Blackbird, p.4
Blackbird, page 4
He looked at his bed. Then he stared at the doorknob. No way was he going to sleep unless he secured his door better.
Feeling a little like the idiot Sam used to say he was, Nole stepped over to his desk, grabbed his chair, and wedged the top of the back under the doorknob. Good thing he’d opted for a wooden chair instead of the plush one on wheels his mother thought he should get.
Once the chair was in place, Nole looked at the shade over the window. The window was locked, right?
Still clutching his softball bat, Nole checked the window. Yes, it was locked.
Good.
“Now can you stop acting like a paranoid mental patient?” he asked himself.
He didn’t answer himself because he had no idea if he could stop. It didn’t seem to be in his control.
Nole stood in the middle of his room for several more minutes. Then he decided there was no way he was going to sleep. So he righted his lamp and went into his closet for a broom, a dustpan, and a new bulb. After he cleaned up the broken bulb and put a new one in the lamp, he grabbed his laptop and got in bed with it. He might as well work on the new screenplay he was writing. He’d hoped it would be the script he and Sam would use for their midterm project. Now? Nole shrugged. Who knew what would become of it? But working on it might take his mind off his insanity. Or make him sleepy. Whichever came first would be fine with him.
It only took an hour for Nole to start nodding off. Encouraged by the silence, not just in his room but in the frat house as a whole, Nole set aside his laptop, made sure his baseball bat was leaning handily against the side of his bed, and switched off his lamp.
He immediately switched it back on.
Was that a shadow he saw right as the light was going out?
He scanned the room. Nothing. Of course.
Nole decided he needed a flashlight. His lamp might not survive the night if he kept lunging for it.
Opening his nightstand drawer, Nole got out the flashlight he kept there for power outages. It was amazing how often one of his frat brothers overloaded the circuits and blew the breaker. Setting the flashlight on the nightstand, Nole looked around one more time and then gingerly laid his head on the pillow. He remained there a few minutes, about as relaxed as the wooden Indian he’d accused Sam of being.
And that thought made him stiffen even more. His lungs seemed to have shrunk; they couldn’t take in enough air.
He tried to blank out his mind.
Think of good things, his mom always said when he was little and he’d get upset. Then she’d sing that song she always sang when he needed cheering up. He never had the heart to tell her the song didn’t do it for him. He wasn’t that fond of rainbows or kittens.
But he did like Amber. He’d think about Amber.
Amber had freckles, just a few of them; they crossed the bridge of her nose like bird tracks.
Nole stiffened again.
“Ixnay on the irdsbay,” Nole told himself.
He tried again. So Amber had these freckles, and she had a matching trail of them across the top of her chest. He noticed them peeking out over the neckline of the white tank shirts Amber liked to wear. He also liked that about her—she stuck with jeans and white shirts. He’d never met a girl as unconcerned with fashion as she was. But she still managed to look great. Maybe it was the wild, shoulder-length, wavy blonde hair.
Nole’s eyelids started to droop. Trying not to hold his breath, he reached out and turned off his lamp.
He lay still and listened. Nothing.
Good.
Nole closed his eyes …
… and the window swept open. Something hit the floor with a thud.
Nole grabbed for his flashlight, and he ended up knocking it across the room. He heard it clatter against the far wall. Nole seized his bat in the dark with his right hand and felt, with his trembling left hand, for the light. He managed to turn it on without breaking the bulb.
Light flooded the room and revealed … nothing.
“What the hell?!” Nole yelled.
He was sure he’d heard the window open. He knew he’d heard something hit the floor.
Did he dream it?
He shook his head.
No way. It had sounded too real.
Crossing to the window, Nole checked the lock again. It was latched.
Okay. Fine. He’d sleep with a light on. Didn’t he tell Ian he could sleep through pretty much anything? And he could. So he would.
Nole retrieved his flashlight and set it on the nightstand. He repositioned his bat, and he lay down on the bed again.
He looked at his watch. It was only 11:25. Could he call Amber?
And say what? Wanna come over and listen for invisible intruders with me? There was a line he’d never tried before.
Nole threw his forearm over his eyes but kept his eyes open.
Why did he push Sam so hard yesterday?
Nole rolled over and punched the pillow. Is this really the time for psychoanalysis? he asked himself. He knew he shouldn’t have taken that psychology class this semester. He did it because his adviser said psychology was helpful for all writers and filmmakers. He hadn’t been prepared for how much it forced him to examine his own actions and motives.
But since he didn’t want to close his eyes yet, why not ask the hard questions?
He’d known Sam was getting pissed off yesterday, but he’d kept needling him. Why?
And even more important, why had he enjoyed bullying Christine so much in junior high? What was it about her that brought out that level of cruelty?
Because there was no doubt about it. He’d been cruel, both in junior high and the day before.
What did he get from that? Did it make him feel better about himself?
He tried to remember something useful from his Psych 201 lectures. Was it mirroring? No. That was when you acted like someone else. Was it projecting? No. Wasn’t that putting your feelings off on someone else? Displacement? Mm. Getting closer. That was taking out your frustrations and impulses on someone or something less threatening than what’s bothering you.
Ah. He might be onto something.
But he was so tired.
Nole’s eyes closed, and finally, he fell asleep.
A screeching squeal somewhere between an alarm’s buzz and a siren’s wail, a sound that barely came in under ear-damaging levels, wrenched Nole from cushy oblivion and hurled him back toward Earth. At the same time, a spine-scouring lightning strike burned an image of the Blackbird into Nole’s brain, marking Nole’s mind like a dreadful brand.
Nole fought to find his way back to full consciousness. But he couldn’t get all the way there.
He was awake enough to know he’d been dragged from sleep, but that was as far as he could go. It was like something was holding him in place, clamping him into restraints in a way station between thought and no thought. He felt literally pinned to the bed. He could even feel the stabbing pressure of something sharp digging into his skin at the wrists and ankles.
He tried to buck off his assailant, but he couldn’t move at all. He was utterly paralyzed. He could feel the pressure getting stronger and stronger, pushing him deeper into his mattress. He felt like he was being compressed into nothingness.
And still he tried to battle the force above him. He poured every ounce of his will into his muscles, and he grunted and strained to get free.
His confinement got worse, not better. Nole suddenly sensed an evil presence hovering over him. No, not hovering. Sitting. The presence was sitting on Nole’s bed. Sitting on Nole! It was pressing down on him, engulfing him, insinuating itself into every part of him.
And then, with a flash of light, he was free. He busted loose from his bizarre captivity and awoke so fully that when he opened his eyes, he was completely alert, and he had his bat in his hands.
This was a good thing, because Nole was not alone in his room. A demonic presence of tenebrous feathers was poised right above his bed.
So Nole swung his bat.
In the nanosecond he swung, or was it the nanosecond before he swung, the thing above Nole’s bed disappeared in an eruption of feathers that spewed throughout the room. Then the feathers vanished into nothingness.
It happened so fast, Nole couldn’t be sure it happened at all.
All he could be sure of was that he did swing the bat. He knew this because his lamp hit the floor. And another bulb bit the dust.
The time span in which Nole had seen the feathered thing was infinitesimal. It wasn’t even a second. Nole’s room went from sound and havoc to utter silence and stillness in the blink of an eye.
And yet …
And yet, the image of what Nole had seen in that blink was burned onto his retinas. Because he hadn’t just seen feathers. He’d also seen soul-drilling, malevolent yellow eyes and a pointed, threatening beak. Those eyes had locked on to Nole’s eyes. The sharp beak had aimed itself straight at Nole’s guilty heart. Nole was sure it was the Blackbird, leaning over him with malicious intent. This wasn’t just a still shot. This was a complete horror film playing out behind his eyeballs, in the theater of his own mind.
Without blood.
Sam was right. You didn’t need blood to have horror. The creep factor was horrific enough.
Nole emitted a sound that was half moan and half laugh. It sounded like the strangled sob of an unhinged man.
How strange that in just a few hours, Nole had gone from a well-adjusted college guy to a paranoid mental case. Because he had to be crazy, right? To believe the horror that he and Sam had crafted on the fly had come to life?
Nole stood and paced around the room. Adrenaline was still coursing through his system, and he needed to get it out.
After three U-shaped passes back and forth around his bed, Nole decided one thing: His room was not big enough for his nervous energy. So Nole strode into his closet and grabbed sweats, a T-shirt, a hoodie, socks, and running shoes.
By the time Nole stepped into the bright hall, it was eerily silent in the frat house. He checked his watch again. It was almost 1:00 a.m.
Wait a second. Where did the last hour and a half go? Had Nole lain in bed thinking about psychology for that long … or had he been in that incapacitated state longer than he thought? He had no idea. The hammering of his heart was drowning out any rational thought at the moment.
Striding down the hall as quietly as possible, Nole darted to the stairs and ran down them without a sound. It wasn’t that he cared about waking up his frat brothers; he didn’t want to have to explain to anyone what he was doing. He just wanted to get away.
As soon as he stepped through the heavy double doors and onto the broad front porch of the frat house, Nole rethought his actions. Did he really want to go running in the dark with this creature hounding him? What if the thing got tired of toying with him and decided to grab him? What if it seized him and took off, the way an eagle snatched a rodent?
Now, that did sound insane. Did he really think the Blackbird was going to fly over and steal him off the ground? Even if some frightful rendition of Sam and his costume was coming after Nole, that didn’t mean it could fly, did it?
Why not?
If any of what happened today was possible, then anything could be possible.
Nole turned and ran back up to his room.
He spent the next two hours trying to stay awake. He was too terrified to try and sleep again.
So he did push-ups and sit-ups. He listened to music. He played games on his computer. Finally, he started watching a movie.
The movie was what did him in. He had to close his laptop, and sleep overpowered him.
As soon as Nole closed his eyes, the high-pitched caterwauling sound started again. He tried to cover his ears, but again, he was paralyzed. Every time he tried to writhe against whatever force held him down, he had to push through the horror that still played in his head: the brutal eyes gazing into the murk of his very essence; the beak, like a scythe of judgment, cutting through his heart.
In his benumbed consciousness, inky feathered shapes streaked toward him, then retreated, over and over. He felt like a fat, helpless worm inching through the dirt—the Blackbird was merely playing with him before plucking him from the ground and swallowing him whole.
The sound and the image were tearing him apart from the inside. And still he fought, still he was held in place.
Until he wasn’t.
As before, Nole came back into the land of the living with a crack of radiant light and a gaping silence. As before, he was on his feet immediately. And as before, the evil trespasser disintegrated into oblivion, as if it was never there. Which it clearly wasn’t … even though every iota of Nole’s being was arguing that it was.
Nole was going to lose his mind if he didn’t get out of this room.
Once again, Nole opened his door and headed through the frat house. This time, when he got to the porch, he didn’t let himself think. He just took off running down the brick path leading toward the quad. He had to get away, and that meant running.
The campus was dead still. Nole couldn’t even hear a car in the distance. He wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the campus had been isolated under a glass dome.
But no, it was still in the real world. It seemed to be a perfectly normal campus, hanging out on Earth.
The night sky was black—clouds must have blown in. Bushes gyrated in a breeze that hadn’t been blowing a few hours before. An occasional torn poster or candy bar wrapper skittered over the bricks.
The campus was lit by a series of wrought iron lampposts, which cast a mesh of shadow and light over the concrete and foliage. Nole found it mildly disorienting to look at—he seemed to see a feather in every blade of grass or errant branch.
So Nole kept his gaze directed at a spot on the ground fifteen or so feet in front of him, to try and keep his focus and also center his thoughts. He’d been running as fast as he could, as if running for his life.
He might have been running for his life. Something was torturing him, relentlessly. How could he escape it?
For now, he’d run.
Nole turned to look behind him, and his shoe caught a tree root. He tumbled off the path into the bushes. Lying on his back, holding a twisted ankle and wincing at the sharp pain that suggested he’d skinned his knees and his elbows, Nole threw his head back and shouted, “ENOUGH!”
He closed his eyes, and the horrendous sounds started again, the chilling, feathered entity loomed over him.
Nole opened his eyes, and of course, he was alone.
Nole fought his way out of the bushes, thrashing to his feet. Ignoring the throbbing pain in too many places to catalog, Nole said, “Sam, I’m sorry.”
Turning in a circle, Nole said it again and again. Almost like a ritual. “Sam, I’m sorry.” Quarter turn. “Sam, I’m sorry.” Quarter turn. “Sam, I’m sorry.”
Closing his eyes for a fraction of a second, Nole confirmed what he suspected, that his apologies weren’t accomplishing anything at all. But he tried one more time. He threw his arms up to the sky and bellowed, “Sam, I’m sorry!”
This got a response. It got him a blinding flashlight beam in the face and a campus cop’s “Are you drunk or high?”
Nole rolled his eyes and faced the guy. He had dark skin and closely cropped hair. An unimpressive badge was clipped to his belt. “Neither,” he said. “I was having nightmares, so I went for a run.”
The campus cop shined his light from Nole’s feet to the top of his head. Nole held his arms out away from his body, hands open to show he carried nothing.
“What’s your name?” The cop put the light back in Nole’s eyes.
Nole squinted and looked away, frowning at the spots that cavorted across his retinas. But hey, maybe if he was blind he wouldn’t be able to see the Blackbird.
Even thinking the name made the image reassert itself.
“Name?” the cop repeated.
“Nole Markham. Could you please not shine that right in my eyes?”
The cop lowered the flashlight beam.
Nole couldn’t see the cop’s face very well, but he didn’t look much older than Nole himself. He was much taller than Nole, though, and the way he loomed over the scene reminded Nole of—
Stop it! he commanded himself.
“Why were you yelling?” the cop asked.
“I was trying to get something out of my system.”
The cop whipped the light back into Nole’s eyes. “Drugs?”
“No. I’m not high. I’m not drunk. I …” He hesitated. “I did something to piss off a friend, and he’s mad at me. I was just … I don’t know.”
The campus cop lowered the flashlight again. For a few minutes, they stood in silence. Nole noticed crickets chirping, which he hadn’t heard while he was running.
Then the campus cop surprised him. He said, “I get that. You want to say you’re sorry, but you’re a little pissed that he’s so pissed, so you’re yelling that you’re sorry to get that anger out of your system.”
Nole lifted an eyebrow. Not bad for a campus cop.
“That’s exactly right,” he said.
“Okay, well, do you think you’re done yelling?”
Nole nodded. “I can be, yes.”
“Okay.”
Nole waited to be sure the guy was done with him.
The cop gestured down the path with his flashlight. “I suggest you keep running. It’s a great way to get stuff out of your system.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
They nodded at each other, and Nole headed off again.
By the time he’d run a mile, the barest hint of pale pink was touching the top of the hills at the east edge of town. Dawn was coming. And Nole hadn’t really slept at all.
Was he ever going to sleep again?
He had to let Sam know he was sorry … some other way than by screaming in the middle of campus. But how?
Nole was running back toward his frat house, when he heard footfalls approaching from the left. Slowing, trying not to quake in fear, Nole glanced in the direction of the footfalls. He tried to tell himself it sounded like a person, not a bird.
And he was right.
“Nole!”
