Bird Box by Josh Malerman Page A

cellar floor.
    “I found her in the bathtub, Malorie. Floating. Her little wrists cut with the razor she’d seen me shave with a thousand times. The water was red. The blood dripped over the tub’s edge. Blood on the walls. This was a child. Eight years old. Did she look outside? Or did she just decide to do this herself? I’ll never know that answer.”
    Malorie reaches for Tom and holds him.
    But he does not cry. Instead, after a moment, he steps to the shelves and begins marking the paper.
    Malorie thinks of Shannon. She, too, died in the bathroom. She, too, took her own life.
    When Tom is finished, he asks Malorie if she’s ready to go back upstairs. As he reaches for the lightbulb’s string, he sees she is looking at the patch of open dirt along the wall.
    “Freaky, no?” he says.
    “Yeah.”
    “Well, don’t let it be. It’s just one of the old-world fears, carrying over.”
    “What’s that?”
    “The fear of the cellar.”
    Malorie nods.
    Then Tom pulls the string and the light goes out.

nine
    C reatures ,” Malorie thinks. What a cheap word .
    The children are quiet and the banks are still. She can hear the paddles slicing the water. The rhythm of her rowing is in step with her heartbeat, and then it falters. When the cadences oppose, she feels like she could die.
    Creatures .
    Malorie has never liked this word. It’s out of place, somehow. The things that have haunted her for more than four years are not creatures to her. A garden slug is a creature. A porcupine. But the things that have lurked beyond draped windows and have kept her blindfolded are not the sort that an exterminator could ever remove.
    “Barbarian” isn’t right, either. A barbarian is reckless. So is a brute .
    In the distance, a bird sings a song from high in the sky. The paddles cut the water, shifting with each row.
    “Behemoth” is unproven. They could be as small as a fingernail .
    Though they are early in their journey along the river, Malorie’s muscles ache from rowing. Her shirt is soaked through with sweat. Her feet are cold. The blindfold continues to irritate.
    “Demon.” “Devil.” “Rogue.” Maybe they are all these things .
    Her sister died because she saw one. Her parents must have met the same fate.
    “Imp” is too kind. “Savage” too human .
    Malorie is not only afraid of the things that may wade in the river, she is also fascinated by them.
    Do they know what they do? Do they mean to do what they do?
    Right now, it feels as if the whole world is dead. It feels like the rowboat is the last remaining place where life can be found. The rest of the world fans out from the tip of the boat, an empty globe, blooming and vacant with each row.
    If they don’t know what they do, they can’t be “villains .”
    The children have been quiet a long time. A second birdsong comes from above. A fish splashes. Malorie has never seen this river. What does it look like? Do the trees crowd the banks? Are there houses lining its shore?
    They are monsters , Malorie thinks. But she knows they are more than this. They are infinity .
    “Mommy!” the Boy suddenly cries.
    A bird of prey caws; its echo breaks across the river.
    “What is it, Boy?”
    “It sounds like an engine.”
    “ What? ”
    Malorie stops paddling. She listens closely.
    Far off, beyond even the river’s flow, comes the sound of an engine.
    Malorie recognizes it immediately. It is the sound of another boat approaching.
    Rather than feeling excitement at the prospect of encountering another human being on this river, Malorie is afraid.
    “Get down, you two,” she says.
    She rests the paddle handles across her knees. The rowboat floats.
    The Boy heard it , she tells herself. The Boy heard it because you raised him well and now he hears better than he will ever see .
    Breathing deep, Malorie waits. The engine grows louder. The boat is traveling upstream.
    “Ouch!” the Boy yelps.
    “What is it, Boy?”
    “My ear! I got hit by a