Bird Box

nine

“Creatures,” Malorie thinks. What a cheap word.

The children are quiet and the banks are still. She can hear the paddles slicing the water. The rhythm of her rowing is in step with her heartbeat, and then it falters. When the cadences oppose, she feels like she could die.

Creatures.

Malorie has never liked this word. It’s out of place, somehow. The things that have haunted her for more than four years are not creatures to her. A garden slug is a creature. A porcupine. But the things that have lurked beyond draped windows and have kept her blindfolded are not the sort that an exterminator could ever remove.

“Barbarian” isn’t right, either. A barbarian is reckless. So is a brute.

In the distance, a bird sings a song from high in the sky. The paddles cut the water, shifting with each row.

“Behemoth” is unproven. They could be as small as a fingernail.

Though they are early in their journey along the river, Malorie’s muscles ache from rowing. Her shirt is soaked through with sweat. Her feet are cold. The blindfold continues to irritate.

“Demon.” “Devil.” “Rogue.” Maybe they are all these things.

Her sister died because she saw one. Her parents must have met the same fate.

“Imp” is too kind. “Savage” too human.

Malorie is not only afraid of the things that may wade in the river, she is also fascinated by them.

Do they know what they do? Do they mean to do what they do?

Right now, it feels as if the whole world is dead. It feels like the rowboat is the last remaining place where life can be found. The rest of the world fans out from the tip of the boat, an empty globe, blooming and vacant with each row.

If they don’t know what they do, they can’t be “villains.”

The children have been quiet a long time. A second birdsong comes from above. A fish splashes. Malorie has never seen this river. What does it look like? Do the trees crowd the banks? Are there houses lining its shore?

They are monsters, Malorie thinks. But she knows they are more than this. They are infinity.

“Mommy!” the Boy suddenly cries.

A bird of prey caws; its echo breaks across the river.

“What is it, Boy?”

“It sounds like an engine.”

“What?”

Malorie stops paddling. She listens closely.

Far off, beyond even the river’s flow, comes the sound of an engine.

Malorie recognizes it immediately. It is the sound of another boat approaching.

Rather than feeling excitement at the prospect of encountering another human being on this river, Malorie is afraid.

“Get down, you two,” she says.

She rests the paddle handles across her knees. The rowboat floats.

The Boy heard it, she tells herself. The Boy heard it because you raised him well and now he hears better than he will ever see.

Breathing deep, Malorie waits. The engine grows louder. The boat is traveling upstream.

“Ouch!” the Boy yelps.

“What is it, Boy?”

“My ear! I got hit by a tree.”

Malorie thinks this is good. If a tree touched the Boy, they are likely near one of the banks. Maybe, by some deserved providence, the foliage will provide cover.

The other boat is much closer now. Malorie knows that if she were able to open her eyes, she could see it.

“Do not take off your blindfolds,” Malorie says.

And then the boat’s engine is level with them. It does not pass.

Whoever it is, Malorie thinks, they can see us.

The boat’s engine cuts abruptly. The air smells of gasoline. Footsteps cross what must be the deck.

“Hello there!” a voice says. Malorie does not respond. “Hey there! It’s okay. You can remove your blindfolds! I’m just an ordinary man.”

“No you cannot,” Malorie says quickly to the children.

“There’s nothing out here with us, miss. Take my word for it. We’re all alone.”

Malorie is still. Finally, feeling there is no alternative, she answers him.

“How do you know?”

“Miss,” he says, “I’m looking right now. I’ve had my eyes open the entire trip today. Yesterday, too.”

“You can’t just look,” she says. “You know that.”

The stranger laughs.

“Really,” he says, “there’s nothing to be afraid of. You can trust me. It’s just us two on the river. Just two ordinary people crossing paths.”

“No!” Malorie screams to the children.

She lets go of the Girl and grips the paddle handles again. The man sighs.

“There’s no need to live like this, miss. Consider these children. Would you rob them the chance to view a brisk, beautiful day like this?”

“Stay away from our boat,” Malorie says sternly.

Silence. The man does not answer. Malorie braces herself. She feels trapped. Vulnerable. In the rowboat against the bank. On this river. In this world.

Something splashes in the water. Malorie gasps.

“Miss,” he says, “the view is incredible, if you don’t mind a little fog. When’s the last time you looked outside? Has it been years? Have you seen this river? The weather? I bet you don’t even remember what weather looks like.”

She remembers the outside world very well. She remembers walking home as a schoolgirl through a tunnel of autumn leaves. She recalls neighboring yards, gardens, and homes. She remembers lying on the grass in her backyard with Shannon and deciding which clouds looked like which boys and girls from class.

“We are keeping our blindfolds on,” Malorie says.

“I’ve given that up, miss,” he says. “I’ve moved on. Won’t you do the same?”

“Leave us alone now,” she commands.

The man sighs again.

“They can’t haunt you forever,” he says. “They can’t force you to live like this forever. You know that, miss?”

Malorie puts the right paddle into a position where she believes she can push off the bank.

“I ought to remove your blindfolds myself,” the man says suddenly.

Malorie does not move.

He sounds gruff. He sounds a little angry.

“We’re just two people,” he continues. “Meeting on a river. Four if you include the little ones. And they can’t be blamed for how you’re raising them. I’m the only one here with the nerve to look outside. Your worries only keep you safe long enough to worry some more.”

His voice is coming from a different place now. Malorie thinks he has stepped to the front of his boat. She only wants to pass him. She just wants to get farther from the house they left this morning.

“And I’ll tell you what,” the man suddenly says, horribly near, “I’ve seen one.”

Malorie grabs for the Boy and pulls him by the back of his shirt. He hits the steel bottom of the rowboat and yelps.

The man laughs.

“They aren’t as ugly as you’d think, miss.”

She shoves the paddle against the bank. She is floundering. It’s hard to find something solid. Feels like twigs and roots. Mud.

He is going to go mad, Malorie thinks. And he will hurt you.

“Where are you going to go?” he yells. “Are you going to cry every time you hear a stick crack?”

Malorie can’t get the rowboat free.

“Keep your blindfolds on!” she yells at the children.

The man said he’s seen one. When? When?

“You think I’m mad, don’t you?”

At last the paddle is planted hard against the earth. Malorie pushes, grunting. The rowboat moves. She thinks it might be free. Then it bangs against the man’s boat and she shrieks.

He’s trapped you.

Will he force their eyes open?

“Who’s the mad one here? Look at you now. Two people meet on a river…”

Malorie rocks back and forth. She senses a gap behind the rowboat, some kind of opening.

“…one of them looks to the sky…”

Malorie feels the paddle sink into the earth.

“…the other tries to steer a boat with a blindfold on.”

The rowboat is almost free.

“So, I have to ask myself…”

“Move!” she screams.

“…who here has gone mad?”

The man cackles. It sounds like his laughter rises toward the sky he speaks of. She thinks to ask, How far back did you see one? But she doesn’t.

“Leave us!” Malorie yells.

From her struggle, cold river water splashes into the boat. The Girl shrieks. Malorie tells herself, Ask the man how far back he saw it. Maybe the madness hasn’t set in. Maybe it’s slower with him. Maybe he will perform one final act of benevolence before he loses all sense of reality.

The rowboat is free.

Tom once said it had to be different for everybody. He said a crazy man might never go any madder. And the sanest might take a long time to get there.

“Open your eyes, for Christ’s sake!” the man shouts.

His voice has changed. He sounds drunk, different.

“Quit running, miss. Open your eyes!” he pleads.

“Don’t listen to him!” she yells. The Boy is pressed up against her and the Girl whimpers at her back. Malorie shakes.

“Your mother is the mad one, kids. Take off those blindfolds.”

The man suddenly howls, gargling. It sounds like something has died in his throat. How much longer before he strangles himself with the rope rail or lowers himself into the spinning propeller of his boat?

Malorie is paddling furiously. Her blindfold doesn’t feel tight enough.

What he saw is near. What he saw is here on this river.

“Do not remove your folds!” Malorie screams again. She is paddling past the boat now. “Do you two understand me? Answer me.”

“Yes!” the Boy says.

“Yes!” the Girl says.

The man howls again but he is farther behind them now. He sounds as if he’s trying to yell but has forgotten how.

When the rowboat has gone another forty yards, and the sound of the engine behind them is almost out of earshot, Malorie reaches forward and touches the Boy’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry, Mommy,” the Boy says.

Then Malorie reaches behind her and finds the Girl’s hand. She squeezes. Then, letting go of both of them, she takes the paddles again.

“Are you dry?” she asks the Girl.

“No,” the Girl answers.

“Use the blanket to dry yourself off. Now.”

The air smells clean again. The trees. The water.

The gasoline fumes are well behind them.

Do you remember how the house smelled? Malorie thinks.

Despite the horror of having encountered the man on the boat, she remembers. The stale, stuffy air of the house. It was there the day she arrived. And it never got any better.

She does not hate the man with the boat. She feels only sorrow.

“You did so well,” Malorie says to the children, trembling, paddling deeper down the river.