On Monday Grant experienced another episode of vertigo. This one lasted much longer than the rest. The whole world was spinning, a top that increasingly wobbled as the whirling went on for several minutes. This time closing his eyes didn’t help. He struggled to get into his reading chair without falling over.
As it had before, the vertigo generated a number of hallucinations: dark appendages issuing from the corners, shadows escaping the closets to harass and threaten. At least he chose to believe they were hallucinations. One thing the young cannot appreciate is how, when you are old, death is lurking everywhere.
He determined long ago that when he died it would likely be because of a fall. He would hit his head or break a hip. Old men didn’t last long once they broke a hip. All his friends told him so.
He had these dizzy spells a few times a year. Usually they were brief, lasting a minute or so, and lying down usually fixed them. But once he had one while driving, and almost drove off the road. He’d been terrified.
That one sent him to the doctor, who was of no help. The man was even older than Grant, and oozed impatience.
“I don’t see any indication of an inner ear infection, and you’re not prone to migraines. You’re not taking any medicines with vertigo as a side effect. Maybe you just turned your head too quickly.”
“How quick is too quick?”
“Quick enough to make you dizzy.”
The doctor mentioned the possibility of a brain issue, which Grant didn’t want to think about, and so didn’t. The doctor said they would monitor the situation, whatever that meant. Doctors don’t tell you everything if they think you’re likely to die soon anyway.
Grant assessed his ability to stand up from the chair, and when he felt able went downstairs and outside. Everyone said he should spend more time outside. Fresh air, sunlight, Vitamin D. He supposed it couldn’t hurt.
The lawn needed mowing, but it was near the end of the season. Soon enough Autumn would come, and then the snow, so maybe he could just leave it. If he had a wife she would insist he mow it, or at least hire someone to do it for him. But he didn’t have a wife. Maybe not having to mow was the only good thing about being a bachelor.
A layer of brown leaves and broken twigs covered the patio. He couldn’t imagine where they’d come from. He didn’t know what kind of tree he had in his back yard. It had smooth pale gray bark and was about a foot wide. The leaves didn’t match those on his patio. The ones on the patio were much larger. Maybe they came from one of the neighbors’ trees, but those trees seemed too far away for this much coverage. In any case, it was too early for fallen leaves.
Grant stepped onto the patio and shuffled his feet, his shoes churning the dry plant debris. It was several inches deep. He could not account for it.
He looked out over the lawn. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, but his lawn appeared covered with leaves as well, green ones, so he hadn’t noticed them at first. He looked up at the gray tree limbs. They were mostly bare. He was unaware of any sort of windstorm the night before. Could a disease have been responsible? The leaves themselves looked okay, although populated by an unusual number of insects. Winged insects, but no longer flying.
Grant walked through the leaves toward the tree. A variety of moths and butterflies hopped and slid across the tops of his bedroom slippers. He’d never seen so many on the ground before. There were no flowers here. The flowers were in full bloom on the bushes lining the edges of the yard. Why weren’t the butterflies over there?
A bumblebee flew by his ear, then fell onto the ground below. Two or three more dropped from somewhere high above him. One hit his left slipper. It appeared to struggle to take flight again, but apparently could not. The sun was out, bright and burning. It was unseasonably warm, and there were no clouds in sight. Yet he could feel rain drops hitting his arms and shoulders. But looking down he saw that it was a light rain of more insects, a variety of beetles and many-legged things, which soon became a shower.
Grant felt the dizziness approaching again, seconds before it arrived. He was about to fall onto all these leaves, and this countless number of bugs crawling across the ground. He stumbled forward and managed to wrap his arms around the tree trunk before tumbling over. He closed his eyes.
The bark smelled of sweetness, like a subtle perfume. He clutched the tree tighter, desperate for the vertigo to pass. The trunk was just the right size to comfort him.
He’d last held a woman like this, when? He couldn’t remember. It had been many years. The simplicity of human touch had eluded him for at least half his life.
Grant was aware of something unfolding in the darkness somewhere deep behind his eyes. He couldn’t quite make it out, if it were anything at all. When you had your eyes closed, you saw either what you wanted to see or what you most feared. In any case, he knew he didn’t want to watch its approach.
He gradually opened his eyes. Reluctantly he let go of the tree. He felt steadier on his feet. He turned away from the tree and walked back into the house.
Grant always ate dinner at a coffee table in front of the TV. He kept switching back and forth between the various local channels looking for some sort of coverage of whatever happened in his back yard.
There was no hint of an explanation on the weather or the primetime local news. Finally at the end of one of the newscasts there was a human-interest piece from two towns over. An old man was complaining that vandals denuded the two large maple trees in his yard. The footage showed an elderly man standing almost knee-deep in a huge pile of shimmering green leaves. The poor fellow looked and acted unhinged.
Grant kept searching for something on TV that might interest him. He’d always believed distraction was the key to happiness. No good could come from focusing on what you could not do, or what you could not have.
He heard something crash onto his front stoop. He peered out the little window in the door and saw a large black bird struggling on the steps, one wing raised and broken. Suddenly it stopped moving.
He didn’t know what he should do. He couldn’t see what was going on. Finally, he grabbed a broom and swept it off the steps. He’d clean up the remains in the morning.
He wondered if the bird knew it was going to die. He’d heard that some animals sensed the approach of death. Something in their bodies told them their time on the planet was over.
Did human beings have the same ability? His own grandfather told the family he was dying, took to his bed, and three days later he was gone. Grant’s mother always said her father just gave up. The world did have ways of signaling that the end of your life was approaching: retirements and lifetime honors, insurance actuarial predictions and critical diagnoses, decreased stamina and mobility, lost memories.
As he did every evening Grant spent some time attempting to meditate. He was never particularly good at it. Worries would work their way into the calmness, cracks would form and widen, so that eventually his eyes popped open, and he saw all he’d accumulated over the years—the figurines and travel souvenirs, posters, worthless antiques and toys—things he should have gotten rid of long ago but couldn’t. How could he? These items were the only proof he had lived. He had no children. He was sure it would all go to a thrift store or into the trash once he was gone.
It was now well past dark but the darkness appeared thicker, somehow grainier than normal, as if something of substance had infiltrated the air of the house. He couldn’t smell gas or smoke or anything else. He walked through the rooms waving his hands around as if whatever it was might be something physical he could push aside.
Perhaps triggered by these thoughts, or by the wrongness in the air, he again felt the approach of vertigo. He stumbled down the hall toward his bedroom, knocking objects off shelves, tipping over a side table. He had no time to stop and look for damage. He stumbled into the bedroom and let himself fall onto the bed.
He was facedown into the blankets but attempting to roll over made the dizziness worse. His head was splitting, and he thought he might throw up and suffocate. The possibility had him panicked. It was embarrassing, and he could die.
He’d never felt so heavy. His bones ached from the weight of his flesh. Dead weight, he thought.
Eventually he managed to turn his head to the side without getting sick. He could feel something rapidly descending above him, but he had no idea what it was and no way of turning over to look.
At some point Grant fell asleep. The world was spinning so rapidly he was lifted off the bed. There was pleasure in the freedom of floating, but it felt dangerous. His body drifted away from the bed. If he suddenly fell now he’d crash onto the floor. He willed himself back toward the bed, but he had almost no control. Now the darkness had seen him plainly, and eventually would come after him.
He was awakened in the middle of the night by a tremendous storm. He heard hail pounding the roof and the ground outside. A riotous thudding, like runaway horses galloping through the night. He wanted to get up and check it out but could not overcome the gravity which kept him pressed into his bed.
Grant woke up Tuesday morning to a clamor of voices outside his home. He remembered the fallen bird from the previous evening and wondered if it had been discovered. He’d reached the living room before he realized he was moving without vertigo. If he could only figure out what he might have done to hasten its departure.
He peeked between the living room blinds and saw that many of his neighbors were out gazing at many small shapes littering the sidewalks, the street, and the ground. One old fellow was out in the road sweeping, wearing a mask. Several people were coughing. A few were crying.
Grant was painfully shy and knew few of his neighbors by name, but he couldn’t hide inside while some kind of neighborhood calamity was going on. He went out the front door cautiously watching where he stepped. He’d lost his bedroom slippers somewhere in the house and was now walking barefoot.
Those small lumps were more fallen birds, hundreds of them, their smashed and bleeding forms only a few feet apart. Robins and sparrows, tiny bodies of what might have been hummingbirds, bluejays and magpies, pigeons, and crows.
A woman from down the street was holding a small, feathered body wrapped in a towel. He didn’t recognize the species. It wasn’t quite dead. Its head lolled loosely above the edge of the towel.
“I don’t know what to do,” the woman said, crying. “Do you?” Grant shook his head, embarrassed by his lack of knowledge.
He thought she wanted him to stay with her, but he couldn’t stand the way the bird’s head moved around. Confused? Surprised? He had no idea how birds felt.
He moved away from her, maneuvering around the crushed and the fluttering. Most appeared to be dead, their movements caused by a noticeable increase in wind stirring the feathers.
Among the commonplace he detected a few larger, more exotic breeds: seagulls, a stork, what might have been a buzzard (he’d never seen one up close), what might have been a bald eagle. Certainly, these did not belong in a quiet suburban setting.
The elderly man sweeping the street made a come here gesture. They were about the same age—maybe the fellow thought they had something in common, that they might share theories. Grant walked over but didn’t want to venture too close. The man’s pants legs were drenched in blood and pasted with a multicolored array of feathers. He frantically broomed the carcasses, which only made a worse mess.
“Did you hear them last night?” he said.
Grant gestured hopelessly. “I thought it was hail.”
“Hail? I thought my roof was coming apart.”
“I’m a heavy sleeper I guess.”
The fellow looked disgusted. “You have to be alert these days, unless dead is what you want.” Grant felt chastised and slowly walked away, gingerly making his way back into his house.
Late Tuesday afternoon the city ordered the neighbors back into their houses and a cleanup crew in hazmat suits began the tedious process of restoring normality. They finished sometime Thursday afternoon. Grant overheard one of the workers say the bird kills covered the entire block, but no further. From his vantage point behind the living room blinds the front yard and street looked clean enough, but Grant couldn’t bring himself to risk going outside.
He spent the weekend glued to his chair in front of the TV, looking for coverage of the disastrous bird fall. One of the news shows had a brief mention with some photos of the workmen in their shiny silver space suits but that was all.
Grant struggled with computers, but on the following Monday managed to connect to the internet with an old laptop which enabled a tediously slow search for similar incidents. “Biblical” was a term which kept appearing in descriptions of strange rains throughout history, downpours of fish and frogs and the like.
He certainly wasn’t responsible. It made no sense. Of course, not everything was about him—his mother used to stress that—in fact, he was far more likely to believe absolutely nothing was about him. But falling had been much on his mind the past few months, and now so many things were in freefall. He felt a sudden disturbance in his stomach and his head began to swim.
A glass slid off his dining room table and shattered on the floor. He almost fainted and fought to catch his breath. He clutched the arms of the chair. That’s when he realized the whole house was shaking.
The picture frames rattled against the walls, as did the glasses and dishes inside the kitchen cabinets. A half-dozen magazines fell off the coffee table in front of him, and several books jumped off their shelves. Something was pounding the roof and the walls of his home.
His first thought was of his neighbors, gathered around his house beating on the walls with their fists. Not satisfied, some had climbed up on his roof and were tearing at the shingles. Maybe they’d figured out he was responsible for the disastrous bird fall and whatever other calamities he might not yet be aware of. His head began to ache as he considered all the possibilities. He rose from his chair and fell to his knees, any semblance of stability gone.
He crawled to the window and lifted the bottom edge of the blinds. He didn’t see any of his neighbors. He imagined anyone caught unprotected in this terrible deluge would be dead.
Most prominent were the fish, hundreds of them hitting the houses, the street, hammering the ground. There was also a large quantity of water, but a number of other creatures, frogs and bats and snakes and worms, more of those bodies than water. There was thunder as well, but it was the thunder of all those bodies striking everything in sight.
In his research Grant read that some thought waterspouts were responsible for these unusual rains. They gathered creatures from the ocean and funneled them up into the clouds. But this town was far from any significant body of water.
A garden shed in the yard across the street was crushed, the fish still flapping and the frogs hopping around in the debris. He saw numerous broken windows in nearby houses, some with frightened faces looking out.
His arms were shaking badly. He fell back onto the floor. He hadn’t noticed how thin his arms had become, and how so many veins were now visible beneath the skin there and in his hands. An old man’s claws. Signs and portents of a life reaching its end.
Grant didn’t go outside for the next few days. He stayed away from the windows, even when he heard a great deal of noise outside. There was extensive coverage on the news, with clips of front loaders and other machinery excavating the foul remains, including a crew in his own yard removing buckets of flesh. A fire truck and its company could be seen hosing the smaller bits into the sewer. Periodically someone knocked on his door, perhaps seeking his permission for something or other. He did not answer. He later came to regret this decision when he realized his backyard was still calf-deep in rotting debris.
The stench outside was so strong it eventually infiltrated the house. He could not make himself eat. He sat in the living room with a kerchief covering the lower half of his face, taking alternating sips of water and rum. His nose had gone numb.
The news reported that this most recent deluge affected the entire town and some unincorporated areas beyond.
The next Monday he awakened to more dizziness and then the rocks came down, some as large as baseballs, followed by a torrent of raw red meat. On Tuesday Grant attempted to shovel the fallen materials into one corner of his backyard, near the back gate. He was too old, too weak, to clear more than a few square yards of ground. At some point he would call someone and hire them to haul it all away. He was clearly desperate. Of course, whoever he called would take advantage of him.
On Wednesday there was more vertigo, more weakness, and the first of the planes fell out of the sky. He heard an enormous metallic bang and thought a car hit a nearby trash bin. This was followed by an overpowering assault of a kerosene-like smell. He walked out the front door for the first time in days.
Many of his neighbors did the same. In the distance a plume of dark smoke rose high into the air. That kerosene smell became more pronounced. Grant realized some of his neighbors were staring at him, and he went back inside.
Over the next few days planes went down all over the country. The news declared it was happening in other countries as well. No known cause, but terrorism had not been ruled out. All flights were grounded until further notice. Grant decided the safest course for him, and perhaps for the rest of the world as well, was for him to stay inside.
He spent much of the following week going from window to window. He felt compelled to watch the sky.
After a week of no incidents, it appeared whatever it was had run its course. Grant’s mood lightened considerably, and he experienced delusions of vigor. He knew it wouldn’t last long. He dragged a patio lounge chair out into the back yard, lay back, and enjoyed the clear blue skies. The stench was still strong, but he was willing to tolerate it. He had some face masks left from COVID and wore two to mitigate the smell. Eventually he fell asleep. He dreamed of flying, with no gravity to hinder his ambition.
Grant woke up near sundown. A swarm of flies floated overhead, the speckled cloud moving up and down like the visible notes of some outré melody. Suddenly the flies fell, covering him with wriggling spots.
Something large becoming larger made its appearance below the evening clouds. Closer in, there appeared to be two of them. Their wings were too small, too damaged, or ill-formed to keep them airborne.
They might have been fallen angels, he thought, and he maintained that impression even as they crashed on either side of him, as large as cows, hairless with ivory-colored skin. Pot-bellied with withered breasts. No genitalia unless their bits were retracted. Their faces were beatific, and vaguely human-like. Their cow-eyes were huge and glistening, one eye brown and the other blue. It was as if they’d fallen asleep mid-flight and hit the ground without ever waking.
He saw all this by moving his head left and right, but that was all he could move. The rest of him was immobile, pressed into the lounge chair by the weight of the darkening air.
Grant had no other choice but to watch the sky, the darkness flowing in to fill the lighter spaces, and then the stars resolving out of the gloom.
Then the stars began to smear, each a blurry line of light, headed in his direction. It didn’t take him long to determine that they, too, were falling.
Originally published in New Writings in Horror & the Supernatural, edited by Stephen Jones.
