The Crows

The wind swept away the girl’s face, caressing it with soft fingers before releasing it to drift back to earth. It landed with a whisper, blank paper eyes raised to the heavens. Moisture gradually ate away at the ink, features bleeding outwards in creeping black tendrils.

A solitary crow drifted over the winding grey ribbon of road, which spooled its way through the valley and away into a distant horizon.

The road was fringed by wide swathes of forest on either side, stretching green and deep as far as eye could see. Concealed amidst these tall leafy shadows, and far back from the road, was a house. It was unremarkable. Aged and weather-beaten. The paint which flaked off the corners of the doorframe was almost indistinguishable in colour from the tawny boughs veiling it from the outside world.

It was in this unprepossessing place which the crow chose to make its descent. It perched on a sagging gutter, with a feathery whisper and a scratch of tiny claws. Tucking away ashen wings it hopped about, tilting its head from one side to the other. Eyes glistening, ebony and alert, it watched as a battered green van bumped and lurched its way through a labyrinthine twist of trees

The van spluttered to a shuddering halt in front of the house. It seemed as though, rather than coming to a purposeful stop, the engine had simply happened to reach its life’s end in that spot.

The crow watched curiously as a tall stooping man slammed the driver’s door and walked over to pry open the boot. He reached in and hauled out a sack. A dark stickiness was soaking its way through the coarse weave. It teetered there for a heartbeat, on the precipice, before tipping over onto the ground with a dull thud. The man shut the boot and bent down to grasp one corner of the sack. The crow watched as he dragged it behind the house, with nothing more substantial than a wet scrape of dirt, and a skitter of leaves to mark the passing. The crow cawed, the sound rippling harshly from its throat to colour the chilly autumn air. It ruffled its feathers and flew away in a flurry of charcoal wings.

A floorboard creaked underfoot as the man entered the rotten heart of the house. A broken venetian blind clattered forward and back; pale sunrays lay shattered across the dusty floor. The room was unfurnished, the exception being a crooked bookshelf, propped awkwardly in the corner. It was almost half full, the shelves stacked with peculiarly eclectic selection of volumes.

The man ran a forefinger gently along the row of spines – arranged straight and stiff as a picket-board fence. He felt the words calling to him, with a softly alluring music. An opium smoke of scattered phrases and broken paragraphs. But the words he heard were not the stories the books contained, they were the other words, the ones he had trapped deep inside the pages. The ones he had stolen and made his own.

He extracted a slim paperback from his left breast pocket. He caressed its fragile pages with a delicate, almost sensual touch. His gaze slid over the inscription, a neat, curling hand – To Bess, with Love – Andie. Just below, he scratched his own words, the letters spidery and sprawling across the length of the page. He slid a lock of hair in-between the pages, and the book was slipped amongst its sisters.

The man smiled.

From the clouded window, a sharp tap-tap-tap rang out, snatching up the man’s attention. He walked over, flicking aside the blind. A crow hopped about on the sill, rapping at the windowpane with its wickedly sharp little beak. The man and the bird studied each other, the one’s eyes black and strangely knowing, the other’s an ocean of shifting grey ice. The man let the blind fall and the bird flew away.

Dusk padded closer on silent paws, chasing away the light, as the man smoked on the porch. The boards breathed underfoot, warped with age and the elements’ fickle kiss. The wind brought the taste of autumn – that earthy richness, with roiling undercurrents of decay.

He took a long, deep drag of the cigarette. As he exhaled, the smoke curled upwards, dancing around his face before melting away with the breeze. He tapped the cigarette impatiently against the splintered porch railing. The crow was back. He could hardly prove it was the same bird, but for some indeterminable reason, he thought it must be. He stubbed out the butt, and on a whim flicked it towards the bird. It fell short, landing in the dirt ringing the porch. By the time he turned to go back inside, two more of the small black birds were watching him.

When the man dreamed, it was of black wings, diving and plummeting towards the ground. As they impacted, their feathers burst apart into clouds of ashy darkness. The darkness coalesced, silent shadows watching from the corner of a room. Waiting, with hungry eyes.

He woke to the sound of faint but persistent scratching from the corrugated tin roof above him. As he opened his eyes, he fancied he saw a shadow-wreathed figure at the far corner of the bedroom, regarding him through hollow sockets.

Blink.

The shadow had melted away, nothing more than the fog of sleep-crusted eyes.

The man went about the business of his fragmented life, unconscious of the darkness which clung to his passing. The house was filled with ghosts of his own making, they traced every step, but he neither saw nor sensed their presence.

Outside, more crows had gathered. Perched along a fallen log in a sepulchral row, they watched the house.

The same dream visited him again that night. But now, in that sliver between sleeping and waking, two shadows were watching him, and they were gliding infinitesimally closer to the foot of the bed.

The man went out again that day. Hours later, he returned, two long scratches on his cheek, and another addition to his collection. The words sang to him in the darkness and they knew no master but him.

Four shadows waited now, and they were drawing closer, gathering darkness around them. He had begun to see at last, a flicker of black from behind his reflection in the bathroom mirror, a flash of pale skin in the gloom of an empty doorway. Perhaps they had always been there, but to believe is to see and the power to make believe requires blood.

The crows were congregating one by one. Outside, the trees hung heavy with living black-feathered leaves.

The scratching on the roof clawed its way inside his skull, almost drowning the word’s siren song. He loaded an old shotgun and went outside. The roof was crawling with a mass of shifting black bodies, scrabbling across the pitted metal and each other.

He raised the gun to his shoulder and fired into the air. The birds grew silent as they swivelled their tiny heads, fixing thousands of beady little eyes on the figure below. He fired again, and they took off, their wings a thunderclap in the cloudless sky.

He reloaded, and fired a final time, aiming into their midst. With a small thump, a crow fell to the ground. It lay motionless, breast pierced through. The man nudged the pile of feathers with the toe of his boot. It left a smear of blood against the scuffed brown leather. He fetched a hammer and a pair of long nails, and fixed the tiny body to the front door, its wings outstretched in a mockery of flight.

The man ate, shovelling in forkfuls of pale, runny egg. As he reached for the salt, the corner of his eye caught a flicker of black. He jerked his head to see nothing but an empty chair, pushed slightly away from the table, as if waiting to be occupied. His fingers, still seeking the salt instead closed around something clammy and yielding. The thing pivoted in his grasp like a snake, icy fingers clamping onto his wrist as the putrid tang of decay enveloped the room. The man snatched back his hand, grasping for the knife beside his plate. When he looked, there was nothing but the salt-shaker, lying on its side where he had let it fall.

He kicked back the chair and stumbled away from the table. In that blurry void at the corner of vision, something was watching. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled up in a wave, and he spun around to nothing but an empty house.

Sleep did not find him easily that night. He closed his eyes, only to sense he was not alone in the oppressive darkness. When, in the early hours numbing exhaustion claimed him, he dreamt.

His house, his home, his sanctuary was polluted. It loomed over him, a cavernous maw, oozing with putrefaction. The shadows grew longer, pressing in behind him with icy teeth. The distance to the door stretched further and further away, and the floor seemed to grasp at his feet, sucking him deeper into the carpet as he tried to run. The front door began to vibrate, bucking against its hinge. It flew open, with a splintering crash which reverberated through the whole house, and deep into his bones.

The crow hung on the door, rivulets of thick, dark blood dripping down from its outstretched wings. Its eyes snapped open, and it began to scream in a woman’s voice, a wordless, distorted static of a scream which tore a fissure in the fabric of his dream.

The man sat bolt upright in bed, stiff as a board and body drenched in sweat. They were in a ring around his bed, and their eyes were so very hungry.

Blink.

The world had tilted back into its proper order, and the gentle rays of morning light were sliding their way through the cracks between the curtains. But, nothing could chase away the remnants of that heart-rending terror. He dressed hurriedly. Snatched up his keys and fairly flew to the van. He had to get out, to breathe. Cabin fever. Madness. A dream of a dream.

As he drove down the lonely country road, his knuckles gripped white around the steering wheel and the dread of a half-realised fear leached slowly into his bones. His eyes darted to the rear-mirror. They were watching him from the dark belly of the van. He jerked around to see nothing but a hollow, empty space.

He saw the girl walking along the shoulder of the road. Her hair drifted long and black across her shoulders as she walked. A small bag swung listlessly at her side as her pale arms swayed back and forth. His eyes grew dark and cold and despite everything, his lips drew themselves into a predator’s smile. All other thoughts were banished from his mind at the sight of her milky-pale skin. He could already feel it sink beneath his touch. Feel the satin-smoothness of her hair through his finger-tips, the heat of her blood on his skin and the taste of her words on his tongue.

He pulled in beside her, driving slowly, with the windows wound down. ‘Let me give you a ride,’ he said, ‘this is a lonely road, it isn’t safe to be out here alone. Who knows what sort of people might come along?’

She startled, her eyes were a doe’s eyes, trapped in the headlights, and unable to flee. ‘No thank you…’ she trailed off, clutching her bag tighter as though it would somehow protect her from evil.

‘I’ll take you wherever you need to go,’ he coaxed, ‘it’s cold out, and it would be a shame if a pretty little thing like you caught a chill.’

‘Thank you, but I’m fine,’ the girl said, more firmly this time.

‘Get in,’ he said coldly, leaning over and shoving open the passenger door. She shook her head and began to walk faster. He growled, and reached for the hand-brake. In the instant before his questing fingers closed around the brake, some unseen force jerked the wheel from his hand and wrenched it sharply in the other direction. The vehicle picked up speed, careening across the road and rolling into the ditch. By the time he managed to crawl from the smoking wreckage, the girl had vanished, taking the words with her, far from his reach.

Before and behind, the road stretched like a pale gash along the backbone of the forest. The trees bent their crooked branches down, twisting towards him, grasping at the empty air. He stood shakily, wincing in pain as grit ate its way into the long gaping cut on his palm. Blood slid from a gouge in his brow. It fell, a single drop, jewel-bright as it rippled out in the dust. The air grew bitingly cold all around him, cracking his breath like ice. At his feet, the blood was creeping outwards, devouring the road in a slick embrace.

They were in the trees, eyes ember bright and feathers sin black. They were crawling, dragging themselves up on shattered bones, their eyes gone and jaws hanging limp on elastic sinews. They were walking towards him, their long, dark hair floating like nimbus clouds around pale dead faces. Walking, knee-deep through the river of blood, smiling at their creator.

He turned and ran. Ran from the blood and the ghosts and the trees. Behind him, an empty road stretched out, nothing for miles except for a ruined van and a single drop of blood mingling with the dust.

He ran without looking back, until the breath rattled in his lungs and his pulse pounded in his ears.

It came into view, the path through the trees. They pressed in towards him, like a ribcage. The house lay at the heart, empty windows and an empty soul.

The crow was gone. All that remained were two nails hammered into the front door, and a splash of blood, fading into the same brown as the boards.

He stood for a moment, eyes to the heavens and watched them rise. They crested the roof in a wave. A raw, clamouring cacophony of hatred, wings beating with the sound of rustling parchment, pages turning in the wind.

He sprinted. The porch groaning beneath his feet. Hands grasping for the doorknob – barely registered pain. The door creaked open. Slammed shut. Panting, back to the wood as it jarred and pounded behind him. The roof shrieked under the weight of those probing tearing claws.

But, he was not alone.

He saw them now. Saw them clearly for the first time. The man had never felt guilt, never sorrow, never regret. But, now he felt fear. He knew, in that moment he was not losing his grasp on reality. He was sane, and that fact drove him almost to madness.

He ran, through a house that now seemed alien and strange as it fell out before him. The words loomed tall in their prison. His breath came out in jagged puffs and his heart beat a military tattoo against his breast-bone. He knew what to do.

The man snatched the books up. Tossing them. Sweeping them off the shelves. Tearing out pages and strewing them behind him. He struck a match, but it burnt out too fast, a tiny flame sputtering and dying before it even lived. With nerveless fingers, he struck another, the sulphur fizzing into life like the fires of hell.

He threw the match into the centre of the pile. At first he thought it had been extinguished, but it caught. Burning slowly at first and then faster. The fire ate greedily, consuming the paper with an insatiable appetite. The hair crackled, melting away with a pungently bitter aroma. They were on the other side of the fire, shimmering behind the waves of heat, and he laughed at them.

With a crackle and a hiss, something exploded from the flaming heap. It flew through the fire, embers dancing from its feathers. It seemed a creature of spark and smoke. Its eyes were dark and the blood still dripped from its wings. It cawed at him, voice harsh and proud and then it was gone in a shower of biting ash.

As the books burnt, the words fluttered loose. They stole them back. And they were free
.
But they were not finished. The man saw and the man screamed. He thought that burning the books would destroy them, but, it made them whole.

The man screamed and there were no more words.