Threshold Read Online Free PDF

stickydamp stain on the carpet at her feet, and that’s when Deacon always gets up to close the windows, never mind the heat because they can all hear the birds at the windows, the frightened birds trying to get in, and “You’re only making it harder,” Elise says.
    “Time flies,” and Deacon’s speaking so softly now she can hardly hear him over the racket the birds are making, and the sash rattles and the featherhard bodies batter themselves against the glass. She can already see places where their beaks have punched spiderweb cracks, the crooked hairline fractures in between, and in another minute the windowpane will break and the room will breathe them in, all the frantic, tiny bodies, all the stabbing beaks.
    And this is the dream that Chance is having when she hears the telephone ring, and Elise looks up at her, glares out through hungry blackbird eyes, crow eyes in her pale face, and “What are you waiting for, Chance? You’re gonna have to go back sometime.”

    Chance wakes up in the house her great-grandfather built, the house where her grandparents raised her, made her something besides an orphan, and the telephone on the gossip bench down the hall is ringing; shrill, insistent bell that has pulled her out of the dream and a world where Elise was still alive. Nothing in the world now but a headache and sore muscles from sleeping all day on the hardwood floor, sore muscles and shadows, and the sense that she’s lost Elise and Deacon all over again. Then Chance stumbles to her feet, bumps one elbow hard against the cast-iron coatrack and it hurts so bad she has to sit right back down. And the telephone still hasn’t stopped ringing.
    “I’m coming, ” like the phone can hear her, like it cares if she’s banged her elbow on the damned coatrack, and when she finally lifts the heavy receiver, telephone from a time before she was born, black Bakelite and a tangled cloth cord, someone’s already talking on the other end.
    “Chance? Is that you, Chance?”
    “Yeah,” and she’s trying to recognize the voice, old woman voice and too much of her head still stuck in her dreams, the rolling kaleidoscope of faces and wings and bird-eyed Elise standing on the bloodstained carpet.
    “I was starting to get worried about you, Chance. You didn’t come by after the service, and we were getting worried.”
    Her Aunt Josephine, then, grandmother’s sister, and Chance sits down by the phone, the little brocade and mahogany gossip bench too small for her, but squeezing in anyway, and she rubs at her elbow, tries to filter the voice through the throb at the base of her skull.
    “I’m sorry, Aunt Josie,” and “I just drove around for a while. I needed some time alone, to think, you know.”
    “Well,” she says, disapproving tone, and Chance doesn’t have to see to know the way her aunt’s frowning, the deep creases on her forehead. “We were worried, that’s all. You should’ve called. We worry about you, Chance.”
    “I’m okay,” and it doesn’t matter whether or not that’s the truth, it’s what she’s supposed to say, what Aunt Josephine needs to hear to let her off the telephone. But there are still more questions: “Are you eating? Have you had your dinner, Chance?” She tries to remember the last time she ate, and her stomach makes a hollow, rumbling sound for an answer, rumbles so loud she’s afraid Aunt Josie might have heard, and so she says something quick, “I just put a potpie in the oven,” but Chance can still hear the silent disapproval through the receiver, somehow the wrong answer, but all Aunt Josie says is, “Well, you gotta take care of yourself. You have to eat. And you know that me and Walter are here if you need us. You will call us if you need anything, won’t you, Chance?”
    “Yes, but I’m okay, really,” and a few more seconds, obligatory and genuine concern, Yes, I promise I’ll call if I need anything at all, and You know we’re here, you know we love you,