The Bitching Tree

by Scott Hungerford

Torvo said nothing, but nodded and headed for the house, stumbling a little bit over a root. As Torvo left the clearing ahead of him, Cobb stopped and looked back on the gravestones in the gray light. He imagined that he could feel Clara standing there, looking upon him with a child’s body and a crow’s black eyes. Like him, she was lost, torn from her family, from her entire world. He wanted to sing like Torvo did for her, to sing for her memory. But there was no time and he didn’t know how.

  “I’ll be back,” he promised her, then moved from the clearing, running across the slippery snow toward Torvo and the house as fast as his feet would take him.

  Nine

  By the time Cobb reached the house, Torvo was already sitting in his easy chair in the living room—but was still wearing his boots and his coat and everything he’d worn outside. He’d rinsed the dirt and blood off his hands, put the rifle on the kitchen table and taken off his heavy gun belt, but done nothing else.

  “Are you alright?” Cobb asked again as he approached where the old man sat in the recliner. “You should get really those clothes off.”

  “I just wanted to catch my breath,” Torvo replied. He looked even more pale now.

  “Well, we’re done for the day now. Should I put some soup on?”

  “I would like that,” Torvo said softly. “And bring me the bottle from over the stove and a clean glass. I think I’d like to have some scotch.”

  Cobb nodded, then went off and washed his own hands, before getting what his teacher had asked for. After struggling to find a glass that wasn’t too big or too small, he brought the bottle and an old jam jar back to the little table next to Torvo’s chair. Without being asked Cobb knelt down in front of the recliner and slipped off Torvo’s boots, one after the other. As the old man poured himself a couple of shots, Cobb unzipped his own jacket and got to work on building up the coals of the fire.

  “You don’t need to be so worried,” Torvo said as he noted Cobb frantically moving around.

  “You just seem cold. I want it to be warm in here. How high does the thermostat go?”

  “It goes up to 80 on the dial, but it only gets to 67 in weather like this, even if you crank it all the way. It’s not the best furnace in the world. But it does its job. It keeps me alive.”

  Once the fire was going and Torvo had taken a few healthy sips of the liquor, Cobb went into the kitchen to dig out pots and pans and cans of soup to make into some kind of dinner. It was early yet, but the fidgeting gave him something to do, something to drive back the feeling that something was—

  Wrong. Very, very wrong.

  “Torvo?” he called out after a few minutes. “How hungry are you?”

  “Hungry enough,” the old man replied after a moment. “Did you shut the kitchen door?”

  “Of course I shut the door,” Cobb replied. He verified with a sideways look that the door was securely closed.

  “I can feel a breeze blowing through. I don’t think it’s from the furnace.”

  Cobb stopped what he was doing with the can opener, trying for the third time to cut into a can that didn’t seem to want to open. “I don’t feel any breeze.” Cobb came out to find Torvo sitting up in his chair. His teeth were chattering a little bit. His hands were shaking as he tried to hold his scotch glass up to his lips.

  “Torvo? What’s wrong!”

  “It’s not cold in here?” Torvo asked him incredulously. “It’s not freezing?” He looked to the windows, as if expecting to see them caked in ice.

  “No. It’s a little chilly but the fire is starting to help with that. Do you want me to get you a blanket?”

  “Hmm …” Torvo said, sitting back and shakily putting the glass down on the end table next to him. “I think I know what this is.”

  “What is it?”

  “I need you to go down to my room. I need you to go inside. In the bureau by the closet door, in the bottom drawer, you’ll find a velvet bag that rattles. I need you to bring that to me.”

  Cobb moved quickly down the hallway, not understanding. It felt very strange entering Torvo’s room, even with permission. After frantically feeling along the wall for a switch, he finally found a lamp on the dresser and clicked it on. He noted the bed, the closet door and the chair with the desk and the radio. The bed was made, with tight corners like usual, with Torvo’s nightclothes neatly folded at the foot. Going to the bureau, Cobb knelt down and opened the bottom drawer, revealing a hoard of strange necklaces, beads, cords, figurines and feathers that initially made no sense to him. Taking out a blue velvet bag that rattled, he carefully closed the drawer, then moved back to the living room at speed.

  Torvo looked worse now. He was clenching his jaw and was trembling all over. “T-take out the b-bag inside the b-bag. It’s the one colored like a moc-c-casin.” Cobb nodded and got to work on opening the drawstring knots, which took him a couple of panicked tries. To his relief, the thing that Torvo was looking for was right on top. Pulling it out by its rawhide strap, he saw the heavy pouch was covered with beadwork, fringe and a few odd-looking feathers. As Cobb looked up, about to take a step toward Torvo to hand him the bundle, he was startled by what he saw—

  On Torvo’s shoulder was a huge red crow, with red feathers and flames for eyes. It sat there, adjusting its weight every time Torvo tried to move, fluttering its wings every time Torvo tried to rub warmth into his limbs to keep himself from shivering. The evil thing was looking right at Cobb, looking at him with an unwavering gaze that any crow, man or beast would recognize as hatred. As Cobb watched, another layer of Torvo’s color, another portion of his aura was sucked into the crow’s gaping beak, as if the thing was steadily drinking his essence down whole.

  “There’s a bird on your shoulder,” Cobb managed to blurt out as he handed the tiny bag to Torvo. “It’s red, like the Red Crow in my dreams.” The second he passed the bag off to his teacher the vision faded—but every detail of the room still stood out to him, every nub in the worn carpet, every crack in the bricks in the back of the fireplace.

  “I figured it was something like that,” Torvo replied. Putting the pouch strap around his neck, then clenching the pouch to his chest with both hands, Torvo began to sing. Not just the singsong murmuring that had filled the tent so many late nights as Torvo sat in his chair and rocked. This song was old, deep-throated and rhythmic, a challenge of magic against the enemy that was doing its best to drink his spirit.

  “What should I do?” Cobb asked.

  Torvo didn’t answer him, but chanted louder. The fire in the fireplace flared up suddenly—and the pans and cans in the kitchen rattled as if somebody had tried to knock them off the counter. A door slammed shut somewhere in the house. Something metal and heavy screeched across the cold concrete floor in the dark basement below, pulled for at least twenty feet by invisible hands.

  Torvo began to chant louder still, now standing up from his chair with the pouch raised in one hand. Shouting the words, he stood by the fire even as the electricity flickered and went out, leaving the two of them illuminated only by flaring firelight. Cobb could feel something cold and sharp rushing across his skin, maybe magic, maybe spirits, but powerful all the same, tracing across the flesh again and again with razor-edged nails.

  “Torvo!” Cobb yelled, scared for his life now, scared of having his body torn asunder by invisible claws. But all at once, as if struck, Torvo dropped to his knees and doubled over, his song silenced by a terrible coughing fit. As his song abruptly ended, the cacophony of crashing sounds suddenly increased all over the house—as the glass in every picture frame simultaneously broke, raining bits onto the carpet.

  Cobb, not knowing what else to do, ran for the kitchen table where the pistol was holstered. Pulling the heavy thing out of the holster, he ran back to the living room looking for something to shoot. But there was nobody but Torvo doubled over in front of the fireplace, trying desperately to catch his breath.

  “You can’t have him!” Cobb yelled in challenge, as the sounds of destructio
n started to escalate throughout the house. “He’s mine! He’s not yours! You can’t take him from me!”

  Laughter echoed from one of the rooms down the hallway, masculine and evil. In response Cobb spun and considered firing, but knew he had no target. Instead he turned back to Torvo, raised the gun over his head and held it steady. Closing his eyes, trying to ignore the sound of something growling in the kitchen, or the wet thing pulling its way along the hallway floor, or the scratching horror spidering down the inside of the chimney, he pulled the trigger—

  —and the resulting, devastating explosion of sound caused every spirit, every monster, every fiend in the house to shriek in unison!

  Panic ripping at his chest from the loud blast, he looked at Torvo to see if he was alright … and realized that the evil laughter was gone. All of the evil spirits had fled. With a buzz-click from the kitchen the power righted itself, casting the living room in strange shadows from an overturned lamp.

  Torvo stood up slowly, holding his chest with his left hand. In his right he clenched the bag, his fingers white from squeezing it so hard.

  “Are you alright?” Cobb yelled, realizing that his ears were still ringing from the gunshot in such close quarters.

  “I’m fine,” Torvo said back to him. His teacher smiled weakly, but his face filled with relief. “The gun. That was very smart of you.”

  “I scared them off?” Cobb asked.

  “That you did,” Torvo replied. “That was quick thinking. In all my years, I’ve never come across a spirit so powerful, or so malevolent.” He sat himself down in his chair and tossed back the last of his scotch in four hard swallows. “I’ve been sucked on before by spirits of winter and storm. I’ve seen shadows open locked doors to let the cold in on a freezing winter night. But I’ve never seen any shaman capable of binding so many other spirits to his will. Not all at the same time.”

  “It’s the Red Crow,” Cobb stated. “He has the Bitching Tree.”

  “Yes, he does,” Torvo answered. “But this little stunt of his, for all the noise and clamor, that probably cost him a great deal of power to pull off. He has the knowledge, but he doesn’t know how to use it yet. He’s just playing with us, seeing if he could scare me to death. I feel like it nearly worked.” At this the old man bent forward, coughing again, trying to clear his lungs. Eventually he got air, but his eyes were watering from the effort.

  “What’s in the pouch?” Cobb asked.

  “It’s magic,” Torvo said, holding the bundle up to the light. “It’s faith. It’s what … it’s what my human carried when we became one. Out of respect I carried on the traditions he was taught by his own grandfather, though I have but a shadow of his true talent.”

  “The Red Crow broke your song,” Cobb said, confused. “It was working, and then he stopped you?”

  “The pouch protects against most things, but not all things. I’ll give the Red Crow this much—the son of a bitch knows how to fight.”

  “So, how do we stop him from doing that again?” Cobb’s ears were ringing a little bit less now from the shot, and he felt significantly less jumpy. Still, he kept checking their reflections in the window, making sure that it was just the two of them in the room.

  “I can bless the house again, which will help a little bit. It will keep the worst of the spirits out. But I think he’ll be done for now. Done for tonight, anyway. Any mortal would be exhausted by that feat. He will need time before he can come at us again like that.”

  “Can we shoot and scare him off again?” Cobb gestured with the pistol.

  “We might,” Torvo replied. “But I figure that trick probably worked best the first time. Now he’ll be ready for it. Besides, I don’t want to spend all winter patching up bullet holes in my walls.”

  “So, what do we do now?”

  “We get out of these clothes,” Torvo said, “and we clean up and prepare the house. Then we eat. It will be fully dark soon. I want to have everything settled before there’s any chance of the power going out again. I don’t want to step on any broken glass.”

  Cobb was about to ask something else, but Torvo reached up with his free hand and put his finger to the young man’s lips. “No more questions. Let’s just get this all taken care of and I’ll tell you more over dinner.” Cobb nodded, though he was still freaked out about everything that he’d seen. The Red Crow especially, in the way the evil spirit had just sat on Torvo’s shoulder and drank the life out of him.

  Righting things in the house took less time than Cobb expected. Apart from a shelf of canned goods that had been dragged sidewise and tipped over downstairs and dustpans worth of picture glass that littered the floor in each room, there wasn’t much else that took more than a few seconds to pick up. After getting dinner on the stove, Cobb went out the kitchen door and down the stairs to the woodpile. Outside it looked like another storm was blowing in, and the rising wind was carrying enough snow to make the world seem like it was flying sideways. In preparation for a long night Cobb brought in four large loads, earning a splinter for his efforts, but he knew now that they would have enough wood for both fireplaces until morning.

  By the time he came back upstairs with the final load, Torvo was walking through the house with a metal dish of burning herbs in one hand and a feather fan in the other. Going from room to room, he touched each door and windowpane with the pungent smoke, then went downstairs to do the same in the cellar. By the time Cobb had dinner served up on the table, Torvo finished his ritual by blessing both fireplaces and placing the smoking dish in Cobb’s bedroom.

  “What do you think happened?” Torvo asked Cobb as he sat down across from him. He picked up his spoon, all traces of the shivers completely gone.

  “Is this a lesson?”

  “No. I want to know what you saw.”

  “The Red Crow sat on your shoulder and tried to drink your … drink your light. That’s what I saw when I was holding the pouch. I think he’d been doing it since we visited the gravestones. Back when …” Cobb thought about it, thought about when Torvo had first started acting strange. “Back when you did the song for the squirrel. When you sang for its soul.”

  Torvo nodded. “I think he was already here looking at us, even before I sang the song. Among the human tribes, there are shamans and spirit-workers who can do that. I don’t know if he knew that I could sing the songs of power. But once I did in front of him, I became a threat—and he did his best to get rid of me.”

  “He comes to me in my dreams,” Cobb said, trying to work it out. “Or I dream about him. Once I dreamed about Old Thom and me facing down his army. Another time, I dreamed about a whole flock of crows attacking a … human woman while I watched from a tree. But no matter what, it felt like they were always looking for me.”

  “Dreaming and waking are sometimes the same to a creature like him,” Torvo said. “I don’t have a word or a name for what to call him. But this one, the brother of Old Thom, he is no ordinary crow. The tales you’ve told me tell one story, but his actions here tonight tell another entirely.”

  “I couldn’t imagine Old Thom doing that kind of magic,” Cobb said.

  “That’s because Old Thom is a good crow and knows his right from wrong. It’s one thing to have power; it’s another thing to use it.”

  “So, what do we do tonight?”

  “We stay up for a while. We let our nerves settle. We have a drink by the fire and maybe you’ll do some reading for me. Then we go to sleep and we continue your training tomorrow like none of this happened.”

  “And if he comes back?” Cobb said, trying not to show his terror.

  “Then you’ll have this,” Torvo told him. He took the pouch strap from around his neck and looped it over Cobb’s. Instantly the room shifted into focus, the lights just a bit brighter and the smell of the food just a bit more appetizing. “You’ll be my eyes and ears. I have other protections in my bag of tricks. If you see or sense anything else you can be the one to warn me.”

  “B
ut you should have this,” Cobb insisted, holding the pouch up as if he was about to give it back. “You’re the one who knows what’s going on.”

  “You’re going to be fine,” Torvo replied. “Just don’t take that off tonight. You understand me?”

  “Yes,” Cobb said, feeling both a little guilty and a little relieved to have such strong magic.

  “Now, let’s finish up this slop and I’ll teach you a new card game. It’s called poker. It will teach you all sorts of things about the human world.”

  Per Torvo’s prediction, the rest of the night passed very quietly. The storm increased outside, the gale rushing by the windows and occasionally trying to push its way down the fireplace. But the house was holding its own, both in light and heat. After the dishes were put away and everything tied up in case they lost power during the storm, they each had a glass of scotch, sitting together in front of the warm living room fire. While Cobb still twitched every time the wind wailed past the eaves, the strong liquor helped—and puzzling out which poker cards he should discard gave his overactive mind something to do other than jump at shadows.

  The clock in the kitchen chimed eleven, then twelve. By that point Cobb was tired enough that he could hardly sit up. Also ready to pass out, Torvo announced it was time to go to bed. After placing the half-full bottle of scotch back in the cupboard, both of them went about their evening routine. When Torvo came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, he found Cobb curled up on his couch in the library, the blankets from his bed pulled off to add extra covers.

  “You could sleep in your own bed,” Torvo reminded him. “I put the sage in there for a reason.”

  “I’m going to be fine out here,” Cobb told him. “I like sleeping out here. It’s more like a nest, I guess. There are some things you never really grow past.”

  “I know what you mean,” Torvo said. “I had a hammock for a while, a great swinging thing that dumped me all over the floor if I did it wrong. I thought I liked it in the beginning, but eventually it got the best of me.”