October 2nd, 2024

The Screechers
by Laila Amado

 

Click here to listen to this story on the Kaidankai podcast.





The screechers are here. Their shrill, angry cries resonate in the dark crowns of the trees, cackle in the branches of the bushes around the house. Emily can’t figure out what kind of bird they are. So, she just calls them the screechers for the terrible sounds that they make. She presses her face to the glass to try and get a better look but can never catch a clear glance of any of them from the window. They’re nothing but shadows and quivering leaves. 
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One time, Emily gets so annoyed with their ceaseless shrieking, she flings the door open and steps outside, thinking that she’d finally be able to identify the perpetrators of the terrible noise if she got a look at them up close. She sees nothing. 

Instead, the moment Emily’s shoes touch the stone of the front steps, she is overcome by a fear so intense, it leaves her struggling for breath. She steps back, shutting the door closed. 

Since the car crash, Emily has been hesitant to leave the house, and after that incident on the porch she is terrified of stepping outside. She suspects that her husband believes her fears to be unreasonable. He doesn’t say anything, but the way his gaze turns vacant whenever she brings up the subject of screecher speaks for itself.

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Emily used to enjoy driving before the accident. Some weeks ago, she decided that if she cannot walk out of the house, perhaps she can drive out, go for a short ride, and put her thoughts in order. She came down to the garage, but there was only one car sitting there – her husband’s. The side of the garage, where her little hatchback used to sit, stood empty. 

Looking at the empty gray square of the garage floor brought on inexplicable sadness, but Emily brushed it aside. It was a stupid feeling. Her husband must have taken the car to the service center. A reasonable thing to do after a road accident, however minor. She went up to the living room to ask him when they’re going to bring it back, but when she mentioned the car, he closed his face with both hands. “Emily,” he sighed and walked out of the room. 

Emily stayed where she was, confused, perched on the edge of the chair. After that day, silence seemed to stretch between them, taut as a tightrope. 

It wasn’t always like this. She remembers how thrilled they were when they first moved into this house. A cottage on the grounds of an old manor house, with a sizable piece of land attached to it—a garden, a pond, and even a small cemetery with three chipped and crumbling tombstones. Emily’s husband wanted to get rid of them, saying that they’re macabre, but she didn’t let him. The house was perfect with everything in it, and they were going to be happy there.

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Cocooned in her favorite chair by the window, Emily thinks of the early days of their marriage. How they couldn’t get their hands off each other. How they slept entwined in an intimate embrace. Now her husband sleeps on the far side of the bed. At night, in the pale light streaming from behind the curtains, she can see the angle of his shoulder, the long dip of his hip. His back is turned, as if even in his sleep he wants to keep the distance. Emily spends her nights turning and tossing, unable to rest.
At breakfast, he sits across the table from her and reads, eyes locked on the screen of the phone in his hand. Emily wants to say something clever about phubbing. She read about this new term online and yearns to tell her husband how it harms their marriage, but somehow, never manages to find the right words. By the time she comes up with a witty, not too confrontational comment her husband has already left the table and is on his way to work, the front door closing with a bang. The bitter bile of annoyance rises in Emily’s chest, but she pushes it down, stifles the urge to bang her fists on the kitchen counter and scream. 

Her husband grows more distant with every day. They never talk like they used to, and Emily wonders what it means. She worries it means that he’s in love with someone else. With time, she convinces herself that another woman present in his life is the reason for their current troubles.

“Who is she?” Emily wants to ask. The way her husband’s gaze slides off of her makes her want to scream, but she cannot do it—she wasn’t brought up that way. Still, the anger is building up, and one evening she finally snaps. A crystal glass flies off the table, sending shards flying across the floor. 

“I need to get out of here,” her husband mutters and leaves. As the sound of his car wheels rolling down the driveway fades into silence, Emily curls into a ball on the cold tiles of the kitchen floor, paying no heed to the sharp glass pieces, and cries. 
From then on, her husband avoids her completely. She is not surprised—he has never been a fan of emotional outbursts. 

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Outside, thick milky fog creeps forward through the trees, spills across the lawn. The night is completely still, even the screechers have gone quiet. Emily gets out of her favorite chair and walks through the rooms. She needs to talk to her husband, make him understand. Make things right between them.

By the bedroom door she pauses. The sound of running water tells her that her husband is taking a shower. She considers going back to the living room and waiting until he’s done but decides against it. The sooner they have this conversation, the faster their life will go back to normal. 

Halfway across the bedroom, Emily’s gaze falls on her husband’s phone on the bedside table, just as it lights up with an incoming call. The picture on the screen is new. Her husband and some woman. Laughing. 

This is too much. Emily’s face burns with shame and indignation. In her worst nightmares she could not imagine being so disrespected in her own home, and the pain is unbearable. 

She dashes from the bedroom. Runs through the living room. Walls are pressing in on her as if the house is wrapping on itself. Forgetting her fear, she flings the front door open and dashes across the lawn. Anything to escape this suffocating humiliation!

The fog is so thick, Emily cannot see where she’s going and she doesn’t care anymore. Tears run down her face as she rushes away from the house. The ground is uneven, and she slips on the wet grass and stumbles, falling on all fours. 

The fog drifts apart. In front of her, stand the tombstones. Three old ones and one new. The new one has her name on it.

The screechers are here. Their ugly cries echo in the dark. One of them lands on the tombstone, and Emily sees it for the first time. On the body of a bird sits a skeletal, human-like face surrounded by a halo of dark, dirty-gray feathers. The ruffled feathers of a roadkill.

Emily remembers tires screeching on the road, and the car tumbling, going round and round and round until it stops.

Three more screechers land on the tombstones. Dozens hover in the sky above. And when they plunge down, pecking at her eyes and pulling her hair, Emily finally screams. The screechers answer with the desperate wail of fire truck sirens. 

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 Laila Amado is a migrating writer of speculative and literary fiction. She writes in her second language, has recently exchanged her fourth country of residence for the fifth, and can now be found staring at the North Sea, instead of the Mediterranean. The sea, occasionally, stares back. Her speculative stories have appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Tales to Terrify, Three Lobed Burning Eye, as well as in various anthologies.
Website: https://amadolaila.com/
Social media handles: Twitter/X @onbonbon7; Instagram @laila_amado; Bluesky @amadolaila.bsky.social

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