The overly-wide, grinning mouth is a horror cliche. It’s a trope, albeit a successful one, that’s wormed its way into scary stories from around the world. So ubiquitous is its inclusion that it’s taken on a legendary status; it feels like something that’s always been around to scare people. Right?
In 1844, one of the first serial killers in Connecticut began a rampage. Little was known about the killer, save for their signature technique of disfiguration. While the victims were alive, they amputated their cheeks. When the bodies were eventually found, their toothy, skeletal smiles became fodder for nightmares, rumors, and legends. The killer was never captured.
Starting in 2012, local Connecticut message boards and forums started to feature messages and questions about ghosts.
Everyone’s heard of the so-called “Suicide Forest” in Japan, but hardly anyone’s familiar with the locally-named “Suicide Woods” in Fairfield, CT. It’s probably a good thing, too; the deaths are disturbing not only by their nature, but because there have been so many of them over the years.
Growing up, I heard scary stories about the woods behind Lake Mohegan. We all did. Rumors of devil-worshipping cults ran like wildfire through every school hallway and cafeteria. Some kid said he was fishing back there with his uncle when they discovered a dead goat by a rock face with its guts arranged in a pentagram. Another kid talked about bloodsucking demons in the trees. Our parents were always quick to dispel the more ridiculous rumors, but they couldn’t deny the suicides. The suicides were facts of life in our town.
We’d been finding paint chips and broken bits of plaster on the carpet near the cellar door. I’d vacuum them up, but each morning they’d be back. At first, I thought it had to be from mice or termites burrowing into the wall. We’ve had mice in the basement since we moved in, but they’d never been seen anywhere else in the house. Despite that, I looked for evidence that they could’ve made the mess, but I couldn’t find any. There wasn’t anything out of sort whatsoever, aside from what we’d find in the mornings.
Larry didn’t think much of it. He mentioned something about a construction site a mile or so away where they’d been blasting out rock. Apparently the shockwaves they produce can form cracks on walls and ceilings. Just cosmetic issues, he assured me. Nothing structural. But neither of us could remember hearing any blasting – especially in the middle of the night.
My guess was whatever had been making our cellar warmer than usual over the last few weeks was to be blamed. Neither Larry nor I could figure out why that was happening, either, but we both assumed there was something with the furnace. The HVAC technician couldn’t find anything wrong, but even he admitted it was strange that the basement was a full 30 degrees warmer than the temperature set on the thermostat.
So, with the working belief that the paint and plaster chips were from the expansion and contraction of the doorway, we went on caring about more important things and hoped the heat issue would fix itself.
Last week, I was getting home late after a red-eye flight back from my sister’s. Larry was dead asleep when I walked in the house at 4:30am, and I was so sleep deprived I couldn’t believe I hadn’t killed myself driving home. After I put my stuff down and was getting ready to head upstairs, I saw something that, at the time, I was certain was the result of my exhaustion: the cellar door and the surrounding frame were moving in and out.
I shook my head to get my senses back, but the door and frame still moved in a slow, deliberate pattern. Tiny flecks of plaster fell with each contraction. I walked up to the door and put my hand on it. I still wasn’t trusting my eyes and knew that touch would confirm or deny what I was seeing. As I expected, the second I touched the door, the movement stopped. I went upstairs and slept for 10 hours.
Larry was at work when I woke up. He was pulling a double that day, and I likely wouldn’t see him again until the next morning. After I showered and went downstairs, I found quite a bit more plaster and paint on the floor than usual. The memory of what I thought I’d seen the night before came back, and I experienced an involuntary twinge of fear. It made me feel a bit silly – almost like how I’d felt when I was a little girl and still afraid of the dark.
I brought out the vacuum and started to clean up the mess. When I was running the vacuum over the carpet right next to the cellar, I felt hot air rushing out of the cracks on the sides and bottom of the door. Not warm. Hot. I shut off the vacuum and listened. Aside from the gentle rush of hot air, there was nothing.
I tentatively touched the doorknob, ready to pull back if it was too hot. It wasn’t. It was very warm, but not hot. The fear came again as I knew I was about to open the door and go downstairs. I didn’t want to. The child me wouldn’t have. But I’m 52 years old. This is our house, and we’ve lived here for 26 years. We know it inside and out. There was nothing to be afraid of.
The fear remained. I opened the door and was hit in the face with a rush of hot, wet air.
While the temperature wasn’t unendurable, it was entirely unpleasant. My plan was to rush downstairs to make sure nothing was on fire, then run back up and call the HVAC man for an emergency visit, no matter the cost. I tiptoed down the old, wooden steps and entered the basement.
The wind rushing up the stairs faded as I got closer to the bottom. All that remained was humid, oppressive air. I began sweating immediately, and I walked across the room toward the furnace. It wasn’t even on. I touched it, and while warm, it wasn’t close to the temperature of the room.
Condensation was covering the tiny windows at the top of the walls. And there was an odor. It was heavy and thick and reminded me of vomit. I felt my stomach churning as my mission now became finding the source of the smell. Whatever it was, it had to go.
It didn’t take long.
On the other side of the furnace, up against the wall, was a pile of dead mice. Tens of them. Maybe 50. They were hideously decayed and dripping with dark yellow slime. I gagged so hard I felt my eyes bulge and I pulled my shirt over my nose and mouth. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t noticed them before, and I was miserable about the prospect of cleaning them up. But it had to be done.
I ran upstairs, grabbed a bucket, some kitchen gloves, and a bottle of bleach. Back in the stifling basement, I grabbed the vermin as quickly as I could, threw them all in the bucket, threw the gloves on top, and poured bleach over the whole area. I’d come back later and scrub the remaining slime and bleach and sloughed fur off the floor. I just couldn’t take any more at the moment.
I grabbed the bucket and headed back upstairs. I could’ve sworn I saw the cellar doorway widening and narrowing as I went, accompanied by waxing and waning gusts of hot air on my skin. My fear and disgust were bordering on terror as I burst through the doorway into the cheery living room.
I stood in the center of the living room, watching the doorway. It wasn’t moving. The bucket of dead vermin smelled incomprehensibly putrid. I went out the back door and was ready to throw the whole thing way out back where the property met the woods, when I stopped. There was smoke coming from the gloves on top of the mice. Another smell joined that of the putrefying rodents: burning rubber. I upended the bucket into the brush. I saw that the parts of the gloves that had touched the mice were bubbling and burning away.
As soon as I got back inside, I called the HVAC guy. He said he was booked solid all day and any work after 6pm would be at double the usual rate. I told him I didn’t care. I needed the furnace fixed. I needed whatever it was leaking removed. I couldn’t have our home in the shape it was in anymore.
The HVAC guy arrived around 7. I felt bad to be pulling him away from dinner with his family, so I made him a sandwich and some macaroni and cheese. He appreciated it, and brought the plate downstairs with him so he could eat while he worked. I wasn’t exactly sure how anyone could eat under conditions like I’d seen that afternoon, but I didn’t bother arguing. I left him to his work and went next door to see my elderly neighbor.
We got to talking, and it was almost 10 by the time I realized the HVAC technician was still working. I wished Gladys a good night and went home. The tech’s van was still in the driveway.
I walked inside and headed to the cellar door. Plaster and dried paint chips littered the carpet and were being blown across the room by the steady breeze coming up the staircase. Three deep cracks in the door frame and ceiling had appeared.
I called down to the technician and asked how it was going. He didn’t reply. I called again, louder. Nothing. That same fear welled up in me again. I looked around. This time, the cheery living room was dark. The windows showed nothing but blackness and the distorted reflection of diffuse kitchen light and the harsh illumination from the tech’s lamps in the basement.
I called a third time. He didn’t respond, but I jumped when a loud, splintering crack rang out right next to me as another fissure appeared in the door frame. I could’ve sworn I saw the frame move right before it happened.
My fourth and final call went unanswered. For the second time that day, I knew I’d go down the stairs. My 52 year-old body carried my frightened, 8 year-old mind down the steps. I felt hot, sticky air on my face.
The moment I reached the bottom, the smell hit me. It was just like it’d been with the mice, only heavier. I spoke the tech’s name, rather than calling it. My voice was small and weak and I realized, as I walked toward where he’d been working, I was shaking.
I reached the furnace and headed around to the other side. The smell was so strong, my eyes had started to water. But even through my bleary, tear-filled eyes, I could see the technician’s clothes and shoes. They were covered in the same yellow slime and smoked weakly as whatever was burning them ate its way through. The man who owned the clothes was nowhere to be found.
I ran upstairs and called the police, fully aware that the doorway was moving in and out as I ascended the staircase, feeling cool air against my face, followed by hot air against my back. I left the house and waited with Gladys for them to arrive.
It’s been five days and the technician has not been recovered. There’s been a town-wide search for him, and his wife and daughters have appeared on television begging for him to come home. Larry and I have allowed the police to search the house while we stay at a hotel. I’ve refused to go back until everything is resolved.
It wasn’t the terrifying strangeness of the cellar that has kept me out of our house. It wasn’t the still-missing man who came to fix our furnace. It was something else. It was the result of the chemical analysis of the substance on the HVAC man’s clothes and the mice I’d taken from the basement. Normally, we wouldn’t have been given that information, but Larry’s brother is a cop. He told us what it was, and now I know I’ll never set foot in that house again as long as I live.
For the last 35 years, a lake in northern Canada has been the site of hundreds of suspected drownings. The location is in the middle of the Canadian tundra. There is nothing around. No food, no shelter. Just cold, inhospitable wilderness.
The lake is frozen eight months out of the year. Nothing happens then. But during the thaw, when we’re doing our flyovers, we’ll see clothes floating on the surface of the water.
Like we’ve always done, we’ll dispatch a team to investigate. They’ll bring back what they can recover, which will invariably be clothing and someone’s wallet or purse.
My brother and cousins and I used to play a game whenever we had a sleepover. It was simple: we’d stay up and scare the living fuck out of each other. When we were at Erin and Kyle’s house, it was the scariest by far. Her house was haunted. That’s what everyone said. Even her parents knew it. “Don’t worry about Mr. Toombs,” they’d say. “He’s harmless.” Then they’d laugh and go back to what they were doing.
Mr. Toombs was the man who owned the house before Erin’s parents. He died all alone and no one realized he was gone until many months later. Even though the house got gutted and renovated before it went on the market, we had this feeling he’d died in the basement right near the furnace. The air there just felt thick and heavy – like old, sour breath.
We’d have our sleepovers a few times a month. Our parents all worked at the same factory. Whenever they had to take third shift, we’d either stay at home and Erin and Kyle would come to our house or Greg and I would go over to Erin and Kyle’s. I never minded all the moving around until Kyle said we had to play that game. I hated it.
Kyle was the oldest and could be mean if he wanted to. He wasn’t a bully; he usually knew when to back off and genuinely felt bad if he made one of us cry. But he still liked to get his way. And that meant we’d have to play the sleeping game.
The first time we played the sleeping game, we were at our house. The four of us were in our sleeping bags in the living room and Kyle started to tell a really terrifying story about a skinny alien that comes through the window and cuts you up in your bed. Greg, Erin, and I hated the story, but I could tell Erin was especially horrified. She was only six. I kept telling Kyle to take it easy on his sister, but he was relentless. To Erin’s credit, she didn’t cry, but I think that was the problem. He probably would’ve stopped if she had.
The game went like this: after the story, you weren’t allowed to get out of your sleeping bag. No matter how scared you were, you couldn’t get up to get water, you couldn’t go to the bathroom, and under no circumstances could you run upstairs to get comfort from the grownups. If you did, you’d have to get an indian burn from the rest of the group.
The night of the alien story, I couldn’t stop looking at the living room windows. Whenever a car went by and cast its light against the wall, I’d shiver and feel my balls drawing up into my body while goosebumps rose on the back of my neck. Stupid Greg and Kyle were asleep already. Erin, whose sleeping bag was next to mine, was crying to herself.
“I need to pee,” she whispered. “And I’m too scared to get up and I don’t want to get an indian burn when I get back.”
I looked at Greg and Kyle. They were both completely out. “Go ahead,” I whispered. “I won’t tell anyone.”
Erin gave me a tight-lipped smile and snuck out of her sleeping back and padded down the hallway. Right around when I’d assumed I would hear the bathroom door close, she screamed. It was a shrill, horror-filled explosion from her tiny lungs, and the three of us, now wide awake, vaulted from our sleeping bags in her direction. We got there a couple seconds before my parents were thundering down the steps. They flipped on the lights.
Erin was in the corner of the bathroom, sobbing. Her pajama pants were soaked. Mom picked her up and held her to her chest and asked what happened.
“The alien,” Erin whimpered, then pointed to the shower curtain. Dad opened it. Nothing was there.
“It was just a shadow, honey,” Dad told her. He glared at us. “Come with me, boys,” he ordered, and brought us back into the living room while Mom drew a bath for Erin.
After a long lecture from my father, we agreed to not tell any more scary stories. Erin eventually came back to her sleeping bag, and with Dad snoring on the couch, we all went to sleep.
The next night, of course, brought more stories. They were much tamer, though. Greg told a dumb one about a lady who gets pulled into a grave by a killer. I told an even worse one about some teenager whose baby brother’s head came off. Erin actually laughed at that one it was so bad. We got ready to go to sleep, still bound by the agreement that we couldn’t get up for any reason until it was morning.
At some point in the middle of the night, Greg shook me awake. “Hey, we caught Erin coming back from the bathroom.” She was already rubbing her arm in discomfort from the burn her brother had given her. Greg grabbed her other one and twisted, making Erin yelp. I took her arm and just squeezed it a little. I felt bad.
Months went by and we played the sleeping game every time we were together. Everyone got caught at least once trying to sneak out. Indian burns were had by all. Erin, though, got the most. It was obvious she wasn’t having any fun. To make matters worse, she looked exhausted on the mornings after we played. I brought it up to Kyle, and he thought about it for a minute, then said we’d do it once a month instead of every time. I didn’t argue.
We kept our little agreement to ourselves because we didn’t want Erin to think we were treating her like a baby. That night, we were sleeping at their house. They had a beautifully furnished basement with a big-screen TV, a ping-pong table, and all sorts of other fun stuff. We set up our sleeping bags and played video games until well after 10pm. My aunt came down and said to turn it all off and get to sleep, so we made like we were getting ready for bed, but when the lights went off, Kyle said it was time to play the sleeping game.
I groaned, but he shot me a look and mouthed “only one,” to me. At least he was holding up his end of the bargain. Like we always did, anyone who needed to get up to pee or get a drink beforehand was allowed to. I went, followed by Kyle, then Erin. We all came back.
In the glow of the flashlight Kyle liked to hold under his chin when he told his stories, Kyle started to talk about a ghost. The ghost. Mr. Toombs. Even Greg looked uncomfortable as he stared at the slatted wooden door which served as the barrier between the furnished and unfurnished cellar. The furnace was on the other side.
“Mr. Toombs waits until you’re asleep,” Kyle whispered, “and sucks your breath into his lungs. The longer you sleep, the more he takes away. And if you sleep for too long, you won’t have any air left to breathe and you’ll…be…dead.”
My eyes were wide with fear and Greg just stared at the ground. Kyle, too, looked like he’d successfully startled himself, especially when the furnace kicked on and we all jumped. Erin, surprisingly, had actually managed to go to sleep first, despite bawling her eyes out by the end of the story and making Kyle promise to give her his snack at lunch or else she’d tell on him. I snuck her one of the Lifesaver candies I’d stashed away to help her feel better. I guess it’d worked.
The rest of us tried to go to sleep. Kyle caught me getting up to pee and gave me a wicked indian burn, but since he caught me while he was on his way to the bathroom himself, I was able to reciprocate. Hard. He punched me in the arm and I swatted him in the balls. I won. We tiptoed back into the basement and got in our sleeping bags. It was the worst night’s sleep I’d ever had; each time the furnace kicked on, I knew I’d see Mr. Toombs floating above my sleeping bag ready to suck the life out of me.
Like always, my aunt came downstairs in the morning to wake us up for school. She started with gentle calls, then hollers, then shouts, then, since we always ignored her, she stomped down the stairs and threatened to haul us out of the sleeping bags.
“Let’s go!,” she ordered, “get dressed and go get your breakfast. Erin, if I have to ask you again I’m gonna flush your goldfish.”
Erin didn’t budge.
“I swear to God, Erin, Goldeen’s going down into the sewer with the Ninja Turtles in 3…2…1…”
Nothing. Concern flashed across my aunt’s face. Kyle, who’d been sleeping next to her, shook his sister. She didn’t respond. My aunt rushed across the room and pulled Erin to her. She hung limply out of the sleeping bag.
Everything went really fast for a while. The ambulance came while my aunt and uncle screamed and cried and Kyle, Greg, and I just sat there in stunned silence. My parents arrived soon after. They were also crying. We were all asked if we saw her drink any alcohol or take any medicine. None of us had. I knew Erin had been the last one to use the bathroom before bed, so I mentioned that. Someone went into the bathroom and returned with an empty bottle of sleeping pills that’d been in the medicine cabinet.
Through her tears, my aunt insisted that the bottle had been empty to begin with; that she’d been saving it so she could remember which kind had worked for her so she could get it again. But there was no other explanation at the time. Erin was dead.
There was a funeral. It was terribly sad. But I went on with my life. Everyone did. I learned years later that the toxicology reports had been negative and Erin’s death had been ruled an accidental asphyxiation. They blamed the sleeping bag, and my aunt and uncle sued for millions.
When Greg was moving out before his first year at college, I was asked to help load the van. I didn’t want to, but I helped anyway. Some of the heavier things were boxed up in the unfinished part of the cellar, by the furnace. I went down and tried not to think about poor Erin.
When I opened the door and entered the warm furnace room, I remembered that feeling I got the first time I’d been in there. An image of Mr. Toombs decaying next to the furnace flashed through my head. I shivered. But then I noticed the familiar, strange heaviness in the air. I noticed the smell. It was different from the sour odor that’d reminded me of the last breath trapped inside a corpse’s rotting lungs. This smell was sweet. It was cloying. Like the breath of someone who’d eaten a lime Lifesaver.
Working in a funeral home doesn’t have many perks, so when one presents itself, it’s important to jump on it. That’s why closed-casket funerals are the best. You know the ones I’m talking about. People who died in car accidents. Fires. Shotgun suicides. Anything that destroys the face and head of the deceased. No one wants to look at hamburger meat in a suit.
I was in charge of preparing the carcass of a middle-aged woman who’d gotten half her head blown off in a gas explosion. We didn’t even offer her family the option of an open casket. She was really fucked up.
The family gave us the dead lady’s favorite dress and some of her jewelry. This is where the perks I mentioned come in. The bereaved are always so trusting. Over the course of the three years I’ve had that job, I must have pawned $10,000 worth of necklaces and engagement rings and all sorts of other sentimental crap.
I figure it’s a victimless crime. The families think it’s in the coffin with their busted-up relative, so they’re happy, and the dead person’s dead, so they don’t care. They’re in a better place, right?
Anyway, you should’ve seen my face when I got the jewelry to bury with the gas-explosion lady. One locket caught my attention immediately. It was huge and looked like solid gold. I opened it up and saw pictures of the dead woman and others who looked like her mother, grandmother, and maybe even great grandmother, all smiling happily for the camera. The locket had space for five or six pictures. I figured it’d be perfect for my girlfriend. She loves big and gaudy shit. We live three towns over, so there wasn’t a chance she’d get caught wearing it.
I pocketed the locket after everyone had left and I finished working on the dead chick. I wheeled the coffin into the fridge and headed out.
Liz was making dinner when I got home. I figured I’d wait until bedtime to give her the present. We ate, watched a movie, and got ready to turn in.
After Liz got out of the shower, I surprised her with the locket. As I’d expected, she loved the thing. It looked comically large on her tiny frame; the golden heart full of pictures was the size of a deck of cards against her chest. I thought she looked ridiculous, but she couldn’t get enough. She opened it up and flipped through the photographs. Then she closed it, sat me down at her desk chair, and unzipped my pants.
Toward the end of one of the greatest blowjobs of my life, the sound of the dangling locket banging against the hardwood floor was starting to break my concentration. But then Liz did something she’d never done and went all the way down. And I mean all the way. And that was all it took.
When the world had unblurred and I could move my body again, I patted Liz’s head and told her I didn’t want to know where she’d learned to do that, but if she wanted to do it every time she should feel free. Liz remained with her head between my legs. She didn’t move.
“Ok Liz,” I said, starting to feel over sensitive and uncomfortable. Still, no response.
“Liz?,” I asked, starting to worry. I realized she wasn’t breathing. “Oh my God, what the fuck!,” I yelled, and pushed her back. She separated from me and collapsed on the floor. Her eyes and nose were bleeding. Panic filled me as I stared at her motionless body.
Her bloody face was horrifying, but that wasn’t what I was focusing on. It was the locket on her chest. The bright gold locket that now glowed dull red. It opened on its own. My eyes widened as I saw that the oldest picture, the one of the great grandmother, had changed. Her smile had become a scowl of rage. Page after page turned and I saw the once-smiling women were all frowning with hatred and indignity.
The photo of the women I’d stolen the locket from was next. Her expression was one of seething animosity. My paralyzing terror kept me rooted to the chair, and I wondered how it could possibly get any worse. Then the page turned again. There was another picture. One that hadn’t been there until right that very moment.
The photograph was of Liz, with blood streaming from her eyes and nose. In the picture, carved across her forehead with vicious precision, was the word “THIEF.” Only once the word started to appear on her forehead in real life, invisibly etched by some malevolent, ghostly hand, did I begin to scream.
I have an African grey parrot named Perry. He’s been part of the family for 25 years. I’ve known him my whole life. When my parents were alive, they taught him a bunch of words and phrases and he’d always make us laugh.
Lately, though, he’s been saying things we never taught him. Certainly not things we’d ever say, either. Nancy, my wife, was in the kitchen with her friends the other day when they all heard Perry squawk, “it bathes in tears and reigns beneath our feet.”
They all laughed and wondered what the hell I could’ve been watching on TV for the bird to pick up a phrase like that. They continued their lunch, but ten minutes later, Perry started again:
“It reigns beneath our feet. It reigns beneath our feet. It reigns beneath our feet.”
Then he squawked and screamed and rattled his cage so hard that he almost fell off the table. Nancy checked to see if he was okay, and he chirped and allowed her to stroke his head with her finger. He seemed no worse for wear.
That night, after I’d gotten home and Nancy had told me about Perry’s weirdness, I let him out of his cage to fly around the house. He was always well behaved and never knocked anything off shelves or shit on things we cared about. He stepped out of the cage and onto the table, but he didn’t take off. He just stood there, looking around.
“Go ahead, Perry,” I coaxed. “Go get some exercise.”
He remained stationary, but he watched me; the pupils wide in his beige eyes.
“You okay buddy?,” I asked. I was concerned for the little guy. He’d always been in great health and never acted weird. This was entirely unlike him.
Perry cocked his head and stared into my eyes. For some reason, I felt a chill run down my spine even before he spoke – almost like I knew he was about to frighten me.
In a deep tone I’d never heard from him in all my years, he uttered, “beneath your feet.”
Something knocked on the floor directly below where I was standing. I jumped about a mile and stepped away from the bird, who hadn’t moved. “Still beneath your feet,” he said.
The knock came again. It was a hundred times louder and so powerful my ankle twisted under me and I fell sideways onto the couch. The floorboards where I’d been standing bulged upward. One had cracked. Nancy came running downstairs asking, “what the hell was that?” I told her to go in the kitchen and call the police – someone was in the cellar.
Nancy and I waited by the door for the police to arrive. They got there quickly. We let them in and they went into the basement. A couple minutes later, they came back up. “No one’s there,” they told us.
“Wait, then what –”
The older cop cut us off. “Can you come look at something with us?”
“Okay,” Nancy said, “but what is it?”
“Just come downstairs.”
We followed the cops into the basement. Neither Nancy nor I go down there very often. I was a little embarrassed by how gross and dusty it was until I saw marks in the dust-covered floor and countertops.
“Are those footprints?,” I asked, more to myself than to anyone around.
“That’s what we thought,” said the younger officer. “But they look pretty weird for footprints.”
We got to the part of the cellar that was under where I’d been standing. The cops aimed their flashlights at the wood above our heads. An indentation was clearly visible. It almost looked like a punch, but the shape wasn’t of any hand we’d ever seen. It looked like it had too many knuckles; too many bones.
“What the hell?” I traced my finger over the indentations. I shivered.
Upstairs, Perry squawked. The floorboards around the indentation began to leak. Liquid dripped into my mouth and I sputtered. It was salty and reminded me of the taste you get after crying for a long time.
“Did something spill upstairs?,” the older cop asked.
“Yeah, maybe the bird knocked something over.”
“Is that him making all that noise?”
I nodded. “He’s been weird all day.”
We headed back upstairs and the cops told us to call if we have any other concerns about someone being in our house. Nancy and I thanked them, and they left.
I stared at the damage to the living room floor. Perry hadn’t knocked anything over, but there was a small puddle on the wood. He’d gone back into his cage and sat in the corner, quietly clucking. I approached the cage. There were little, wet footprints around it. They were his prints. It looked like he might’ve lapped up some of the water that’d been on the floor while we were in the cellar.
“What’s going on, bud? You having a rough day?” I tried not to think about what had happened. There had to be a reason for it. Maybe the wood had warped. The basement’s always been damp and gross. That had to have been it. The wood warped and trapped moisture was dripping out of the fracture point. But then there was Perry.
Perry stared at the bottom of the cage, still clucking. He didn’t look up. I reached out to pet his head, but he struck my finger with his beak. Not hard enough to do any damage, but with enough force to let me know he wanted none of my affection.
I looked at my pet with sympathy, wondering if he was just getting old and losing his mind. He remained in the corner, trembling slightly. Something caught my eye. There was red on the cage where he was sitting. I looked closer. It was blood.
“What happened, Perry?,” I asked, and reached inside to pick him up, knowing I was in for a pecking. Before I could grab him, he spoke in that same, chilling voice:
“It will bathe in blood and claim the sky.” He paused, then slowly spoke. “Twenty…. seven… days.”
I picked up my bird to see how badly he was hurt. But before I could assess his wound, I saw what was in the corner where he was sitting. Something entirely unexpected.
Perry, my male, African grey parrot, had been sitting on a bloody, black egg.
It’s been 24 hours since all this started. Perry seems no worse for wear, but he fights whenever we try to pick him up. He does everything he can to remain by the egg. I don’t know what’s happening to him and I have no idea what he means with any of the stuff he’s saying. Whenever he talks now, it’s just “26 days” followed by the word “hours.” The number of hours keeps going down. And I haven’t heard it, but Nancy swears she hears soft knocking coming from the basement each time Perry makes his announcements.
