyes.

  I shake his arm. “What do we do?”

  “Shit. I don’t know. Where the fuck is Martin?”

  “I don’t know. Where are we?”

  “There’s another… you gotta be fucking kidding me,” he blurts out. “Follow me. I’m not leaving you here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “There’s another tunnel.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Victor

  “We’re leaving,” I tell her, and take her into the Scary Tunnel.

  Eve never says a word, she just follows me, clutching my hand with hers. Her skin is sticky, dried blood from her scalp. It’s not as bad as she probably thinks it is. Any scalp wound bleeds like a stuck pig. It’s matted in her hair, a dark clump of rust on the white gold.

  She keeps her head down as we traverse the tunnel. My every step is sure. I know where I’m going. The first time I came through here, it felt five miles long. First thing I need to do is get Eve to safety, then I need to get my hands on Martin. The son of a bitch is not getting away with this. The end of the tunnel isn’t far. Once we reach it I open the trap door and Eve hauls herself up the short staircase and out, and I’m right behind her, breathing free air on the other side of the wall.

  “What is all this?”

  “My family used to shelter runaway slaves,” I tell her, panting. “Back during the Civil War. Before that, too, I guess.”

  I can see the flames over the treeline. It’s all burning, everything.

  “The house,” she says.

  “Fuck the house. Pictures of my Mom and Dad. Pictures of you and me. My life was in that house…” I trail off.

  “No,” I touch her shoulder and pull her to me. “My life is right here. The rest of it can be replaced. Let’s get out of here, I want you safe.”