The Storyteller (2 page)

They all laughed her off. “You're too sensitive,” her father said. “Heck, your mother's cat alone probably kills one hundred birds a year. These things have a way of balancing themselves out.”

Two weeks before, she would have agreed. Two weeks before, she wouldn't have boarded up her windows. But that's what she did now.

The next day, the birds started showing up in her house. In the toilet, down the chimney, in the air-conditioning ducts. The numbers held true. She ticked them off in her notebook and filled the bathtub with the bodies.

There would be no more running. Mornings weren't
good
anymore. There was only the inevitable sunrise and the inevitable double dose of dead baby birds. Within a few days the bathroom was full. Justine didn't dare look out her windows. Not because she feared seeing more dead birds outside, but because she feared seeing none.

She
was the problem.
She
was the cause of all this. They followed
her
. Was this punishment for her positivity? Or was she simply going crazy? Whatever the case, she couldn't face the world anymore. Each day was definitely not a blank page. It was a black page. And it didn't matter what you wrote on it; it would always be black.

Within five more days, the birds filled the house. There was nowhere to stand, to eat, to sleep. Justine huddled in the corner, surrounded by the stinking mess.

I can't do it,
she thought.
I can't go on like this.

But before she could act on her dark thoughts, something came out of the pile of death. A bird, a real live hummingbird. It hovered in front of her face.

“What does it all mean?” she asked the hummingbird.

The hummingbird didn't say anything because hummingbirds can't talk, obviously. Though she swore it had compassion in its eyes. The hummingbird hovered there for what seemed like hours. Then it fell dead on top of the pile, as Justine's cuckoo clock, buried by birds, tried in vain to announce a new day.

The End?

 

W
EDNESDAY
, 11/22/1989

AFTERNOON

People want closure. It's been two and a half weeks since Fiona Loomis disappeared, and people want her home safe and sound, but if they have the choice between never knowing what happened to her and knowing that she's dead, then I hate to say it, but they're going to pick dead. No one will 'fess up, obviously, but it's the truth. A story with a clear ending, happy or sad, is an acceptable story.

They still don't know anything about Charlie. No ending to his story either, and no ending to Kyle's, who's still hooked up to the machines and full-on comatose. The superintendent canceled school yesterday and today, so we essentially have the week off. With one missing kid, he told us to go about our routines. Two kids changes things. This isn't a fluke. Something's happening. Someone's doing something.

I stood outside of Alistair's door last night. I was going to try to reason with him, but what can I say anymore?
Please speak to us? It's okay, we won't judge? We love you no matter what?
A lot of people say
no matter what
, but how many people actually experience
no matter what
?
No matter what
will fill up your head with a real mess.

So, yeah, I stood there, saying nothing, and I listened. I could hear some faint beeps. I could hear him whispering, like he was talking to himself. Eventually, Mom saw me and glared at me like only she can glare. I tiptoed over to her and she whispered, “He's not ready yet. One more day.”

Mandy isn't as patient as Mom. I tell people she's my best friend, but she really tests me sometimes. Like when she calls me up and says things like she said this morning.

“You gotta get your brother to talk. The longer he's silent, the guiltier it means he is. He's probably working on his alibi, making sure it's super airtight.”

“How the hell do you know that?” I snapped.

“TV. Books. Every place,” she said. “It's a well-known fact that most missing person cases are solved in, like, forty-eight hours, and what's it been now since Charlie disappeared? How many hours are there in two and a half days?”

“He's already met with the police twice.”

“Does he have a lawyer?”

See what I mean about Mandy? Pushy. Nosy. Whatever you want to call it. Alistair does have a lawyer, of course. Or at least my parents have one. Dad works at the hospital in Sutton, and they have a few lawyers on staff. One of them is a family friend named Ms. Kern, and she gives Mom and Dad advice on documents and things like that. So she's been going to the police station with Alistair. I'm not sure what she does, because Alistair isn't under arrest and has been totally silent, but she's there just in case.

“He's got people looking out for him,” was what I decided to say to Mandy, because that's all she needs to know.

“Heavy Metal Fifi made sense,” Mandy replied. Heavy Metal Fifi—or HMF—was our nickname for Fiona, because we saw her a few times listening to heavy metal music while she was riding her bike.

“Made sense?” I asked.

“She's a lonely girl and they're easy prey for sickos,” Mandy said. “But who's going after Charlie Dwyer?”

“I don't know,” I said with a sigh.

“Honestly, I don't think it's your brother, but I got this theory. What if it's Fiona's uncle? He's a war vet, like Rambo, which means he torched villages in Asia and stuff. Maybe he, like, did something with Fiona because she found out about that. Then Kyle and Charlie found out about it, and so he tried to cover up some more. And now Alistair knows all this and he's scared. Weren't you saying Alistair blamed the uncle for Fiona disappearing in the first place?”

“Alistair was confused,” I said, which was an understatement. Mom and Dad haven't told me everything, but I know that after Fiona disappeared, Alistair was making all sorts of strange accusations. Like I said, he hasn't been himself.

“One thing is for sure,” Mandy said. “Creepy uncle drives by and honks at you, offers you Fruit Roll-Ups or something? Run, run, run.”

“Goodbye, jerkface,” I said.

“Sayonara, onion butt,” she said in her super high
I'm going to annoy the crap out of you
voice.

I hung up.

EVENING

This thing was supposed to be about me. You get a diary and you're supposed to write about yourself in it. You're supposed to confess your deepest and darkest secrets. That was the thought, anyway. Dad bought this for me as an “early birthday present” two years ago. Which was a bunch of bull. The reason it came early, or came at all, is because things got a little
Are-You-There-God-It's-Me-Keri
-ish around here one embarrassing morning when Mom looked in the bathroom trash and found some of my stained pants and … undergarments. She probably talked to Dad about it, and he had the brilliant idea of getting me something to
express myself
with. He's a social worker, you know, and is all about sharing feelings. Well, I didn't start writing in this stupid thing until yesterday, nearly two days after Kyle was shot, Charlie disappeared, and the police came upon Alistair sitting in our yard, staring up at the stars. And wouldn't you know it, this is my diary, but all I'm writing about is my brother.

I'm not ready quite yet, but I need to write the wombat story down soon. Not sure why, but the wombat might help.

 

T
HURSDAY
, 11/23/1989 (T
HANKSGIVING
)

AFTERNOON

The bird went in at eight a.m., as it always does. Food will hit the table sometime around four p.m., like every year before. I don't know what the Loomis family has planned. Maybe they'll escape back to their lake house or wherever it is they go. The Dwyer family will be in the hospital. Bedside, with a phone nearby, hoping for any sliver of good news. While we, the Clearys, will eat our taters and stuffin' and pretend like nothing ever happened.

Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub. Amen!

Okay, it might be a bit different than that. We'll sit there silent through most of it, as we have been through all of our meals lately. Mom will pick. Dad will scarf. I will try to make jokes, and Alistair might even smile at a few of them. But he won't speak. Because that would be helpful, wouldn't it?

I'm so glad Grammy and Pops and Nana and Grampa aren't here. And Uncle Dale and Aunt Mia. They all said they'd come, but I heard Dad on the phone saying that he “didn't want things to be overwhelming.” Too late, old man.

Old man. That's what Alistair calls him. A buddy name, I guess. I call him Dad. But he's starting to seem like an old man. Sighing a lot. Slumping into chairs as if they're meant to break a fall from hundreds of feet up. I don't blame him. I feel it too, the falling. Mom, on the other hand, is staying strong, which looks like staying stiff to me. Hands in the sink washing dishes, stiff. At the computer, playing Solitaire, stiff. Standing by the car, about to leave for another shift at the post office—because the mail only takes holidays and Sundays off—looking out at the neighborhood before opening the door. Stiff.

When your family isn't talking much, you watch a bit more TV. At least I've been watching more. Mostly stuff I normally wouldn't watch. Like the news. You know what the big story this morning was? Besides all the tales of pardoned turkeys and all the people going wild back in the USSR?

The Littlest Knight.

He's a boy they found in a lake somewhere in the Middle East. Jordan? Syria? I forget. One of those. He was dead, and his body floated up on shore a few days ago. No one knows who he was, but he was wearing a miniature suit of armor called scale mail. Apparently it's a type of armor from hundreds of years ago. It's one of those weird random stories that people love talking and wondering about, but I couldn't bear to watch much more than a few minutes of the coverage.

I switched over to the parade instead. The New York City one, obviously. It's funny; our parades in Thessaly are nothing but Little League twerps and beer-gutty bagpipers. In the big city they get the big floats, the humongous balloons. I started to zone out as I watched it and I imagined that there were balloons of Fiona and Charlie in the mix. Monstrous cartoon versions of them, floating between the skyscrapers.

Mom sat down next to me and broke me out of the daze. She put her hand on my knee and said, “Maybe next year we can drive down there, get a hotel, and see this thing in person.”

“That'd be fun,” I said.

It would be fun. To be a year in the future. To ditch this place and time for a bit. To eat Thanksgiving dinner in a restaurant where no one knows who the hell we are, to eat lobster instead of turkey, to gaze out a window and see people you'll never see again in your whole stupid life.

 

THE FINE ART OF FORGETTING

Many years ago there was a princess named Sigrid, and she lived in a tower made of onyx, which is a type of stone that's as black as black can be. Sigrid was an only child, destined to inherit a kingdom that stretched from one sea to the next. Every day, she sat on a swing that hung over her balcony at the top of the tower and she watched her subjects work in the market and the fields. Her heart was always bursting with empathy, and whenever she saw someone in turmoil, she called to her trusted advisor, Po, and made a request.

Make sure that man gets his broken leg fixed.

Make sure that mother has enough food for herself as well as her children.

Make sure that family has a warm home in which to live.

Po would always nod and respond, “Yes, my lady,” but he knew that all requests had to filter through her parents, and her parents, the king and the queen, kept the purse strings mighty tight.

“She is given to whimsy,” the king said at first. “Indulge her for now, but we cannot afford to do this all the time.”

All the time
is what Sigrid wanted, however. She was a humanitarian, and a humanitarian's work never ends. She kept passing her requests through Po, and her parents kept growing more and more annoyed.

“I fear we must turn to the Dorgon,” the queen finally said, a shocking but inevitable decision.

The Dorgon was neither man nor woman. It was a vile beast made of mud that lived in a bog not far from the tower. It possessed one talent, the construction of potions, and while the potions always worked, they came at a steep price. Payment was always in blood.

“I agree with the queen,” the king told Po. “Give the Dorgon our kingdom's lowliest citizen in exchange for a potion that will cure young Sigrid of her constant do-goodery.”

“And what sort of potion might that be?” Po asked.

“We do not want to silence her kind heart,” the queen said. “We simply want to make the kindness temporary. A potion of forgetting should do the trick.”

Po was a loyal subject and did not ask any other questions. That night, he went to a tavern, where he sat down next to a man named Tom Rondrigal. Rondrigal was a known liar and cheat, a thief and a scoundrel who would cut the throats of his own children if there were a gold coin in it for him. Po challenged Rondrigal to a drinking contest, something Rondrigal would never pass up, and the two proceeded to throw back flagon after flagon of mead.

Rondrigal was a legendary drinker who had never been bested, but Po had a trick up his sleeve—or, to be more specific, under his shirt. He had the ability to untie his belly button and tap into his stomach. Using the tentacle of an octopus, he created a spout that led from his stomach to a hole in the floor. The mead went in and the mead went out and Po didn't get the least bit drunk.