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In the dream I go from the endless terrifying fall straight to the broken bones and the beeping hospital machines and the sepsis and the fever and the coma and the—
Death is cold. Even when just for a little while.
Death is so very, very cold.
5
Emily
I wake from the dream sweating and disoriented in the strange surroundings. It’s too dark. No cars. No streetlights. I’m used to the noise of the hospital, which even at night never stops. Sirens wail through double-glazed windows and nurses’ shoes whisper up and down the corridors. It’s never pitch-black and quiet. Not like this.
I’m trying to go back to sleep when a quiet thud from downstairs stops me. My skin prickles. After listening intently for a minute and hearing no more noise, I’m about to call it my imagination when there’s another deadened thump.
I listen harder, acutely aware of how isolated this house is, of how anyone could come in with a shotgun and blast us to death before the police would even be halfway here. The kind of stuff I’ve read in crime novels and seen on true-crime documentaries. I put a hand on Freddie’s shoulder to shake him awake, but then I hear a faint caw. A loud, panicked fluttering of thick feathers. Heavy wings hitting a wall. Relief floods through me.
A bird. It’s just a bird.
A bird is trapped in the house.
I get up and move hesitantly to the bedroom door, my leg immediately screaming even as I reach for my stick. Freddie doesn’t stir, but given that he’s drunk most of a bottle of wine by himself tonight, that doesn’t surprise me. We were both drinking more before my accident, and while I’ve had months of enforced sobriety, he’s still drinking like we used to. I can do this by myself anyway. It’s just letting a bird out.
From the landing, I can hear the squawks downstairs grow more frantic, and by the time I make it to the ground floor I’m sweating despite all the physio and exercise in the hospital. In the cool hallway, I listen. A hard, fluttering thud. A croak. Another thud.
I track the sound to the unused drawing room, directly under our bedroom, and after another heavy thump, open the door and quickly slip inside, pressing myself back against the wall before flicking the switch. The sudden yellow light sends the bird into a frenzy, battering itself into every deep red wall in a panicked effort to escape. I have to duck as it circuits the room, talons sharp on its feet. It’s a huge black raven and has shat all over the floor in its panic, and I flinch as its heavy wings brush past me.Germs. I bet it’s covered in fleas and mites and germs.
The bird lands on the mantelpiece, its panic temporarily exhausted, and lets out a quieter caw. It must have come down the chimney because the walls are dirty with old soot where the bird has flung itself against them, and the room smells like something awful. How long has it been since anyone lit a fire here or cleaned out the old flue?
The bird stays where it is, black eyes fixed on me, and for a long moment neither of us moves. The house is silent, and as my heart slows, I’m aware of how cold the floor is under my feet. One of us has to make the first move, so I keep my eyes locked on the bird and hobble to the window to let it out, staying pressed to the awful flock paper.
“It’s okay,” I murmur, as much to myself as to the bird. “It’s okay. Nothing to be afraid of.”
I yank down the top of the sash window, letting in the freezing night air, and almost immediately there’s the whisper of wings above my head and a joyful caw as my uninvited guest flies free. It’s a wonderful relief as it vanishes into the mist. I try to peer through it for a last glimpse but the fog is impenetrable, thick and low-lying. There are other noises outside too. Creatures rustling through theunseen garden. Hunters and prey alive in the night. I close the window, locking it tight.
It’s only as I go to leave the room that I realize my bird wasn’t alone.
Another raven lies unmoving in the cold fireplace, its dull eye sockets empty and unseeing. Still, I feel an accusation in them.
You didn’t get here in time to save me.
The bird is withered, desiccated, dead for months, if not longer. One wing is badly scarred with feathers missing, the area around it a shocking white, maybe the result of a near miss with a farmer’s shotgun at some point or a fight with another bird, and I’m amazed it could even fly. I’m torn between revulsion and sadness. Was it stuck in the chimney and died there? Did the bird I freed knock it in panic on its way down into the house, loosening it from its entombment in the walls?
Perhaps my raven had come in search of this one. I read somewhere that corvids are capable of love. And vengeance. Was all the fluttering and banging into walls grief, not panic? I can’t leave the raven’s corpse there, so despite my fear of germs I fetch a dustpan and brush and sweep up the dark body, opening the bottom of the window just enough to tip it out. It’s barely more than a husk. A strong wind might even blow it away to dust. But at least it’s back in the fresh air now.
Free of the house.
I haul myself back up the stairs, trying not to let the pain win, and in the bathroom I scrub my hands until they’re pink with the effort but perfectly clean. I’m suddenly tired again, and this time I think I really will be able to sleep. I flick off the bathroom light and pad across the wooden floor of the dark hallway.
The pain comes out of nowhere.
It’s sharp and needle-focused in the sole of my foot and I gasp, almost crumpling with the shock as I pull away. In the half-light the blood on the wooden floorboards shines bright red.
Blood. My blood. No, no. No.
I lift my foot up, my aches forgotten, and the dark crimson bloom against my skin fills my vision. My worst fears confirmed. My breath hitches in my chest as the palpitations start. I can’t breathe. Blood. A cut.Oh god, not sepsis again, please not sepsis again, and then the white heat of panic overwhelms me.
6
Freddie