The Night Bird

18

In her dream, Frankie hiked along the Point Reyes beach with her father beside her.

He took long, determined steps in the sand, and she had to walk fast to keep pace with him. His back was as straight as a light post. His wiry hair defied the wind. He walked the way old men did, with his hands laced behind him. He fired questions at her like an impatient professor.

“Question,” Marvin said. “Is there a formula for measuring acceptable risk?”

She was practically running. “No.”

“Question. Then how do you assess whether a risk is worth taking?”

“It’s a judgment call,” she said, panting. “You have to look at the circumstances in each case.”

“Question. Is it acceptable to pursue your own selfish satisfaction when it causes risk to someone else?”

Slow down, she wanted to say. Slow down!

“I suppose it’s a trade-off. How badly do you want something, and how big is the risk?”

“Question. So it’s okay to risk another’s life or happiness simply because you really want something?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Question. Are you and Jason still sleeping together?”

Frankie stopped.

“What? How dare you ask me something like that? What does that have to do with anything? It’s none of your business!”

Marvin kept walking, leaving her behind. He seemed taller than he was in real life.

Frankie’s senses felt oddly sharp. The noise of the waves was crisp and unnaturally loud, making her want to cover her ears. The beach was littered with hundreds of dead fish, their carcasses swarmed by flies, and rotting flesh squished under her bare toes. A briny smell filled her nose. Everything in the world felt bigger, brighter, and more intense. The ocean. The huge rocky cliffs climbing to the sky. Her father striding ahead of her. It was like a movie playing in her head.

She caught up with him. His voice was softer now.

“Was I a good father?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You’re successful.”

“Not because of you.”

“Did I praise you enough?”

“No.”

“I need you,” her father said.

She cocked her head. “What?”

“You have ten minutes to save me.”

“What?”

She blinked, and her father was suddenly gone. She stood alone on the beach. The wind and waves grew more ferocious, as if she were in the center of a storm. Dead fish washed in with each slap of the tide. Spray soaked her skin. She looked all around to find her father, and then she saw him — a silhouette high on the tall cliff, his arms spread wide. He was going to jump.

“Stop!”

Frankie shouted, but the noise drowned her voice. She ran, but the wet sand sucked her down. He flew. Gravity brought him shooting toward her, larger and faster with each second. She turned away in horror, but she heard the sickening thump of flesh and rock colliding. Not ten feet in front of her, when she looked again, her father’s broken form cartwheeled down the beach and lay still. She stood over him. His limbs were twisted. Blood striped his face.

His eyes snapped open.

They were not human eyes under his eyelids. They were fly eyes. Bug eyes. His lips grew into a giant, red-lipped grin from ear to ear. He sang to her in a horrible falsetto.

“Fran-kieeee, Fran-kieeee.”

She bolted upward in bed, screaming. Her body under her nightgown was clammy with sweat, and she threw off the covers. Warm sunlight streamed through the windows of her bedroom. She shook herself to drive the dream out of her brain, but the memory lingered, making her shiver.

She got out of bed. Below her in the condo, she smelled coffee brewing. It was Sunday morning. She refreshed herself with a long shower. The pulse of the water massaged her back, and she breathed in steam. When she was done and out of the bathroom, she’d almost forgotten the dream.

Then the creepy, falsetto voice came back.

This time, it was real, calling to her from inside her own bedroom.

“Fran-kieeee, Fran-kieeee.”

She screamed and spun around, but she was alone. The voice was coming from the phone on her nightstand. Someone was calling her — but somehow, her ringtone had been changed. She ran to the phone, but she was too late to grab the incoming call. She fumbled with the buttons on the phone to check her settings, and when she found the listing of ringtones, she saw a new one:

Frankie threw the phone against the wall, where it shattered into pieces. How? How had he done it? She always had her phone with her; she never left it anywhere. But as if to taunt her further, the phone rang again. Not the broken phone on the floor. This was another phone, using her ordinary ringtone. The noise was muffled. She looked everywhere and realized that her own phone was still in her purse. Her real phone.

Somehow, he’d slipped a second phone into her bag. As if to say, I was this close to you once. I can be this close to you again. He was worming his way into her life. Into her brain.

She remembered sitting next to Todd Ferris on the bench the previous day. Was it him?

Or had the Night Bird been among the crowd at Zingari again?

Frankie dove into her purse and answered her phone. She didn’t recognize the incoming number.

“Dr. Stein?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“It’s Khristeen Smith with the San Francisco Chronicle. I wanted to see if you had any comment about the unusual deaths of three of your patients.”

Frankie’s fist tightened around the phone. The news was out. Soon she’d be under siege. “No, I don’t have any comment right now.”

“Should your patients be worried? Do you have any idea how this could be happening?”

“I can’t talk to you right now, Ms. Smith,” Frankie said. She hung up the phone. Almost immediately, it rang again. She didn’t answer; she knew it would be another reporter. The vultures were gathering. She powered down her phone and returned it to her purse. She felt déjà vu. This was how it had started with Darren Newman, too. Her life was spinning out of control.

Frankie went downstairs. She poured coffee from the pot and took it out to the solarium. Pam was there, reading the newspaper on her iPad, and she didn’t look up as Frankie took the chair next to her. A cool distance blew between them.

“Hey,” Frankie said.

“Hey yourself.”

“Where’s Jason?”

“Running.” Pam’s head swiveled. Her blond hair was casually messy. Her long bare legs were propped on a second chair. “Looks like you’re famous again. It’s on TV. It’s in the paper.”

“I know.”

“Did you screw up? Give somebody the wrong meds?”

“It’s not me. Someone else is doing this.”

Pam sipped coffee. “What do you mean?”

“Some psycho is targeting my patients. And me.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“I thought I heard you shout earlier. Did something happen?”

“Just a bad dream,” Frankie said. After a pause, she added, “The dream was about Dad, actually.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

“It was. Remember how he used to ask us all those questions on our camping trips?”

“Oh Lord,” Pam groaned. She lowered her voice to imitate their father. “Question. Does addiction constitute a brain illness or an absence of will? Question. Does the intervention of family help or hurt in an addict’s trajectory of dependence? Like I didn’t know he was talking about me. His questions were always designed to remind me that I was a shit-hole failure in his eyes.”

Frankie knew Pam was right about that. Marvin’s questions usually had a sharp edge, and the edge was always directed at Pam. “Hey, you lucked out when the topic was extraplanetary life. There wasn’t much he could do with that.”

“I don’t know. I kept waiting for him to say, ‘Question. If humans were relocated to another planet, would Pam be a minimum-wage waitress or a whore?’”

“He wasn’t quite that bad.”

“He was every bit that bad, Frankie,” Pam replied.

Just like that, the shadow was back between them. Even from the grave, their father drove the two of them apart.

“I dreamed that I saw him on the cliff,” Frankie said.

“Lucky you.”

“He didn’t fall. He jumped. In my dream.”

“Maybe he did.”

“Pam, don’t say that,” Frankie chided her.

“You said the rangers couldn’t be sure. If he slipped, or if he jumped, what difference does it make to us? In the end, it’s the same. He’s gone. And you know what? I don’t miss him.”

Frankie hesitated. “Neither do I.”

“Okay, then,” Pam said. “Let’s leave the bastard behind instead of talking about him every time we’re together.”

“Sorry. It still haunts me.”

Frankie got up. She wasn’t done with her coffee, but she wanted to get to the office. She always felt safe at her office. That was where her life made sense. Plus, she was sure she had messages waiting for her. Patients would be watching the news, and they’d be scared.

“Do you think I’m a bad person?” she asked.

Pam’s eyes had the sharpness of knives. “I asked you that once myself. Remember? I OD’d and nearly died. I was in rehab for the second time. Dad wouldn’t even come to see me. I was crying because I needed a father, and I didn’t have one. I asked you if I was a bad person.”

Frankie closed her eyes. “I do remember.”

“You told me there was no such thing as bad people,” Pam went on. “Only bad memories.”