Siren. Part 14

And piece by piece, the posters and plaques and other knickknacks all came down until the room began to look a little bare, though there was a good pile forming in its middle.

Evan went to the garage and found the pile of boxes Sarah had contributed; a handful of midsize copy-paper boxes and slightly smaller boxes that held the coffee pouches Sarah's company used in their lunchroom. He left most of them in the hallway outside Josh's room, as he filled one of the coffee boxes with the trinkets he'd pulled down from Josh's tackboard. Pictures of Josh with Tiendra, the girl he'd taken to junior prom. And of him with the guys, probably freshman year, all lined up waiting for the starting gun at a track meet. Then there were the key chains that he collected, with logos ranging from popular movies to rock bands. And the snakebite kit, still wrapped in its plastic sleeve that he'd found at a garage sale for its kitsch value. The old 1960s vintage kit had a red label at the top that read RIP, SLASH, SUCK! SURVIVE!

Evan and Josh had both laughed over the block letters and a.s.sorted exclamation points when they'd found it sitting in a box in someone's dank garage. For fifty cents, Josh had had to have it.

Just below that, Evan plucked a handful of b.u.t.tons, most of them things that Evan himself had picked up over the years. He smiled as he pulled off the j.a.panese-animation vixen who posed as a sultry coquette advertising Matthew Sweet's cla.s.sic Girlfriend alb.u.m. Geez. Evan had picked this one up himself back in college. Of course, that's where the rest of these came from, he realized, as he pulled off a tiny Psychedelic Furs "Pretty in Pink" b.u.t.ton and a spooky gray-tone "Lonely Is An Eyesore" b.u.t.ton, advertising an ethereal collection by the '80s English label 4AD.

Evan misted up for the first time then, thinking about the music he and Josh had shared. They'd always been close, but music was where they really connected. And Josh had been as fascinated with the "antique" mystery of Evan's old LP collection as Evan had been with the new stuff that Josh brought home on his iPod. Music wasn't a generation-gap indicator for them, it was glue. Evan pocketed the b.u.t.tons, instead of putting them in the box to pack away.

They had been his originally, and now they were his touchstones to countless nights spent in front of the stereo, playing music with his son, both of them closing their eyes and nodding, living in the beats.

In the corner, the acoustic Washburn guitar still sat, covered in dust. Evan remembered all the times he'd kicked back on the floor, trying to pick up the basic rhythm and chords on that guitar while a song played on the stereo. Later, Josh had taken lessons, and had gotten better than his old man, though neither one of them were ever performance-ready musicians.

Evan picked up the guitar now from its stand, and with a sharp burst, blew the dust in a cloud from the instrument's neck. Then he sat on the bed and strummed it, wincing slightly at the out-of-tune disharmony that jangled through the room. Holding down the seventh fret of the second largest string, he began to carefully tune the guitar by ear. Once he was satisfied that the instrument was at least mostly in tune with itself, he began to strum an easy song he'd played a lot when Josh had been a baby.

"Don't you know / I love you so / never never never gonna let you go," Evan sang quietly.

"And when you're big / it won't be long / I will still be singin' this song..."

He stopped abruptly, to wipe a tear from his left eye. Evan could still remember the time that he'd written the simple ditty, when Josh had still been an infant, lying in a baby seat. The boy had waved his chubby arms in the air as Evan played, almost as if he were keeping the beat.

"Don't you know / I love you so / never never never gonna let you go," Evan whispered, setting down the guitar and picking up one of Josh's swimming trophies. He set it in the box, and then set another trophy next to it, and a third, before he couldn't keep up the bravery anymore. He sat down on the floor of his son's room and let the tears flow freely, finally, and held his face in his hands.

"I'm sorry," he choked to the empty room. "I'm so, so sorry."

Evan let out the grief; he'd grown accustomed to letting the tears have their way. For a while after Josh's death he'd tried to be brave and hold them in, but once he'd begun letting the tears out as they came, he'd found that the periods of awful lasted less and less. He had discovered the cathartic impact of tears.

And so now he sat there in the middle of his son's floor, and cradled his face in his hands and bawled like a baby. The sooner it came, the sooner it would be gone.

Thump.

Something crashed against the window. Evan sniffed and rubbed a hand across his eyes and nose, trying to clear his face. What the h.e.l.l had that been? It was loud; sounded like it nearly busted the gla.s.s.

He got to his feet and started toward the bedroom window, still covered partially in the charcoal gray drapes that Josh had picked out for himself.

Evan had his hand on the drape to pull it back when another smack hit the window.

Thud.

He jumped back. "What the h.e.l.l?"

Now his heart was pounding. Who was throwing things at his window?

Evan gingerly pulled back the draperies and looked outside. The morning was shaping up to be a lovely shade of slit-your-wrists gray, and he had no doubt that a storm would roll in before dinner.

The edges of his view were obscured by small evergreen shrubs, but Evan could see the open gra.s.s of the yard directly in front of him, and the empty asphalt of the street beyond. The Aramonds' brick ranch across the street looked as quiet and deserted as everything else he could see from this vantage point.

"Hmphff," Evan said, and released the curtains. He decided to go outside to have a look.

The neighborhood seemed still as midnight when he stepped outside; strange for a Sat.u.r.day, but it was pretty cool and bl.u.s.tery. Not exactly a day that called out for an outing to the beach!

Evan stepped off the stoop and walked over to the side of the house where Josh's window perched just above the ground. Their house had been built into a hill, and while half of it was solidly aboveground, the other half was below. It made for good heating and cooling bills, since the ground provided a natural insulation.

It was clear that something had hit the window. When Evan stood in front of his son's bedroom window, he could see an oval spot near the center of the gla.s.s. Josh's window had a spray of some white-colored dust around that impact spot, and something that looked like it might be blood dripped down the white painted frame below.

He looked around on the ground near the evergreens and saw the culprit instantly. A seagull. The creature was still alive, but it wouldn't be for long. The wings fluttered, briefly, crazily, with a flap-flap-flap sound that succeeded only in turning the bird's body in a circle. Evan could see the pain in the creature's bright, open eyeball. The thing stared at him from its crooked head and flapped again, moving its bulk in a circle around the broken neck.

"Sorry, buddy," Evan whispered, and went to get a shovel. He needed to put the thing out of its misery and bury it before Sarah came back home. It drove her nuts when birds. .h.i.t one of the house's windows. "Bad luck," she insisted.

When he came back, the gull was already dead, one open eye stuck staring at the gray sky. Evan shook his head, and thanked the air that he didn't have to smash the thing in the head with the shovel before burying it. Instead, he scooped it onto the blade. That's when he noticed the second one, lying just underneath a long branch of evergreen, near a gnarled twist of root. There had been two thumps, hadn't there?

He looked at the bird splayed out on the spade and then at the other bird, and shook his head. "I'll come back for you," he promised, and walked the first bird around the house to bury it in the compost pile. Once back there, he dug a small hole (and was secretly pleased that so far, the fish appeared to have been untouched by the local cats) and dropped in the dead gull.

Then he returned to the front of the house to retrieve the second body.

He was scooping the shovel under the bird when he heard the first sound.

"Eee-ahh-ee! Eee-ahh-ee!"

Evan looked up from the bushes to the sky, and quickly located the source of the sound. Another gull circled overhead, lazily pinpointing the house in its flight.

He raised an eyebrow at the unusual interest gulls were showing in his house today and lifted the dead bird on his shovel.

"Ee-ahh-ee!" came the sound again, only this time it was closer. And then another screech answered it. "Eeeee-aahhh!"

Evan looked up and there were five gulls now flying in the air above his roof. The things did not appear to be en route to another beachside location. The target was right here.

Maybe one of these were a mate, he wondered, stepping out of the bushes with the dead bird.

"Eee-ahhh! Ahhh-eee!"

He looked up again and there were a dozen gulls now swirling around his house; one of them swooped down at his face. It came so close a feather brushed his cheek as it pa.s.sed.

"Whoa!" Evan gasped, ducking as the bird swooshed by. "What the h.e.l.l!"

Above his head, the sky suddenly darkened, as scores more gulls joined the flock. The quiet of the morning suddenly turned into a cacophony of screeches and caws, as one by one the cloud of birds grew, and more and more of them peeled off the main flock and dipped in the air to strafe Evan's lawn. He ducked and jumped a dozen times as the birds flew around his yard, bombing his head, screeching as if their babies were being attacked.

"d.a.m.n," Evan said. He'd never seen the gulls like this. They normally didn't bother to come in from the beach much, other than for a solo flyby while looking for some easy lunch. He had never seen them circle the subdivision like a flock of vultures that had spotted a kill.

He began to edge away from the house, brandishing the shovel, intending to cart the bird body back to the compost quickly, so that he could get back into the house before too many more birds arrived.

But it was too late.

"Eeee-ahhh!" shouted one gray monster as it dove in the air straight for his face. Evan ducked, but it didn't matter; the bird landed on his head, grasping at his hair with clawlike feet as its beak pecked hard at the soft flesh of his forehead.

"What the f.u.c.k!" Evan screamed, and dropped the shovel to swat at the bird. It took off from his head in an explosion of feathers, but then two more gulls dropped from the sky and landed on his shoulders, bending in to peck at his neck almost right away. He shook them off, but the air around him was alive with gulls, shrieking and cawing like mad, and Evan felt the pinch of claws on his head and neck and back, and he didn't stand still anymore. He turned and ran for the house.

Something jabbed him in the back of the neck and he stumbled at the pain, flipping his arms back and flailing at the air, trying to fend them off. Another dart of pain caught him in the neck, and then something reached around and pecked hard at his cheek, just missing his eye.

"No no no!" Evan yelled, turning around in a violent circle and spraying his hands out like a manic ninja, catching one after another heavy feathered body with the back of his hands. Beaks and claws ripped at his skin; it felt like he'd pulled his arms through a rosebush. The birds bounced off of him and pecked at his hands, and then one was in his face, cold claws grabbing at his lips and teeth for purchase.

Evan literally punched that one midair and felt its claw rip open the inside of his gum as it tried to hold to him before falling away.

"No!" he screamed again and regained his balance from his violent pirouette. He ran again for the door to his house, and quickly ripped it open and flung himself inside. Behind him, thud after thud after thud hit the door.

"Eee-ahhh!!!!" the air outside screamed.

Evan looked up to see a half dozen gulls plaster themselves against the gla.s.s, beady black eyes all staring in at him for just a second, as their bodies pounded against the transparent surface, molded to it briefly, and then fell off to pile on the ground outside. He could see wings beating feebly against the ground from the felled animals, and could hear the scrabbling of nails against concrete.

The birds cried and wailed outside, and still more of them came, streaming out of the sky like avian kamikazes. They pounded against the door, one after the next. Each head smacked against the gla.s.s with a finality that made Evan's skin crawl, and soon he could see trails of yellowish liquid on the window of the door, and the occasional dots of impact blood.

"What the freakin' h.e.l.l," he breathed, lying back on his arms on the floor, feet to the door. He could feel the warmth of blood dripping down his neck and back from where the birds had pecked him, but he didn't pay attention. Outside, the air continued to flutter with gray feathers and shrieks of frustration as the birds pounded one and three and five at a time against his door.

He lay there on the floor and waited, wondering if the gla.s.s would shatter and the birds would finally plow through the opening and reach him. He could have shut the wooden door, but something made him watch; he wanted to know when the birds gave up. They had to stop eventually, right?

The crashes and thuds against the door did finally start to slow, and soon, he realized it had been a couple minutes since the last bird committed suicide against his front door. Groaning at the pinchlike wounds all over his head and arms, Evan stood and cautiously stepped toward the door. He flinched when the floor creaked as he stepped close. His heart beat faster, and he kept expecting a smack to crack against the gla.s.s right in front of him. But as he surveyed the piles of b.l.o.o.d.y feathers that littered his stoop like the remains of a serial killer pillow fight, he began to think that maybe, this attack anyway, was over. Nothing moved on his front lawn. Where his neighbors had been through all of that, he didn't know...but n.o.body was outside down the street as far as he could see.

Evan pushed open the door; it resisted at first from the weight of dead gull bodies piled against it.

Once outside, he peered beyond the frame of the house into the sky, looking hard in all directions for some indication that there was more of a flock coming.

The horizon was gray and roiling with quietly ominous clouds...but there appeared to be no more flocks of murderous birds ready to break free of the sky.

He began to count the bird bodies lying all around his front door, but lost track at thirty. "That's just not right," he mumbled to himself, and then went to get a garbage can. He had originally come out here because he didn't want Sarah to see one dead bird on her lawn. He couldn't let her get a glimpse of this. It was almost biblical.

Evan piled all the birds into the can, and then dug a deep hole next to the compost pile. He didn't want to risk hitting the fish with the spade and this load was going to take some s.p.a.ce to bury. The sweat was pouring down his back and chest by the time he was satisfied that he'd cleared enough dirt. He poured the birds from the can into the hole and tamped down the dirt on top of them. Then he returned the can to the garage and went inside to clean up.

He showered for the second time that morning, as much to clean all of the scratches he'd incurred as to get rid of the dirt-and the feeling of dirt. He felt violated, he realized, as he scrubbed shampoo into his hair with extra vigor.

He toweled off in front of the mirror and leaned in to look hard at his face. None of the scratches looked too bad, but he got out some antibiotic cream and rubbed it on all of them. No sense in risking an infection. As he applied the cream, he looked into his own eyes. They were brown and sad, and a little distant. Far away.

"a.s.s," he told his reflection, watching the bristles of his unshaved beard, now well peppered with gray, move across his cheek as he spoke. "You brought this on yourself."

Then he laughed at his reflection and threw the towel in the hamper. "So what?" he asked the bathroom mirror. "Are you suggesting that she can control the birds? What kind of woman do you believe she is?"

When he didn't answer himself, the house seemed suddenly disturbingly quiet. He could hear the hum of the refrigerator from down the hall, and the tick of a clock in the front room. The air hung expectant.

"What kind of woman is she?" he asked the empty house more quietly.

Shaking his head, he pulled on a fresh pair of pants and shirt and went back into Josh's room. Then he attacked his mission with renewed intensity, piling all of the trinkets and photos and pictures into boxes and marking them TROPHIES, MOVIES, PICTURES and more in black marker on the side before sealing the tops with packing tape.

In an hour, he had cleared the majority of the room, down to the furniture. Then he got a larger plastic bin he'd been saving in the garage, and began emptying the drawers. He pulled out Josh's top drawer of T-shirts and pressed his face to them, trying to catch just one last whiff of the warm, huggable scent that had once meant the happiness of his son in his life.

But now, the clothes just smelled musty. He stifled a sneeze and dropped the pile into the bin, following it with jeans and socks. When it was full, he pressed down the lid until it clicked.

"I'll miss you, buddy," he whispered, and then rolled it to rest beneath the attic stairs in the hall. Then he got another plastic bin, and brought it into the center of the room before opening the closet doors.

He didn't stop packing until the room was empty of everything but a dresser, desk and stripped bed.

When he couldn't find anything else to box up, he sat on the bed and took in a long, hitching breath. He stared at the faint mark from the bird on the window, and the horror of the morning rushed back at him; he'd been pushing so hard at packing the room that he'd all but for gotten about the birds. He realized that he hadn't slowed down in close to three hours. His shirt was soaked, but when he reached up to wipe his eyes, he realized that it wasn't just from sweat. His face was sopping wet too. He'd been crying the whole time.

Chapter Thirty.

O'Flaherty's buzzed with laughter, music and the clink of gla.s.ses lifting and resetting on the bar and dozen wooden tables. Sat.u.r.day night spelled celebration in any town, and when you were the town's main watering hole, well...a full house was nearly always a given.

Evan's back and legs complained from all the bending and crouching and lifting he'd done throughout the day; never mind the impromptu war of the gulls and subsequent military burial of bird carca.s.ses. Between packing and digging, he'd put in a week's worth of physical labor compared to his normal activity quotient.

Sarah had come home after lunch, laden with packages from the Wal-Mart and Ace Hardware stores. "If I couldn't help with the packing," she'd explained, "I figured I could be focused on the redecorating. You didn't have anything in mind, did you?"

When Evan had shrugged, she'd smiled. "Good. Because I found this wallpaper runner and these drapes at Wal-Mart that I thought would be perfect if we wanted to go with more of a plum theme..."

She'd proceeded to empty her numerous plastic bags of everything from decorative wall plates to paint samples on the bare mattress. By the time she was done, Evan felt more exhausted just from thinking about the coming painting and redecorating than he had from the actual process of boxing.

At the end of the afternoon, Sarah had plans to meet her friend Melanie for dinner, but offered to cook Evan something first. He declined, opting to call Bill first to see if he wanted to do something. And not surprisingly, Bill had said to meet at the bar. By six o'clock, Evan and Sarah were kissing each other good-bye in the garage and heading in separate directions. "I should be home by ten," Sarah promised, and Evan said the same. If they'd had any inkling of how the night would truly go, they would have kissed a lot longer.

"Hey, Fish Lover!" Bill called from a booth at the back of O'Flaherty's. Evan saw him through the crowded bar instantly; his friend wore a faded, ripped green flannel shirt that would have embarra.s.sed a lumberjack. The thick wave of brown beard that he'd adopted this past winter only exaggerated the effect.

"You applying for a job with a Pearl Jam tribute band?" Evan poked.

"What, this?" Bill grinned, running one hand down his green- and brown-checked sleeve and rolling his eyes in mock enjoyment. "I just want to be in style, you know?"

"Well, news to the clueless," Evan offered. "That shirt probably wasn't in style when it was new, and it sure as h.e.l.l isn't now."

Bill held up a hand, as if to motion "stop."

"You're just jealous of my hot duds. I know it. I don't blame you." Bill nodded as if he knew the secrets of the underworld. "But it's okay. I'll just slip this off so that you're not seeing the green devil all night."

Underneath Bill's flannel was a T-shirt that unbelievably was in worse shape than the overshirt. This one had once been white, with a cartoon bunny adorning its chest. The rabbit held out a hand as if to shake, while the other mitt had buried a foot-long cleaver in its own chest. Beneath it, a slogan read LET'S JUST CUT TO THE CHASE.

The shirt looked as if it had been used as a dust rag; blotchy stains marred it in a dozen places and a couple holes showed the hair of Bill's shoulders poking through.

"Jeez, man, do we need to take up a collection?" Evan asked.

"Laundry weekend," Bill explained. "Now you know why I was wearing the flannel."

Evan nodded. "Yeah, you can put it back on."

"Too late," Bill said. "It's getting warm in here."

"That's just the embarra.s.sment talking," Evan suggested.

At that point, a waitress turned up. "What can I get you guys?" she asked, bouncing from one foot to the other while smiling in a way that could only be described as plastic. Evan supposed the motion was meant to make her look perky, but instead, the resulting gentle vibration of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against a too-tight black T-shirt just made it look like she had to go to the bathroom.