Josh Malerman - Bird Box

But this time she hears something besides their coos.

At the end of the front walk she hears an “abandoned step.” It’s the only way she can explain it to Felix. It sounds to her like someone was walking, was planning to walk farther, then suddenly stopped.

Cheryl, always on high alert whenever she feeds the birds, is surprised to realize she is trembling.

She says, “Is anybody there?”

There is no answer.

She thinks of returning to the front door. She’ll tell the others she’s too freaked out to do this today.

Instead, she waits.

And there is no further sound.

In the box, the birds are active. She calls to them nervously.

“Hey hey, guys. Hey hey.”

The quiver in her voice scares her. Instinctively, she lowers her head and raises the hand holding the apples to protect her, as though something were about to touch her face. She takes a step. Then another. Finally, she reaches the box. Sometimes, she tells Felix, the walk between the front door and the box is like floating in outer space. Anchorless.

Today she feels impossibly far from land.

“Hey hey,” she says, opening the box’s lid just enough to be able to drop a few of the apple slices. Normally she hears the pitter-patter of their tiny feet as they rush for the food. Today she does not.

“Eat up, guys. Aren’t you hungry?”

She opens the lid the tiniest bit again and drops the remaining pieces inside. This, she tells Felix, is always her favorite part. When she closes the lid and presses her ear to the box, listening to their tiny bodies as they eat.

But they do not start eating. Instead, they anxiously coo.

“Hey hey,” Cheryl says, trying to shake off the tremble in her voice. “Eat up, guys.”

She takes her ear from the box, thinking her presence today is making them shy. As she does, she shrieks.

Something has touched her shoulder.

Spinning, blind, Cheryl waves her arms wildly. She touches nothing.

She can’t move her legs. She can’t run inside. Something touched her shoulder and she does not know what it was.

The voices of the birds no longer sound sweet. They sound like what Tom wanted them to be.

An alarm.

“ Who’s there? ”

She worries someone will answer. She doesn’t want someone to answer.

She decides to yell. One of the housemates can come get her. Pull her back to Earth. But as she takes a step, she hears a leaf crushed beneath her shoe. Frantically, she tries to recall the first time she arrived at the house. She looked at it through the window of her car. Was there a tree? Here by the front walk?

Was there?

Maybe it was only a falling leaf that grazed her.

It would be so easy to find out. If she could just open her eyes for a moment she could see she was alone. She could see it was just a leaf. Nothing more.

But she can’t.

Shaking, she presses her back to the house and slowly slides toward the front door. Her head swivels left, then right, at the slightest sounds. A bird high in the sky. The rustling in a tree across the street. A small gust of warm wind. Sweating, she feels the brick at last and hurriedly makes it to the door.

“Jesus,” Felix says. “Do you really think it could have been a leaf?”

She pauses. Malorie leans farther into the hall.

“Yes,” Cheryl suddenly says. “I do. Playing it back. That’s exactly what it was.”

Malorie steps back into her bedroom and sits upon the bed.

Felix’s story about the well and what he heard out there. Victor barking at the blanketed windows. Cheryl with the birds.

Is it possible, Malorie wonders, that the world out there and the things they hide from are closing in?

To Malorie, since the arrival of Gary, the house feels absolutely different, divided. It’s a small change, but under these circumstances, any change is a big one.

And it’s Don who worries her the most.

More often than not, when Tom, Jules, and Felix are talking in the living room, Don is in the dining room with Gary. He’s expressed a heavy interest in the story about the man who took down the drapes and unlocked the doors. While washing clothes in the kitchen sink, halfway through the second-to-last jug of detergent, Malorie listens to two conversations at once. While Tom and Jules are turning long-sleeved shirts into dog leashes, Gary is explaining to Don the way Frank thought. Always the way Frank thought. Never quite what Gary thinks himself.

“I don’t think it’s a matter of one man being better prepared than another,” Gary is saying. “I think of it more like a 3-D movie. At first, the audience thinks the objects are really coming at them. They hold their hands up for protection. But the intelligent ones, the ones who are very aware, know they were safe all along.”

Don has come full circle with Gary. Malorie thinks she saw it when it happened.

Hey, I don’t think that theory is any more cracked than ours , Don said to him once.

“It’s hard,” Don says now, “because we don’t get any new reports.”

“Exactly.”

Yes, Don has gone from voting against letting Gary in, to being the one housemate who sits with him and talks. And talks. And talks.

He’s skeptical , Malorie thinks. That’s his nature. And he’s needed someone to talk to. That’s all this means. He’s different than you are. Don’t you understand?

But these thoughts, just as they are, aren’t taking root. No matter how she perceives it, Gary and Don are talking about things like hysteria and the idea that the creatures can’t cause harm to someone who is prepared to see them. Don, she knows, has long espoused a greater fear of man than creatures. Yet, he closes his eyes when the front door opens and closes. He does not look out the window. He has never committed to the idea that the creatures cannot hurt us. Could someone like Gary convince him at last?

She wants to talk to Tom about it. She wants to pull him aside and ask him to make them stop. Or at least go and talk with them. Maybe his words will influence their conversation. Make it sound safer.

Yes, she wants to talk to Tom about Don.

Division .

With trepidation, she crosses the kitchen and looks into the living room. Tom and Felix are reading a map on the floor. They are measuring distances according to the map’s mileage scale. Jules is teaching the dogs commands.

Stop. Start again .

“We have to measure what is an average step for you ,” Felix says.

“What are you guys planning?” Malorie asks.

Tom turns to her.

“Distance,” he says. “How many of my steps are in a mile.”

Felix is using the measuring tape at Tom’s feet.

“If I listen to music as I go,” Tom says, “I could walk in rhythm with it. That way the steps we measure in here would be close to the ones I take out there.”

“Like dancing,” Felix says.

Malorie turns to see Olympia is now at the kitchen sink. She washes utensils. Malorie joins her and continues washing the clothes. After being confined to this house for almost four months, Olympia has lost a little of her shine. Her skin is pale. Her eyes deeper set.

“Are you worried?” Olympia suddenly asks.

“About what?”

“About making it.”

“Making what?”

“Surviving our deliveries.”

Malorie wants to tell Olympia that it’s going to be okay but she struggles to locate the words. She is thinking about Don.

“I’ve always wanted a baby,” Olympia says. “I was so excited when I found out. I felt like my life was complete. You know?”

This is not how Malorie felt but she says yes, she knows.