Nestlings

by Nat Cassidy

We don’t belong here. That thought, quiet but insistent—like a best friend tugging on her sleeve, trying to pull her out of an embarrassing, maybe even dangerous, situation. Get out, hurry, before anyone notices. Ana did her best to ignore it.

At the center of the huge courtyard was a massive, wild-looking forest—it was shockingly green and vibrant.

In the middle of the foliage lay a flat, tamed rectangle of grass. From this high up, Ana got the so-called visual joke right away: all those wild trees were buildings, skyscrapers, and the flat grass was Central Park in miniature. We don’t belong here.

Except for its gargoyles. Besides the Chrysler Building and maybe the Woolworth Building or City College, the Deptford had some of the city’s most famous gargoyles.

Why was he making her say it?

Vera was just saying how it can almost make you feel like you’re even higher up because—oh.” He finally looked at her. Then he looked at her wheelchair. She watched his face as it registered what he should have known all along. “Fuck.”

“We were really stubborn about wanting to avoid a C-section, but it was a long labor and the epidural kept me from feeling how badly the position I was in was actually hurting me.” The lithotomy position, legs spread as far as they could go, which she indicated with her hands in her lap. “I had an old dance injury in just the right spot. Wound up causing a hemorrhage in my spinal column. I didn’t know how bad it was until I tried to get out of bed the next day.”

“Is that common?” Ana remembered the neurologist she’d been referred to, shaking his head and sighing (while making eye contact mostly with Reid): You have to understand, this sort of injury is a million to one … billion to one, even … “Nope!” Ana tried to sound upbeat. “Super rare. Billion to one.”

“I can’t stop thinking … we don’t belong here. Like … places like this just aren’t meant for people like us.”

“Well,” Vera said. “What do we think? Perfect for baby, isn’t it?”

With the couple gone, Vera the broker-not-broker exhaled. They would work. Disappointing that they hadn’t brought the baby with them—it would’ve been nice to see her in person—but the vetting had been thorough, and the husband had been more than happy to show photos and videos. A beautiful child. The mother’s disability was an asset, too. In a word, they were perfect. Envy rocketed through her, as it often did when she met lucky new tenants of the Deptford. Then she remembered what she was holding on to. She looked down, wondering if the couple had thought it odd she hadn’t shaken their hands as they left. No, probably not. They had their own issues to discuss. The roach continued to squirm against her palms. Vera carefully opened her hands, then plucked the roach up by its back. Its legs kicked helplessly. She’d caught it scurrying across the kitchen counter while the couple talked in the second bedroom. It was quick, but not quick enough. “You don’t belong here,” she reprimanded with a grin, an actual, genuine grin. Roaches were common enough in any building—and this particular apartment had sat empty for a few months now—but she couldn’t help feeling a sense of … holy confirmation finding one at this exact moment. This building teemed with life, after all. Its new tenants were about to discover just what that could mean. Here came that envy again. They were so lucky. Vera wished she could experience what the young couple was about to experience. What their baby would ge...

Ana had endured lately—the unpleasant, savings-draining fertility procedures, the pregnancy, the difficult labor, the paralysis, the compounding expenses, the loss of Ana’s personal trainer income, the newborn … and, of course, that night with the knife …

(Ana put the knife down) (What were you doing?!)

she hated looking down on Charlie like this. Bad memories of (Ana!) one awful night.

Now the window, and its sill, were spotless. But something else bugged her about the view. What was it? The drop. You had nightmares last night, remember?

It was something specific, but she was too tired and frazzled to put her finger on it.

She just had to be loose, right? Flop like a rag doll onto the hard, hard ground of their new life.

And you’ll plan Charlie’s birthday party, and your friends will come here and coo in jealousy over how lucky you are. And they’ll tell you they’re proud of you and how far you’ve come. Not just because of the apartment but because you’re making the best of a difficult situation. You’re getting by and getting better. And they never have to know the awful truth—

she made eye contact with her mother, and her face lit up. She babbled a little, then let out a short, high-pitched chirping noise. It was her signature sound—a bizarre, gleefully falsetto yip that sounded eerily like a birdcall.

The awful truth is that you hate your daughter and wish she’d never been born.

Actually receiving their food had left a little to be desired. They’d ordered pizza (as per the rituals of moving day), but the delivery guy had refused to come up to their apartment. He’d made Reid come outside and cross the street to get his order. They wouldn’t be ordering from that place again. They’d find new favorite places. Reid might even ask his new neighbors for the inside scoop. He was an insider himself now, after all.

“Just come up; it’s fine, they’ll let you in. We’re floor—” Another moment. “You’re just not gonna—come on, man, this is—ugh, fine! I’ll be down in, I don’t know, minutes.” He hung up with a growl. Nothing was quite as anticlimactic as angrily ending a call on a touchscreen cell phone. “Again?” Ana looked up. “This better not become, like, a Thing,” he grumbled. Although, if it was, what exactly could he do about it? “Maybe they’re just intimidated by how fancy we are.” “Yeah, right.”

Charlie’s window, specifically what was bugging her about it.

because the nighttime is the right time to cruise the Panic Attack Expressway, baby, keep your useless foot on the gas and let’s crash into that wall at the very end, the one where you start thinking of that awful night, you know the one, when you were so exhausted you grabbed a knife and came so very, very close to—

She finally realized what had been bugging her about the view from Charlie’s window. No, that’s impossible, she thought. I’m not remembering it right. But she knew she was. Just as she knew, in that moment, they had to leave this place.

room. “Besides the death of a loved one.” I can think of a few more stressful things, Ana almost said.

Until they got back to the Deptford. The moment they passed into the building’s mirrored front lobby, Charlie became a different baby. Miserable. Fussy. She squirmed and grunted the entire elevator ride up.

Impossible, she thought again. She put her face fully against the glass and moved her head around. During their walk-through, she could have sworn she’d seen a set of famous Deptford gargoyles festooning the interior upper walls of the courtyard. But now? Nothing. No gargoyles.

How…? Why did I imagine them? What does this mean?

The sound of a baby crying. For a moment, she thought it was Charlie. Two things quickly clarified that it wasn’t. The first was that it was obviously too far away, coming from another apartment, probably the one next door. Second, it wasn’t just a baby crying. An adult was crying, too.

If the nightmare sound of someone rushing up from the throat of darkness made Ana’s blood go cold, the figure who appeared moments later flash froze it.

How is it so dark in there? Ana wondered. All the lights must be off, and all the curtains must be drawn.

Just a shape, barely visible in the murk, but even its silhouette communicated great, glaring wrongness. The angles were wrong. The behavior was wrong. The whistling, panicky sound of its breath: wrong.

Don’t apologize; get out of here! Go back to your own apartment and lock the door.

“You found my key,” the woman said. “I didn’t think anyone would try, but … but I heard new people and I had to. All I could think of.”

“Nope.” She laughed quietly. “No, no, no. Fuck you.” She put a grimy hand on Ana’s shoulder, stepping over her, and stumbled through the doorway. Ana did a double take, looking into the shadows, then back at the escaping woman. “But your—your baby—?” “Ate,” she heard the woman muttering. “Ater…”

“She’s killing me.” Ana blinked. She must have misheard. “What?” “She’s killing me.” “Your … baby?” The woman didn’t answer for a long time. She just kept staring down that long, winding staircase. Ana followed her gaze. This was Ana’s first real look at the stairs. She’d known they were here, but she’d avoided ever coming over and looking. No doubt there was also a smaller, enclosed set of fire stairs somewhere, but someone designed these to be seen.

her neighbor climbed onto the railing of the staircase and swung one leg over. “Ican’tIcan’tIcan’tIcan’tIcan’t…” Holy shit, she’s about to jump.

(a manic thought whipped through her mind: She should go up to the roof—that’s what I would do if I could).

She didn’t notice the knife in her hand until the moment before Reid turned on the light. Moonlight had glinted off the blade, and only then did her nerves register the handle’s heaviness. It was the butcher knife they’d bought after their wedding. Bad luck to register for knives, they’d been told, so they got the knife set themselves, laughing at the superstition. She couldn’t remember bringing it from the kitchen. She held it over the crib, where Charlie sniffled and mewled. The stench of liquid shit covered the world, and she imagined running the blade into Charlie’s soft belly and making this all go away. Then the light clicked on. Reid’s sleepy voice: “Ana?” For the rest of her life, she would never forget that moment before her husband rushed over and pried the knife out of her grip. That realization: Yes, I can do this, and then everything will be easier again. Ana and Reid never talked about it.

“Babies! Hahaha! They’re the reason why we got these apartments! They’re the only reason why we’re—” The door closed on Mrs. Jacobs and the concierge before she could finish her sentence, but Ana was pretty sure what that final word was going to be. Here. They’re the only reason why we’re here.

You might become like her one day. Unless … you end it now …

she heard the voice of Mrs. Jacobs again. I should have jumped Sometimes I think the doors lock on their own I’m crazy, like my husband says

it must have come from Mrs. Jacobs’s hand as she’d stepped over Ana to get out of her apartment. Ana’s hand came away covered in some sort of slimy, gooey gel. It was appallingly sticky. Like honeyed cement. Up close in the light, it looked like it squirmed on her fingertips and she thought of that ragged, peeled-away flesh on Mrs. Jacobs’s leg. “Be right back, Baby Bird,” she muttered, wiping her hand on her shirt.

This time, she was too busy thinking how the stuff on her hand looked a lot like the stuff she’d scraped off the windowsill.

Did you open that window earlier? What do you mean? I don’t know, I just don’t remember … Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I mean, one of us must’ve opened it. Right. Okay, I’ll be right back.

Someone was pressing up against the glass of the window, looking in. A face. Moon-pale and hungry against the blackness beyond. It was such a shock that the impossibility of it didn’t register until a few moments after. Adrenaline and terror sizzled through her. She had to blink, squeeze her eyes shut for a second, just to test whether she really saw something, or whether maybe she was still asleep, next to her husband in the bed where sanity and her former life, the one she lived before this horrible vision, were. When her eyes opened, the face was still there. Pressed so close to the glass that it was visible with horrid clarity. It was almost human. Almost. But with a puggish nose, flat and, and … bat-like, she thought feverishly. The thing’s lips quivered in a grin, revealing gnarled, dirty teeth. But something was wrong with its mouth. Its lips … rippled, moving the way the legs of a centipede move. Like its lips marched in place in an insectile circuit around the lower half of its face. She could have sworn she heard its lips scratching against the glass with tiny little tickety-taps.

Let them underestimate Frank. They wouldn’t be the first. Frank had ways. He was smart. Bet those little cock-a-roaches didn’t know that. Bet they thought they were so clever. Bet they didn’t know, when they filled out their little mail forwarding change of address form, that if you were a landlord, all you had to do was send your tenants a letter at their previous address, your address, slap a first-class stamp on it, and write Return Service Requested on the envelope. The letter comes back, processed by the post office, with one of those yellow stickers on the front showing the new address. Easy peasy, pudding and pie. He even had a buddy at the post office in Corona who owed him a favor and who could expedite the process. Yeah. He was going to find out where Reid was hiding now, where he’d rolled his wife and their screaming infant. Then maybe he’d go pay them a visit. Let ’em know they weren’t so smart, they weren’t so sneaky, so crafty. They had a lot to learn. And Francis Gardner Jr., was more than willing to teach them.

Like a motor idling, or a tiger … or the sound of bones being slowly crushed under a tank. Something was growling.

Like it was a trap that had finally swung shut. That was a weird thought.