Nick Cutter - Little Heaven

“What about this Grand Poobah?” Eb said.

Ellen said, “I don’t know a thing about him.”

“We know he’s fussy about his hair,” said Minerva.

“Sherri and I weren’t raised religious,” Ellen went on. “So the idea of following someone— one person —devoting your whole life to him, it just doesn’t add up. What if he’s wrong? What if he’s nuts?”

Ebenezer said, “O ye of little faith.”

Eb said it with a smile. He thought this Bellhaven woman was a fool but a good-hearted one, and those were the best sorts of fools. He would gladly take her money. She would get a gander at this rug-rat nephew of hers. On the way back, he would pay a visit to Ruby at the cathouse in Albuquerque. Ruby did this most delightful thing with her hips.

Micah said, “You will not get him back.”

He peered across the fire at Ellen. His face was grave.

“You should not harbor that hope.”

Ellen stared back at him. “All I’m asking is to see him. He doesn’t even know who I am. He won’t remember me. I am—” She casually encircled her face with one finger. “I look different than I did then. Nate was just a baby anyway. Reggie couldn’t pick me out of a lineup, either. I just want to make sure he’s okay.”

Micah said, “Okay by whose estimation?”

Ellen’s shoulders drew tight. Her head dipped.

“You know what my sister said to me once? She said that maybe the best thing about having a child, especially a young one, was that you could love that child shamelessly. She said that you could put everything into that kid, love crazily, give everything in your heart and mind and soul over to that other person. You can’t do that for a husband or a wife, not really. The only other entity you could love that way would be God, if you’re a believer.”

She looked up again. Directly at Micah.

“You and me—we don’t understand that kind of love, do we.”

Micah blinked his eye. He said, “We should turn in.”

THUMP.

The first one landed softly. Micah stirred.

Thu-thump.

He cracked his eyelid. He was inside the tent. The Englishman was snoring somewhere to his left.

Thump.

Something collided with the tent. Micah heard it roll down the canvas.

He grabbed one of his pistols and crawled past Ebenezer.

“Whuzza?” Eb mumbled.

Micah pushed the flap aside. The clearing was washed in pale moonlight.

Thump. Thump.

“What the bloody hell?” Ebenezer said. He sounded like a man who had been kicked violently awake.

Thump.

That soft pattering all around them. Something else struck the tent and rolled off. Things were landing on the ground with muted whumphs .

“Shug?” Minerva called out. “You okay over there?”

He didn’t answer. No sense in disclosing their position. He had no idea what manner of assault they were under.

Thump.

This one landed eight inches away, on the grass in front of the tent.

A bird. He did not know what kind. He wasn’t a birder. It was small, its body no bigger than a plum. Its wings were folded tight to its body.

Micah reached out and touched it. Cold. Stone dead.

Thump. Thump.

They continued to fall, the oddest downpour Micah had ever encountered. Ebenezer crawled up next to him. His hair was in disarray, but his eyes were sharp to the task.

“Arm yourself,” Micah whispered.

Ebenezer retrieved the Tarpley carbine. “What is it?” he said.

“Birds.”

“ Birds? ”

Micah pointed at the ground. Ebenezer’s fingers crept along the grass; he picked the bird up. It must have felt so light, Micah figured, seemingly hollow, but then, birds were built that way to help them fly. Its feathers were brown except the tips, which were shock white. Its beak was open as though it had died midchirp.

Its eyes were white, too. Not black, as a bird’s eyes should be. The white of mother-of-pearl or of concentrated smoke.

There came a final snapping impact—the sound of something much heavier plummeting to earth. The rain of bodies slackened, then stopped.

Micah and Ebenezer crawled from the tent. Ellen and Minerva were already out. Minerva had one Colt stashed behind her waistband, the other Colt in her right hand, and a flashlight in her left hand. Her flashlight beam swept the meadow. They were everywhere. Two dozen birds, maybe more. Most of them were the small brown-winged ones, but there was at least one large bird—a hawk, could be a falcon. None of them were struggling. No wings flapped. It was as if they had died midflight and tumbled gracelessly from the sky.

“It’s like that goddamn Hitchcock movie,” Minerva said.

“They’re kites,” Ellen said softly. “Most of these birds, I mean. They’re called kites. Their coloring’s a bit different from the ones back home, but it’s the same bird.”

“Tippi Hedren,” Minerva went on. “That broad’s got a scream to wake the dead.”

Micah scanned the trees beyond the clearing. Nothing moved.

“I’ve heard about such a thing,” said Ebenezer. “In Dunchurch, a village in Warwickshire not far from my hometown. Birds fell from the sky there one day. Hundreds, they say. Their hearts had burst. Every damned one of them.”

Micah knelt before the largest bird. Its wings were tucked tight to its body, as if it had curled into a protective ball. He tried to pull a wing back to see if it had been shot, but the flesh and bone were locked in place. That was strange in itself. All bodies were softest in the minutes after death, after the muscle and nerve spasms and before rigor mortis set in. But he could not peel the bird’s wing back.

A sharp inhale. Ellen was staring at the woods to the east of the meadow. The blood had drained from her face.

“What is it?” Micah said.

“There’s something there,” she said.

Minerva trained her flashlight. The trees fringing the meadow shone whitely in the glare, the woods impenetrable beyond. They all looked, waiting. Nothing materialized.

“I swear I…,” Ellen said.

“What?” Minerva asked.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head as if to dispel a bad thought. “Just movement. Something… Hey! ” she called out. “Who’s there?”

Micah clapped a hand over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and shocked above his hard-knuckled fingers. Micah held a finger to his lips. Ellen got the message. She nodded.

“Give him one of your Colts,” Micah told Minerva, nodding at Eb.

“He’s already got the rifle.”

“He is the best shot amongst us. You know it. Best he be armed.”

Reluctantly, Minerva handed Ebenezer one of her pistols; he stashed the Tarpley back in the tent and accepted the sidearm. Minerva pulled the second Colt from her waistband and thumbed the safety off. They faced the woods.

There. A flash. A pale flickering. It trembled through the flashlight’s beam, impossible to categorize.

Micah took a step back. He needed to widen his perspective. He couldn’t make sense of what he’d seen or was still seeing.

But he felt something out there. He suspected they all did. Watching them from the blackness past the trees. Its presence was unmistakable. It galvanized their blood and rashed their necks in gooseflesh. It seethed at them with a hunger they could feel squirming in their own stomachs—hunger, and a malignancy of purpose none of them could even guess at.

It’s nothing , Micah thought, his mind rioting just a little.

“It is nothing,” he said. “Not a damn—”

A FLASH.Nothing definite.