A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre

by DeAnna Knippling

  I hung up.

  I brought the box into the living room and set the thing on the coffee table. I started running my fingers along the tape again, cooing. “Shh, darling. It’ll be all right in a minute.”

  The phone rang again, and I cussed. Some telemarketer wanted to ask me a few questions about my lifestyle. I almost laughed in the girl’s face. What kind of hair-care products did I use? Did I use any non-prescription medications, and if so, what brands?

  Telemarketers are damned souls, busted out of hell for eight hours a day to do Satan’s bidding. Do they even know?

  I answered as politely as I could, turning down any and all offers for free products, trial offers, and coupons. Then I jerked the phone cord from the wall jack.

  The thing in the box had run out of patience, and the box was wobbling on the coffee table, winding itself up with a good howl, like a cat with its tail lashing. I cooed to it for a few seconds, got it settled down, and ran down to the furnace room to find the black knife. For a few seconds, I was sure I had lost it, but I found it in a box of cooking magazines, still wrapped in its black cloth. The knife was the only thing that could hold the thing off, if it decided to attack. And it was good for opening boxes.

  The blade was damasked with oily black and gray streaks and eight inches long, about as long as a chef’s knife, but double-bladed. I took care for my fingers as I brushed the knife against the box seams. The knife was so sharp the cardboard didn’t make a sound as I sliced into it, here and there. I put the knife to the side—within easy reach—opened the flaps, and scraped back the packing peanuts, sticky and wet.

  There it was. Something I didn’t want but had to take.

  It reached out a cornstarch-white hand, pasty and sluggish. The smell hit me, and I almost stabbed the thing out of some kind of primal reflex. Instead I lifted it out—it was heavy and slippery—and held it to my chest. The thing was cold and smelled like something that had been left lying dead and wet under the leaves, until some asshole had come along and stirred it up with a stick.

  I’d tried to wash it once, after I’d first made it. Bad idea. Where the soap had touched it, its skin had peeled back, revealing a black mess like a rotten tomato. My fingers had sunk into it, splitting the flesh and sliding through it. I don’t think it had any bones, just that rotten, fruity mush that had oozed back together and crept up my arms. Finally its skin, humping along with a wet slurp, wriggled back over the flesh until only the eyes were showing. Never again.

  I tucked the flaps around each other one-handed and tucked a stray peanut back inside. Then I cleaned the knife, wiped it with some light oil, and wrapped it back in its black cloth.

  “I won’t fight you this time,” I told the thing. “But you have to stay hidden. My husband can’t find out.” I intended to make a nest for it in the furnace room and clean up the stains—oh, there were already stains on the coffee table, not to mention my blouse—as best I could. “He’d leave me.”

  The thing purred against my chest, apparently content with my plan.

  I threw the box in the trash, wiped up the mess on the coffee table, and filled a plastic crate in the furnace room with old t-shirts, the soft ones that smelled most like me. The thing was as cold as a piece of refrigerated meat, despite the fact that I’d been holding it for—I looked at the clock by the TV. Jesus. And hour had passed in the blink of an eye. All I could think about was how tired I was, especially after all the nightmares and insomnia last night. I laid the thing downstairs in its crate even though it scrabbled at me with its claws, trying to stay close to my chest and the sound of my heart. I peeled off my blouse, stuffed it in the box in the trash, showered, and lay down on the couch for a nap.

  —

  I jerked awake as David pulled into the driveway, around six.

  The thing was back on my chest. David was coming into the kitchen through the garage, slamming the door behind him and throwing his keys on the table, so I grabbed a blanket off the arm of the couch and wrapped the thing up in it. My lungs hurt, they were so cold, and I felt a wet cough bubbling up. The hell with my lungs. The bones in my chest hurt, like they were being crushed from the inside out. The thing reached an arm out of the blanket and trailed the icy, nubby things at the end of its arm across my cheek. Oh, sure, they looked soft, but they were sharper than my knife and left cuts on my face that stung with black slime. I shoved the arm back in.

  David walked into the living room and kissed me on the forehead. “What’s that?” He nodded toward the bundle of blanket and monster.

  I tried to tell him, but my throat seized up, and I started coughing so hard I started to worry that I couldn’t stop. Of course, once you start to worry about not being able to stop coughing, you make it worse.

  Regardless, it was too late to hide the thing. Finally, I croaked, “You’ll never guess what came in the mail today.”

  He grinned. “Is it bigger than a bread box?” Sniffed. “Smells awful, whatever it is.” He pulled back the blanket.

  The thing was clinging to my chest. Its skin stretched where the blanket had stuck to it, and I prayed the skin wouldn’t tear. The thing shifted until it could glare at David through its black, fleshy eyes.

  David stepped back. “Oh God, Madeline. What is that?”

  “A mistake,” I said.

  “Get it off,” he said. “Get rid of it.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I made a deal—”

  Without warning, David grabbed the bundle away from me. The thing tried to hang on to me, but its claws slipped.

  “David, don’t. It’ll hurt you. Put it down slowly—”

  But the thing had done something to me. It had hurt or drained me so bad I couldn’t get off the couch to try to get it away from David.

  I heard David from the kitchen. “Ugh.” A shriek louder than a fire alarm made me flinch. It cut out with a crunch. I heard the rustle of plastic—it sounded like he scraped everything into a garbage bag. He went out through the garage door and drove away.

  —

  By the time David was driving back into the garage, I was feeling better.

  Then the thing was mewling at the front door, getting louder every second. I opened the door. The thing had left a black trail on the sidewalk and front step and was reaching up to me with both arms. Its knees were scraped down to black jelly. I scooped the thing up and closed the door.

  I didn’t think I was going to be able to help at that funeral tomorrow. I laughed with hysterical relief. No more cookies for Doreen! I picked the thing up and held it. Small blessings and all that.

  David came back through the garage to the kitchen. He opened the cupboard above the sink—the booze—sighed, and closed it again. Then he opened the fridge and poured himself a glass of something. Probably milk.

  The thing hissed and dropped to the floor, creeping on its skinless legs to the kitchen door.

  “David!” I screamed. “Stay back. It’s trying to come through the door.”

  The thing nudged the kitchen door with its head, which caved in like a gelatin mold. The door had latched; the thing beat the door with its head so hard—despite the way it stretched the thing’s skull like a balloon—it cracked the wood around the hinges.

  David jerked the door open and kicked the thing across the room. As it hit the wall, the thing curled its legs under it and sprang at David, sharp nubs streaking toward his throat.

  But I’d been fighting that damned thing a long time. Losing. But fighting. I caught the thing, swung it around in a circle, and wrapped my arms around it until it clung to me, shuddering with rage.

  “Well?” David walked toward me, standing so close I could feel the heat from his body.

  I held on tight and closed my eyes. The thing jerked in my arms as David tried to pull it away from me, but he wasn’t fast enough this time. The thing’s claws dug into my throat as David pulled harder. I felt the claws slipping: the blood running down my shoulders.

  “Please don’t,” I begged.


  “Don’t make me do this,” David said. “Let it go.”

  “You don’t know how bad you’re making this,” I said. “Let me—”

  “I’m still going to try.” He pulled on the thing, but it only coiled its arms around me tighter. I screamed. David wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t let go. I felt blood on my breasts now. The harder David pulled, the more it choked me, but David wouldn’t let go.

  I passed out.

  —

  When I woke up, I was covered with black slime, crusted blood, and bruises, but the thing was gone. My bones hurt, but not as bad. I put my hand inside my blouse and tried to feel if my heart was still beating. It was. I was in the bedroom, lying on the bed—David must have put me there. We’d made love only a few days ago, and I hadn’t changed the sheets.

  David didn’t understand. The thing would only come back. I’d made it. I’d made a deal with it. I got to live a few more years without being sick, and it would poison everything I loved. It had come. It would always come.

  I wasn’t going to be able to hide the cuts on my throat—they were fine, like red hairs, but they’d swollen up. The slime was probably full of something nasty. I dabbed around with rubbing alcohol, but I didn’t think it was going to do much good. The cuts went all the way up to my ears and across my chin. My blouse was shredded almost to the waist. I took another shower.

  Poor David.

  No. It was going to be fine.

  Until I realized the thing was clinging to the wall above the bathroom door, waiting for David.

  I started screaming again. I backed into the corner of the bathroom between the shower and the toilet, knowing I was only going to bring David running. I was naked but for the towel around my head, screaming nonsense and howling. My throat was already raw; the screaming quickly died into a painful croak.

  Something touched my shoulder.

  “Aaahh—”

  “Don’t try to talk,” David said.

  “Where is it?” I whispered. It was all I could get out.

  David clenched his jaw and said nothing.

  “It was above the door, it’s back already—”

  The thing slammed into the back of David’s head and sliced him across the face with both claws. David bucked, turned—but the thing had its arms around his neck already.

  I beat at the thing on David’s head with my hands. Useless. I tried to scream, but it was useless.

  David snarled. His face was already turning red, he was running out of—

  “I told you not to try to help me,” I hissed. I shoved him out of the way and ran downstairs. By the time I’d come back upstairs with the knife, David was lying still on the floor, unconscious or dead. The monster still had its arms around David’s throat and was dragging its teeth across his cheek.

  I couldn’t stab it; the knife was too long.

  I held the knife behind my back and stroked the thing’s soft head. “Come on, dear,” I murmured. “Don’t be afraid. It’s over now. You know I’ll do anything for you. I haven’t forgotten what I promised. I told you to hide from my husband, didn’t I? He’s not reasonable. But you and I, we’ll find a way to work it out. Why don’t you come here?”

  Its head swiveled toward me, and one arm reached out. I grabbed it by the arm—it swung toward me like a monkey to cling to me, sobbing. I patted it a few times, rubbed my face against the top of its head, soft as silk, and used the knife to slice across the thing’s back. It screamed. I pushed my hand inside until I found the one solid thing inside: a tiny heart. The scream stopped as I pulled it out. I knelt down to the tile floor and traced a pentacle on the ground with the tip of the knife. The tile split like butter under a blow torch. I dropped the heart awkwardly in the center, then set it on fire with a black word.

  The thing writhed and smoked in my arms until it fell into ash.

  I cried. It was gone. I cried with relief, I cried with longing, I cried out of betrayal, I cried because my chest was burnt and my bones were falling apart, I cried because I couldn’t stop.

  —

  I sat on the bathroom floor next to David until I couldn’t sit up anymore, staring at my hands and trying to make the fingers move. Eventually I slid down until I was lying next to David, watching him breathe.

  When David woke, I had to laugh out loud: it looked like we’d been strangling each other.

  “It’s gone,” I said. “For now. I’m so sorry, David.”

  “What was that?” he asked.

  “A mistake,” I said.

  He stared at me. “A mistake? What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t tell him. He was going to stare at me and decide I wasn’t worth it, and he was going to leave. “May I have a glass of water?”

  “The sink’s right there,” he said.

  “Please?” I asked.

  While he was downstairs getting a glass, I struggled to sit up. It wasn’t as bad as it had been right after I’d killed the thing, and I started to hope that I wasn’t going to collapse into a pile of dust and dried bones, like in a movie. The burn on my chest wasn’t too bad, so I pulled on a silk blouse and a pair of panties while David dawdled downstairs.

  I caught myself jumping at nothing, looking for the thing out of the corner of my eye. It would be faster when it came back, stronger. And I would be weaker.

  I thought I heard something move inside one of the drawers, so I jerked it open and pawed through the socks, apologizing. The thing wasn’t inside. Another rustle of cloth. Now I was looking through the closet, scraping the metal hangers back and forth. I thought I saw something moving in the back, so I tossed the clothes out, chanting, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” I shoved the mattress off the springs, and the springs off the frame.

  I ripped open the pillows and shook my makeup out into the trash. “I’ll never do it again. I swear. If only you leave David alone—”

  I looked up. David was standing in the doorway, holding a glass of water and a couple of aspirins, watching me.

  “Here,” he said. “Take these.”

  I took the glass and flung it across the room. “I told you not to do it! It’s going to kill you. You think it’s gone because it’s not here?”

  The heavy glass left a dent in the drywall but didn’t smash.

  “Leave. Get it over with.” I tried to yell but I couldn’t, I had to speak in a reasonable tone to get the words out.

  “Whatever you want,” David said. He handed me the aspirins and went downstairs.

  “Fine!” I screamed unintelligibly. “Then leave! I don’t want you. I don’t want to hide in this house and wait for the phone to ring so I can bake cookies for another funeral. I don’t want to wait for you to come home, wondering if the thing killed you on the road. I don’t want to wait for another box full of a monster.”

  Eventually, I was so embarrassed by my ridiculous, phlegmy babble that I stopped. I gargled some cough syrup, put on some pants, and slunk downstairs. David was slumped over the kitchen table, half asleep on one elbow.

  “I’ve been hiding from this monster almost half my life,” I told him. I don’t know how he understood me, but he did. “Please tell me I don’t have to do this anymore.”

  “You don’t have to do this anymore,” he said. “But you probably will.”

  —

  I opened my front door. Joe had his fist up in the air, about to knock.

  “Hey, Joe,” I said.

  “Hi,” he said. “Uh, I guess I’m back again. I’m sorry.”

  I shrugged. “It’s time.”

  “I had a weird dream about you last night,” he said. He stared at my scars. “Do you have cancer? Is that it?”

  I laughed. “Cancer doesn’t come in a box, Joe. No, I’ve had six good months, and what comes to me I’ve brought upon myself.” I scratched my neck; the wounds had turned into puffy wrinkles. I was tired, but only from being awake all night. If anything, I was stronger than I had been before I’d made the deal in the first place. Which goes to s
how you shouldn’t make deals with monsters built like a rotten tomato; they lie.

  “You don’t have to take it,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “How about I mark it ‘Return to Sender’?”

  He looked at the box as it rattled in protest. “That won’t work. It’s your name on the return address, too. Some people do that, so you don’t know who it came from.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Bad joke. Here—” I pulled out a pen and printed my name on a bare spot of brown paper next to the return address.

  The handwriting matched.

  “Good God, ma’am,” Joe said. “Are you sending these things to yourself?”

  Then I scratched through the return address and wrote in a made-up address for someplace in Siberia. I wrote “Return to sender” over the front of the box. “How’s that?”

  He frowned at it. “It might work. It’ll probably end up in the undeliverable mail bin.”

  The box twitched, and Joe gripped down on the box hard. The box wasn’t going to get away from him again. I could tell.

  I sighed. I didn’t want a postal rampage on my conscience, on top of everything else. “Forget it.” I signed for the box.

  David walked down the hallway in a ragged bathrobe, carrying a mug of coffee; he’d taken the day off work when I’d told him about the nightmare. “Morning,” he told Joe.

  “Don’t let her do this,” Joe said.

  “We’re ready for it,” David said. “I hope so, anyway.”

  Joe stared at David for a few seconds, then shoved the box into my arms. I handed the box to David so I could wave goodbye as Joe drove away. David laid the box on the coffee table, where the black knife was sharp and ready, and everything was laid out.

  We opened the box together.

  * * * * *

  The End

  In the end, you chose death.

  The priest returned near dawn and went into the barn, and returned with a ladder, and took me down from the windowsill. If I was not dead then, I was very close to it. He held me to his chest and paused for a moment, and we both looked inside the window.