The Crouga flew us like puppets down to the front door, the rug made of thin strips of old tires woven together with long, thick wires. The cracks were packed with mud and cow shit and flecks of frost. The Crouga flew toward the door, a flicker across the green-painted panels, and then it was inside.
The door creaked open, and the three of us hopped inside.
The walls were mint-green. The floor was covered with mud prints on the rubber-backed rug, and streaks of blood had run from inside the sink over the edge, and puddled and dried on the floor. The ceiling belonged to a slaughterhouse, as though the pipes had backed up with blood so fiercely that they had nearly burst. The air was cold, but it was warmer than it was outside.
The Crouga was nowhere in sight.
With hops and short flights, we passed a door leading downward along steep steps into shadow. It looked as though something large and muddy and bleeding and furred had been dragged downward, and not come back up. The fur was white and rust-red and had come off in patches. As I learned later, it had been the milk cows.
The passages were filled with more mud, more blood tracked along the floors, bits of fur and what looked like curls of skin covered with fine, black hair, as though a bat had been ravaged to shreds several days ago.
I had an idea about telling the darkling stories to distract it: we would stall, that’s all. But Facunde and Ibarrazzo had other ideas.
The house had seemed to groan quietly to itself, as though it were caught in a powerful wind that made it lean back and forth a little, its bones shifting and complaining. There were ticks and pops from upstairs, as though something with claws had taken a step, then halted. A smell of dead flowers filled the air, not dried blossoms but dead ones, piles and piles of them, turned into an oversweet, sticky perfume. The closer we came to the stairs up, which led from a room with a large table that had been split the long way down the center, as if by lightning, the stronger the smell became.
We hopped and fluttered up the stairs as quietly as possible, with Facunde in the lead and me at the back, constantly looking over my shoulder. I felt a prickle between my shoulder-blades, as though I were being watched. The thickening darkness that followed us up the stairs confirmed it slyly, as though it were pleased with itself. As though it were some sort of cat.
At the top of the stairs was a twisted mass of darkness.
Part of it was liquid, flowing.
Part of it was dissolving, like old paper that has been yellowed by the sun, and was being eaten through by a hailstorm. It was full of holes. It steamed, although I could not have said what it smelled like—the smell of dead flowers was too thick, thick enough to choke on.
Help me, the Crouga said, as black slime twisted through it, dissolving it.
Facunde and Ibarrazzo flew at the darkling, pecking and kicking and screaming. It twisted on them and tried to pin them down, but they had been harrowing cats for years, and they kept it always attacking the places where they had just been. So much for my plan to tell it stories.
The last of the paperish darkness collapsed, leaving behind a bead.
I snatched it up and glided down the stairway.
The cellar, it said.
I flew through the passage, careful not to beat my wings against the narrow walls, careful not to swallow. At the top of the stairs I opened my beak to fling the bead into the darkness.
No…further down…you must take me further down.
It was then, I must admit, that I thought to myself, This is all a plot to kill Machado the valiant storytelling crow. A moment of vanity, or rather of fear: what would happen to me, in that darkness?
I shuddered all over, then spread my wings and jumped.
What is down in your cellar, you would rather not know. If your curiosity begs to differ, then I won’t stop you from opening up your door, going downstairs, and having a look.
I crawled out of the cellar a different crow than when I went down. The horror of the thing, if you will permit me to dwell on it but a moment, is not that it is horrible, although of course it is. The horror of the thing is that you brought it here, what must have been long before I was born, long before my sire’s sire was born. You brought that thing here for some reason, and, before I bleed to death on your windowsill, I would dearly like to know why.
14. The Strongest Thing about Me Is Hate
Brian,
This is Lisa
I gotta tell you something. I’m
Mom & Dad and Martin and Dave &
I want to tell you that I’m sorry
You remember us hiding out in the scrub trees across the highway? We’d crawl through the big runoff drain, the metal ridges hurting our knees, getting all muddy and me tearing my skirts. The whole thing would shake and roar when the semis drove over top of us. In the winter the bottom was full of ice and in the summer it was stinky puddles and whining mosquitoes. We’d crawl and crawl and it felt like it took forever. And then we were on the other side, running over the muddy ground and losing our shoes in the mud half the time.
You and me, we’d sneak away from chores on the farm and make stuff up. We’d leave Middle of Nowhere Reservation, South Dakota, and we could go anywhere. We hid all day out there, eating government cheese on mushy white bread with mustard and pickles.
You remember how we used to pretended there were monsters out in the scrub trees and cattails next to the river? We pretended there were caves under the muddy grass banks where they lived, and we either hunted them or ran away from them or pretended we were them.
I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to know what I’m telling you yet. I want you to save this letter for later, when you’re older. You can read it now. But I want you to save it for later, too.
The night before I left I found you downstairs in your hiding-out closet and hugged you through the sleeping bag you had wrapped around you. You had a bandaid on your head but you said you were okay. You wouldn’t tell me what happened to you. I told you never to go back there. You asked me why and I told you nevermind just do what I told you, but now…I’ve been gone long enough that I can tell you. Kind of. In a story.
There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you.
I was tired of wearing K-mart shoes with cracks across the bottom and my toes sticking out while the stuckup rich white kids wear $200 jeans and complain about their allowance.
I was tired of getting called a half-breed. Now I tell people I’m half Hungarian, and they think that’s cool.
I was tired of not being in sports because we have to ride the bus every day. I felt like I could run faster than any of them, even the ones in high school. I was as good as anybody. But when they chased me, they backed me into a corner with no way out. Nowhere to run.
When I came home I always changed clothes right away because they were ripped up, spat on, covered in boogers and piss and shit. My knuckles were always swollen because I hit stuff when nobody was looking. I had this dream. Sorry if it’s too mushy for you. Someday I’d have a man, and he would hold up my hands and say, “Hey baby. How did you get those scars all over your hands?” And I’d snuggled into his arm, ’cause he’s my protector, and I’d say, “I don’t remember, baby. I got in a lot of fights at school when I was a kid.” I’ll say that. I’ll say “kid” like being sixteen was the same as being ten. Only now you’re eleven. Anyway he’d say—he’d kiss my scars and say, “They make you look strong, baby. Tough as hell. I like that.”
And then we’d get all kissy kissy. He’d never, never find out how weak I am. Because when people find out you’re weak you can’t trust them anymore.
That was my dream, anyway.
—
You don’t have to tell me what happened for you, but I am going to tell you what happened to me, so you can understand what I did. I don’t want you to forgive me. I’m not sorry for what I did, except for what you had to see, the next morning.
I told you I wouldn’t sit with you because I was too old to sit with a litt
le kid. But that’s not true. It’s because it was too dangerous to sit with me. I used to think it was because I would sit in the back of the bus, where I wasn’t supposed to. You know, “only middle-school and high school boys are allowed in the back of the bus,” or so they said. But that wasn’t it, because when I quit sitting back there, it didn’t stop.
Do you remember when one of the high school girls sat back there two years ago? She used to bring a knife with her on the bus every day. The day of the big fight after Christmas break the high school boys got it away from her. That’s why she was screaming. That guy, X, fucked her. He raped her. The bus driver saw it, too. He looked at her and just kept driving. Why should he care? He was an old white guy.
That’s why she left. She didn’t graduate early. She got pregnant and killed herself. I used to want to kill myself. I didn’t want to end up like her, and it was starting to look like I was going to.
I will not write down his name. You know who I’m talking about.
Anyway I’m riding along in the middle of the bus by myself and trying to do my algebra. I secretly do all my homework twice, once at school and once on the bus, in case it gets ripped up.
(You can’t skip homework, not even a little bit. That’s what happened to Martin and David. They skipped a little homework because Dad told them they had to help out around the farm, and every week they had to do a little bit more, and a little bit more, until Dad told them they better quit school because they were flunking out anyway, even though it was his fault. That’s when they started to go)
So I’m doing my algebra and my socks are wet from the holes in my shoes and my feet itch from walking in wet socks. It’s supposed to be spring but there’s still a ton of snow on the ground and ice on the road, but when I breathe on the window, the fog disappears right away. Barbed-wire fences and weeds flick by. I stick my pencil in my algebra book and hold it closed. The notebook paper is already falling apart on one corner where a drop of spit hit it. Stupid cheap paper.
The reason nobody sits with me isn’t because I’m a snob. It’s because X told them not to.
After a few minutes someone sits next to me. I don’t look. I already know it’s him. He says, “You keeping it wet for me, eh?” He’s talking about sex stuff.
“Fuck off,” I say.
I used to feel bad for him. In the morning he gets off the bus and he’s a nobody at school, just like me. But by that point I hate him.
He leans closer and breathes on my face. I don’t move. I’m shaking. I feel him shift and my algebra book starts to move. He’s trying to shove his hand in my crotch again.
I think, “This is it. I’m going to go home and kill myself tonight.”
Something goes pop in my chest. I have tears exploding down my face but I don’t feel afraid anymore. The bus bounces up and down like we just ran over something, and I bounce off my seat for a second. I feel sad, because I’m already thinking about myself like I’m dead, but I don’t feel afraid.
I reach into the book where I have it closed over the pencil and start rolling the pencil back out towards me. I say, “I will fuck you up, X. If you don’t knock that shit off I will fuck you up.”
He laughs at me and shoves the book out of his way.
That’s when the bus starts swerving, like the bus driver’s going around a dead animal in the road or something. I don’t know if you saw what it was later or not. It was a tire. A tire blew. That’s when we started to swerve. It was ripped up so bad that a loose circle of rubber was just hanging down across the side of the upside-down bus.
Everybody around us stops talking. I feel more breath on me, the stink of chaw. The other high school and middle school boys are gathering around us. I can hear them breathing. The other nobodies are pushed back in their corners and praying to God that they aren’t next.
X shoves his hand into my crossed-over legs and I decide to stab him with the pencil. It doesn’t matter what I do because I have nothing left to lose. Do you understand? I wasn’t even a virgin anymore.
Then the bus swerves again, harder, and everyone’s heads jerk forward. My body slides forward on the green fake leather seat stuck together with green tape. My algebra book falls on the floor and I step on it before I can even think about it. I knew I could not lose that book. Better to turn in a book with a footprint on it than no book at all.
“Ungh,” X says. “What’d you do that for, bitch?”
I didn’t do anything but I know better than to argue with him. The bus jerks again and he takes his hand off my legs and puts it on the seat in front of us. The bus bucks up and down. We’re sliding off the road. The brakes are squealing, people start screaming.
We tip forward. That’s when we start to go down into the ditch. He’s staring out the far window. For just a second, while he’s not really paying attention, he’s weak, and I’m strong.
I pass the pencil over to my left hand, turn the point around so it’s facing his hand, and stab as hard as I can.
I don’t know if he sees me, but his hand slides to the side as we go over an especially big bump. I don’t stab through the middle of his hand but I don’t miss, either. The pencil rips a red line along the side of his hand, digs into the bone by his pinky finger, and jumps over it, leaving a gray line. Before his hand even starts bleeding bad the pencil hits the fake leather and snaps in half. The back half of it stabs through the back of the seat and falls inside the hole.
Then we start tipping sideways and I get thrown right into him. He hits me and blood from his hand goes into my face but we’re all falling and the slap turns into a grab, and I’m shoved up against him with my face against the side of his head. He bounces off the other seat and his head slams up against mine. I see an explosion of white pain. I don’t know how else to explain it.
“Bitch!” he shouted. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
Right in front of me is his ear.
I hated him, Brian. I hated him so much. I knew I was going to die. One way or another, either I would die in a bus wreck or I would kill myself. I didn’t matter what I did, so I opened my mouth and grabbed the bottom of his ear between my teeth and bit down.
Let me say something about hate. You shouldn’t hate the people below you. If you have to hate, you should hate the people above you. That’s what makes you strong. If you hate weakness, it makes you weak. But hating the strong gives you strength. Not much. But a little.
I feel the slick of meat between my teeth as the ear starts to slide out of my mouth. I bite down harder, and he screams. Everybody’s screaming by then but me, I think. We’re falling in all directions. I pull back with my head. His ear stretches. I feel something tearing. We slam into seats and other kids and the roof and the floor and the windows. Hot blood fills my mouth, mine or his, I don’t know. Sometimes he’s on top of me, sometimes I’m on top of him. It fucking hurts.
Someone kicks me in the head and I pass out.
—
By the time I wake up, you’re gone. Everybody’s gone, except for the person on top of me, although I don’t find that out until later. I must have ended up on the bottom somehow. Except the bus was upside down, so I was really on the roof.
The metal is sticky and cold under me. The inside of the bus is supposed to be mint green but it’s brown now, from muddy footprints. There’s streaks of blood, too, but all of it except for a puddle next to my head has turned brown already too. I can’t move so I don’t see much at first.
I spit bright red blood and move my shoulders from side to side, trying to get the body off me. Whoever it is, he’s heavier than I am. It must have been one of the teenage boys, maybe X, maybe not.
Suddenly he starts moving off me.
Not like…not like he’s getting up. He slides off me like someone dragging a pile of blankets. His head knocks on mine and I see bright white lights and bite my tongue, which means more blood in my mouth. His fingers get stuck in my hair for a second, not grabbing, just tangled in it. My scalp hurts and my head
starts to pull back, which makes me feel like puking. I jerk my head forward and it hits the metal. Great. But his fingers come loose. The boy is still sliding off me, and I hear a thud as his head hits the metal of the upside-down roof. He doesn’t say “ouch.”
I try to say your name a couple of times but I can barely speak. It’s like someone took my voice away. The more I lift my head, the more it hurts, until I’m so dizzy I just lay it back down again.
I spit again and figure out one of my front teeth is gone. I’m never getting that back. My skin feels torn up all over. A cold breeze comes in through the broken windows and my skin feels like it’s burning with cold. Sometimes when there’s too much pain your body gets all confused. Gas rumbles in my gut, it feels like it’s knives stabbing into me. I fart and it feels a little better. It turns out I had a tear in my large intestine and I was lucky not to get it infected. I’m okay now.
I hear a grunt from outside, and then a crunching noise. A horn honks. Honk honk honk. It doesn’t stop for a long time. Then there’s a woman shouting from outside but I don’t know what she’s saying. The grunting and crunching stops, and then someone’s walking through crunchy dead grass. I turn my head and that’s when I know for sure that everyone else is gone. I also know I’m going to throw up for sure by then, it’s just a matter of figuring out when and where. A gun goes off, a rifle. Don’t ask me what gauge, I don’t know guns as good as Martin and David. There are more shots and more shouting. Glass sprays over me and I turn my head the other way but it doesn’t hit me. The bus rocks with a jerk, and there’s a squishy thud outside, like someone jumped off the top of the bus into mud. The puke is coming up now. I spit again but it’s too late.
I puke.
I close my eyes because I don’t want the puke to splash back into them.
I think the stupidest things. While I puke I worry about that algebra book and what I’m going to tell Mom. I think about what she’s going to say. “We don’t have that kind of money, that you rip up your books like that all the time.” I want to tell her that I never do it but you know. She never listens. She’s just upset about the money.
A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre Page 18