As the Crow Flies

by Rysa Walker

  Julie instinctively extends her arm to keep Chase back and then takes a step toward the circulation desk. “Barb? It’s Julie Kennedy. Why don’t we go next door until someone can get the bird out of here, okay? Sandra should have a fresh pot of coffee by now. Or maybe some tea? A nice cup of chamomile to—”

  The bird lets out another loud caw, and a split second later, Julie feels the breeze of its wings as it again strafes the librarian’s head. Barb falls ass over teapot, tumbling off the desk and landing hard on the marble floor. Her eyes fly wide open as a tiny beam of golden sunlight hovers just above her head and then vanishes.

  Apparently, the sound of the librarian crashing to the floor rouses the cat. It hops onto the desk and stares intently at the crow, orange fur raised in a spiky ridge along its spine. The crow makes a sound that almost sounds like a laugh and perches on one of the hanging globes near the exit.

  Julie kneels down next to the librarian. “Oh my God. Are you okay, Barb? Is anything broken?”

  Barb stares blankly at the ceiling. “Did you see that bird? It tried to kill me. And the eyes. All the eyes. Eyes everywhere.” She grabs Julie’s arm, digging her nails in so hard that they cut through the weave of Julie’s thin black sweater and into her skin. “Won’t you pray for him? Pray for the devil.”

  “The…bird? You want me to pray for the bird?”

  “No! No! Pray for the boy who stumbled in. The boy who stumbled in and broke the world.”

  Barb’s eyes are glassy, and her voice still has that same singsong quality—da dum da dum da dum da dum da dum—although the rhythm is a bit off now, and rhyme seems to have been abandoned entirely. Julie can’t be sure, but she thinks maybe Barb has been speaking this way all day.

  Da dum da dum, da dum da dum da dum

  Now everybody’s rappin’ to the beat.

  “Dial 911, Chase. I think she hit her head.”

  Julie half expects him to break into song or Shakespearean verse, but he just says, “I don’t have a cell phone.”

  “Mine is in my bag up—” Julie stops, remembering the way the bird eyed the boy. “No, wait! Use the phone behind the desk.”

  The bird continues to watch Chase with laser-like intensity as the boy picks up the phone.

  Its eyes really aren’t…normal. They’re white with odd streaks of red. Julie wonders again if maybe it is blind and was just using its sense of smell or hearing to attack Barb. She was certainly loud enough. But Chase is barely making any noise at all, and the thing follows the boy’s every movement.

  The boy who stumbled in and broke the world.

  A few seconds later, the front door opens, and Tucker Vance enters. Julie’s first thought is that it’s a really impressive response time, even for a tiny place like Haddonwood, but Chase is still holding the phone. He’s not even talking yet, apparently waiting for someone to pick up. Tucker must have been headed here already for some other reason.

  “Oh, there you are,” he says when he sees Julie.

  She’s about to ask why he’s looking for her, but then he rounds the corner of the desk and sees the librarian on the floor.

  “What happened?”

  The crow answers his question. Not with words but with another hoarse screech and a dramatic swoop from the globe light down toward his head.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tucker’s arms immediately fly up to protect his face, which is already bandaged.

  The bird doesn’t actually touch him. It just circles the library a few times, like taking victory laps, then once again perches on the second-floor railing, its head tilted sardonically as it watches them.

  “Sorry about the language, Reverend,” Tucker says.

  If Julie could change one thing about her job—well, one thing other than having Scott Jenkins in her congregation—it would be the pedestal that everyone puts preachers on, especially women preachers. Anytime someone curses or shows the slightest bit of human weakness, they seem compelled to apologize to her.

  She smiles weakly and gives him her stock response. “It’s just Julie. And no worries. I’ve said far worse.” She nods at the bandage on his forehead. “Judging from your reaction, I’m going to take a wild guess and say you’ve already had an encounter with our feathered friend.”

  He touches the bandage reflexively. “Feathered fiend is more like it.”

  Barb nods frantically. Her eyes are still locked in the general direction of the bird, but they are now dazed and lack focus. “A fiend indeed,” she says, “with mayhem in its heart. A feathered demon, wild and wicked smart.”

  Tucker frowns and gives Julie a questioning look.

  “It may be a concussion,” she says slowly, not wanting to admit in front of Barb that the woman had been acting strangely even before she fell. “She was up on the desk, and when the bird attacked—” The bird caws loudly, almost like it’s thanking her for giving it credit. Julie narrows her eyes and continues. “When the bird attacked her, she fell off the desk.”

  There’s a movement off to the right. She’d almost forgotten Chase was there, but now she sees that he has crossed behind the desk and is shoving the book cart against one of the double doors at the front entrance to hold it open. She catches a quick glimpse of an orange-and-white-striped tail as the cat darts through the door.

  “Maybe the bird doesn’t know how to get out,” Chase says.

  “Good point. But get back behind the desk, okay? I’m starting to think you might be right about that bird being diseased.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Can you call 911?” Tucker asks Julie. “You might want to use the landline. Both my department phone and personal phone seem to be on the fritz.”

  “911 didn’t answer,” Chase tells him. “It just kept ringing. You want me to try again?”

  “Try calling the office directly and see if they can patch you through,” Tucker says, giving the boy the number. Then he kneels down next to Barb. “Mrs. Starrett, I need you to stay still and calm, okay? We’re going to get somebody over here to check you out. If Chase can’t get through to 911, I’ll go find Dr. Loomis.”

  Barb nods again, and Tucker turns to Julie. “That reminds me. Daisy Gray was over at Martha Yarn’s house this morning, doing an interview for the school paper. I talked to her afterward, and she’s worried about Miss Martha. Thinks she might have had a stroke, said she was…” Tucker glances at Chase, who is still waiting for someone to answer the phone, then down at Barb, who seems pretty out of it. He’s apparently trying to decide whether to talk in front of them. After a moment, he lowers his voice and adds, “Said she might be depressed. Maybe even suicidal. She told Daisy this would be her last birthday. Anyway, Daisy said you might know which doctor she sees, and thought maybe you could stop in and check on her. Just to be on the safe side.”

  Julie nods. “I’ll head over as soon as I leave here.”

  Barb is mumbling now. “Pray for Martha Yarn, and pray for Daisy. But don’t forget the boy who wears the noose. The father, the son, the brother of none. The boy who brings the birds all home to roost.”

  Tucker raises his eyebrows, clearly wondering if Julie has any idea what Barb is talking about. She gives him a shrug. The last part doesn’t make any sense at all to her. And even though she knows that Barb probably picked up the bit about Martha and Daisy from what Tucker just said, the librarian’s singsong voice is giving Julie the creeps. She’ll definitely be checking on Martha and following that up by checking on Daisy and Dani, too.

  But Barb is her priority until they can get someone here to help. “Shh,” Julie says. “I’ll pray for everybody. I promise. You just relax, okay?”

  “You still not getting a response?” Tucker asks Chase.

  When the boy shakes his head, Tucker motions for him to hang up. Then he turns back to Julie. “Can you wait here with Mrs. Starrett while I go see if I can find Dr. Loomis?”

  “Sure. Barb’s daughter, Carrie, works over at the…” Julie stops. She’d been about to say over a
t the IGA. That’s not right, but she can’t for the life of her remember the name of the supermarket where she shops at least once a week. The only supermarket in town, and yet it takes her several seconds to pull up the name. “At… at Blaine’s. Blaine’s Grocery. Maybe see if you can get Carrie over here, too?”

  Tucker nods and starts to rise from the catcher’s squat he’s been in since he saw Barb on the floor. But the librarian’s hand whips out, grabbing at his belt. The movement nearly knocks him off balance, and Julie reaches out a hand to steady him. Only then do they realize that Barb has his handgun.

  The librarian is on her feet faster than Julie would have thought possible. She whirls toward the crow and fires. Julie yells for Chase to get down as the bird emits a startled squawk and swoops from the railing toward the open door. Barb tracks its flight path with the gun and fires again, but the bird is already gone.

  “Ms. Starrett.” Tucker approaches the librarian, both hands up. “The bird is gone now. It can’t hurt you. Give me the gun, okay?”

  “Listen to him, Barb,” Julie says. “You don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “The scarecrow walks. A boy hangs from the tree. No body, no car, no moon in the sky.” Barb smiles first at Julie and then at Tucker as she speaks. There’s no madness in the smile—it’s the same smile she wears most days when Julie comes through the library doors. Her voice is level and calm, as though she’s directing someone to the children’s section rather than babbling nonsense. She was looking straight at Julie when she mentioned the scarecrow, however, and all Julie could think was she knows.

  “Wind on the pumpkin, twins on the screen. Engage the dragon, game over, you die.”

  The librarian turns Tucker’s gun to her own neck. And then, still smiling, she tilts it slightly upward and pulls the trigger.

  Two

  CHASE

  “Are you sure you’re okay, Chase? Do you want to talk about it?”

  What Chase wants is for the preacher to keep her eyes on the road instead of glancing over every second or two to see how he’s handling things. It’s the third time Julie Kennedy has asked if he’s okay since they left the library.

  The answer each time has been that he’s fine, and he is. He’s not so sure about her, however. Her face is flushed, and she’s breathing hard. True, they’d had to walk up the street from the library to the church where her car was parked, but she’s not old or out of shape, and the walk hadn’t been that strenuous.

  She’s probably just upset because she witnessed the librarian’s death. Chase feels like he should be upset, too. But he really isn’t. He’s not glad that the woman died or anything, but none of it feels real.

  “It’s important to talk about things,” the preacher says. “Trust me, I know. If you don’t, it’ll just grow into this heavy feeling inside your chest, making it hard to breathe.”

  Chase doesn’t want to talk about it, though. He’s a little worried that talking about what happened might make it feel real. The scene at the library is already taking on the sepia tone of an old photograph in his mind, and that makes it easier to pretend it never happened.

  The bigger issue, though, the one he can’t really explain, is that he really doesn’t think it was real. Chase doesn’t doubt that something happened back at the library, but it didn’t feel like a death. He has memories of interacting with Ms. Starrett, and he’s sad for her family, but he can’t shake the notion that what happened in the library isn’t the actual problem. It’s just a symptom of something much bigger.

  Another symptom of that bigger problem is ahead, just beyond the stop sign. A body dangles from an overhanging tree branch, twisting gently in the breeze.

  The scarecrow walks. A boy hangs from the tree.

  He doesn’t know squat about the scarecrow or any of the other stuff the librarian was rambling on about, but that’s his body. His neck inside the noose. He knows this even though he can’t see the face, because he recognizes the bright-orange shoes. His dad—not his dad here, but his dad on the other side—found them on one of his trips with his girlfriend. Chase has never worn those shoes in Haddonwood, though. Until this moment, he’d have sworn they didn’t exist here.

  Chase watches his body swaying above the pavement of Hammond Street. It almost looks peaceful.

  Reverend Kennedy puts a hand on his shoulder. “Chase?”

  He can tell she’s trying really hard not to ask again if he’s okay, and he’s grateful for that. A lot of people who don’t have kids seem to get stuck in this pattern of treating every child like they’re mentally deficient. But Reverend Kennedy—who says he should call her Julie, and maybe he will—doesn’t seem to be one of those adults. She’s worried about him, yes, but not in a condescending fashion. And she seems here in a way that most of the others in town don’t.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I guess I was daydreaming.”

  Julie smiles. “That’s okay. We can talk about all of this later. If you want.”

  Chase considers asking whether she sees the body hanging from the tree, but he knows it’s a dumb question. If Julie could see it, she’d be as horrified as she’d been when Mrs. Starrett killed herself.

  “I’m sorry about dragging you with me,” Julie says.

  Chase shakes his head. “I don’t mind.”

  “At least Miss Martha usually has cookies or cake on hand. Amazing that she can still get around well enough to bake at ninety-three, but I guess it gives her something to do. And she likes to make people happy.”

  “Maybe we should’ve brought her something,” Chase says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s her birthday. And you said she’s depressed. Maybe a gift or something would make her feel better.”

  Julie’s face falls. “That’s an excellent point. But…we sort of are bringing her something to make her feel better. She loves company, and she loves kids. You’re not much older than the students she used to teach. Seeing you at her table eating cookies will brighten her day, especially if you can tell her some stories about school.”

  Chase inhales sharply, and Julie quickly adds, “Or about anything, really. Doesn’t have to be school. What books you’re reading, maybe.”

  He nods. Books he can do. School, though…that’s tricky. He keeps getting school here confused with school there. And no one would believe him if he told the truth, if he told them that the entire school ceased to exist this morning. He doesn’t think it was gone for long, although it’s hard to judge time exactly when there’s no light, no sound, no gravity, no nothing. What scared him worst of all was that he couldn’t even see the other place, the good place. Okay, the mostly good place. The place he wants to get back to.

  Then, just as suddenly, everything and everyone had popped back into existence. His teacher, his classmates, all acting like something was wrong with him, when they were the ones who had entirely ceased to be. He’d been so confused that he blurted out the wrong information, wrong for Haddonwood, at any rate. And then someone had laughed at the idea of Chase Rey’s dad having a job, of him being anything other than a drunk. He probably should have backed down then, but that just pissed him off, so he repeated the story.

  Which led to the school calling Ben, him staying with Julie, and seeing a lady shoot herself. And now, seeing another version of himself twisting in the wind, wearing the orange sneakers that he knows instinctively fit a whole lot better than the hand-me-downs on his feet right now.

  Chase wants to get back to that other world. But he’s beginning to get the sense that the only way out is through that noose, or something like it, which scares the hell out of him. Was Barb Starrett trying to get back to some other world, too? The way she was raving, she sure didn’t seem to belong in this one.

  Julie parks on the street, next to Martha’s mailbox. Chase follows her up the sidewalk and waits while she rings the doorbell. And then rings it again.

  “I don’t hear anything,” he says. “Maybe it’s broken?”

>   She knocks, and the door opens with a creak as soon as her knuckles hit the wood. They both jump back, startled. No one is on the other side.

  “Guess it wasn’t shut all the way.” Julie laughs nervously, then pushes the door open a bit farther to reveal a spacious living room with pale-blue walls.

  Chase likes this room. The place looks the way a living room should look. Not like his family’s trailer, with its dark paneled walls and the smells of smoke and beer hanging in the air. This room smells like gingerbread. Underneath, however, there’s a faint aroma of something else. A sweet smell, but not in a good way. More a chemical odor than cookies or cake.

  “Miss Martha?” Julie says. “It’s Julie Kennedy. I’ve got a friend with me. We wanted to wish you happy birthday.”

  As they walk toward the kitchen, Chase’s eyes fall on the television, an ancient beast that sits on the floor, encased in a boxy wooden cabinet. The screen is dark, but for a brief moment, the darkness twitches. A half second of gray static cuts through the blackness, accompanied by a faint, almost imperceptible, popping noise. And then it’s gone.

  Julie calls out for Martha again, then turns to Chase. “I’m going to check the rest of the house. She could have fallen in the bathroom or something. Wait here, okay?”

  The second Julie leaves the living room, the television clicks on again, and his head is filled with music. Weird music. He’s not entirely certain whether it’s coming from the TV speakers or playing inside his head. A spinning door is centered on the screen as a man in a dark suit talks about keys to the imagination and different dimensions. The voice seems familiar. He thinks it’s a show his mom watched. But…not the Aileen woman. His real mom.

  The man steps closer to the screen. “Chase. We need to talk. You’re not supposed to be here, but—”

  Whatever he says after that is drowned out by Julie’s scream. The man on the TV, the one who just said his name, glances toward the kitchen as though he can hear what’s happening. His mouth presses into a thin, firm line, and he says, “Well, fuck.” Then the screen goes black again.