As the Crow Flies

by Rysa Walker

  “Chase is in the Grimshaw house.”

  “Fine,” Luke says. “Then I guess you better start up that hill. Me, though? I’m heading into the barn with or with…out—” He stops.

  “What?”

  Luke puts a finger to his lips. “Listen.”

  Ben does listen. He hears absolutely nothing. There’s no wind, no bird calls, insects, or noise from the distant road. The quiet is absolute aside from the sound of their breath and a faint rustle from above that must be coming from the bird cloud.

  “Luke, I don’t—”

  “Shut up.” Luke cocks his head to the side. “It’s Aali. She’s crying.”

  “I’m not hearing anything. Think about what you said a minute ago. Someone is setting you a trap.”

  Luke ignores him and takes off running. Not to the barn, as Ben expected, but in the opposite direction, toward the remnants of the bonfire and the wicker man.

  “Aaliyah?” Luke circles the base of the thing, looking for an opening in the web of sticks and twine that form the legs. He apparently doesn’t find anything, because before Ben can reach him, he jumps up to grab the ropes and begins scaling the side up to an opening in the torso.

  “I’m coming,” Luke yells.

  A strong gust of wind hits Ben out of nowhere, almost as if Luke’s voice summoned it. The pinpoint blast seems to be aimed directly at the statue. Luke digs his arms into the rope bindings and continues to climb as the structure sways back and forth against the gray sky.

  Wind whips toward Ben, and it now carries more than just Luke’s frantic cries. The slick scent of gasoline hangs in the air around him.

  Luke is still calling out to his daughter as his head disappears into a gap in the wicker, followed by his shoulders.

  “Wait!” Ben screams. “Luke!”

  At the exact second Luke disappears inside the statue, a flash of lightning cracks across the sky. The crows, which had been silently circling until now, send up a volley of cries as some of them—a dozen, maybe more—begin to fall. The birds spiral toward the earth with wings on fire.

  Ben calls out to Luke once more, but the man is oblivious. And so he tosses his gun to the ground, grabs the side of the structure, and heaves himself upward, fingers clutching at the ropes and broken branches as his feet struggle to find purchase in the tiny spaces between. The gas fumes are stronger now, making his eyes water, and causing everything—including the Grimshaw house off in the distance—to shimmer like a mirage.

  Another bolt of lightning brings a second round of cries from the birds. Thunder crashes, shaking the ground so hard that Ben almost loses his grip. From a gap in the wicker man, Ben watches as another flaming bird falls from the sky, this time landing at the base of the statue. With a hiss and a thump, fire begins to creep up the leg on the opposite side.

  Leaning against the thick pole supporting the statue, Ben looks up at the scaffold of rope and branches above him. The soles of Luke’s boots are only a few feet out of reach.

  “It’s okay.” Luke’s voice is hoarse, either from crying or the fumes or both. “Daddy’s here. I’m coming. Just hold on, baby girl.”

  There’s nothing in there, though. Nothing and no one.

  “Fuck,” Ben says, making a grab at Luke’s foot. “She’s not in here, Luke! We have to get out now. You’re going to get us both killed.”

  When Luke doesn’t respond, Ben jumps upward. His right hand closes around Luke’s ankle, and he punches through the twigs and twine to grab it with his left as well.

  “Let go!” Luke screams. “She’s right there! Are you fucking blind?”

  Then Luke loses his balance. The branch supporting him—now supporting both of them—snaps in half, and the two men fall, thumping through the brush and scaffolding like rocks cascading down a mountain. Luke tries to grab the ropes on the side, clearly hoping to pull himself back up, but Ben now has a grip on his shirt. The branches and sticks give way, and they tumble to the ground as debris rains down around them.

  Fire chomps greedily through the base of the structure where they were standing only moments ago. Ben hears another whoosh as the left leg ignites. He rolls himself and Luke away, over the jagged rocks arranged at the bottom, as one of the arms—the one he saw fall last night—comes crashing down a few feet away.

  “What the fuck?” Luke’s right fist connects squarely with Ben’s left eye. “She was up there. You killed her. You fucking killed her.”

  He goes in for another punch, but this time Ben is ready. He ducks and then charges into his friend, his shoulder catching Luke in the stomach. He lands face down, then rolls both of them over so that he can wedge his knee into the small of Luke’s back.

  “Stop it,” Ben says, but he doubts Luke can hear him. Behind them, the bonfire is now fully engulfed in flames, roaring like a summer storm. The back of his head catches a blast of heat. They’re still too close, so Ben stands up, grabbing Luke’s shirt to drag him away.

  He keeps his guard up, though, a little worried that Luke will tag back in for round two. But his friend just staggers away from the blaze and drops to his knees. All the fight seems to have gone out of him.

  “I. Saw. Her.” Luke rolls over on his back. “Aali. She was crying. I heard her.”

  “No one was there, Luke. I swear to God. Like you said before, it was a trap.” He offers Luke his hand. “Come on. We need to get away from here before this thing falls.”

  Luke stares up at his hand for a moment and finally takes it. Ben pulls the shaking man to his feet, and they retreat toward the car.

  A chattering noise fills the air above as Ben opens the door to the Acura. He looks up and sees that the birds aren’t circling lazily above the town anymore. Instead, they’ve formed a single dense mass, moving purposefully across the sky toward the Grimshaw house.

  “Holy shit,” Ben says as they watch the cloud drop into a funnel shape. The tornado of black birds swirls and skates across the horizon and then swallows up the house on the hill. “We need to go.”

  “Up there.” Luke’s words aren’t a question, but rather a numb acceptance of a reality he’d much rather avoid.

  “Yes. Aali could be there, too, Luke. This wasn’t just a trap. It was a distraction.”

  But as soon as Ben cranks the engine, a splash of orange deep in the woods behind the barn catches his eye. It’s a bright neon shade, or else he’d never have seen it through the haze of smoke. At first, he ignores it, thinking it must be one of those orange property marker flags you see occasionally on empty lots.

  But his eye keeps being drawn back to the woods. The orange thing is too high up to be a property marker. It’s swaying in the wind. And as he gets closer, that flash of bright orange twists something inside of him. It’s not rational, but his mind connects the color to Chase.

  He accelerates right up to the tree line, then slams on the brakes. The car skids to a stop.

  “What the hell?” Luke says.

  “It’s Chase. I see him.” Ben half tumbles out of the driver seat, scrambling to stay on his feet as he runs toward a dark figure hanging from the tree branch.

  Luke calls out, “There’s nothing there.”

  But Ben doesn’t stop.

  Five

  TUCKER

  Tucker skirts the edge of the downtown area, which is completely abandoned. There’s still just the one light—the theater marquee—shining through the early morning gloom. It’s too far away for him to read, but he has an odd feeling that the words above THE BIRDS have changed from COMING SOON to NOW PLAYING.

  Daisy stares out the window, biting the side of her forefinger. When she catches him looking at her, she says, “What if there’s no way out? What if the roads are all blocked, or—”

  “Then we come back.” He tries to make his voice reassuring, but he’s tired and pretty sure she can hear the fear underneath. “We regroup. Strength in numbers, right?”

  She gives a hollow, bitter laugh. “Which brings us back to what I said
a few minutes ago about splitting up not being the best idea.”

  They fall silent for a moment, and Tucker watches as the trees pass by in a skeletal blur. As a child, he was terrified of the dark knot of trees that circles the town. His dad hadn’t helped. Tucker’s bedtime stories often featured witches and monsters, ghouls and ghosts that roamed the woods, especially at night. He’d thought that was to keep him from wandering into the woods. Now, he kind of wonders how many of his dad’s stories were true.

  He also wonders how many of those memories are false. A little backstory for a peripheral character. Something to pad him out, make him seem real.

  Tucker shakes the idea off, because there’s not a lot to be gained from that line of thought. Daisy is here, with him. That’s real. He reaches over and takes her hand to ward off his anxiety. It’s not like he needs to keep both hands on the wheel with the road so completely empty.

  When they reach the junction with State Route 217, Tucker flips the left blinker on, planning to head north. Going right would take them south toward Viola City and past the tree where Julie saw Bill’s car. They’ll have to check it eventually, but he’s not looking forward to putting Daisy through that. And Julie didn’t get out that way. He’s holding out hope that one of the other roads will be…what? Will be open? Will be there? Will be anything other than a giant black void?

  Daisy squeezes his hand. “Turn right. We need to check the route Julie took first. Maybe Dad’s car is there again. Maybe he’s…” She takes an uneasy breath. “Maybe he’s on the side of the road, and Julie just couldn’t see him in the dark. He might still be alive.”

  “Okay,” Tucker says. “If you’re sure. I was just—”

  “I know. You were hoping to make it easier for me.”

  And so he turns right. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “When we were talking about other realities earlier, you kind of…dodged the question. But I could tell you were thinking about something. Something that bothered you.” He feels her shrink just the tiniest bit toward the passenger-side door, so he adds quickly. “If you don’t want to answer, that’s—”

  “No. It’s okay. It’s really not much to tell. There were a couple of times where…where I saw a hospital. I’ve never even been a patient in a hospital—well, except as a baby, I guess. I don’t like them, because we were there so often when Mom was sick. But I get the feeling that I’m actually in the hospital in this dream or vision or whatever it was. That I’m a patient. Everything is fuzzy, though, like…” She stops, as if she’s remembering something.

  “Like what?”

  “Fuzzy like when I was on too high a dose of the antidepressant. I didn’t want to tell you—I was embarrassed—but after Mom died, I just needed something to get through. It was so hard to sleep, and I was having really…dark thoughts. Dad took me to a therapist.”

  “That’s nothing to be embarrassed about, Daisy. God, there were times after my parents died that I couldn’t even see the point in going on.”

  “But you got through it. Like Dani did. You didn’t need—”

  “Stop,” Tucker says. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “Well, I’m not on them anymore. At first, they had me on a higher dose, but we cut back because it made me loopy. And eventually I quit altogether. I haven’t taken Xyleva in nearly six months.”

  “Xyleva?”

  “Yeah. The message on Martha’s fridge said STOP XYLEVA. But…I already stopped, ages ago. So it doesn’t make sense.”

  “Can you describe the hospital?” Tucker asks.

  “Just…institutional-looking, I guess? I’m in a recreation room of some sort. And Chase is there. It’s kind of weird. He’s wearing these neon—”

  “Orange sneakers.”

  “Yes! You saw the same place?”

  “Only briefly. A couple of seconds. Some other people in the room were watching—”

  “Family Feud.” Her eyes widen as they round the corner. “Tucker!”

  He stomps on the brake. “I see it.”

  The road leading out of Haddonwood ends about fifty yards ahead.

  And so does almost everything else.

  The sky. The trees. The grass. They all disappear completely into a black hole, almost like a tunnel carved into reality. Even the crows circling above them sort of merge into that solid wall of blackness.

  Tucker remembers this Road Runner cartoon he saw where Wile E. Coyote painted a fake tunnel onto the side of a mountain, hoping the Road Runner would smack into the rock. Of course, the Road Runner simply gave him a cheery beep beep—which is clearly the Road Runner equivalent of the middle finger—and ran straight through to the other side.

  If Tucker hadn’t braked, if he’d kept going, would they have crashed into the wall or sailed through? He’s half tempted to back up, accelerate, and test their luck.

  But even if he could screw up the nerve to do that, there’s someone between them and the void. An elderly woman, right in the middle of the road.

  “Is that…?”

  “Yeah,” Daisy says. “I’m pretty sure that’s Martha Yarn.”

  The old woman sits behind a tiny table in the middle of the blacktop, looking very much as she did yesterday afternoon when Tucker pulled her from the oven. Well, except she’s alive now, which is a pretty major difference. She’s wearing the same dress and slippers, though. Same cloud of puffy white hair.

  But she doesn’t look quite as solid. Both the woman and the table seem to flicker slightly.

  “Stay here.”

  Daisy ignores him. “Don’t give me that look,” she says as she meets him at the front of the vehicle. “You knew I wasn’t going to stay in the car.”

  Tucker did know that, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. “Fine. But keep close, okay?”

  She smiles softly. “That will be my pleasure.”

  His right hand slides down to rest on the grip of his pistol, and they begin walking toward the woman, whose eyes are closed. Two kid-sized chairs are positioned opposite her, and three dainty cups are arranged on the table around a plate of cookies in the middle.

  Ginger cookies, judging from the smell.

  The woman opens her eyes and smiles broadly. “The tea is hot and the cookies freshly baked. But get your hand off that gun, Tucker Vance. You don’t need it here.”

  Martha uses her teacher’s voice for the last part, which is probably why Tucker’s hand automatically falls away from the gun. But then he remembers her body lying on the kitchen floor, and he moves his hand back up.

  “You’re dead,” he says. “So I think I’ll keep it.”

  “If I am dead, what good will it do?”

  He doesn’t really have an answer for that. And suddenly he’s wishing he’d grabbed the stake that he tossed into the backseat after his run-in with Marty last night.

  “Pssh,” the old lady says. “That would do you no good either, had I any wish to harm you.”

  Daisy doesn’t seem to be listening to their conversation. She doesn’t even seem to realize that the old woman just yanked a thought from his head. Instead, she is captivated by the brightly colored plastic table. “It’s like the table Dani and I had. This was…mine. Mine and Dani’s. LEGOs and Play-Doh…and My Little Pony. Dad gave it away after the acci…dent…”

  She trails off, looking confused and a little stricken.

  “And what accident was that, dear?” The old woman’s amber eyes—eyes that seem oddly familiar to Tucker—shine as she tilts her head to the side. Her expression says that she knows the answer to the question, but she wants to hear it from Daisy.

  But Daisy shakes her head. “I…I don’t know. Don’t even know where that came from.” She laughs uneasily. “I only meant that Dad gave it away. He must have, I guess. Why is it here?”

  “I…I don’t know,” the woman says, her tone matching Daisy’s exactly.

  Is she mocking her?

  Daisy certainly seems to think s
o. “You aren’t Martha,” she says, her eyes narrowed.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “For one thing, your eyes are the wrong color.” Daisy pulls up one of the chairs and sits down. “As people always say, eyes are the windows to the soul. I’m looking into your windows right now, and you’re not Martha.”

  Tucker had never noticed Martha Yarn’s eyes when she was alive, but he had been around her enough to know that Daisy is right. The feeling surrounding this woman…or whatever she is…is completely different. Not malevolent, exactly, but different.

  Her eyes still look familiar, though, as does her expression right now. She keeps glancing warily at the sky behind Tucker and Daisy, where the crows continue to circle.

  “I never claimed to be Martha.”

  “You’re wearing her skin,” Tucker says. “It’s kind of like impersonating an officer. You don’t have to say you’re a cop. Wearing the uniform is proof enough. So if you’re not Martha, who are you?”

  The woman flashes her amber eyes toward the crows again. “You may call me Zophiel, the name I gave to the boy. As for this form, I thought something familiar might put you at ease. But as you wish. I can dispense with the niceties.”

  With those words, the table disappears. So do the cups, the cookies, and even the tiny chairs. Daisy’s butt hits the asphalt, and Tucker reaches a hand down to help her up. Even though it’s not much of a drop, he’s glad he didn’t bother to sit.

  The old woman is gone too, replaced by a ball of light the same amber shade as her eyes. It hovers above the spot where her chair was, pulsing faintly in the early morning light.

  So caught up in your own little concerns.

  Tucker doesn’t hear the voice with his ears. It thrums inside his head, but also in the air around him. He tastes the words, feels them pulsing against his skin. Sees them being swallowed up by the black void behind the amber ball.