It was for her in the beginning. But by the end, it was for us. To drown out her screams.
From the darkened hallway came the sound of soft, shuffling footsteps.
Kris looked up just as a pale shape emerged from the shadows.
It’s Mommy. You called to her and she came, Kris thought as the pale thing lurched into the light.
It was not her mother. It was Sadie. And even though the girl’s eyes were open wide, her irises as perfectly round as green buttons, she did not seem to see anything before her. She came toward her mother in strange, lurching movements.
“Take these broken wings and learn to fly … all your life …”
“I know this!” Sadie screeched.
Startled, Kris leapt to her feet. The cassette case slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor with a hollow clank.
“I know this!” Sadie cried out, over and over. “I know this!” Her eyes were still staring straight ahead, into nothingness, but she cocked her head toward the sound.
“… take these sunken eyes and learn to see, all your life …”
Kris took a step forward, her hand stretched out in a pitiful attempt to stop what was happening.
“Sadie! Wake up!”
Even though the girl’s eyes were clearly open, Kris was convinced she was sleepwalking. It was the only explanation. Sadie was lost in some all-consuming dream, unaware of her actions even as she shuffled farther into the dim light of the great room.
“Sadie!”
“I know this!” Sadie raised a hand and pointed a single quivering finger toward the boombox. Her wild eyes found her mother, and for the first time since entering the room, she seemed to focus on the object in front of her.
“This is her song!”
The words brought Kris to a sudden halt. Her song. Mommy’s song. But how could Sadie know? Kris had never really told Sadie about her last summer. How could she? Even to Kris, those final days were murky.
Her voice warbled as she asked, “Sadie, what are you talking about?”
“… you were only waiting for this moment to be free.”
A strange little smile suddenly played at Sadie’s lips, made all the more disturbing by the madness in those green eyes, as if her brain squirmed with fever.
“I know this!” she shrieked. “This is her song!”
“Blackbird fly …”
“Sadie, stop!”
“Blackbird fly …”
“It’s her song!”
“Sadie, wake up!”
“Into the light of a dark black night.”
Lunging forward, Kris grabbed her daughter by the shoulders, stopping her terrible, lurching march.
A bird was chirping, right there in the room with them. Not the harsh shriek of a grackle but the tweeting of a songbird.
Sadie looked up into her mother’s eyes. Her lips peeled away from her clenched teeth into an awful imitation of a smile. And the little girl began to laugh.
On the boombox, the guitar returned, joining the chirping bird in a duet. It curled around the sound of Sadie’s manic laughter like smoke twisting in darkness.
“Stop it!” Kris commanded.
Grasping her daughter’s shoulders tighter, Kris gave her a sharp shake, then another.
“Wake up! Sadie! Wake up!”
Sadie’s eyes opened so wide, it was as if someone had cut the lids away. The wet orbs looked as though they were about to fall out of their sockets.
Her upper body began to shake with laughter, the sound forced mercilessly through teeth clamped like a triggered animal trap.
“Stop it!” Kris screamed. “Wake up! Wake up!”
Before she was even aware of what she was doing, Kris spun around and leapt toward the boombox. She jammed a finger down on the stop button.
“Blackbird singing in the dead—”
Click!
The music abruptly ceased. Silence rushed in to fill the void.
It was as if a spell had been broken. Sadie’s eyelids drooped. Her lips relaxed. Her laughter faded away like an echo into open air. Her brow furrowed in confusion as she turned to Kris.
“M-Mommy? What’s happening?”
On the couch’s cracked leather cushion, Kris’s cell phone began to ring.
Kris glanced down just as the screen lit up, displaying the caller ID.
The area code was 620. A local number.
She and Sadie stood in confused silence, listening to the steady rhythm of the phone vibrating against the leather cushion. Finally, it fell silent. A second later, the phone gave a pleasant ding as a notification appeared on its screen: “1 Missed Call.”
“Sadie—” Kris began.
The phone started to ring again.
With an irritated snort, Kris snatched up the phone.
Sadie slowly shook her head. “Mommy, don’t …”
But Kris had already tapped accept.
“What? Who is this?” she barked angrily into the phone.
On the other end, there was only the distorted sound of wind blowing. Then a man’s gruff voice spoke up: “Mrs. Barlow.” He quickly corrected himself: “Dr. Barlow?”
Kris stared down at the floor, confused. “Yes?”
“This is Officer Montgomery.”
“What …? Is … is something wrong?”
There was another pause. Only the wind filled the void.
And then Officer Montgomery said grimly, “Dr. Barlow, I’m afraid we could use your help.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“STAY IN THE car,” Kris said to Sadie in the back seat. She did not wait for a reply. She stepped out of the Jeep and slammed the driver’s-side door shut, locking the doors with the key fob as she hurried across the drive.
The last of the storm clouds were drifting slowly away to the northeast like the dark forms of whales swimming off into an even darker sea. Over downtown Pacington, stars had begun to reclaim the sky, blinking out of the blackness.
The thunderstorm may have passed, but its presence was still felt in the way Kris’s boots sank into the soggy earth and the fallen branches that snapped under her weight as she made her way toward the field. The lights of the Auto Barn burned in the gloom, the mirrored image of the sign reflected in two deep, rainwater-filled tire ruts. The warmth of the previous day had been swept away by the downpour. A cold breeze blew through, carrying with it hints of honeysuckle and wild lavender. Kris shivered, her bare arms prickling into thousands of goosebumps. She should have grabbed a sweatshirt before she left, but she had been too distracted by the call from Officer Montgomery and Sadie’s bizarre behavior.
Raindrops dripped from the rusted points of barbed wire as Kris neared the fence. Three figures were standing in the field beyond. The tallgrass surrounding them drooped low, weighted down by rainwater. Each of their faces was a study in contrast, one side glowing with the yellow light cast by security lamps, the other completely lost in darkness. They all wore the same expression—mouths pulled down at the edges as if by gravity, brows furrowed into peaks of pure helplessness, watery eyes staring at something large on the muddy ground before them.
Kris heard it before she saw it—the sharp snort of nostrils, the desperate breaths of a body in shock—and she knew what held their attention.
Ben was the first to look up. He offered Kris a faint smile of appreciation. It was all the joy he could muster.