Four and Twenty Blackbirds

I flipped the safety, pointed the barrel, pulled the trigger tight.

The first shot threw me backwards, almost out the door, but my shoulder landed up against the frame. I put one leg up on the wall to brace myself and fired again.

And again.

The rotating tussle of wrestling limbs jerked and jolted with each bullet.

I wasn't sure who I'd shot and I didn't care, not even a little bit. I just kept on shooting until the gun was empty—six shots, I guess, it was some kind of a big pistol and I think it was fully loaded when I began. All I really know about guns is where the safety usually is and which end's the dangerous one, but at the time that was all I needed.

When the chambers were empty, my ears were humming and both of my adversaries were down, splashed with gaping red holes. Twitching. Both alive, but both hurt.

I hauled myself to my feet, propping myself against the door and letting the gun hang at my side like an anchor at the end of my arm.

Malachi was struggling to pull himself off Avery, who had fallen beneath him. One bent arm at a time he pried himself loose, crawling off to the side and leaning with his back at the bed. He was bleeding from nearly as many places as I was, but none of them appeared critical except the freshly reopened wound on his chest, which had dampened the front of his shirt down to his navel.

Avery was pushing himself up, lifting his chest off the floor and steadying himself on his elbows. A black, sticky puddle mucked up the boards beneath him, but I didn't trust it. His head was wobbling, but he was alive, and in a moment he would be on his feet. And I was out of bullets.

But the knife was beside the stove.

I stumbled towards it, almost falling when I picked it up.

"Eden, let me. . . ." Malachi insisted.

I ignored him and stood over Avery's trembling back. I lifted the knife high, trying not to wonder if I had enough strength to send it all the way through his neck. It was heavy, and it was sharp, but after all the trauma, were my arms enough to wield it?

He raised his head and one of his eyes met mine. The other was a vacant, gaping crater. Yellow fluid and black blood congealed around the sides of the wound, already healing from my lucky shot. But he was down, and he was beaten. He simply wasn't dead yet, and it was up to me to fix that oversight. My arms wilted a little, dropping the knife to my waist level.

"So you'd take me, then . . . just like that?" he said, voice halting and wet. "But you were here to help. I made you strong. I brought you here."

"You killed me once, and I came back—but it was never to help you."

I don't think he heard, or at least he was not listening to me but to something or someone far, far in the distance. "Then I misunderstood. For what it's worth, I never killed you. But now I know the way he wants it . . . and I agree to his terms. So take it—do it if you're going to." He stared back down at the floor, his head sinking between his shoulders.

He didn't have to tell me twice. I pulled the long knife up over my head and swung it down like an ax. It clicked between two of the vertebrae in his neck, splitting them neatly, and continued on through the muscles that held up his head, and the tubes that went to his stomach, and the pipes that serviced his lungs.

His body collapsed, sinking spread-eagled to the ground.

A great gust of hot air gasped out of the hole where his neck had been, but his head was still attached by some cartilage, meat, and skin. With renewed vigor I hacked viciously away at the last bits until his head rolled clear, jaw slack and yellowed teeth leering from pale gums, one brown eye glaring up and out of the skull.

The eye blinked twice before its light went out. His last words came slowly, his tongue stiffening with death. "Take my curse, child . . . and live with it."

Then all of him—now both parts of him—withered and went still.

I opened my fingers to drop the knife. It stuck to my palm, lightly glued there by all the blood. I shook my wrist and it fell clattering down between his body and Malachi, whose head had rolled backwards against the bed. He'd either died or passed out again.

For a moment, I thought I might join him. My head was swimming with bubbles and stars, and my skin was tingling all over. Perhaps the shock of my injuries was wearing off and I was on the verge of feeling every cut, every sore. Perhaps I was dying. Perhaps . . . but then I put my hand to the knife wound at my breast and felt that it was dry. I peeked inside my shirt and saw that it had shrunk to a red, swollen line.

Already. How could that be?

Take my curse, and live with it.

Every passing moment I felt stronger, and drier, and less damaged. Oh, the room was still weaving back and forth, and I ached from every joint, but my bleeding had stopped, and the sharp immediacy of pain was fading. "Some curse," I said. "If this is the worst of it, I'm going to save a fortune in doctor's bills."

I surveyed the room. Malachi's eyes flitted but didn't open. So he was alive after all. Maybe. I waited for another flicker, but none followed. Then again, maybe not. I didn't much care. A pair of long, light curtains swayed around the window I'd broken with my head. I ripped them down and wadded them up, then dropped them on top of the stove. They ignited immediately. I watched with satisfaction as orangey flames sprouted and spread, eating the curtains and starting on the walls.

I picked up the knife again, and used it to fish some burning chunks of wood out of the stove. I scattered them around, watching them char the floor and ignite the rug by the bed. Then the bedspread caught, and the fire worked its way up to the pillows. Bed, walls, bits of floor all sparked into spreading heat. The shack was a hundred years old and not in the best state of repair. It would burn fast.

I stood in the middle of the increasingly warm room and surveyed my handiwork. Satisfied that the place would go completely up in smoke, I turned to leave.

But Malachi was awake again. His wheedling voice whispered over the hungry crackling of the fire. "You . . . you can't leave me . . . here," he said, smoke choking his words and raising tears in his eyes—or maybe he was only afraid.

I hesitated in the doorway. "Why not?"

"I'm . . . sorry. About . . . all of it. I . . ." My cousin-brother coughed and tried to raise his head to an upright position. "I was wrong. Please . . . don't leave me. Help me. I'm sorry. Never . . . never again."

A small thread of fire was working its way along the blanket towards Malachi's wobbly head. I watched as it approached him, devouring the cotton sheets and spitting them out as coal and ash. I could let it take him. I could leave him in the shack, and even if someone found out what I'd done, no one would care.

Self-defense. Ample precedent. I wouldn't even have to lie.

The flame sneaked up to his collar and singed it dark, then attacked his hair. He didn't feel it, or if he did, he lacked the strength to do anything about it.

Decisions, decisions. I sighed. It wasn't so difficult after all.

I stepped forward and patted at the flame with the back of my hand. Malachi dodged away, thinking that I was trying to hit him. "Stop it," I commanded. "You're on fire. Let me put it out."

He looked at me with those huge, watery blue eyes, rimmed with red from the pain and smoke. For the first time I saw written on his face not maniacal certainty, but fear. Everything he'd spent his life believing had been wrong, and now he had nothing but . . . well, nothing but me, and the relationship we'd established thus far did not amount to much. But he was my brother. And he was going to die if I didn't do something.

I reached down and wrapped one of my arms behind him, under his armpits, and pulled him to his feet. "Come on. This place is going to go." I guess I'm just not one to say "I don't care" and really mean it, even if I think I do.

He nodded and did his best to follow orders, flopping one foot down in front of the other in a pitiful attempt to walk. It was enough. We limped together onto the porch and down the stairs, and then into the yard.

Avery's house fell down behind us, spewing a burst of heat against our backs and collapsing into a pile of flaming rubble. We stumbled across the wet, thick yard where the women no longer stood, and we weakly began our way back towards the road. Except for the light of Avery's pyre, the swamp was dark.

I was just beginning to wonder how we'd find our way out when a bobbing white light charged forward at us from between the trees. "Eden? Eden, is that you? Are you all right? Dear God, it's taken me forever to find this place! I saw the fire through the trees, and dear sweet Baby Jesus—is that . . . ?"

"I'm fine, Harry," I cried back, though it was possibly something of an overstatement to use "fine" in such a context. "Yeah, it's Malachi. It's okay, though."

My brother put his head down on my shoulder and lurched along beside me. "Thank you. I know . . . you didn't have to do . . . this for me. I mean . . . after all I did to you . . . and everything."

"Aw, Malachi," I said, awkwardly patting his ribs with the arm that held him up. "It's okay. I was never very afraid of you anyway."

12

Finis

I still see ghosts, but then again, I always saw ghosts. Now I see them more, that's all. And my dreams have settled down. Most of them are like Dali paintings, just like before this whole mess started. Well, except for that one dream. I had it just last night.

In it, I was very small, maybe five or six years old. I was back there, in the swamp at Highlands Hammock, and the day spilled bright through the leaves overhead. Not long before, it must have rained, for the yard behind the shack was made of mud. Teeny frogs hopped and croaked, bouncing on thin, springy legs between the puddles. I was enchanted by their shiny, bulgy eyes and bright skin.

The frogs liked me too.

I picked them up gently and kissed them, seeking not princes but friends. I helped them climb out of mud-slick holes and put them back in the water if they roamed too far from the soft places. Sometimes, when the pools were filled with tadpoles, big black birds would lurk about like vultures, picking off the squirmy black babies for a quick snack. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">