“That’s enough,” he said, then turned an apologetic smile to the hallway full of women.
Gretchen started up again. “Hooray! Hooray! To live and die—”
Mr. Lang grabbed her arm, yanking her to one side. Gretchen straightened and somehow Mr. Lang lost his footing. He slipped off the top step, arms windmilling, and tumbled backward. It happened in an instant, but Abby was sure she’d seen Gretchen push him.
Mr. Lang thudded into the wall, his breath slapped out of his lungs in a single shout. He landed hard on his butt, then fell backward down the stairs, his legs cartwheeling over his head. He almost took out Abby when he smashed into the landing.
A moment of silence followed. Gretchen stood frozen at the top of the stairs, her eyes blazing with wild triumph. Abby was white-knuckling the bannister with both hands. Mrs. Lang was opening and closing her mouth. The book club ladies were all frozen. No one dared to move.
Mr. Lang struggled into a seated position.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I—”
BANG!
Everyone turned toward the living room. The wall at the far end was made of glass, and lying at its base was a flapping pigeon that had broken its neck. Just as Abby was about to turn away, another BANG sounded and a seagull hit the window, smearing blood on the glass. TOK! TOK! TOK! Three sparrows smacked into the glass, one after the other.
One of the ladies began to recite the Lord’s Prayer as bird after bird flew into the window; within minutes the concrete walkway was littered with stunned seagulls wandering in circles, dragging broken wings, dead sparrows on their backs, talons slowly curling, twitching pigeons, a pelican in a heap, beak open unnaturally wide, slowly turning its head from side to side.
The house vibrated as birds dove into upstairs windows, the skylight, the side windows—one after the other without pause. It sounded as though invisible hands were knocking all over the house, saying, “Let me in, let me in.” Three of the women held hands and prayed. Mrs. Lang raced to the enormous window at the end of the room and waved her arms, trying to shoo away the birds so they wouldn’t fly into the glass, but they kept coming.
Two owls swooped out of the darkness and landed among the stunned and dying birds, their talons digging into soft bodies. They strutted through this morbid buffet, dipping their beaks into feathered breasts.
“Dear Jesus,” one of the ladies said.
The two owls cornered the pelican, which put up a fight until a third owl dove out of the shadows, talons pinning the pelican’s neck to the ground. It tried to get away, thrashing its wings, but the owls were pulling it to pieces. One of its wings streaked blood onto the huge window.
A scream ripped loose, high pitched and pained, making the air in the stairwell vibrate, drowning out the sound of birds hitting the house. As it drilled into Abby’s eardrums, she looked up to see Gretchen on her knees at the top of the stairs, clutching both sides of her head, digging her fingers into her frizzy hair, screaming, “Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!”
It didn’t.
Paranoimia
The next morning was so dark that the streetlights were still on when Abby got in the Dust Bunny and drove to Gretchen’s. She’d raced through putting on her face because she needed to hear what happened after Mr. Lang had limped up the stairs and pulled Gretchen’s hands away from her ears. After he’d wrapped his arms around her. After he’d muffled her screams against his chest. After the book club ladies had run for their cars. After Mrs. Lang had noticed that Abby was still there and rushed her out of the house.
“Please,” she’d said, closing the door in Abby’s face. “We need some time.”
Abby pulled onto Pierates Cruze, and the Bunny’s headlights swept over three bulging trash bags piled at the end of the Langs’ driveway. A whirl of stray feathers blew around them. The bags were lumpy and dimpled with talons and beaks.
Gretchen was waiting on the side of the driveway closest to Dr. Bennett’s house, shoulders hunched, wind tossing around the stiff ends of her frizzy hair. She was wearing the same skirt from the day before. Abby pulled up and Gretchen slammed into the Bunny, and they took off.
“Are you okay?” Abby asked. “What happened? Did you get in trouble?”
Gretchen shrugged.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“But you pushed your dad!” Abby said, pulling onto Pitt Street. “I saw you.”
Gretchen shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “My head was killing me. I just remember getting angrier and angrier and then my brain went white. I tried to tell them how I can’t sleep, but they never listen.”
She started to gnaw on her nails.
“Did your dad have to clean up all the birds?” Abby asked.
Gretchen nodded, miserable.
“Dr. Bennett came over to help but they wound up fighting,” Gretchen said. “My dad says there were more than a hundred. Every time I started to fall asleep, I heard them again.”
They were driving on Coleman Boulevard now, approaching the last traffic light before the bridge.
“How much trouble are you in?” Abby asked, stopping as the light turned red.
Gretchen shrugged.
“We’re going to have a ‘family meeting’ tonight,” Gretchen said, making quote marks with her fingers. “I’m supposed to sit and listen while they tell me what my problems are.”
Before Abby could ask anything else, the light changed and the Bunny shifted into the lane that went over the old bridge. The old bridge—a two-lane tightrope with no sidewalks—stretched over the Cooper River for three miles before dropping cars onto the crosstown express, which ran along the trashy northern edge of downtown, where all the fast food restaurants were.
It made everyone nervous. The lanes were too narrow; one four-inch drift and you’d knock off your side mirror on the steel rails that whipped past your ears. A newer, wider bridge ran parallel to the old one, with three lanes and actual shoulders and sidewalks, but only one of its lanes ran downtown, so it was bumper-
to-bumper this early. Every morning you had to pick your poison: new and slow or old and fast. Today, Abby went with old and fast.
The wind howled, trying to shove the Dust Bunny into the other lane as Abby held on to the wheel for dear life. They were roaring down the backside of the first span, cars screaming by close enough to swap paint.
“I hear voices,” Gretchen said.
“What?”
“They tell me things.”
“Okay.”
Abby couldn’t say any more because they had reached the long curve at the bottom of the first span, where the worst accidents happened.
“They won’t leave me alone,” Gretchen said. “Someone’s always whispering in my ear. It’s worse than the touching.”
Abby powered the Dust Bunny up the second span, wondering if this would be the day its engine finally exploded. Her foot mashed the accelerator all the way to the floor, but other cars kept passing them.
“What do they say?” Abby asked, shouting over the noise of the engine as they crested the peak of the second span.
The Bunny was in the homestretch, with Abby riding the brakes down the final drop onto the crosstown.
“They tell me things,” Gretchen said. “About people. About Glee and Margaret. About Wallace and my parents. And you.”
They leveled out on the crosstown, their speed dropping from fifty to thirty-five, and Abby was able to stop thinking about sudden death and focus on what Gretchen was saying.
“You already know everything about me,” she said. “I’m stupid, Gretchen. I don’t understand all these hints and riddles. If you want to tell me something, just say it.”
Abby shifted gears. Gretchen dropped back in her seat.
“They told me you wouldn’t understand,” she said.
And that was the moment Gretchen started to pull away, and there wasn’t a thing Abby could do to stop her.