The Bird Eater Page 11

  “Nothing like throwing some cow into a towering inferno, huh? Now, this is what I call leisure.”

  “Next time I’ll hit up a fast-food joint before I invite you over,” Aaron said. “We can avoid this mess entirely.”

  “Next time?” Eric raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know…” He balanced a particularly charred patty on the end of the spatula for inspection. “I may not survive this time.”

  “How about you shut up and make yourself useful? I left some stuff on the counter. Bring it out here, would you?”

  “Is it some kind of magical make-my-burger-unburn-itself condiment?” Eric asked, rising from his seat.

  “Yeah,” Aaron said, “it’s called ketchup.”

  Eric entered the kitchen through the open back porch door. “Oh, foolish one,” he said, raising his voice so Aaron could hear him. “You overestimate the power of the tomato.”

  He stepped around the kitchen counter and peered into a familiar bag, his family surname emblazoned across thin brown plastic. He hated working at Banner’s. Hell, if the Superette hadn’t gone under, he would have shopped there just to give his father’s business a healthy dose of competition. He resented his pop, condemned both his father and mother for calling on him after his dad’s accident. Eric had been out in Little Rock, knee-deep in business classes at UALR, working part-time at a locally owned coffee shop just shy of the college campus. It hadn’t been much of a job but he had liked it; the easy atmosphere, his peers coming in off the street in dire need of caffeine, their arms weighed down with books they paid a fortune for and would sell back to the university for pennies on the dollar. Eric had been over the moon when he had put Ironwood in his rearview mirror, his optimism replaced by despondency upon his return. It had felt more like a prison sentence than a homecoming. Sometimes, it still did.

  Eric grabbed the plastic bag off the counter, raised an eyebrow at an empty whiskey bottle sitting in the sink, and turned to head back outside. He paused when his gaze snagged on a camcorder and a book sitting at the edge of the old farmhouse table. It was the same table he and Aaron used to play War on when it was too hot to go outside, the same table they had sat around when Aaron’s uncle Fletcher had busted them trying to play poker, only to teach them the rules when Edie’s back was turned.

  Eric took a single step toward the table, the wood top dried by decades of neglect, a large fissure running through the center of parched pine. He narrowed his eyes, gingerly moving the camera aside to read the title of the book beneath it. Coping with Grief. Eric frowned at it, letting his fingers linger upon the cover before pulling his hand away with a start.

  “Did you get lost or what?” Aaron called from outside.

  Eric stepped away from the table, turned where he stood, and stepped out onto the small screened-in back patio with bag in hand. Aaron sat at a small table just within the porch’s netting, building himself a sad-looking burger. Eric settled back into his seat, placed the bag in his lap, and emptied it item by item.

  “Ketchup.”

  He placed a bottle of Heinz at the edge of the table.

  “Mustard. Mayo. What’s up with the camcorder; making a sex tape?”

  Aaron smirked at the suggestion and grabbed the ketchup, twisting the cap off before working on the protective seal beneath it. “Just eat your burger,” he murmured.

  Eric started on the construction of his own char-grilled nightmare. “Seriously, though,” he said, reaching for a hamburger bun. “What’s it for?”

  “Documentation.”

  “Gee, you think so?” Eric shot his friend a look from across the table. “Documentation of what? You want to join NAPS?”

  He had meant it as a joke at his own expense, but his suggestion seemed to give Aaron pause, as though he was seriously considering the possibility. Eric perked, wondering if something had happened to turn Aaron’s skepticism of the paranormal into belief, but bringing it up meant dredging up the past; it meant possibly implicating himself as one of the numerous trespassers who had snuck in and out of Edie’s broken kitchen window. Not wanting to piss Aaron off with that tidbit of information, Eric dropped a leaf of lettuce onto his bun and crushed it with a disk of grilled meat instead.

  After a moment of silence, Aaron lifted his shoulders and shrugged. “I saw someone on the porch the other night,” he said. “Just standing there, like they were considering coming inside.”

  Eric blinked at the news.

  “I fell asleep on the couch. I thought it was the cops, but whoever it was disappeared by the time I set foot on the lawn.”

  “Wait, you called the cops?”

  Aaron didn’t reply.

  “You think it’s the same asshole kid who’s been screwing with your car?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What did the cops say?”

  “In a nutshell? To enjoy being harassed, because they couldn’t do shit about it.”

  Eric scoffed. “Figures. You need to get yourself armed and alarmed, man.”

  “I’ve got a gun,” Aaron said. “Maybe I should use it.”

  Eric raised an eyebrow at that.

  “I checked the web for alarm systems earlier,” Aaron continued.

  “You get Internet out here?”

  Aaron rolled his eyes at the suggestion. “I hardly get cell phone service out here. I looked around on my phone while I was in town. For this size house, I’m looking at a grand, minimum. I can’t afford that, not with the amount of work this place needs. And I don’t know what the hell I’d do with it even if I did get one. I have no idea how to install something like that; the wiring is probably all outdated anyway.”

  “So you’re going to put the culprits on YouTube instead?”

  Aaron gave him a petulant smile.

  “Hey,” Eric lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying, a camcorder isn’t going to stop a thief unless you chuck it at their head, and even then, you’d better hope you’ve got good aim. Though, I guess if you set it up on a windowsill or something, you could at least get a positive ID on who’s actually doing the vandalizing. Maybe the cops would do something then. Or maybe it’s a ghost…”

  “Yeah. Right.” Aaron’s face went sour. “I think it’s the same kid time and time again. And then there was this boy in town, the same damn kid, I swear. I went to Bennie’s Burgers like you suggested…”

  “Yeah?” Eric straightened in his chair. “Did you have their bacon cheeseburger?”

  “I did.”

  “And did it blow your mind?”

  “It was pretty good.”

  “Pretty good? Dude…” Eric gave him a scolding look. “It’s the best bacon cheeseburger I’ve had in my entire life, and I’ve had a lot of bacon cheeseburgers. Bennie’s is, like, the only good thing about this entire town. We should rename Ironwood in honor of Bennie’s achievement. Benniewood. Burgerwood. Bacon-Cheeseburg, Arkansas.”

  Aaron cracked a grin as he chewed on the antithesis of Bennie’s creation, and Eric peered down at his own sandwich and frowned.

  “Anyway,” Eric said, “continue. You went to Bennie’s Burgers…”

  “I went to Bennie’s Burgers like you suggested, and while I’m sitting at one of their outdoor tables I look across the street at the high school…”

  “The high school,” Eric said flatly. “Weird, right?”

  “What happened to it, anyway?” Aaron asked. “Whose bright idea was it to consolidate at the elementary school instead of moving the little kids to a bigger building?”

  “There was a fire,” Eric said. “It happened the year after we graduated. Well, we as in Cheri and me. I don’t know if you ended up graduating in ninety-seven or not.” Aaron gave him a nod. “Anyway, I wasn’t here for the insanity of the whole thing—I was already out in Little Rock—but from what Craig says, someone planted a pipe bomb in the cafeteria, bl
ew out half a cinderblock wall.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Nobody was in there when it happened except some cafeteria workers, and they were too far away to get anything but seriously freaked out. I guess the timer was rigged wrong, but yeah, someone basically tried to blow up the fucking school. They never figured out who it was, and after it happened there was just this air of, like, having avoided fate or something. You know, like those Final Destination movies? Nobody wanted to go back in there, and it would have cost an arm and a leg to repair the damage, so they just moved everyone to the elementary school and called it good.”

  “That’s insane.” Aaron took another swig of beer. “But kids wander around in there?”

  Eric shrugged. “We would have, wouldn’t we?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “It’s still creepy, though. I mean, I’ve seen a few people hanging around the building after dark, but I think most of them avoid going inside. It’s that whole escaped-fate feeling. What if the Grim Reaper is in there, patiently waiting for his body count?”

  “That sounds like some grade-A necromancy right there,” Aaron said, a ghost of an amused smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “You always did believe in the weirdest shit.”

  Eric shrugged and leaned back in his seat. It was true, he was a junkie when it came to conspiracy theories. He’d probably spent years of his life in front of the TV, watching documentaries on ghosts and aliens and government cover-ups. Living in a place like Boone County, you took your thrills any way you could. That stuff made the world a more interesting place, and in backwoods like this, you either kept your mind engaged or your brain turned to sludge.

  “Regardless,” Aaron said after a moment. “I saw a kid in there.”

  “Inside the high school?”

  Aaron nodded. “He was wandering past the busted-out front windows, noticed me looking at him, made some weird gesture with his hands, and took off.”

  Eric laughed. “A weird gesture? You mean he flipped you the bird?”

  “It wasn’t like that,” Aaron said. “He hooked his thumbs together and, like, flapped his hands like wings. Either way, I’m positive it was the same kid who’s been screwing with my car.”

  “Maybe it is,” Eric said. “But that’s a pretty big assumption.”

  “It’s not an assumption.”

  “Why? How do you know for sure?”

  Aaron shrugged, staring down at his plate.

  “Everyone in town knows who you are. They know you’re Edie’s nephew and that you’re living out in the creepy-ass house at the end of Old Mill. People are curious, especially the kids. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of the Warrior Army has driven out here in the dead of night.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron murmured, distant.

  “And quite frankly,” Eric continued, “I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “What?” Aaron was caught off-guard by the impromptu warning.

  “These are the fucking Ozarks, man. You know there are all kinds of weirdos out here. This place is in the boonies of the boonies. It’s on a road that’s, like, virtually abandoned. No neighbors, too much property to effectively check for freaks.”

  “What are you trying to do,” Aaron asked, “scare the hell out of me?”

  “I’m just saying. I don’t know how a kid, especially a younger one, would get out here from the center of town. It’s more than a ten-mile drive, so it isn’t like he could walk it.”

  “So you’re saying I’m imagining things?”

  “Not at all.” Eric threw his head back and drained his beer. “I’m saying that these weirdos come out to places like this. These are some of the last unspoiled pieces of North American land. What if the kid actually lives in the forest just beyond this place? What if you’re dealing with a whole family of ravenous cannibals or something?”

  “Okay, stop.” Aaron looked genuinely freaked out, and Eric’s enthusiasm for the strange and unusual wasn’t helping. Aaron peered at his burger, then finished it off in a couple of bites.

  “Sorry, man,” Eric said, deciding to dismiss the whole idea. “You’re right, it’s probably just some stupid kid. He probably hitched a ride or something. Maybe he has a four-wheeler. Who knows?” He shrugged at his own question. “Hell, who cares? All I know is that if someone is showing up on your porch, you need to have that gun of yours at arm’s length. If I were you, I’d stuff it into the waistband of my jeans and Dirty Harry it from now on. If someone is genuinely screwing with you, going out of their way to come out here and scare you, stare through your windows, vandalize your car, there’s something seriously wrong with them. Like, mentally. That isn’t what normal people do.”

  “You aren’t helping,” Aaron said.

  “I know,” Eric said, holding up his hands once again. “I’m sorry. I just think you need to be careful. Don’t isolate yourself out here.”

  Aaron nodded faintly.

  “I’m serious. You quarantine yourself out in the middle of nowhere and you’re liable to go nuts.”

  “I hear you,” Aaron reassured him, but he was less than convincing, and that made Eric nervous. There was something about the way Aaron was willing to accept what was happening to him, his lack of fight, the gun…something about the whole thing didn’t sit right.

  “Hey,” he said, “are you okay?”

  Aaron’s expression wavered slightly, but a second later he was putting on a brave face and nodding his head. “Sure, why?”

  “Just checking.” Eric rubbed the back of his neck. “You a whiskey man?”

  “What?” Aaron actually looked defensive for a second, confirming Eric’s suspicion. Aaron had thrown back more than half a dozen beers out at Stonehenge and still walked a straight line back to his car. If Eric had tried that same trick, he would have stumbled headlong into Bull Shoals Lake.

  “I saw the bottle in the sink,” Eric told him.

  “Oh.” Aaron leaned back in his chair, began to construct another sandwich. “I found that outside,” he said. “Figured I’d keep the bottle for—”

  Their conversation came to an abrupt halt when a starling swooped across the backyard and kamikazeed into the brand-new kitchen window. Aaron and Eric stared at the thing as it weakly flapped its wings twice and died, its neck bent at an impossible angle. But before Aaron could say a word, there was another bang, this time from the front of the house, far louder than the first.

  Aaron dropped his half-eaten second burger onto his plate and twisted in his seat.

  “What the hell was that?” Eric asked, looking about as startled as Aaron felt.

  Aaron slowly shook his head to say he didn’t know. The thud that had come from the front of the house had sounded heavy, two weighty knocks, as though someone had thrown a sack of potatoes against his door and let it drop to the porch—bang, thump. Aaron peered at the door as he approached it, Eric fast on his heels. What could it be this time? A bag of maggoty meat? An assault of rotten eggs? A sack of flaming shit care of Ironwood’s chummiest adolescent?

  Welcome to the neighborhood, asshole.

  He unlocked the door, jerked the thing open.

  Lying on his doorstep was the carcass of the biggest crow Aaron had ever seen. The bug netting that he’d repaired was torn, only a minor detail compared to the swath of gore that now decorated the whitewash along the side of the door.

  “Holy shit,” Eric muttered as he stood with his arms at his sides, blinking at the dead animal where Aaron’s welcome mat should have been. The thing was massive. Eric assumed it had a wingspan of at least four or five feet.

  “Is it dead?” Eric finally asked.

  Aaron stood next to him, glowering at the thing.

  “Obviously.”

  “I don’t know, man, it’s a crow. These things are like Necronomicons. Nudge it.”

  “With what
?”

  “Your shoe, man. Just give it a kick.”

  Aaron’s face twisted in distaste. “I’m not kicking it.”

  “I thought you said it’s dead,” Eric countered. “Think you’re going to hurt its feelings?”

  “If it isn’t dead, I’ll nudge it and it’ll tear my face off.”

  Eric cracked a grin at that, imagining Aaron with a face full of bird, then cleared his throat and looked serious again. “So get a stick or something. If it moves, you can smack it.”

  Aaron looked horrified.

  “Baseball is America’s pastime,” Eric said. Something about that made Aaron’s face twist in alarm. “What, since when do you not like baseball?” he asked. “Besides, what’re you going to do, leave it on your doorstep? What if it starts rotting? Its eyes will go first. It’ll get all bloated and creepy, the flies will come…”

  Aaron grimaced and slowly extended his foot, the tip of his sneaker tapping one of the crows clenched feet. The thing didn’t move.

  “I told you, it’s dead,” Aaron said, pulling his leg away. “It flew right through the netting, which I just replaced.”

  “Well.” Eric crossed his arms over his chest in contemplation, staring at the splat of gore next to the door, his eyebrows furrowed. “That’s pretty fucked up; maybe he doesn’t like home improvement?”

  “This giant fucking thing slams into the front of my house a few seconds after a starling tries to fly through the kitchen window,” Aaron murmured, as if trying to put it together.

  “Starlings are stupid birds,” Eric assured him.

  “That isn’t the point. You know about all this stuff. Does it make sense to you?”

  Eric considered it, then shook his head. “No. Starlings may be stupid, but crows are smart. They don’t fly into windows or run into houses.” He gave his friend a stern look. “You didn’t do anything to piss them off, did you?”

  “What? To piss off the crows?”

  “Crows hold grudges,” Eric said matter-of-factly. “And they tell their friends. You’ve seen The Birds, right? Oh sure, it’s just a movie…until you realize that it can actually happen.”