Harris Coverley

The Nest

 

Scott bent back the thin board covering the entrance to a shed and looked inside.

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“Just a load of wood,” he said, and let the board return to its natural position with a sharp pang.

His younger sister Becky knew this was no surprise in a timber yard, but she also knew to keep her mouth shut. Scott had a temper, and it was already foolish enough for her to have been convinced to follow him through the gap in the steel fencing next to the abandoned cottage and into the overgrown clutter of outbuildings and rusted equipment.

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Scott had known that the Carters—the old man and his two sons who owned and operated the dilapidated yard—were away for a few days, and he had always wanted a chance to look around unsupervised to see what was really making all the noise by their row of houses. Bringing his little sister was an opportunity to impress her, or possibly to scare her.

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Becky stood on the gravel driveway, looking around at the other sheds. There were a dozen or so of them, crusted with tall weeds. They were not real sheds, but the backs of lorries, unbolted, lifted off, reclaimed, and then used as sheds. Some had been cheaply and roughly repainted, while others were still printed with the names of their former companies, loyal even in their afterlife.

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Scott re-joined her, his hands in his pockets, already bored with his supposed adventure. He kicked loose stones and gazed down the drive. He had been beforehand to the workshop at the other end by the main gate where the saws that cut throughout the week were, but someone had the forethought to lock the building before leaving, so there was no fun to be had there.

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“Can we go now?” Becky asked, crossing her arms against an unseasonably chill breeze from the east, wishing she had brought her jacket to put over her summer dress.

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Becky’s request gave Scott the desire to keep her in the yard. He took her by the hand and pulled her down the drive to a different shed.

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“Maybe there’s a saw in this one!” he said.

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Scott jumped up the step onto the shed floor, coated with sawdust, dragging Becky in after him.

She tripped on the edge and fell against Scott’s side. He angrily pushed her, she very nearly stumbling back out and into the dirt.

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“Watch it!” he snapped. “Stupid girls…why are girls so clumsy?”

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She knew better than to argue with her brother about this.

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The so-called shed, once a refrigeration unit for a long dead supermarket chain, was stacked on both sides lengthwise with logs, dried for home burning, held in place by straps and rope, although the triangular piles would have otherwise been safe and sound without them. At the far end, sunlight came in through a high and open transom, the tip of a rogue branch from a tree poking through a corner.

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Scott walked down the corridor of wood, as Becky stayed by the entrance and smelt the scent of a dead forest, the accumulation of months, if not years, of hard work.

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Scott searched amongst the piles, found a hammer, and pocketed it, its nasty metal head sticking out at an angle.

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“Don’t…” said Becky on impulse against her better judgement.

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Scott smiled, pulled the hammer out of his pocket and hit several logs on their ends, splitting them.

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“Don’t!” Becky cried out. “They’ll fall! They’ll fall! You’ll die, we’ll—!”

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Scott dropped the hammer to the floor suddenly with a clunk, quickly fed up with his own vandalism.

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He moved further along until he stopped in the shadow under the transom’s bar of heavenly brightness.

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“Becky,” Scott said, his eyes fixed on something beyond the wood pile. “Come here.”

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She shook her head, a “No” soundlessly leaving her lips.

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“Come here I said!” he shouted, and she obeyed, trembling.

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When she reached him she saw what he had been fixated on: a strange clump of twigs, sat on the edge of a short pile before the end wall.

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“What is it?” she asked, but Scott did not answer. He leaned in over it.

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Bonded with mud and whatever other natural rubbish, the thing was rounded and dipped like a bowl or a pot, and not bigger than a volleyball. There was something black and fluffy-looking inside.

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As Scott leaned back, Becky realised what it was.

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“It’s a nest!” she said, happy at figuring out the mystery.

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Scott was not impressed.

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“Of course it is, dummy!” he scoffed. “Anyone, any boy, would know that!”

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On a whim, Scott flitted his hand above the nest, and the downy mass moved. He pointed his fingers and did it again, and in response a squeak emanated from the pile. A beak lifted from the mass.

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At a third time, two more beaks had materialised from within the darkness, and opened up.

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Scott was delighted with his own ingenuity, but Becky backed away. There was something not quite right.

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“Don’t…” Becky started. Scott glared at her and she quieted.

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Over and over again, Scott fluttered his hand, and the beaks got louder and more energetic with shrill sounds.

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The three eyeless beaks were wide and pink, yellowish on their outer rims, but they were not like any of the beaks Becky was familiar with. In fact, they did not seem like proper bird beaks at all, but something else entirely.

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“We need to go,” Becky said, fear rolling over her. She stepped forward and grabbed Scott’s upper arm.

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Scott shoved her off.

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“I’m not finished yet!” he barked, and went back to tormenting the creatures. He giggled as those odd beaks began to get higher and higher, the mass of feathers fluctuating.

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“Stupid things!” he laughed, as Becky finally figured out what was so abnormal about the beaks—they had teeth, which even someone her age knew was impossible in nature for a bird to have.

As she considered this, there was a sudden flash of shadow as one of the beaks, in a great leap upwards, took hold of two of Scott’s fingers and fell back into its nest.

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There was a brilliant silence for a moment as Scott slowly pulled his hand back to him, completely stunned at what had just happened. His index and middle fingers were gone…and almost as if his heart itself had paused for the shock, the freshly cut flesh of the two stubs abruptly spewed blood onto his t-shirt with an angry vengeance.

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He screamed—he himself would have said “like a girl”—and ran down the shed in hysterics and out the doorway, the blood fountaining up into his face. He tripped and fell into soft mud, dirtying his gored hand, but he did not stop screaming until he was up and away again, back in the direction of the fence hole they had climbed through.

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Becky had been perfectly still, watching in terror. She allowed herself to breathe for the first time in nearly half a minute, and her throat burned for the relief of the warm air.

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She turned to the nest—its inhabitants had reverted to a peaceful state.

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Her brother being gone allowed her the opportunity to think with clarity for a change, and she carefully went over to the nest for a close inspection of her own, her hands held tight behind her.

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She could see that the three resting beaks were attached to bodies that were not actually separated, but instead linked together, like conjoined twins she had seen in a documentary on television.

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They were a bundle of lifeforms, or even just one being—she could not be sure. It was as though they had been distorted, broken, and they were in need of repair or healing.

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Having learnt from watching Scott’s easily preventable tragedy, she did not agitate them with her fingers, but instead looked around for something to carry them safely.

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At the end of a woodpile she found small canvas bag with a flat base, and, with a soft and gifted delicacy, she slid the nest into it, positioning it upright so it sat comfortably at the bottom. She then folded the top of the bag over so that the beaks would not get any chances to have a go at her fingers, or at anything else.

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Keeping the bag close to her, she left the shed and walked back up the driveway. She went through the bushes to the gap they had come through, which meant following the trail of her brother’s blood.

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Becky got through the gap with difficulty, being really a two child job to force the fence panel, Scott’s blood mixed with mud upon it now drying into a grimly blended maroon. She did however not turn back home, but instead went towards the river where there was a small but thick patch of woodland.

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She knew that her brother was at their house by now, spilling everything to their parents—they would easily believe that he had snuck into the wood yard with his little sister in tow, and be more than ready to believe that his fingers had been cut off there. But for them to even consider the idea that some flesh-eating monster in a bird’s nest was the thing that had done it to him?

The boy would be seen as a liar, as always. Far more likely, they would think, he had found the saw he had wanted to play with and got way more than he had bargained for.

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As she walked down the pavement she smiled to think of Scott being bundled into the ambulance, and taken to the hospital to have his stubs stitched up (Scott hated stitches!). The fingers would not grow back she knew, being a smart child. His torments from other children for his idiocy would go on for years…

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But what of the nest and its occupants? She would find a nice tree to put them in, preferably a hollow in a trunk. She would make sure they were shielded and protected, and then bring to them whatever bits of meat, cooked or raw, she could get, as often as she could. It wasn’t their fault they had taken Scott’s fingers, was it? They were just hungry…and they had been provoked as well.

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Yes, there would be questions asked about where she had been when she finally got home. But she would just say she had been scared when Scott had injured himself, and had hidden somewhere in sheer fright.

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Nonetheless, this was certain: in no way would she tell her parents, or anybody else for that matter, about the nest. She would also strongly deny that Scott’s story was in any way true.

She was, after all, a mother now. She had to do what was best for her babies.

 

Along with previously in Danse Macabre, Harris Coverley has had more than eighty short stories published across dozens of periodicals, including Curiosities, Hypnos, Penumbric Speculative Fiction Magazine, and Rivanna Review. A former Rhysling nominee, he has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England.

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