The Swallow

Content Warning: Suicide, animal injury, and alcohol misuse.

It was half past midnight when Virgil knocked on my door again. Three frail taps.

“Anabell? You awake honey?”

It was locked, but his voice slipped easily through the keyhole.

“You there hon’?”

“Yep, I’m here.”

“What are you doing in there?”

“Tossing and turning,” I said before raising the bottle to my lips. 

Kiss me baby, I whispered to myself. The rotgut made its way down the gully to my gut, rekindling a spiced fire in a cavern of no other substance. There was nothing in me anymore.

“Bad dreams again?” he asked.

“Three so far. There’ll be three new ones by morning.”

“Poor baby. Tell me about them.”

“I don’t know. They don’t really matter.”

“All dreams matter. Come on, I’m listening.”

“Fine.” 

I sat up and tried to calm the waves behind my eyeballs. Pressure filled my ears with a pounding silence. The room spun in the dark to the tune of the fan spitting soft breezes against my naked body. The hot night on the marsh crawled through the open shutters with a humid breath that dulled every sense I was trying to dull further with the whiskey. 

“Hello?”

“Still here darling. Just give me a second.”

“Where were you?”

“Where?”

“In the dream. What were you doing?”

“I was in the house. I remember the magnolias. It was spring…or summer, it doesn’t really matter, but they were in full bloom and covered the windows.”

“Was I there?”

“Yeah… yeah, you were there.”

“What was I doing?”

“Remember those little woodcarvings?”

“Of course.”

“Well you were working on a new one. In the living room.”

“Was I on the red couch?”

“No. The red couch wasn’t there. There wasn’t any of our furniture, just walls and floor. I just came in and you had that wooden bird in your left hand and a knife in the other. You had carved it from the neck of your guitar which was destroyed all around you.”

“What about Jenny? Was she there too?”

“No.”

Virgil sighed.

“But there was someone else there. In the room above us. Some kind of smacking that echoed through the whole house. I left you and went up the stairs. A man stood at the top wearing a long white coat and khakis but had no face, just a swirl of colors. I asked him what was going on, with no mouth he answered, ‘There’ll be curtains here soon,’ and he pointed to Jenny’s room.

So I went inside. The room was just as she left it. In the middle, fluttering against the ground was a barn swallow. Its wings were broken and near featherless. There were no eyes in its sockets, only knife marks that hollowed the cavities down to the bone. The swallow spun in circles before catching flight, only to slam into the ceiling and fall back to the floor. It tried again and again, until its body had given up. It crawled on its back until it rested on my feet as if it was sorry. Finally it gurgled out a little morning chirp, one I’ve heard in my childhood, until it choked on its blood and stopped.”

“What happened next?”

I knew what happened next. The sunlight that spilled in through the windows started to flicker on and off, and between the lapses at my feet Jenny appeared, right where the bird had been, curled up, her hair just like mine at that age, just a mini me cold on the floor. There were empty caverns where her eyes had been. Her ears were the only things left intact, only to listen.

“I woke up,” I said.

“Thank goodness, that sounds awful.”

“Yes.”

“What about the second one?”

“It’s hard to recall. There was a storm, no wait, a hurricane, yeah and it was coming in. All of the magnolias were swaying, limbs were snapping, and rain was slamming against the top of the lake outside. There was one other thing, but it’s hard to explain.”

“Was it something you felt?”

“In a way.”

“Was it the angels?”

“Maybe.”

“Did you hear them finally?”

“I guess.”

“I heard them too, honey, all the time. Their howls. God you thought I was insane but I just wished you could hear them too. They sound heavenly don’t they?”

I remember their screams ripping through the sky, carried by the wind as I stood on the dock. I could hear them in the canopies of the trees that rattled, on the waves crashing onto the clay shore, and in the thunder groaning along the horizon. A violent orchestra of nature. 

There was a rowboat out in the middle of the lake without any oars. Virgil was the only one aboard, his back turned to the shore, looking up to the swirls of blackened clouds. The Sheriff and his boys had come for him, rushing to the dock and yelling out at him but he couldn’t hear them. He had his arms stretched out and head cocked back, crucified to the chaos around him. The breeze harshened and pushed us all down on the dock. A curtain of rain came in and he started to disappear in the haze, but in those last moments that I could see him, he stood up with a chain in his hand. He wrapped it around his neck, picked up a great stone, and tossed it over the side of the boat. I couldn’t see him after that and in the midst of the world crashing down, I could hear his splash as clear as day. 

“Honey?” He said behind the closed door, “Everything okay?”

“Of course, everything's alright. Why don’t you go back to sleep now?”

“I can’t. Why don’t you come out here? Just join me please.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“It’s the simplest thing there is.”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes you do know. You’ve known it for quite some time now. You’ve listened to them sing their song all these nights, ever since you were born. It’s why we cry when we first come into this world, it’s because we hear it. From then on we know there’s nothing else but it, and no matter where we go or what we do, it’ll never stop. We are only commanded to listen. It is He, the Father, who is the conductor and we are just musicians, in time your part will come up and you’ll have the instrument in your hand. He’ll tell you what to do.”

I’ve heard this before, countless times he’d tried to explain this as if I had just missed the headline news. Jenny always thought it was all just a tall tale told to children and would giggle like any child would. I giggled too. If I hadn’t, would they still be here?

“How about that last dream, Annabell? Tell me about it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Alright. Can I tell you one that I had? It’s a good one, I promise.”

“I don’t–”

“It’s with you, Jenny, and I. We were all together underneath a magnolia. Jenny had a crown of fallen leaves you had sewn together for her. I sat in the middle of us with my guitar. The sun was setting and I played for y’all. You both had your heads on my lap and I kept playing. There was no other sound except for my song and y’alls breaths. That was the dream.”

I knew that dream. It was how my third one ended. I just didn’t want to talk about how it started. It involved what whiskey was left in the bottle, a short walk down to the lake, and a dive. 

“How does the dream end?” I asked.

“It never does.”

The wind picked up through the shutters, bringing in the snap of twigs and the rustle of the Spanish ivy. It loosened the silence pressed in my ears. A bird cooed in the distance. The night was over; morning had come, and with it the chirp of the blind swallow. Within it, a chorus of angels sang a song I had always known.

“You hear them honey?” Virgil said.

“I do.”

“They never stop over here.”

“What’s over there?”

“Only music.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It is. You want to listen together?”

“Can we?”

“That’s all we’ll do.”

“Alright. Let me grab my things.”

“Sounds good honey, just let me know when you’re ready.”

I stood bare to the world and it stood bare to me. Every instrument was in tune, every musician in place, the orchestra in full swing. Fire burned along the ridge, its light spilling across the lake like golden trumpets heralding the day. I lifted the bottle to my lips and whispered, kiss me baby.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“You look beautiful honey. Come right this way.”

The door opened on its own.