It’s not worth telling this story unless everyone understands what a very Normal family we are. We always have been normal, and we like it that way. That’s why we can’t stand the people across the street, who are not Normal at all.
That said, this story is about the evil and ferocious rooster that once inhabited our basement.
A few summers ago my parents took a three-week trip together, just for fun.
After a lot of discussing, they left my brother and me in charge of our house, because my brother had just turned 16 and they figured we could handle it. I was 15.
When the car was all loaded with my parent’s luggage and they were about to walk out the door, my mother looked at us with a frown and told us to call the lady across the street if there was trouble. My brother said we wouldn’t have to, because if there was trouble, the lady across the street would know about it before we did. Mom said that wasn’t a nice thing to say. I guess it wasn’t nice, but it was normal.
That was on a Friday. Monday morning, I was hanging out laundry on the rusty old clothesline my Mom used to use when we were younger. The clothes dryer stopped working the day after Mom and Dad left. It was very early, because I wanted to get it done before anyone saw me doing something so abnormal for a girl my age in that neighborhood. I was just pinning up my sheet when the Lady-Across-The-Street popped up over the clothesline.
“Michelle,” she said, and she sort of pinched her face all up and looked at me over the rim of her cat-eye glasses, “are you aware that A Rooster now resides in your basement?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I repeated some of her words, “rooster in our basement?”
“Woke me up this morning, with its blamed singing” she said, whipping off her cat-eye glasses and cleaning them as she spoke. I felt intimidated for a moment but then I remembered who I was, and who she was, and - well, I threw the last towel over the line and spoke plainly.
“You’re seriously admitting that there’s a rooster in my house, it woke you up - but I didn’t even hear it?”
She stopped wiping and looked at me in disgust.
“OK, whatever. I’ll look for it when I go in,” I said.
“It’ll attack you, I’m certain. You don’t exactly have a way with animals.”
“My cat adored me. Before it died.”
“Your rooster won’t. Your rooster is probably a vicious old thing with a battled-scarred comb. Your rooster is probably ugly, and mean, and stupid too. I hate your rooster.”
“Well, I don’t like when people talk about my rooster that way.”
She put her glasses back on and we glared at one another for a few seconds, and then she said, “Tell him ‘Hi’ for me.”
“I will” I said, and we went back into our houses.
Andy was sleeping on the floor in front of the TV. I shoved him with my toe, and he tripped me, but I don’t think he really woke up until I told him that we had a visitor in the basement.
He sat up, then, and said, “Male or female?”
“Um, male, I think.”
“The cool look…” he muttered, and went to the mirror. The clothes that he had slept in on the floor already had the cool look, once he turned the shirt inside out. I waited until he was done, because I didn’t know if I was afraid of roosters or not, and I didn’t want to find out unless someone big and strong was there.
“Go ahead” I said, and Andy sauntered to the top of the basement steps.
He stopped, and looked at me, coming up behind him. “You’re sure he’s in the basement?” my brother asked, suddenly realizing how abnormal that was.
I told him that it was some creature that seemed to be the sworn enemy of the Lady-Across-The-Street.
“Wow” Andy said, with a look of awe on his face. “Probably an angel or something, huh?”
We walked down the steps, looking this way and that. We didn’t see anything. “She swore he was down here” I began babbling. “Maybe I shouldn’t have listened, but…”
Suddenly this whirring noise startled me. Then a scrawny, rust-red bird about the size of a gallon water pitcher shot down from the ceiling. It landed on Andy’s head. Andy was screaming and flailing his arms around and the rooster was beating his wings and pecking at my brother’s head.
The rooster was small and vicious.
I was just screaming at first, but eventually I noticed a thin board of plywood leaning against the wall next to me, so I grabbed it and whacked the rooster across the room.
Andy whipped his head around and gave me a wild look. But he didn’t have time to decided whether to yell at me for almost taking his head off or thank me for saving him. The rooster, on the other side of the basement floor, got up and began beating his wings savagely. His neck was arched, and these long little feathers sloping down from his head all around his neck were puffed out. Like a ball gown. Only more like one of those collars you see on mean dogs, with spikes on them.
I could tell the rooster wanted to do something bad to us, because he was glaring at us with the most evil round little eyes. You notice such weird stuff at a moment like that, and I have to say that his eyes were cold, and yellow, and strangely ribbed. As if they were made of the same stuff as a tongue or a scab.
Then he was scrabbling across the cement floor, straight at us.
We saw him coming, and went for the stairs.
Now, when we were younger, Andy and I used to believe, or play at believing, that goblins lived in the basement. Whenever we had to go down there in those days, we came up again as soon and as quickly as we could.
It had been awhile, but we both found we could still make pretty good time.
After we had slammed the door and caught up on some breathing, I wanted Andy to call someone to come and shoot the bird and he said that Tyler’s Dad had a gun.
So Andy called Tyler, who was 19, and I called Tyler’s sister Ruthie and our cousin Jon because I had to tell someone and it drove me nuts that Jon got to tell Tyler. And they all came over.
I was looking out the window when they drove up - Jon got out of his car and saw Tyler on the sidewalk with his gun, loading it. He ran up and they messed with the gun for a minute. Ruthie came in and hugged me and said she hoped she would not have to look at the rooster after her brother killed it.
Then Tyler and Jon came in, all riled up about the rooster, and asking where it was. We told them the whole story and the guys started making fun of Andy for running away from “a puny little bird”.
He was trying to defend himself, but wasn’t doing a very good job. Now I hope no one will think it is abnormal if I mention that I am a little bit loyal to my family and when people make fun of Us I like to defend whichever member of Us needs it.
So I asked the boys if they wouldn’t they like to meet the “puny little bird.” Without the gun.
And this is when it started to get really uncanny, which is a word I remember from vocabulary tests at school. This is where it started to seem like that rooster understood more than was Normal for a bird.
It was almost funny the way the rooster dealt with Tyler, who was really pretty conceited, as we all remembered pretty soon. Tyler accepted my invitation, and walked down the basement stairs, boasting and making fun of Andy all the way down.
The rooster toyed with him by not making a sound or showing himself at all. Tyler stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. He rustled up some nerve and started poking about. Eventually he searched the whole basement. The rest of us stood on the stairs and kept watch.
Finally we were all convinced that the rooster had disappeared. Tyler began marching up the stairs, bragging even more. And that made it very eerie when a loud triumphant crow sounded from above and began repeating itself almost monotonously.
It was so unexpected that at the first head-splitting bird-screech, Tyler came leaping back up the stairs toward us and safety, and landed chest-first on the kitchen floor, hands sprawling everywhere, boasts all forgotten. (I almost smiled until I remembered whose side I was on.)
We slammed the door and exclaimed over the thing for a while, and then I looked to our cousin Jon, who was obviously thinking hard.
“I think the way you have to deal with these creatures is with your feet. We’re taller than them, that’s our advantage. I bet if I get out in the middle of the floor, make him show himself, I can kick him clear across the room before he ever gets anywhere near me.” We all nodded hopefully, except Tyler who was coughing and muttering something about being sick a couple of days ago. With a cold.
Jon said to wish him luck, then he ran lightly down the stairs, heading for the center of the room. This time the rooster didn’t even make a sound. It just flew between his feet on the last couple of steps. Jon tripped. And landed on his front.
And you know what was really freaky? I swear that bird just stood there and kicked at Jon’s head. (He only did it in spite; he couldn’t kick worth anything.)
Jon let out a horrific scream, tore the rooster out of his hair, and hurled him across the room. Then he came bounding up the stairs and collapsed on the tile kitchen floor. Andy slammed the door.
We gathered around him and Ruthie flung herself down on her knees next to Jon. She kept saying, “Oh, Jon!”
Jon grabbed my brother’s arm and pulled himself up. He panted a minute, looking at us really weird the whole time, and then he said something that totally freaked us out.
“That rooster” he gasped, “that rooster KNOWS!” It was like a movie.
Like I said, we were really freaked out, but after awhile everyone calmed down so we started eating. Jon looked happier and mentioned that his cold was getting better but he was supposed to be eating and getting his strength back.
We were discussing the whole thing (I remember everyone’s voices being kind of giddy) and we all agreed that the bird reminded us of the Phantom of the Opera, who lived down in the secret caverns and tried to kill people and stuff. So we started calling the rooster “Erik” (which is the Phantom’s name in the book.)
Pretty soon the guys went to the park down the next street to see some tadpoles in the pond, and Ruthie and I locked the basement door and cleaned up lunch and swore we would never marry.
When the guys came back, they were talking about the rooster (Erik,) and they were full of new plans for getting rid of him but a little nervous.
This is how guys work up their courage - they dare and dare and dare each other until their pride drags their courage to the top.
Anyway, the three boys decided to brave the basement again, this time as a group. They’d bought a net from a pre-adolescent they met in the park and meant to snare Erick with it somehow. Ruthie was supposed to hold the door open for them and close it in time if they had to come up quickly. I was told to stand a few feet back with the phone and call 911 on speed-dial if anything happened. Andy emphasized the speed-dial part, and even took the time to re-program it as number 1 in case I forgot and had to start working my way through the numbers.
So the three guys were kind of shuffling towards the stairs with that net under a big sweatshirt of my Dad’s, still throwing out a few encouraging dares and insults along the way. Ruthie stood in the stairwell and I watched a little further back.
And before the got past the first step the door bell clanged.
We all jumped.
Then we slammed the basement door, turned around, and walked to the front hall very quickly. (Ruthie positively scuttled but don’t tell her I said so.)
I opened the door and there was the Lady-Across-The-Street, standing on our door-stoop! Her head was hanging down and tears slipped out of her half-closed eyelids. The guys stood behind me in the hallway and stared at her.
“It’s the Lady-Across-The-Street” my brother whispered to Ruthie. “She’s not Normal.”
The lady cleared her throat. “Can I see him?” she said in a breaking voice. She wasn’t wearing her cat-eye glasses.
After an awkward silence I told her I guessed so. She pushed through us immediately, still crying, and we all followed her to the basement stairs. She went through it and shut it in our faces. We heard her walking down the stairs.
“I wonder what happens when two of - their kind - meet” my brother said. The other guys nodded.
After a long moment of silence we heard two voices screaming very loudly. Ruthie looked horrified. We couldn’t tell which voice belonged to the lady and which to the bird.
About ten seconds later the basement door flew open and the lady burst out of it. “You can’t tell that bird anything!” she shrieked, and stomped out of the house. She had her cat-eye glasses back on.
We stared at the basement door for a long time and didn’t say anything. We had very little enthusiasm left for the project we’d started.
Finally I reminded the guys that they were going to catch Eric with a net.
They fidgeted a lot but finally grabbed the net and shuffled off.
This time Eric was positively foul. He sprang upon the guys halfway down the stairs and started tearing at the backs of their legs with his hard beak. In case you don’t know, a rooster’s beak is like an upside down horn. It’s a weapon. And the guys were all wearing shorts. Ruthie screamed like an opera singer.
Well, that did it.
Hollering and stumbling and flailing, the guys came up for the last time. Ruthie wasn’t screaming anymore but she didn’t remember her job, either, so I slammed the basement door for her.
Then we heard Ruthie exhaling hoarsely behind the door, so we opened it again and dragged her out, and then shut it once more.
She drew a round, gasping breath like someone coming up out of the water after almost drowning. Then she wailed, “I couldn’t scream! Tyler, take me home!”
“Uh, guys, I have to take my sister home” Tyler said.
We didn’t push him to stay. We didn’t want to stay in the same house with Erik ourselves.
Jon was fidgety and even suggested that we stay with the people across the street, but then we told him to look out the window and he saw them all sitting motionless on the front porch perspiring in the sun (the porch didn’t have a roof.) So he invited us to spend the night at his place instead, and that is how our exile began.
We left Erik in the house and locked the doors, taking all the clean laundry with us.
We started making the rounds, staying overnight at classmates’ and relatives’ houses. The story of the “demonic firebird” was getting around to all our friends, and we got lots of invites. (I found that dramatizing the wording a little would increase the number of invites, and I was getting to be the most popular girl in my grade.)
Then, one night, Andy and I had to go home to get Andy’s baseball uniform, which was in the laundry. We ventured down into the basement, hoping against hope that the bird was gone somehow, or that we could at least grab his uniform before we were driven back upstairs. I carried Andy’s bat.
But this time we weren’t attacked.
Andy said, “Listen…” and we stood motionless in front of the wash-machine and listened. All we heard was a soft gurgly squawking. Andy whispered, “Maybe he’s dying.”
“I wonder if we injured him and never realized it” I said.
In the end we shrugged and went back to Ian’s house. But our fear was broken.
The next night, I slept in my own bedroom.
Dad and Mom were coming home on a Saturday afternoon, and we got up early on Saturday morning to do all the things that they had left for us to do. When they drove up, the house was clean, the lawn was sort of raked, there were fewer weeds in the root-garden, and all the dirty laundry was under Andy’s bed.
They hugged us and stuff, and we carried their things inside.
“You know,” said Mom, “the house smells kind of funny . . .”
Like a dingbat, Andy said, “There’s a rooster who’s probably dead in the basement.”
I glared at him. He shouldn’t have told. He should have waited for Dad to find Erik’s remains, and get wondering what in the world they were there for, and throw them out. If we got in a conversation, on the other hand, there’s no telling what they might take it into their heads to blame us for.
But Mom was already staring at us like “no way.” Any normal mother would.
I tried to laugh and said, “It’s probably just the bit of dirty laundry under Andy’s bed.”
Andy caught on, and said, “Oh yeah, that laundry. I meant to get to it but…”
However Dad interrupted and said, “What’s this about a rooster?”
So we had to tell him. And in the end it wasn’t so bad. There was a smell but we had kept the basement windows open and all the house fans were down there and there were rolled-up towels (line-dried) in front of the crack at the bottom of the basement door. Mom and Dad were glad we had at least prevented the smell from spreading too much, and they felt sorry for us because, as I heard Mom whispering to Dad, we weren’t really used to dealing with Death.
But we all had to go down together to get Erik’s remains because Dad whispered back that it was about time we started to get used to it. Mom cried when we found Erik shriveled up behind the ironing board, his feathers being ruffled by the flow from an air-conditioning vent. She said, “Oh, the poor thing!”
I didn’t feel sorry for him.
Dad scooped him into a clear plastic bag with a little plastic beach-shovel or something and we all marched outside to bury him behind the compost pile.
That’s not the end. The Lady-Across-The-Street came over while we were burying the rooster.
Her face was white, and her glasses were nowhere to be seen. She knelt down between my astounded but polite-faced parents, opened the box the bird was in, and put on some white latex gloves like you see in the Dentist’s office. And she started pinching Erik’s breastbone. At first I thought that she was thinking about eating him. But she sat up again, abruptly.
“Horrible,” said the Lady. “He starved to death!” When the Lady said “starved” Mom gasped, and we all stood there looking at him.
“What an awful way to go” Mom said softly.
“He tried to murder us,” I explained, “We really couldn’t have fed him.” But my voice sounded too loud just then and no one wanted to curse the dead.
“Himself his own destruction.” Mom said. “It’s so pathetic - almost human.”
We covered that ugly bird-body with dirt and didn’t say anything more, and then my parents went into the house. My Dad had his arm around his wife’s waist. And then Andy and I realized we were alone with the Lady-Across-The-Street.
She was standing over the grave, sobbing. We looked over at her, and my brother’s eyes were all big.
Andy coughed sort of, and then he said, “uh, you must have known him well…or…something…” But she sobbed on and he looked at me like he felt really stupid.
“It wasn’t even a person!” he whispered.
“He was my rooster, once upon a time,” the Lady said, suddenly and coldly.
(Andy looked at me sideways, with a guilty kind of look.)
“You hated him, didn’t you?” she continued.
Andy looked at me again, quite helplessly.
So I said to the Lady-Across-The-Street, “We weren’t friends exactly.”
She was furious. But Andy and I couldn’t help it if she belonged in an asylum. So we just walked away, across the lawn, with the wind cooling our faces off and long green shadows and golden streaks going with us and laying along the ground between our half-grown trees. I remember the scene distinctly, because about halfway across the lawn, we heard the Lady-Across-The-Street screeching after us.
“Everything has to feed! He was just trying to eat you!”
She wasn’t Normal, and we were. Andy and I kept walking.
