Blake Crouch: Birds of Prey

Luther fills his plate with raw oysters on half shells. He lifts one after another, shaking a few drops of Tabasco sauce onto the meat, and sucking it down his throat like a swallow of briny, spicy snot.

As Rufus tears into a hushpuppy, he glances at Luther, “Boy, I know it’s strange to have her back, but make her feel welcome. This is hard on her, too.”

“Katie,” Luther begins, twelve years old, and his prepubescent voice on the cusp of making the turn toward manhood. “How, um, does it feel to be home?”

She doesn’t answer.

“Tell her how much you missed her,” Rufus says.

Luther looks at his father, to Katie, then back to his father.

“Tell her!” Rufus roars, slamming a fist down on the table, silver and glassware trembling.

Luther turns back to Katie.

“Every day, I…I thought about you. I wondered if we’d ever find you.” His voice breaking. “I had forgotten what you looked like. I would think back to all the happy times, and I could remember your clothes and sometimes even your smell, but your face was always blurry.”

Luther stares across the table at his mother.

Seven years of grief have crept in and stolen away with her looks. Maxine has lost that striking softness he loved in his early years. Lost her perfect figure. Acquired those first few wrinkles near her mouth and hard edges and a gleam in her eyes that he’s learned to be wary of, to not set off.

“I don’t know what else to tell her, Mama.”

“Do you still love her?”

He nods.

“Why don’t you tell her that.”

Luther looks over at his sister, trying so hard to conjure the image of that eight-year-old girl who’d been his best friend in the most important years of his life.

Days they spent playing on the beach.

Or down on Portsmouth.

Or their favorite game of all…throwing chunks of stale bread to the cormorants who chased the ferry between Ocracoke and Hatteras.

“You were my best friend,” Luther says. “I loved you so much. Remember the time the hurricane hit and we lost power and it blew down the trees in the front yard, and we had to hide in the closet all night with the wind howling? And we pretended it was an army of ghosts trying to get us, but as long as we were in the closet, we were safe?”

“Boy,” Maxine says, “tell her you love her.”

He doesn’t want to say it, and he isn’t sure why.

Maybe because too many years have passed.

Because of the audience.

Because he’s been told to.

Because this is all very, very confusing to him.

Thinking it will be better to say it when he truly feels it. In a quiet moment when all is normal again.

“Goddamn it, Luther!”

“I love you, Katie,” he says.

“What a beautiful sentiment,” Rufus says, leveling his gaze on his daughter. “Anything you’d like to share, darling? We just laid our souls bare to you. I understand this is a difficult transition, but we always were an open family. Never held back our feelings. I happen to think that made us as strong as we were.”

Tears stream down her face.

She is visibly shaking.

“Please, Katie. Talk to us.”

The teenage girl wipes her eyes.

“I wanna go home. Please.”

“Honey,” Maxine says. “You are home.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Katie screams.

“Katie, just listen, please—”

“That isn’t my name!”

The girl jumps to her feet and her chair topples back as she rushes past Maxine and Rufus and out of the cupola.

Her steps pounding down the squeaky staircase.

Rufus shakes his head.

“I told you,” Maxine says, “this is gonna happen every time if you don’t duct-tape them to the chair. Are the doors and windows locked?”

“No.”

“No?”

The girl’s footfalls growing faster but softer as she descends toward the first floor.

“No, Beautiful.”

“She’s gonna—”

Rufus smiles, “She isn’t going any—”

A scream explodes up out of the foyer and Luther hears something crash hard to the floor.

“OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod, oh…my….God!”

Maxine scowls at her husband.

“Rufus…what did you do?” She says it like she’s scolding a dog.

He plucks an oyster off Luther’s plate, sucks it down, and stands.

“Come see,” he says.

Luther scoots back in his chair and follows his parents out of the cupola and down the staircase.

The girl’s screams getting louder and louder as they descend.

The corridors of the House of Kite masked in shadow.

Lanterns mounted to the walls casting only the dimmest splotches of firelight on the old hardwood floors.

Every year since that day on the beach, the house had seemed to grow darker, to let a little less of the light of the world slip in.

Up ahead, Luther sees that his parents have stopped at the top of the flight of stairs leading down to the foyer.

By the light of the Christmas tree in the living room—strands of tiny, white lights—Luther sees the girl in three pieces.

Her legs below the knees still standing on the third step up from the bottom.

The rest of her crawling toward the front door, a wide puddle of blood expanding in her wake.

Rufus glances down at Luther.

Runs his hands across the boy’s head.

“Come help your old man get her stowed away?”

“Sure.”

“Make you a deal, Sweet-Sweet,” Maxine says. “You boys clean up that mess, I’ll clean the dinner table.”

“You got a deal.”

Rufus and Luther start down the steps.

The girl has gone quiet, lost consciousness.

“Now you watch yourself, son,” Rufus warns as they approach the bottom. “That string of razorwire runs over the third step up. You see it?”

Luther does.

Not the wire itself, but the blood glistening on the blades in the soft, white light of the Christmas tree.

Into the underbelly of the house, and down the dirt-floored passageways the Kites have only begun to explore, Rufus and Luther drag the girl into a musty-smelling room of old, stone walls.

“You already dug the hole?” Luther asks.

“No, I made her do it yesterday when I started to get the feeling she wasn’t going to work out. Here, help me. One…two…three.”

They swing her toward the hole and let go.

“From downtown!” Rufus says.

“What are you talking about?” Luther asks.

“Basketball? Like we just made a shot?”

“Oh.”

Rufus kicks her arms in and the one leg still hung up on the lip of the grave.

“You can finish this up, son?”

“Yes.” Luther tries to hide the sniffle.

“What’s wrong, buddy? You look sad.”

Luther wipes his eyes, nodding slowly as he stares at the other mounds of dirt that mark the three other graves. There’s only room for one more, maybe two if they make perfect use of the space.

“I miss her, Dad.”

“I know. Me, too. Tell you what. January first, we’ll take the ferry over to Hatteras and drive up the coast to Nag’s Head. Think of all the families vacationing over the holiday. Celebrating. Ringing in the New Year.” Rufus grabs the shovel leaning against the wall, puts the handle in Luther’s hand. “Look at me son. I promise you. We’ll find the perfect Katie.”

Cuckoo

North Carolina Outer Banks, 1986

“Hit him again, son.”

“Dad—”

“Right now. Hit him in the head.”

“But Dad—”

“Hit him in the head!”

Tears streaming down the boy’s face.

“What are you waiting for?”

Luther looked down at the man—bound, bleeding, gagged, his eyes begging for mercy.

He strained to raise the sixteen-pound sledgehammer.

“Hit him in the FUCKING HEAD!”