The Bird Eater Page 9

  “I’ve got you on camera!” he yelled into the dark. “And I’m calling the cops.”

  Stopping at the tree line, he glared into the shadows that made it impossible to see. He turned on the camcorder’s built-in light in an attempt to illuminate the unlit forest, but it was no use. The light was weak. It lit up six feet in front of him, if that.

  “You’re trespassing,” Aaron said, sure the kid was still within earshot. “And entering someone’s house without their permission is a felony. If you’ve got anything else on your record you’re going straight to juvie, you little shit.”

  Backtracking to the house, he pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed information. “Ironwood Arkansas…the police department,” he murmured into the device. “No, it’s not an emergency.” He rolled his eyes at the woman on the line and sighed. “Sure, I’ll hold.”

  He fell asleep while waiting for the police to arrive, the flickering blue shadows of the muted TV playing an old Loony Tunes rerun, the Road Runner outsmarting Wile E. Coyote at every turn. He pictured Ryder sitting on the floor in front of the couch, his legs pretzeled in front of him,

  the blue glow replaced by warm, gilded sunlight. Ryder turned his head toward the muffled knock on the front door, jumped to his feet, and skipped across the length of the front room to greet whoever was standing on the front porch in the summer heat. A pair of boys came rambling inside. They were older than Ryder, one dressed in a plaid short-sleeved shirt with mother of pearl snaps for buttons, the other carrying a wooden baseball bat in his right hand, an old oiled glove shoved beneath his left arm. Ryder motioned for the boys to follow him upstairs to his room—to Aaron’s room, except that Aaron’s band and movie posters were gone and his furniture had been replaced. The room looked dated with its vintage striped wallpaper. A collection of tin robots was lined up along the top of a pine dresser.

  The boy with the baseball bat and glove took a seat on the edge of the bed while the other stuck his head out the window, staring into the branches of a giant oak just beyond the glass. Dozens of starlings chirped and sang, and Ryder showed the boy how they’d come right up onto the windowsill if you spread birdseed onto the ledge. The plaid-shirted boy smiled in delight as a couple of birds swept in and began to peck at the seed. The baseball player looked less-than-impressed, kneading his glove with impatience, apparently having come over to toss the ball around, not screw around with some girlie birds.

  But the baseball player’s disinterest waned when, without a hint of warning, Ryder gave the boy at the window a vicious shove. The kid let out a yell as he tumbled forward, his fingers groping for the sill as his sudden shift of weight pulled him out of the room and into the sun. The baseball player jumped off the bed open-mouthed, but he froze where he stood, too shocked to react.

  Ryder slowly turned from the open window to his remaining friend, but it wasn’t Ryder any longer. Aaron’s son was suddenly older, his dark hair mussed into a rat’s nest that stood in wild peaks atop his head. It was the kid—the one who had ducked into the trees not an hour before. He canted his head to the right, and with his ear nearly touching his shoulder, allowed his mouth to split into a gruesome leer that exposed too many teeth.

  Aaron’s muscles spasmed. His lukewarm beer tumbled to the hardwood floor and rolled beneath the couch, fizzing as it slithered across the wood and collected in the seams between the slats. He winced against the tightness in his chest, pressing his hand to his sternum as he tried to catch his breath in the gloom. What the hell had he just dreamed? He tried to shake it off, angry at himself for imagining Ryder doing something so terrible. But his self-loathing was derailed when a shadow drifted across one of the front windows.

  Someone was standing on the porch, a moonlit silhouette creeping across the glass.

  Aaron felt like he was choking, unable to swallow against the surprise. He waited for the doorknob to turn as he sat there, his pulse drumming within his head, dulling his ability to think, to plan, to get off the couch and sprint for the kitchen and grab the biggest knife he could find. After what felt like an endless fifteen seconds of doing nothing, logic kicked in.

  It was the police.

  “Jesus,” he said, gathering himself off the couch. He moved across the room, flipped on the overhead light, and unlocked the front door. When it swung open, a jolt of realization hit him square in the chest.

  The porch was abandoned.

  Aaron was alone.

  But he was sure of what he had seen. Someone had been looking through his front window. And yet it seemed as though the trespasser had simply disappeared.

  He stepped out onto the covered patio, his gaze wavering to the oaks that lined the driveway, his Tercel parked beneath their branches. He squinted at the leaves that shivered in the 3 a.m. breeze. He swore he saw someone sitting upon one of the branches, a figure reminiscent of a medieval gargoyle, watching him from a distance. Aaron stepped out on to what had once been the lawn, felt for his phone in his front pocket, and made a slow approach. But the closer he got to the tree, the fainter the shadow became. By the time he was standing directly beneath the oak, it had faded into the canopy completely.

  Aaron was alone, left staring at the husk of a house that drew so many to it, a house he never wanted but was his. This was getting ridiculous. He was tempted to booby-trap the place just to catch that little shit in the act. And where the hell were the cops?

  He stepped back inside the house, locked the door behind him, and double-checked it to make sure it was secure. But when he turned back to the front room, a yell punched its way out of his throat.

  A pile of dead birds sat in the center of the room.

  Except that this time there was no way in through the kitchen—the back door was bolted and the new window was latched.

  This time, Aaron would have seen the kid if he had run inside the house; he’d only been standing a few hundred feet from the front porch steps.

  This time it didn’t make any fucking sense.

  “I really don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Holbrook,” the officer explained. “There aren’t any signs of a break-in, and, uh, as I said before, I wasn’t able to locate anyone outside.”

  “Of course you weren’t,” Aaron said. “I called you guys twice before anyone bothered to show up.”

  The officer frowned at Aaron’s tone.

  “Sorry,” Aaron mumbled. “I’m just a little pissed off. This kid has been terrorizing me since I got here. I wouldn’t care so much if he wasn’t coming inside, you know? I mean—”

  “As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Holbrook,” the officer cut him off. “There’s no sign of a break-in. I can, uh, note it on the police report, but without a positive ID on the youth or anything missing from the house—”

  “What about something being left in the house?” Aaron asked, motioning to the pile of bird carcasses in the center of the room. “This is the second time.”

  The officer sighed and readjusted his belt, his walkie blipping on one hip, his gun holstered on the other. “Mr. Holbrook…”

  Mr. Holbrook. Every time Officer Helpful said it, Aaron wanted to snap.

  “I’m sure you’re aware that this particular house has a, uh, reputation.”

  “How does that even matter?”

  “Perhaps you should put in a security system, maybe put up a fence?”

  Aaron gritted his teeth at the suggestion.

  Sure, he thought, because those options are cheap.

  “Either way, I’ll note the…” He motioned to the pile of feathered bodies with his pen, “…the expired animals. But short of calling wildlife removal, I’m not clear on what you’d, uh…” Officer Helpful hesitated, as if searching for the right way to put it, “…on what you’d like us to do.”

  “So you can’t help me,” Aaron said flatly.

  “Oh, we can help plenty,” the cop assured him. “We just nee
d a little more to work with.” He flashed Aaron a smile that was supposed to be friendly, but came off more as an awkward grimace instead.

  “What if the kid decides to set my house on fire?” Aaron asked.

  “Well, technically that wouldn’t be breaking and entering,” Officer Helpful explained. “That would be arson.”

  “But he’d be allowed to do it, right? Because you need a little more to work with?”

  “I understand your frustration, Mr. Holbrook. I’m sure it’s upsetting. But you have to understand,” he said, appealing for a little sympathy by holding out his hands. “This place is, uh, this place is ten miles outside of town. It’s on the fringes of what we call our jurisdiction. But because you’re new and we like to show our residents hospitality, I’ll have a, uh, a patrol car cruise up and down Old Mill for you for a few nights, just in case the, uh…” He paused, searching his vocabulary, “…in case the perpetrator decides to, uh, cause you any more trouble.”

  A patrol car.

  Aaron nearly rolled his eyes.

  A patrol car wouldn’t do shit. Like the kid he’d been seeing was stupid enough to openly wander the street on his way to vandalize a property.

  “Whatever,” Aaron muttered.

  “Sir?” The officer peered at him. “Is that a ‘whatever’ as in you want us to patrol the road, or a ‘whatever’ as in you’d rather us not?”

  “Whatever,” Aaron repeated. “Do what you want. But do note in my file that you were out here and you couldn’t do anything, so that when I drag that little asshole into the station by his ear I don’t get arrested for harassing a minor.”

  “Uh…” Officer Helpful frowned at his pad of paper, not sure how to respond to that. “I’m not sure I’d suggest that plan of action. Maybe just talk to him.” He cleared his throat. “From a safe distance, of course.”

  “Of course,” Aaron echoed.

  “And just, uh, just call in any new occurrences.”

  “So you can note them in my file?”

  The officer smacked his lips and shoved his pad into the back pocket of his slacks. “That’s right,” he said. “It all goes in the file.”

  Aaron moved across the room and opened the front door for Officer Helpful, waiting for him to take his leave.

  “You have a good rest of your night, now,” the cop told him.

  “Sure,” Aaron said, and closed the door before the officer could make it down the front porch steps.

  By the time the cruiser crunched down the gravel driveway, Aaron was grabbing a beer from the fridge. Tomorrow he’d stop at Banner’s for more, if not for something more substantial. But until then, he’d quench his thirst, pop an Ativan, and try to get some sleep.

  The picture on the camcorder’s tiny screen tilted and swayed. Aaron’s breathing sounded raspy and disturbed as the camera jerked from one point of reference to the next. There was a brief shot of Aaron’s sneakers as he moved across the kitchen, down the hall, and into the living room, pausing to pull open the front door before stepping onto the porch.

  “I can’t fucking believe this,” he said, his voice aggravated, the front lawn unrolling along the bottom of the camcorder’s screen. “I swear to God, if I see that kid again…”

  The camera swung wide, bringing the Tercel into view. A few starlings chirped overhead as if disturbed by the angry man beneath the canopy of branches. Aaron stepped around the car to bring the driver’s side into view, capturing a freshly shattered window with the device, safety glass sparkling in the early morning sun.

  The camcorder scanned the perimeter of distant trees, searching for signs of the kid—the perpetrator, as Officer Helpful would have called him—but there was no one there.

  Aaron turned the camera on himself.

  “Ghosts?” He squinted against the light. “Bullshit.”

  He lowered the camera, staring at the damage to his vehicle, taking deep, steady breaths to keep from losing it completely. He gritted his teeth as he circled the car, searching for additional damage—maybe the vandal had gone out of his way to key his doors and break out his headlights. When Aaron was satisfied that the window was the only new development in his world of car trouble, he sighed and switched off the camera; it was enough documentation for his file.

  He dismissed the idea of taking the car back to Vaughn’s. He wanted to see Cheri again, but if Miles saw him so soon he’d flip his lid. That, and Aaron wasn’t in the mood to drop another hundred bucks on car maintenance. This was a job for the hardware store—nothing a bit of plastic sheeting and duct tape couldn’t fix. And while he was in town picking up more supplies, he’d drop by Officer Helpful’s office and give him an eyeful of the “new occurrence.”

  “Goddamnit,” he murmured, pulling his car keys from the pocket of his jeans, patting his back pocket to make sure he had his wallet before setting out for town. Grinding gravel beneath the soles of his shoes, he stepped around the driver’s side of the Toyota once more, but this time his gaze didn’t stop on the shattered window. His heart hitched and stuttered within the cage of his ribs as he stared at the side of the car.

  In crooked, childlike lettering, a name was scrawled into the scrim of dirt clinging to the door—a name that hadn’t been there a minute before.

  Feeling as though his knees were about to give out, he pressed a hand against the roof and shut his eyes tight, willing the writing away.

  But the name was still there when he looked again.

  I RYDER.

  His hands trembled.

  His eyes went glassy at the sight of it.

  That name was plain as day, scribbled across the paint of his driver-side door.

  Eight

  Hazel Murphy’s attention wavered from the table of flowers ahead of her and across the hardware store’s greenhouse. She recognized the man as soon as she saw him; Edie Holbrook’s nephew was hard to miss. His skin glowed green from across the arboretum, tinted by sun that dappled through the shade tarp stretched tight overhead. Hazel watched him from a distance, not the least bit worried of drawing attention to herself. Men like him didn’t notice old bats like her. She was quite sure that the only time Aaron would regard her in any sense was when he needed a refill on his coffee or to ask for an extra side of toast.

  Losing sight of him when he turned the corner into an aisle of peat moss and wood chips, Hazel looked down to the daisies and petunias that stretched out before her like a colorful carpet—red and white, just like the ones she’d planted around the Lumberjack’s feet. She had considered talking to Aaron during his early morning visit to the Blue Ox but had thought better of it. Besides, Harold had been there; she would have had to explain herself. And if she was even the least bit right about that old house at the end of Old Mill Road, keeping her distance from Edie’s boy would serve Hazel well.

  Hazel Murphy and Edie Holbrook—Edie Bell before she and Fletcher had tied the knot—had been close as girls. They sat next to each other in class from the first grade all the way through junior high, ate lunch together at the outdoor picnic tables when the weather was nice, and giggled about boys while climbing on the monkey bars. Hazel and Edie spent equal time at each other’s houses, at least before the Bells decided to move into the old relic of a house at the end of Old Mill.

  Once that happened, Hazel was forever explaining that she couldn’t visit Edie because it was too far outside of town; her parents didn’t want to make the drive. But distance had nothing to do with it. There was talk about the Bells moving into that old house as soon as they started packing up their things; that was when Hazel’s parents made it clear that she was forbidden to visit her closest friend. Edie was welcome to come over whenever she wanted, but Hazel wouldn’t ever set foot in Edie’s home.

  Taking slow, deliberate steps across the greenhouse to where Aaron had disappeared, Hazel paused just shy of a row of fruit saplings. He had a few flow
ering bushes set on the flat bed of his cart—hydrangeas, which had been Edie’s favorite. Hazel imagined Edie’s inked-up nephew slaving over that cursed house, a house she was sure had been devastated by standing empty for so many years.

  After Edie had passed, a few of the women from their congregation had taken it upon themselves to clean the house of any perishables before securing the place against intruders. Hazel and Edie had grown apart by then, but that wasn’t why Hazel hadn’t offered to help clean out her old friend’s home. Even in her mid-thirties, she had remained wary of that house, and after Edie died, she was convinced that her father’s kooky stories about curses and ghosts had been truer than she had thought.

  Hazel hadn’t been surprised to learn that, less than a few months after Edie’s death, local kids had broken a window and were wandering inside the place. All the kids believed the house was haunted; only a few of the adults suspected the tales to be true. Hazel Murphy was one of the believers, but she’d never said as much. The last thing she needed was to be known as the batty old superstitious diner waitress.

  Regardless of the stories, her heart ached at the thought of keeping her distance from Aaron. The least she could do for Edie was to reach out to him, offer him a homemade meal and a clean place to sleep while he was fixing up the house. But after what happened to Edie, she couldn’t allow herself to get close, couldn’t permit that man anywhere near her home. She had her own family to worry about.

  Hazel frowned, not liking the look of his sunken eyes. He seemed jittery, agitated, which was yet another reason she didn’t dare approach. She didn’t like judging books by their covers, but there was something distinctly wrong with the way Aaron appeared. He radiated a fractured sort of dismay, an electric anxiety that reminded her of the way Miranda had been just before she had taken her own life.

  Aaron glanced up at her from his cart and she offered him a faint smile, holding a potted daisy plant to her chest. He gave her a half-hearted smile in return and continued loading peat moss and topsoil onto his cart. Hazel quietly turned away and ducked out of the aisle. She was sure she’d see him again; she could only hope that the terrible stories her father had told her as a girl were wrong. For Edie’s sake, she prayed that her father had made up all those crazy stories.