Opening Chapters: The Birds Began to Sing

An ornithophobic aspiring novelist goes to extreme lengths to rid herself of an avian intruder.

Continuing my brief series showcasing the first chapters of some of my novels, here’s the opening of gothic mystery thriller The Birds Began to Sing. I’m including this one also as an example of an opening with a few things that make me slightly cringe these days (I wrote this one ten years ago). I love the rest of the novel, but if I were writing it today, I’d approach this opening a little differently. More on why in my companion piece article linked to at the end of the chapter.

Rejection is normal. Everyone experiences rejection at some time in their life, so there is no point getting upset about it. Don’t give up. Just move on. Tomorrow might be better.

That’s what Alice Darnell kept telling herself. Yet having her writing rejected again and again by agents and publishers was beginning to feel worse than getting dumped by a boyfriend. She had just received another rejection letter from a literary agency through the post, and every time she read one it felt like something inside her died. Her bedroom now had an entire wall plastered with rejection letters of one kind or another, all of them saying more or less the same thing:

Dear Alice,

Thank you for your sample chapters and synopsis which we read with interest. Unfortunately, we don’t feel this is one for us, but we wish you the best of luck elsewhere.

Kind regards

The Publisher/Agent

Alice thought a more honest summary might read as follows:

Dear Alice,

I’m not sure why you bothered to send us your sample chapters and synopsis, as you are not an established author. Obviously, we didn’t bother reading it. You might want to try elsewhere and see if anyone is foolhardy enough to take on an unknown author, but don’t count on success.

Indifferent regards

The Publisher/Agent

Alice pinned the most recent rejection letter alongside the others, and glanced at the alarm clock at the side of her bed. Almost half past nine. She had a cold, and had already called in sick so wouldn’t be going to work. That meant a day alone trying to rest, recuperate and watch daytime television whilst trying not to feel too depressed.

Staring at the walls of her small, rented terraced house in Kensington, Alice wondered why she didn’t have more to show for her thirty-two years. Was this how it would be indefinitely? Nine to five at Farrow and Company alongside her housemate Chloe Green? Still, work at the Central London letting agency might be dull, but at least it paid the bills and gave her the time she needed to concentrate on writing.

After deciding she might feel better after a shower, Alice dragged herself across her rather messy bedroom to the bathroom and stared miserably in the mirror. Running her hands through her straight dark hair, she felt the scars that were still present from her fall down the nightclub stairs all those years ago. She had sustained serious head injuries that day, but thankfully her face had suffered no long-term damage. Peering into her deep brown eyes she wondered — not for the first time in her life — who the person staring back really was. If eyes were the windows of the soul, then her windows had shutters. Whatever was in her soul couldn’t be seen.

Alice shook her head. These dark thoughts were what the doctors had advised against. She had to think positively.

Raindrops pattered on the window. The weather was typical for January — persistently bleak, with all trace of the excitement and colour of December’s festivities seemingly swallowed up in a grey gloom. Not that Alice did much at Christmas. Since her parents’ death in a gas explosion, she had spent winter holidays with Esme, her aunt on her mother’s side, or the families of kind-hearted friends of colleagues, most recently Chloe’s.

After taking a shower, Alice put on her dressing gown, went down to the kitchen, and made herself a hot lemon drink. She didn’t feel much better, so skipped breakfast and instead curled up on the sofa with a spy novel by Sasha Hawkins. In spite of her preference for more highbrow writing, Alice found Hawkins’ books something of a guilty pleasure, and like the millions who had read them was gripped by the page-turning plots. Her enjoyment of them felt like something of a dirty secret, and to others, she always felt the need to qualify the reasons for reading them as “research”.

As she read, Alice felt a peculiar twinge of pain from the scars on the back of her neck. She rubbed the area to ease it, thinking she might have slept in an awkward position. The unfortunate tumble she had taken down the nightclub stairs had occurred shortly after the death of her parents at the height of her illegal drug use, and had actually been one of the factors that propelled her to seek medical help. At the very least, it had made her more willing to do so when her overbearing Aunt Esme had insisted on it.

It had been many years since these scars had given Alice any problems, so it was unusual for them to flare up. The pain was sharp, stabbing, and urgent. In spite of Alice’s attempts to rub the scars, they kept hurting. If anything it got worse.

Alice began to feel hotter than was comfortable. Perhaps this was simply her illness. Her temperature had risen and fallen throughout the night, but Chloe had left the central heating on, so Alice decided to turn it off for a while. She walked to the thermostat and adjusted it. She then opened the sitting room window to let in a little fresh air.

A damp, cool breeze rushed in amid the sounds of distant London traffic. Alice breathed deeply and for a moment felt refreshed. But mere seconds later, she began to shiver and wanted to shut out the draught. She went to close the window when suddenly a large black crow fluttered into the sitting room.

It was all Alice could do to stifle a scream. She froze, her eyes fixed on the bird as it flew around the sitting room in obvious frustration. Alice was terrified. She had always been afraid of birds. There was no rational reason for her fear, but nevertheless, she could not seem to get over it.

Taking slow, deep breaths, Alice tried to calm herself. All she needed to do was guide the bird towards the window and it would fly off. Surely it had the sense to leave the way it came, if gently coerced into doing so. But Alice’s instinct wasn’t to help the bird. Her instinct was to kill it. She could not understand why, but she felt this in her bones with every fibre of her being, as though the bird were an aggressive, venomous serpent.

How could she kill it? She had no weapons to speak of, and certainly couldn’t attack it with a kitchen knife or suchlike. Perhaps she could get a pressurised canister of something lethal to birds and spray it. But what? All she could think of was deodorant, and that was hardly likely to cause serious damage.

The bird landed on the coffee table and glanced around the room with its dark eyes. Then it stared at Alice, and Alice stared back; too frightened to look away and unable to think of how she could possibly resolve the situation. What was she thinking about before? She needed a way to kill the bird. Pressurised canisters were out. Or were they? She could run upstairs and get her deodorant and a match from the kitchen. That would certainly do the trick. Unfortunately, it could also set fire to the house, and such damages would have to come out of her rental deposit…

What about cleaning agents? There was bleach in the bathroom upstairs — the kind you could spray. It was normally kept under the sink in the kitchen, but Chloe had left it in there as she had recently cleaned. Surely bleach would do some damage. It was better than doing nothing. But it wouldn’t kill the bird, just enrage it. No, perhaps deodorant and a match would get the job done in a simpler, quicker way. Besides she could always bring a jug of water to hurl onto the burning plumage once the bird fell in flames.

Unfortunately, there was a much bigger problem. Alice realised she would have to walk away from the window, through the sitting room, and past the bird; which had now taken off, and once again was fluttering through the air. This could prove a serious impediment to her plans, since she was paralysed with terror and could barely move.

With a supreme effort, Alice closed her eyes and told herself to calm down. This was a bird. It wasn’t going to attack her. It wasn’t going to suddenly peck at her like in that Alfred Hitchcock film. But it was going to die. It had violated her home, her sanctuary, her space. There was no question of trying to usher it out of the window. It had to pay for what it had done.

Deep down Alice knew such thoughts were irrational and ridiculous, and yet they made perfect sense in a way she couldn’t explain. In what felt like an act of monumental bravery she finally put one foot in front of the other and began to creep across the room, past the sofa, around the coffee table, and back to the door that led to the stairs. The process of crossing the room seemed to take an age, and as she neared the door Alice found herself making faster, slightly more reckless movements. She kept her eyes fixed on the bird at all times, and tried not to think about the claws. The beak. The feathers. Those horrible, horrible eyes…

With a last frantic rush, Alice hurled herself out of the room and slammed the door. The crow now had nowhere to go but out of the open window. But would it fly out? For a moment Alice stopped and listened intently outside the door. She could hear the bird still flapping about inside. Part of her didn’t want the bird to escape. She wanted to go back in and kill it.

With sudden determination, Alice ran upstairs to her room and grabbed the deodorant from the bedside table. She then rushed back downstairs, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a match. She also found a near-empty bottle of window cleaner and filled it with water. That would surely be enough to extinguish any flames once the bird was on fire. Alice placed the water bottle inside the belt of her dressing gown, put the matches in one pocket, and held the can of deodorant in her hand. Now she was ready to take on the crow and kill it.

Upon approaching the sitting room door, Alice could hear the sensible voice of Chloe ringing in her ears as she imagined what she would be saying if she could see her now.

Alice, have you finally gone completely nuts?

You’ll burn the house down!

It’s just a bloody bird!

But Chloe’s voice of reason became strangely muffled as Alice put her trembling hand to the door handle. Inside the sitting room, she could still hear the fluttering of the crow, and as it let out a loud caw, her blood ran cold. Fresh terror surged through her body, and Alice froze once more.

After about thirty seconds of helpless panic, her resolve hardened. Determined to pull herself together Alice lit a match, held it carefully at arms length in front of the deodorant, and after pressing the handle with her elbow, slowly pushed open the sitting room door.

The moment Alice saw the bird she screamed. The crow flew right at her with surprising aggression. It seemed the bird wanted access to the rest of her house. Time seemed to slow, and amid the flapping wings, Alice saw peculiar images in her mind’s eye, accompanied by eerie unsettling sounds.

Screeching tyres on a remote country lane at night.

A car overturning.

Fire.

A great country house surrounded by frost-covered grounds.

A corridor that ended with a dark closed door.

A screaming woman clutching her face as blood dripped through her fingers.

Claws.

Beaks.

Flapping wings.

All of these pictures and sounds flashed through her mind in less than a second, but it seemed far longer. The bird was closer now, and to Alice it seemed the claws were extended, ready to attack. Ready to lacerate her face and tear her eyes from their sockets. Alice didn’t hesitate any longer. She pushed down on the canister of deodorant and held the match in front. A jet of flame shot from the nozzle, igniting the bird.

The bird shrieked as it was immolated. Within seconds it fell dead onto the sitting room carpet. Alice stood with uncharacteristic remorselessness and watched it burn. The smell of frazzled crow carcass was revolting. It had been quite a large bird, so took a while to be fully consumed by the flames.

But the fire was spreading. The carpet was alight. Alice had forgotten to spray the water. Coming to, Alice realised her foolish error and frantically squirted the bird’s ashes and the burning area of floor. But she was too late. The flames licked along the carpet and up onto a wooden table by the wall. Paintwork began to peel and burn. Thick smoke filled the air. A loud ringing… Smoke detectors going off…

Alice cursed herself for her stupidity. If she hadn’t stood like an idiot watching the bird burn, she could have easily put out the fire. But it was too late now. She had to get out. She had to call the fire brigade. She had to…

A wave of extreme dizziness engulfed Alice. Her head swam, and clammy sweat emerged all over her face, arms, and upper body. She tried to steady herself against the door, but that was now on fire too, and by doing so she slammed it shut. The smoke grew thicker than ever. In spite of the open window, breathing became almost impossible.

At that moment, louder than anything — even the smoke alarm — Alice heard the piercing cry of birds. The same paralysing fear that had seized her earlier returned. The floor no longer seemed stable and the room spun. Sweat dripped down her face, and as she put up a hand to wipe it Alice felt her knees giving way. The last thing she remembered was a dull pain, as she caught her forehead on the edge of an armchair falling to the ground. After that, the cawing of birds stopped, and there was only blackness.

The Birds Began to Sing is available via the usual outlets (Amazon, Smashwords, and so on). You can read my companion piece article, about my process for writing opening chapters, here.

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