Chapter 26
The twins and Jessica left Oliver’s house in the early hours of the morning, the blue light weak as the rising sun battled a thick cloud cover for ownership of the sky.
Out of the forest, they made their way back to the little red house mostly out of reflex, only realizing the mistake they’d made as the bay came into view.
They couldn’t go back inside. If Nora’s theory was correct, that would be like walking into a bear’s cave dressed as a salmon. But they had nowhere else to go.
The wind had begun to pick up, rain spitting down on them in small but enthusiastic droplets.
Nora’s feet stopped beneath her on the beach, her shoes submerged in cold, soggy sand.
She tossed her hood over her head and wrapped her coat tighter around her torso.
Between the wind, the hour, and their distance from the house, they could speak freely, though Nora could barely dredge up the energy to say a thing.
Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t have the same problem.
“All right, so how do we do this?” he asked. His hands were shoved in his pockets, his face as keen and sober as Nora had seen it. “Do you, like, have to say S.C.Y.T.H.E. in the mirror three times to summon them or something?”
“They’re not Beetlejuice,” said Nora. “It’s a corporation. You have to call them. Like, on the phone.”
“Okay, cool, cool. And you have their number?”
Nora nodded and turned away, walking even farther up the beach. Charlie stumbled after her, Jessica in his arms.
“Okay, so, like—”
“Charlie.” Nora stopped moving again. Or at least she stopped walking. The rest of her kicked into overdrive. Her hands began to shake, her eyes suddenly stinging with entirely unwelcome tears. “I can’t.”
“Right, because of the no phone thing. So we borrow a car and get you to a phone.”
“No.” The first tear tore loose and traced the soft contour of Nora’s cheek. “I can’t do this. I can’t turn this place in.”
“What are you talking about?”
Nora tried to steady her breathing, but hearing her own ragged inhale only made it worse. “I’m not like you, Charlie.”
Charlie gave her a look that said, “Duh,” but Nora shook her head.
“No, I mean…this place. Charlie. I need it.”
“I don’t get it.”
“No, you don’t, that’s just it. You don’t know what it’s like to be afraid.
Mom and Dad died and it was like you suddenly became fearless.
You did everything. And everyone. But I…
I’m not built like that. Losing them, it just made me see what a horrifying world we live in.
But this place, it means I don’t have to be afraid.
I know what Oliver said, but he’s bitter and lonely.
It doesn’t have to be like that. I could make a life here, Charlie, forever. I would never have to worry again.”
Charlie stared at her for a moment, and for the second time in their lives she couldn’t read his look. “Wow,” he said. “That’s…that’s what you think?”
“I—”
“Nor, I’m not fearless. I’m terrified. Like, all the time.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“But the way you live…”
“I’m not scared of death, Nora,” he clarified.
“There’s no point. It’s always gonna happen in the end.
But after Mom and Dad died, I became terrified of not living.
Like, as far as I knew, Mom and Dad were these nice but boring people who just kinda settled down in the suburbs and that was that.
Then the chance to be anything else was taken from them.
Honestly, learning they had all these secrets made me feel a lot better about that.
But I promised myself when it all happened that I wouldn’t let myself go to the grave with regrets, and the only thing I ever seemed to regret was not trying something. ”
Nora swallowed hard. The wind swept her hood off her head, her hair back from her face, the cold pulling a flush of pink to her cheeks and nose. Charlie was as ruddy as his sister by this point, his bleached hair falling into his eyes, weighed down by the rain.
“I’m not…I can’t…”
“I know.” Charlie put a hand on her shoulder. “But I think you’re braver than you think you are.”
She shook her head. “I feel it, all the time.” Nora was sobbing now.
She didn’t know when she’d properly started and didn’t much care.
“It’s like this weight. Being afraid. It’s like I carry it around on my back, and, Charlie, it’s so heavy.
Like if I don’t stay one step ahead of life, it’s going to catch up and take everything from me. Mom, Dad, Bubbie, you.”
“But, Nor,” said Charlie. “Then you’re letting it take you instead.”
Nora felt her feet sink deeper, the wet sand gripping her like quicksand.
She could feel herself being swallowed as much by Charlie’s words as by the hungry earth.
He was right, which always came as a shock when it happened.
She had spent so long trying to protect the lives of those around her, including her own, that she’d all but stopped living.
In a sense, she had sacrificed life in exchange for existence.
Fuck. Maybe Charlie was the smart one.
“I have to do this, don’t I?” Even as she said it, she knew it was true.
Either live forever knowing she’d let her brother die, or save Charlie and return to the life she knew and feared and never properly gave a chance.
That’s what it boiled down to. Those were her only options now. “I have to do this.”
Charlie smiled at her. “Yeah, you do.”
Nora nodded. “We’ll go to Charles’s. He’s the one who brought us here, the least he can do is give us a ride out.”
“And then we call the Ghostbusters?”
Nora just rolled her eyes, but her insides twisted slightly at the thought of that call.
Not only was she about to destroy the one place she knew Death couldn’t touch, she had to call her old workplace to do it.
The same workplace she’d been in hiding from for days.
The same one that would be only too happy to punish her for taking Charlie’s file.
It was like sending yourself to detention, only much, much worse.
“God. It’s all too much,” she said. “I just want to scream.”
“Okay,” said Charlie. “Go for it.”
“What?”
“Scream.”
Nora looked around at the desolate beach, the rolling ocean merging into the heavy sky.
“Charlie, I’m not going to scream.”
“Suit yourself,” said Charlie. Then he turned to face the sea, took an exaggerated inhale, and shouted, “FUCK!”
“Charlie!” Nora shushed.
Charlie gave her a look that said, “What?”
Nora let the rain pummel her cheeks, blending with her tears.
She faced the endless gray and squared her shoulders.
“FUCK!” The sensation of such complete, feral abandon made her giggle.
It shouldn’t have, but the laughter bubbled up her throat, completely unbidden, and erupted in a girlish squeal, catching both of them off guard.
Charlie laughed right back. “What the hell was that? Did you snort?”
“Maybe,” said Nora. She turned back to the sea and shouted again. “FUUUUCK!”
“FUCK!” Charlie joined.
“Fuck!” Jessica squawked.
This sent Nora into hysterics. She doubled over, her tears now exclusively from the laughter pouring out of her.
“Fuck,” she wheezed. She gathered herself enough to stand upright and undid her jacket so it flapped out behind her like a cape.
A gust whipped at her, ready to carry her away, and she was almost willing to let it.
She felt so light she was fairly certain she could fly.
Her arms opened to the wind. “I AM NORA BIRD AND I’M SICK OF THIS SHIT,” she screamed.
Jessica flapped over and perched on her shoulder as Charlie stepped beside her.
She could feel their warmth against the cold of the infant day, of loneliness, of life.
An army of three against the world. Nora staggered through another gust. “I AM NORA BIRD AND I DON’T WANT TO BE AFRAID!
” Jessica hopped up and down on her shoulder now, spurring her on. “I AM NORA BIRD AND I WANT TO LIVE!”
“I’m afraid you’re making that very difficult for yourself, dear,” said a sharp voice from just behind her. Nora whipped around to find Ruby and Richard standing there, faces pulled into caricatures of themselves. Her heart shot into rapid motion between her ribs.
“They’ve got Silver,” Richard mumbled, tipping his head at Jessica. “Which means…”
“We’d wondered where she’d gotten off to,” said Ruby. “You’d best give her here.”
Nora pulled the parrot off her shoulder and instinctively clutched her tightly to her chest.
“You went out in the woods again last night,” Ruby said. “After we warned you not to.”
“They know too much,” Richard said to Ruby as though the twins weren’t there.
“We have to do something about them,” said Ruby.
Nora’s muscles were rigid. She had saved her brother from fires, lawn mowers, car accidents, and knives. Her gut was primed for tracking his safety, and right now it was signaling to her like a fire alarm.
“You took Mom and Dad away from me. I won’t let you take Charlie too.” She looked over at her brother and shouted, “Run.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, they took off down the beach and onto the grass, stumbling over their own harried feet as they raced.
Nora led them onto the dirt path and into the heart of the strange little town, already out of breath but unwilling to break stride.
Charlie, for his part, kept a few paces behind, his own breathing even more labored.
Behind them, Richard and Ruby maintained a pace no octogenarian had the right to keep, but still they lagged behind enough for the twins to gain a growing distance from them. As they turned the corner towards the town center, Richard and Ruby disappeared from sight.
Nora and Charlie stumbled down the main street of Virgo Bay, passing the still-shuttered general store and curtain-drawn houses as they ran. Across from the little church with no graves sat Charles’s house, a beacon in the haze of panic, fear, and the early-morning light.
They bolted up the squat steps to the perpetually unlocked front door and spilled in.
As soon as they were both inside, Nora slammed the door shut and twisted a lock that had clearly gone its whole life never serving its purpose.
Inside, the house was dim; misty tendrils of weak dawn light playing in the gaps of closed shutters.
“Charles,” Nora whispered into the space, the stillness echoing her voice back to her.
Jessica grew restless in her arms, squirming for liberation.
Nora obliged without much thought, her focus locked on the closed bedroom door at the other end of the little house.
A clang of metal distracted her. She looked over to the source of the noise and saw Jessica perched on top of the metal birdcage Nora had noticed during her first visit.
She was right; Jessica had brought the twins home. Nora called for Charles again.
This time the bedroom door opened and a very groggy Charles emerged, still in his blue-striped pajama set.
“Heavens, is everything all right?” he said through a yawn.
“We need your help,” Nora said. From beyond the kitchen window she could see Richard and Ruby racing down the road, heading in the direction of Patty’s house.
Soon it would be too late for them to get away.
Soon everyone involved in this sordid plot would be after them.
“We’re going to do what Dad tried to do,” she continued quickly. “What you brought us here for.”
Charles stopped yawning and straightened. “You are?”
Nora nodded, her eyes flicking between him and Patty’s house. Charles followed her gaze. “Well, then, we ought to hurry,” he said. “Or else I fear you’ll no longer have a chance.”
He led them back into the front hall, shoving his bare feet into a pair of sleek boots and tossing a coat over his pajamas. He grabbed the car keys from where they sat in the bowl by the door and held an arm out for Jessica, who took it with the swiftness of a bird who’d done so many times before.
They piled out of the house and raced to the driveway.
“There’s a pay phone at a gas station a few miles out of town,” said Charles as he made his way over to the driver’s-side door.
Nora hopped into the passenger seat and Charlie climbed in behind them.
Just as they were about to pull out of the driveway, Patty appeared at the front of the van, her hands on the hood.
She gave a sharp look to Charles, then shifted her attention to the twins.
“Stop this. You need to come out of there,” she shouted into the van. “Right now.”
Nora just shook her head, unable to speak.
Richard and Ruby were making their way over to the driveway, their faces as set and severe as their daughter’s.
From the rearview mirror, Nora could see the silhouette of someone with a rifle racing onto the scene.
Phil. She recognized the rugged shoulders immediately.
They were all closing in around the van, trapping them like prey rounded up to be slaughtered.
Nora’s breath caught in her throat, her face tingling from the restricted oxygen supply.
She could feel herself slipping, her fear gripping her, its hands around her neck, squeezing.
“Hey, Uncle Chuck,” said Charlie from the back seat. “Any way you can swerve onto the grass and get us out of here?”
Charles looked across his perfectly manicured lawn with consideration, then seemed to come to a resolution.
“Nora,” Patty called from the driveway. “Please. You don’t know what you’re doing. Charles!”
Charles set the van into drive and plowed onto the lawn, tires pulling up clumps of grass and mud as he peeled out, off his property and onto the grassy path out of town.
Nora watched the crowd scramble in the rearview.
Phil inexplicably seemed to be trying to chase after them, rifle raised.
Richard and Ruby stared at each other with something heavy settling between them.
Patty, meanwhile, had turned and begun to run in the opposite direction for reasons that didn’t matter now.
All that mattered was that they were on the road, or what passed for a road in this forgotten place. And soon this would all be over.