I’m excited to share an excerpt from my story Ouija Bird, available for preorder now as part of a new anthology, Blood in the Yolk. Is this an anthology of bird-themed horror? Why yes it is.
If you like birds, you’ll love this book. If you think birds are creepy little freaks (correct), you will adore it.
The book includes stories from some of your substack favorites: , , , , , and the birdman himself . And Jon T created our delicious original cover art.
I will have signed copies of both Blood in the Yolk and The Midnight Vault to give away to subscribers who upgrade this month. Upgrade to Paid for your choice of either book, or to a Founding membership to get both (and forever access to my archived stories and paywalled posts).
And now, Ouija Bird…
“Your grandma was a witch, Hannah. We are spending the weekend in a witch’s house— facts are facts.” I smirked at my friend as I tossed our duffel bags on the hallway floor. Hannah feigned a gasp, laying a hand over her heart.
“My precious Yia-Yia? How dare you, Leila?”
Her older sister Viv was right behind us, carrying two grocery bags.
“Our precious Yia-Yia was a bitch, Leila. But I don’t think she was riding brooms anywhere.” She set the bags on the rippled linoleum counter.
I stood in the little hallway for a second, looking at the mound of luggage, the brown wood paneling, the scuffed walls, and I had the sudden and inexplicable urge to flee. The brown carpet smelled sour like mildew. I felt the low ceiling sag overhead. I inhaled and the breath I got was too shallow.
Viv’s voice dragged me back.
“Anyway, how about we not speak ill of the recently departed, hmm?” Viv added. “That bitch had the courtesy to die and leave us a beach house, didn’t she?”
Hannah laughed and my eerie feeling fell away. I joined them in the kitchenette.
“You’re right Viv,” I put my head on her shoulder, playing up my role as surrogate baby sister. “I’m sorry Yia-Yia,” I said, looking at the ceiling.
Truthfully, Yia-Yia had been awful. A fiercely rude and cruel old woman, calling her either witch or bitch felt more apt than grandmother. Growing up, when Yia-Yia would come to town, driving her huge black Cadillac, Hannah and I would run and hide, leaving Viv to face the wrath. She deserved a little beach house, even if it smelled like mold.
Aiden was last through the door, carrying nothing but his car keys and his vape. His blond hair hung over his forehead, the floppy haircut of his high school years only making him look desperate.
“This place is a dump Viv,” he said.
“Oh really?” Viv said, unpacking groceries. I noticed her slide the bag across the counter a few inches, covering a scorch mark on the aged counter top. “Is it worse than your beach house?” Hannah laughed. Aiden’s face flushed.
“Don’t be a bitch Viv,” he sneered.
It pained me, but Aiden was right. I had been in the house for less than five minutes and I was already considering packing my bags. The wood-paneled walls and brown carpet squeezed in on a too-small space, giving the feeling that there was not enough light, maybe not even enough air.
“Listen,” Viv sighed, carrying a six pack to the table. “It might not take Dad long to sell this dump, so let’s just enjoy it while we can. Free place to stay, a two-minute walk to the Gulf? We have survived worse.”
She started passing around food. Cold fried chicken, potato salad, and canned beer. Paper towels were ripped from the roll. Viv presided over the grocery store meal like it was Thanksgiving Day. After being away at school for a year, I felt like I was finally home.
Hannah’s family was loud and hungry. They yelled and sang and drank beer and ate meals together at big, messy tables. Her grandmother was from the old country, and their shared family vocabulary was lilting with accents, spiced with Greek phrases. Her parents owned a restaurant in town, and after school Hannah and I had the run of the soda fountain, which is as close as a nine-year-old can get to Heaven on Earth.
“So, this is where you spent your summers,” I said to Hannah. “While I was home all alone, just waiting for you to get back.” I made sad puppy eyes at Hannah.
“Leila, literally all I wanted was to come home. Being here was terrifying. Yia-Yia had this rule: we couldn't call our parents until we had been here for 24 hours, and I used to count down the minutes until I could call and beg them to come get me.”
“It wasn’t terrifying,” said Viv. “It was just different.”
“And,” Hannah looked at her older sister with defiance, “she totally was a witch.”
Viv rolled her eyes.
“She was! If anyone has ever been a witch, it was Yia-Yia. She would have these big pots bubbling on the stove with bones in them.”
“Hannah, be serious.” Viv shook her head, but she was laughing. “It was probably soup or something. You were little.”
“None of that is real Hannah,” said Aiden, his mouth full. “Time to grow up.”
“Oh,” Hannah’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “I’m sorry, she had perfectly innocent soup,” she made air quotes with a beer in her hand, “in the cauldron. Nothing witchy about it at all. What about those little jars she kept full of ocean water? And what about her bird obsession? She thought birds were demons, right?”
“Omens,” Viv corrected, laughing. “She thought birds were omens— signs that something was about to happen.”
“She used to chase them out of the yard with a broom! In her nightgown!” Hannah said and we all laughed at the picture. We had been so terrified of Yia-Yia as children— her white powdered face and loose black hair— I couldn’t imagine her being afraid of a bird.
“That is unbelievably stupid,” Aiden chimed in.
“Can you imagine living at the beach and being scared of birds?” I said. “There are a thousand seagulls within ten feet of here.”
“And if you saw a dead bird? Like roadkill or something? Forget about it. She would be boiling up her cauldron in no time,” Hannah said.
“She was superstitious,” Viv said, her cheek packed full of cold fried chicken. “She was terrified that the house would flood.”
“But it never did, through like ten hurricanes,” said Hannah.
“Hannah, that’s a coincidence,” said Aiden. “Your grandma wasn’t magic. She was a senile old lady.”
“When I was a kid, Yia-Yia took me to that closet,” Viv nodded her head toward a door in the hallway, her two hands holding either end of a drumstick. “She showed me a stack of sweaters— thick sweaters she never wore since she moved to Florida— and she said, ‘Vivienne, if I die, there is cash in the sweaters.’ I don’t think she even had a real bank account.”
Hannah broke in, doing an over-the-top Greek accent, “You must remember theees, Vivienne.” They both giggled. “She probably saw a seagull that morning.”
“No shit!” Aiden said, his eyes brightening. “That nutty bitch hid cash in here?” His hands were shiny with chicken grease, and he wiped them on the table. He went to the closet, shoving our bags out of the way with a sneakered foot.
“There’s nothing there now,” Viv said, like she was talking to a child. “My dad took everything out when she died. All that’s left is sentimental stuff.”
Aiden ignored her. He picked up a stack of worn beach towels and tossed them sloppily behind him. A cardboard puzzle box slid out of the stack, landing on the brown carpet with a hiss. At the strange sound we all stopped. Even Aiden turned around. Its cover showed a picture of a lighthouse, but from inside the box spilled a river of sparkling white gravel, the lid askew enough to let the stones trickle out.
Viv lifted the lid, trying to scoop the gravel back in, but when she did, she gasped, dropping the entire box. Out rolled a white cylinder, wrapped in some kind of wires. Hannah got up from the table and I followed. The cylinder was a bird. A small gull, with a white chest and gray wings tucked into its body like a closed cape. Its feathers were smooth and shiny, and its yellow legs were folded up, wrapped tightly in coils of rusty wire. The same wire coils sealed the gull’s beak, and several long pins poked out of its body.
It was the most tortured thing I had ever laid eyes on.
“The fuck is that?” said Aiden.
“Is it real?” Hannah asked, stooping to pick it up.
“No way it’s real,” he said, and he put a foot between Hannah and the bird.
What lay on the floor between us was a mystery, an artifact we couldn’t begin to understand. Its black bead of an eye shone up at me, its pristine white feathers clean and perfect against the rusty wire and the dingy cardboard box. The mildewy smell— temporarily masked by dinner— came back to me, and I decided it was the smell of the bird. My gag reflex threatened.
“No, really. What the fuck is this?” Aiden finally snapped. Perhaps the smell had reached him too. “This house is a dump Viv, and your whole family is batshit. Especially her.” He jerked his chin toward Hannah.
Hannah shoved his foot aside with her own, and finally got her hands on the bird.
She picked up a handful of the rocks and let them fall through her fingers.
“Hannah, what the hell is this?”
“I think it’s rock salt,” she said, choosing to answer my question literally. “The bird, he’s like, mummified.” She raised the bird in her hands, showing me how light it was.
“I— um,” I swallowed hard. The bird’s yellow, webbed feet looked so alive. Around the base of its beak, downy feathers waved in invisible air currents. I could see grooves where the wire had begun to cut into its beak and legs.
I felt sick.
“Why?” I managed to croak out, before biting my lips shut. She cradled the bird’s head in her palm and looked into its face, its yellow beak banded in black. Then she looked up at me, smiling like a kid on Christmas. Her brown eyes glittered with gold flecks.
“I guess my grandma was a witch.”
Order Blood in the Yolk now, in paperback or ebook, to keep reading…
Beautiful writing. Congratulations on being published! I love the cover art—the artistic qualities with the framed wooden edges, the cloth string lines hanging above, the silhouettes of the foreboding bird symbols. Similarly I can find birds to be a bit off-putting at times. By the ending I screamed out in fear of those monstrous ghost-demons. Absolutely fantastical and phenomenally crafted writing as always. Your stellar horror stories are some of my all time favorites (though I confess I do have quite a few favorite authors.) So good. Can’t wait to hold the real book in person. Incredibly grateful for having a chance to read <3
I love that this opens up the collection. It's so damn good.