Malorie is sure of it. The birds have seen something below.
The communal birdsong swells and peaks before it flattens, twists, and the boundaries explode. Malorie hears it like she’s inside of it. Like she’s trapped in an aviary with a thousand madcap birds. It feels like a cage was lowered over them all. A cardboard box. A bird box. Blocking out the sun forever.
What is it? What is it? What is it?
Infinity.
Where did it come from? Where did it come from? Where did it come from?
Infinity.
The birds scream. And the noise they make is not a song.
The Girl shrieks.
“Something hit me, Mommy! Something fell!”
Malorie feels it, too. She thinks it’s raining.
Impossibly, the sound of the birds gets louder. They are deafening, screeching. Malorie has to cover her ears. She calls to the children, begging them to do the same.
Something lands hard against her bad shoulder and she yelps, wincing in pain.
Wildly, her hand grasping her blindfold, she searches the boat for what struck her.
The Girl shrieks again.
“Mommy!”
But Malorie’s found it. Between her forefinger and thumb is not a drop of rain but the broken body of a tiny bird. She feels its delicate wing.
Malorie knows now.
In the sky above, where she is forbidden to look, the birds are warring. The birds are killing one another.
“Cover your heads! Hold on to your blindfolds!”
Then, like a wave, they hit. Feathered bodies hail from above. The river erupts with the weight of thousands of birds splashing into the water. They hit the boat. They plummet. Malorie is struck. They hit her head, her arm. She’s struck again. Again.
As bird blood courses down her cheeks, she can taste them.
You can smell it, too. Death. Dying. Decay. The sky is falling, the sky is dying, the sky is dead.
Malorie calls to the children, but the Boy is already speaking, trying to tell her something.
“Riverbridge,” he is saying. “Two seventy-three Shillingham . . . my name is . . .”
“What?”
Crouched, Malorie leans forward. She presses the Boy’s lips hard to her ear.
“Riverbridge,” he says. “Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom.”
Malorie sits up, wounded, clutching her blindfold.
My name is Tom.
Birds strike her body. They thud against the boat.
But she is not thinking of them.
She is thinking of Tom.
Hello! I’m calling you from Riverbridge. Two seventy-three Shillingham. My name is Tom. I’m sure you understand the relief I feel at getting your answering machine. It means you still have power. So do we . . .
Malorie starts shaking her head.
no no no no no no no no no no no
“NO!”
The Boy heard it first. Tom’s voice. Recorded and played on a loop. Motion activated. For her. For Malorie. If ever she decided to take the river. Whenever that day would come. Tom, sweet Tom, speaking out here all these years. Trying to make contact. Trying to reach someone. Trying to build a bridge between their life in the house and a better one, somewhere else.
They used his voice because they knew you’d recognize it. This is it, Malorie.
This is the moment you’re supposed to open your eyes.
How green is the grass? How colorful are the leaves? How red is the blood of the birds that spreads through the river beneath her?
“Mommy!” the Boy calls.
Mommy has to open her eyes, she wants to say. Mommy has to look.
But the birds have gone mad.
“Mommy!” the Boy says again.
She answers. She hardly recognizes her own voice.
“What is it, Boy?”
“Something is here with us, Mommy. Something is right here.”
The rowboat stops.
Something has stopped it.
She can hear it move in the water beside them.
It’s not an animal, she thinks. It’s not Gary. It’s the thing you’ve been hiding from for four and a half years. It’s the thing that won’t let you look outside.
Malorie readies herself.
There is something in the water to her left. Inches from her arm.
The birds above are growing distant. As if rising, rising, in a lunatic rush toward the ends of the sky.
She can feel the presence of something beside her.
The birds are growing quieter. Quieting. They fade. Rising. Gone.
Tom’s voice continues. The river flows around the rowboat.
Malorie screams when she feels her blindfold being pulled from her face.
She does not move.
The blindfold stops an inch from her closed eyes.
Can she hear it? Breathing? Is that what she hears? Is that it?
Tom, she thinks, Tom is leaving a message.
His voice echoes across the river. He sounds so hopeful. Alive.
Tom. I’m going to have to open my eyes. Talk to me. Please. Tell me what to do. Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.
His voice comes from ahead. He sounds like the sun, the only light in all this darkness.
The blindfold is pulled an inch farther from her face. The knot presses against the back of her head.
Tom, I’m going to have to open my eyes.
And, so . . .
forty-two