The Omens Call by Daniel Willcocks & Julie Hiner

Author:Daniel Willcocks & Julie Hiner [Willcocks, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781914021091
Publisher: Daniel Willcocks

The noise of clapping beaks pulls her out of this terrible dream. As her eyes pop open her forehead collides with the black block wall of the night. It’s still a long way ’til morning. Some stray dogs are barking in the yard, while her husband snores next to her as if a pig is grunting, but she heard, she really heard that clapping sound beyond this awful snarl.

The girl’s first thought is that the dead stork thrown on the roof had somehow come back to life. She imagines the torn-winged bastard writhing over their heads like an angry worm. You killed me, but I came back from the dead and I will pierce your heart with my sharp beak—maybe that’s what it’s trying to say. She puts her hand over her mouth, but the scream is unstoppable, it struggles upward through her throat, and she imagines if she doesn’t give it a free way, a tiny gap will appear on her forehead, from where it can flow out into the world. Suddenly she hears that noise again. Yes, clapping, but it doesn’t come from the roof, but from the yard, from the hungry throat of the night.

“Wake up!” she squeaks, but realizes she’s still squeezing his mouth with her palm. She takes her hand away and repeats the sentence. The sleeping swine-herd boy doesn’t even hear her words. The girl gives him a good hard kick in the thigh as he attempts to snore again. She gives his thigh a hard kick once again and her husband stops snoring.

“Wake up!” the girl cries.

“What the fuck?” her husband mutters, but then he hears the noise too, as if bones clink together rhythmically over and over again, as if the teeth of every damned soul were chattering at once down there in Hell, which is perhaps not full of flames but filled with the indelible cold of fear. The girl digs her teeth into her own wrist when she realizes the frightening beak-clapping noise is coming from a closer place, not from the yard, but directly from the front door.

“He has arrived,” she mutters.

“That’s impossible,” the boy replies.

“The Human Stork has arrived, and…” But she can only finish the sentence in her thoughts.

“May-maybe he’ll ju-just go away if we don’t op-open the door!” her husband stutters, and the girl immediately forgets all of her fears and only anger remains in her soul. This feeling of irritation and hatred swoops her with such a force that she becomes dizzy. Her stomach twitches and nausea begins to strangle her throat.

“You fucking bastard!” That’s all she can squeeze out between her trembling lips. “This is what we were waiting for!”

“What you were waiting for?” the boy asks, burying his face in his hands. “I wasn’t waiting for anything.”

“Because you never want anything.” The springs in the mattress squeak as she jumps out of bed. “I just wanted a baby, but you are so worthless, you’re not even able to give me one. I bet

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