The Wandering.

Chapter 8

With your nerves in tatters
As the cockleshell shatters
And the hammers batter
Down your door
You better run

- Pink Floyd

1

It wasn't long before the crowd had begun removing the dead birds from the street, but in the meantime, Scott and Shari accompanied an unconscious Gracie to the Sachem Bay Community Hospital. After half an hour there, Gia Davenport - Scott's wife - came rushing through to her daughter's aid. She embraced her unconscious body tightly, tears forming at her eyes.

Then she squeezed Scott lovingly, sharing their strength with one another.

"I thought we'd never see her again, Scott." Gia said, her voice fragile but yet so strong.

He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead, assuring her it was okay. "Our Gracie isn't going nowhere. I'll make sure of that."

Gia's eyes trailed to Shari and she lit up. "Shari! I'm so sorry, how rude of me."

She embraced her sister-in-law.

"I'm sorry it's been so long." Shari said.

"Don't be silly. You came at a moment's notice for Gracie, and for that, I am forever grateful."

Shari felt appreciated for the first time in a long time, and begun to wonder why she let herself become so distant from her family due to the petty fear of her childhood town.

She took in her view of Gia, who was as beautiful as she ever had been. Her long brown hair, her seemingly always-parted lips and cat-like eyes. She wore a silk blouse and a dark skirt finished off with low black heels - she must've been working when she heard the news.

"What is all this talk of dead crows?" Gia asked them. So Scott dived into the explanation of the birds in the sky and their sudden fall from the heavens, and as Shari listened, she realised how bizarre the story was.

She left the hospital soon after, wanting to get back to the boarding house before dark - she didn't want to keep Lorelei waiting. So she drove back to Secular Woods.

Mrs Devereux was on the porch when she pulled up at the house. She was rocking on her swing-chair, involved deeply in a fiction novel, focused and seemingly calm.

"Whatcha reading?" Shari asked, approaching her.

Lorelei beamed, folding the book over on her lap. "Stephen King."

"I didn't take you for a horror type." Shari said, raising one brow.

Lorelei laughed. "I'm very versatile. Give me a book - if it's good, I'll read it. Simple."

Shari sat on the swing beside her new landlady. "I might adopt that ideology."

"I advise you to. It opens up the mind, takes it out of its comfort zone. You know what I really enjoyed reading?"

"Fifty Shades Of Grey?" Shari joked.

"Pffft. I wish. But no."

"Enlighten me?" Said Shari.

"Zombie books. They're amazing, such bloody detail and the gore - oh, it can give me nightmares but it makes me feel so unsettled. If any book can make you do that - then that's a good book."