It checks out with my charts, the weather conditions. Other people saw something, and there was a jokey news piece about illusions. Sky mirages and long winters. Newscasters made fun of the people in Maine, saying they were drinking too much. There was a piece in the Onion that spoofed the whole thing pretty accurately, a bunch of drunk people looking up at the sky and seeing ships. Exactly what people said in the 1890s.
I saw something out Aza’s window that day, the day she died. I saw a mixed-up flock of birds on her lawn—majorly out of season. I heard something in the sky on the day of her funeral, and I don’t think I’m losing it I’m not losing it.
After Aza’s funeral, after her voice coming out of the sky, I remembered the helicopter. Of course.
I know what you’re thinking. Pretty stupid, Jason, to not think of it before, right?
Yep, pretty dumb, because there’s a black box.
That’s a new thing for helicopters. Not all of them have them, but life flights get sent out into insane weather.
Today, I got what I needed. Through some of my more reliable and illegal back channels, I had it emailed to my most secret account.
I hit play on the helicopter audio. It’s all communications with the hospital at first, talking about where exactly the life flight needs to go to pick us up, and I can picture it in the most horrible way. All over again, us in the ambulance, Aza beside me.
The audio shifts to the medic in the ambulance itself, updating the copter on Aza’s condition.
I have to move the cursor. I’m afraid I’m going to hear the rattling, terrified sound she made at the end, and I can’t hear it again.
A second later, I’m listening to something else, the flight, the pilot, and the medic in the copter with him, talking about the storm.
“Whoa. This came out of nowhere,” the pilot says.
“Global warming,” says the medic. “We okay?”
“Yeah, it’s good, we’re fine,” he says.
There’s a moment.
“Wait. Did you see that?”
“What?”
“What the”—jumbled sounds—“is that a—”
“Ropes? Oh my god—”
And then there’s a sound, a huge, screeching ripping of metal, smashing of glass, crush and tear and screaming from both of them, and what they say, what they try to say is—
Yeah, no, because I can’t. They died right after this. I can’t listen to their last words. It’s too horrible.
A moment later, there’s a huge explosion. Singing and shrieking. The sound of flapping wings.
Birds.
Someone says, in the faintest and most scratchy voice:
“What are you?”
That’s all there is to the audio. I keep listening to it over and over again. Between the first talk about the storm and the crash, maybe two minutes.
I have to give that a moment. I have to sit with it, because. All of it. The sounds of people dying. The sounds of birds. Last words. Last things said before these poor people fell out of the sky, tumbling down, on fire.
The pilot and medic, their families don’t have this. Only me, and the people I got it from. It wasn’t just the two of them that died, but the medic from our ambulance too. He ran out trying to flag them down, and they never found his body.
I’m sitting at my desk, not crying, but—
Yeah, I am. I’m crying.
What are you?
That was the night Aza died, and five days later, I heard her voice coming out of the sky.
No, not paranoid, not looping, no. Not conspiracy, not obsessive, wrong notions in my head.
I’m sure, if this hit the internet, some people would say the pilot and medic were confused by the storm, air pressure, and lack of oxygen.
That “ropes” was not really what they said at all.
But if not “ropes,” what?
Out my window there’s suddenly a lot of wind and rain. I get up and shut it. Freezing.
What are you? What are you? The voice repeats and repeats in my head—when the doorbell rings.
Carol or Eve, forgetting keys. It’s almost always Eve. Her brain gets snarled on things and then any hope of not forgetting is over. Not that I’m not exactly the same. Lots of not being picked up at school in my childhood. I spent afternoons at Aza’s. And that was fine by me.
I close the tab with the black box audio, just in case, and make my way to the front door.
Someone rings again, and then bangs. Not Eve. She’d be outside my window, tapping the glass, and performing “face of the forgetful mother” for me.
I have a moment of nervousness. I’m doing the kind of hack stuff that if it gets traced back, causes you to be investigated, locked up, and/or sued into oblivion.
I peer out the side window, but I can’t see a police cruiser. No flashing lights. Of course, if it was federal, there wouldn’t be. I scan the trees across the street just in case. Lots of wind out there. Blowing.
Maybe I’m paranoid. (Looping?) I worry about myself for a second.
The person hits the door again, hard. All I can see is a shoulder in a blue coat, and a little bit of black hair in a ponytail.
Calm down, Jason. Maybe someone’s trying to give the neighborhood religion.
Have you thought about hell lately?
Nope, I’ll say. Everything else, yeah, but not hell. Or not exactly.
I unlock the door. I open it.
Aza is standing on my front steps.
Zal wakes me, shaking my hammock. “Daughter,” she says. “On deck.”