Free Resurrection House by James Chambers Page A

openings. Their wings beat like drums. More glass cascaded into the bedroom. The gulls ripped at the shades, creating a snowfall of vinyl shreds, and then they poked through the ragged openings. Blood streaked their gray and white skulls, and some of them had lost all or part of their eyes to the needle-sharp points of the broken window panes. Through the jumble of maddened bodies, Jennifer glimpsed the sky where hundreds of the shorebirds spun and twirled with cyclonic fury, a frenetic mass pressing down on the meek defenses of the house.
    A window gave way and gulls spewed into the room, filling the space with their darting bodies and the scent of stale seawater. Jennifer fell to her knees and covered her eyes. The second window crashed inward and more birds flooded the room, ramming one another, and then dropping broken-necked to the bed and the carpet. Jennifer scrambled over them to reach Mr. Barnes, clambered onto the bed, and forced herself into a kneeling position at its foot.
    Gulls slashed and pummeled her.
    The cries drowned out the life support machines.
    The bedroom door opened, and Chloe peered in.
    A gull lanced her cheek, drew blood.
    She screamed and dropped to her knees.
    “Dad!” she screamed, and then began crawling across the floor.
    Jennifer clutched Marion Barnes’ scarf tight between her hands, the silk drenched with her perspiration, and began the incantation, her voice floundering in the whirlwind of rushing, screeching gulls. But the effect was immediate. The gulls dove and swooped with fresh urgency, and several tried to pluck the scarf away from Jennifer. A shadow appeared in a corner, and then vanished, only to reappear in another place. The figure blinked around the room, taking shape in flickering clusters of gulls. Jennifer shouted louder, continuing the incantation.
    The rhythm of the gulls changed.
    They tightened their groups, traced a series of interwoven rings centered over Jennifer at the edge of the bed. Jennifer glanced back to see Chloe reaching up for her father, and then she felt the frigid, clammy hand on her shoulder. The dark figure stood beside her now, its face unmistakable, its features focused by rage.
    Jennifer shouted until her throat ached.
    Marion Barnes hissed.
    Filthy rags, the remnants of her burial clothes, hung in tatters from skin that looked like orange rind left to rot in a puddle of water. The dead woman’s eyes blasted Jennifer with a palpable sensation like twin millipedes crawling over her flesh. Jennifer squelched the panic welling up inside her, struggled to keep her stammering voice even, and continued the incantation.
    The dead thing churned, a construct of squirming, terrified seagulls bound by raw, malevolent will. Here and there a gull’s head broke the fetid skin with little pairs of stark eyes staring out from the ruined human shape that contained them. Marion opened her mouth and her gnarled lips flapped, but no voice emerged. The caws of the gulls filled the air.
    Jennifer edged backward, scuttling over Mr. Barnes’ corpse. He was dead, and as Jennifer had imagined, the machines persisted in emulating his life functions. His chest rose and fell. Medicines drained into his veins. Meaningless air passed from his throat. Jennifer inadvertently slid a finger in his mouth, felt a whoosh of dead breath, and then snatched her hand back. She needed to hold out just a while longer. Chloe threw herself across her father and sobbed against his chest.
    Jennifer lunged forward, catching the dead woman’s neck in the silk scarf she had once owned and dragging her to the floor. Gulls battered them. The birds were everywhere, filling the air, rising from Marion Barnes’ makeshift body. Jennifer knotted the scarf, tightened it, bound it. Chloe’s mother reached around with decayed fingers and scratched at Jennifer’s back. Her body lurched as she tried to buck free.
    Jennifer clamped down tight, shrieking the incantation again and again. Marion snapped her