I buttoned my jeans, pulled on my socks and looked around for my trainers. I could see one over by the door, but there was no sign of the other one anywhere.
I dropped to my knees and put my face close to the floor. The shoe wasn’t beneath the old chest of drawers, the bedside cabinet, or the wardrobe. Thrusting an arm below the bed, I felt around for the missing trainer. For a moment or two my fingers just trailed through dust, before finally brushing against something vaguely solid.
It took a second for me to realise what I’d found. I’d completely forgotten about the ball the crow had been tossing around. It felt soft and a little sticky in my hand. There was something attached to the top of it, like a short length of cord, or a piece of damp string.
Despite my hurry to get back to Mum, curiosity got the better of me. I pulled the thing out to take a proper look.
When I saw what I was holding, my hand spasmed, as if I had been electrocuted. The ‘ball’ gave a squelchy thud as it landed on the bare wooden floorboards.
On trembling legs I leapt up and backed away, fighting a rising feeling of sickness in my gut. I rubbed my hand against the front of my jeans, desperately trying to wipe off the thin layer of stickiness that clung to my palm.
Even as I did these things, the horror of what I was looking at had only begun to filter through. Despite the urge to look away, I stared down at the squidgy round object, and it stared right back, lifeless and unblinking. An eyeball.
An eyeball with a piercing blue iris.
‘M-Marion?’ I could hear the shake in my voice when I called her name from the top of the stairs. Only the faint sizzle of frying bacon, and the persistent howling of the opera singer on the radio answered me back. ‘Marion? You there?’
The top step gave a groan as I put my weight on it. I was about to continue down when I noticed the door to Marion’s bedroom. It had swung half open, revealing her dressing table and part of one wall. Last night, when I’d gone in to lock the shutters, Marion’s room had looked immaculate. Now the jars of creams and ointments that had stood neatly on the dressing table were scattered and toppled on the floor.
The step creaked again as I slowly back-paced to the top of the stairs. I’d found the missing shoe just outside the bedroom door and had quickly slipped it on. Even with my trainers’ soft rubber soles, though, my steps echoed on the wooden floor. They resounded around the whole house as I crossed to Marion’s room and edged in through the half-open door. I stopped just inside, my legs suddenly unwilling to take me any further.
The room was a mess, but I couldn’t see it. The shutters were broken, the windowpane smashed, but I noticed neither one. All I could see – all that was in the room – was the thing on the bed.
It looked like Toto had, only much larger; a tangled mess of bones and flesh and black, oily feathers. A skeletal arm hung down over the ragged remains of the bedcovers. I watched, hypnotised by the steady drip-drip-drip of blood trickling from the fingertips.
I may have been there, but I felt strangely detached from it all, like an observer watching a recording of events years later. Maybe if the bits on the bed had looked more like a person I might have reacted differently. I might have felt differently. But the arm was the only thing to suggest I was looking at human remains. I kept my eyes fixed on it, followed every droplet of crimson as it meandered down the fingers and fell in slow motion to the floor. Focusing on the fingertips meant not focusing on anything else. Anything worse.
How long did I stand there? I honestly can’t say. Time and the world beyond the room became meaningless, as if nothing existed but that place and that moment. All I know is that it was a while before the numbness became confusion, and a while later still when confusion was joined by the urgent gnawing of fear.
I didn’t want to believe it was Marion, but who else could it be? There was no way to tell by looking at the remains, but I knew it was her. I’d have bet my life on it.
My lungs began to cramp up and I realised the rank smell of death had forced me to stop breathing. The walls around me seemed suddenly to bulge forward, closing in on me, squeezing out any clean air that was left in the room.
I had to get out. Had to get away from the room, away from the walls and the stench and the thing on the bed. Chest burning, I spun round, ready to run from this place and never look back.
And then, there she was in the doorway. Large as life.
Marion.
‘Boo!’ she said, and her lips drew sharply upwards into an impossible grin. Her whole face seemed to stretch, until I was sure that smile was going to tear her head wide open.
With a sudden jerk of her arm she tore the square of bandage from her eye. I caught a glimpse of empty darkness, before she doubled over, clutching at her sides and howling with laughter.
‘M-Marion?’
Still laughing, she straightened and held her hands up for me to see. The ends of her fingers bulged grotesquely. I watched, too stunned to move, as one by one the fingertips split in half. From within the blistered skin other fingers emerged – longer and thinner, tapering into black, claw-like nails.
Marion’s single eye was bulging from her face, swelling to the size of a golf ball. When it finally popped from its socket she laughed harder than ever. It was a hissing, high-pitched giggle – loud enough to shake the remaining shards of glass from the window frame. I heard them shatter on the floor behind me as Marion dug her nails into her neck and began to pull.
She was still smiling as the skin across her throat split and her face slid backwards over her head. With a schhlp the mask of skin was pulled off, revealing another face underneath.
The face – the whole head – was made up of a rough brown sack, tied off at the neck. Its eyes were two dark, narrow holes. A wide mouth crammed with brown, rotting teeth took up the bottom half of the head. It wore Marion’s grin like a trophy.
Stray strands of soiled straw poked out from where the head met the neck. The body that wriggled free of Marion’s skin was agonisingly thin – barely half as wide across the shoulders as me. Its limbs were skinnier still, and far too long to be in proportion. Fully extended, they stretched down past the figure’s knees, each one well over a metre from shoulder to claw.
The thing had no skin of its own. A red-and-white striped T-shirt and a pair of ragged dungarees covered most of its body, but those parts I could see were formed from decaying knots of straw and grass.
‘A scarecrow,’ I muttered in horror. ‘Of course she’d have a scarecrow.’
With a final shuffle, he pulled his dirty work-boots clear of his disguise. Marion’s blubbery skin lay in a heap by his feet. The spaces where her eyes had been stared blankly upwards, as if seeking mercy from some higher power.
That was the split second that everything fitted together. It wasn’t a slow, dawning realisation, but a sudden jolt, as if someone had crept up and shouted the answer into my ear.
I’d been looking at it all from the wrong angle. A crow hadn’t come in through the train window. Nothing had come in.
But something had gone out.
Joseph had told me to ask myself if the man had died before going into the bathroom or after. The question had seemed ridiculous at the time, and of course I’d said ‘after’.
But I was wrong.
‘You,’ I croaked, ‘it was you. On the train.’
The scarecrow’s bulging head bobbed up and down like a novelty nodding-dog’s. His straw hands made almost no sound as he clapped them enthusiastically together.
‘You killed that man and… and…’ I could barely bring myself to say it. ‘And wore him. And Marion. You did the same to Marion.’
‘What can I say, boy?’ he sniggered. ‘I just couldn’t resist dropping in to meet you in person.’ His voice was high and shrill, like metal rubbing on metal. Reaching into the chest pocket of his dungarees, he pulled out a crooked, mouldy carrot. The vegetable made an almost comical boing sound as he attached it to the middle of his face, just above hi
s mouth. ‘I’m a sucker when it comes to fancy dress!’
‘And my mum. You hurt my mum!’
‘Wrong! I killed her. I killed yo’ momma dead,’ he cackled. With a whoop of delight, he began to dance on the spot, singing: ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead!’
‘No, you didn’t!’ I bit back, and then immediately wished that I hadn’t. He stopped dancing and stroked the bulge where his chin should have been.
‘Well, ain’t that a shame?’ he muttered. ‘Guess that’s what happens when you go running off to catch a train.’ He shrugged his pointed shoulders. ‘Maybe I’ll drop by and see her when I’m done with you. I reckon she’d like that, don’t you, boy?’
It erupted like a volcano inside me. The thought of this… this animal being anywhere near my mum shocked my abilities into overload. I couldn’t just feel the energy sparks this time, I could see them. They flooded out from within me until they covered every surface of the room like a living skin of electric blue.
A jagged triangle of glass rose from the floor behind me. Even without looking I could see it. I could see everything – every groove of the floorboards, every fibre of the wallpaper, every bloody scrap of Marion’s remains. I could see it all, but all I focused on was the scarecrow.
And the broken glass.
With barely a thought, I sent the shard slicing past me. I felt the wind as it whipped past my cheek. Heard the thup as it found its target. The scarecrow was sent staggering backwards as the glass embedded itself deep into his chest.
Without moving, I reached out for more glass. Three deadly slivers rose into the air, rotating until their most pointed edges were aiming directly for the monstrosity in front of me.
Thwip. Another piece of the broken pane swished through the air at my command. It dug into his arm, just above the elbow.
Thwip. I sent another flying in his direction. This one was driven into his stomach. He stumbled backwards as I twisted the shard deeper inside him, making a tunnel all the way through to his back.
He was looking straight into my eyes when the final shard hit him. It was the largest piece of all, with a wide, serrated edge that caught him across the throat and ripped clean through his neck. I didn’t feel even an ounce of guilt, as I watched his head roll backwards and thud down on to the floor.
His body remained half upright, his back wedged against the wall of the upstairs hallway. The long, branch-like arms hung limply, his fingers almost touching the wooden floorboards.
Gradually, my rage faded, taking the shimmering glow that had covered everything with it. The numbness I had felt earlier began to creep back in, joined this time by a trembling that started at my feet and worked its way up until my whole body was shaking. I stared down at the expressionless face, barely able to believe what I’d just done.
Had I meant to kill him? I wasn’t even sure. I’d wanted to stop him going after Mum, yes, and I wanted him to pay for what he’d done to Marion, but what I’d done went far beyond that. Something savage had assumed control, forcing me to finish him. To murder him in cold blood.
My abilities had almost taken over completely when I was fighting Caddie, and now it had happened again. It was as if they were feeding off my rage, growing stronger as my anger increased, turning me into a… a monster.
Just like my dad had told me they would.
I didn’t flinch when the body slid sideways towards the floor, assuming it was just gravity at work. It wasn’t until the arms began to move and the hands snatched up the fallen head that I realised something was very wrong.
The wide mouth was twisted into the now-familiar grin as the arms held the head in place above the stump of the scarecrow’s neck. The severed strands of straw began to wriggle around like skinny worms. It took just seconds for them to start knotting together. A few moments after that and you’d never have known the head had ever been removed.
‘Thought you had me there, didn’t you, boy?’ the scarecrow giggled. He idly plucked the shards of glass from his body and let them fall to the floor with a chink. His ‘wounds’ knitted closed immediately.
‘If you reckon a little thing like that’s gonna stop me, you ain’t got no idea who you’re dealing with,’ he warned.
‘I-I do,’ I told him, rocked by what I’d just seen, but trying not to show it. ‘I know who you are. You’re Joe Crow.’
‘Wrong again, boy,’ he said, holding his scrawny arms above his head. ‘They call me the Crowmaster!’ The empty hollows that were his eyes turned towards the broken window.
‘And here come my babies,’ he said proudly. ‘Don’t you go running, now. I know for a fact they’s all dying to eat you.’
Chapter Eleven
THROUGH THE SQUARE WINDOW
The Crowmaster moved faster than I’ve ever seen anything move before. He’d barely finished speaking when he took a sudden hop towards me, raising one knee to the level of his chest.
WHUMP! The sole of his boot crunched against my face, snapping my head back and driving me further into the bedroom. The pain came rushing in – a hot, firey ache that spread out from my nose and stabbed up into my brain.
The world around me went soft and wispy, like the inside of a cloud. Sounds became muffled and indistinct – the cawing of the crows; the giggle of the scarecrow hissing through his broken teeth; the pitter-patter of my blood as it flowed from my burst nose and dribbled to the floor.
I didn’t feel myself fall. It wasn’t until the rough hands caught me by the hair and dragged me towards the window that I realised I was on my knees. Fragments of glass tore into my legs as he pulled me across the floor. I kicked out, trying to stand up, but the one time I came close he knocked my legs from under me, forcing me back down.
‘Word is you’s somethin’ special, boy,’ he drawled, lifting me so my head was level with what was left of the window. He spat a thick wad of sticky black phlegm on to the floor by his feet. ‘Don’t look so special to me.’
Fighting through the pain, I concentrated on making the sparks come. It seemed to take longer than usual, but eventually I felt them pulsing through me, uncoiling their muscles and giving me strength. He wanted to see special? I’d show him—
KRAAK! He drove my head hard against the wooden windowsill. Another burst of agony exploded at my temple. The sparks fragmented and shot off in every direction, like startled fish in a shallow pool. I tried, but unconsciousness was closing in too quickly for me to bring them back.
I felt his spindly fingers tightening around my throat. In one movement, he lifted me clean off the ground, shaking me like a rag doll until I forced my eyes to open.
‘Not so fast there, boy. Don’t want you passing out on me or nothin’. Reckon I wants you alive when them babies of mine rip your eyes clean from your head.’
He pulled me in close enough that I could smell the damp and decay on his breath. Maggots squirmed in the hollow of one of his eyes, gnawing hungrily on the rotting cloth that covered his head. His blackened teeth jutted up like crumbling headstones in the graveyard of his mouth. There was no part of his face that wasn’t repulsive, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.
‘Funny thing is, I ain’t supposed to kill you. I’m just supposed to hurt you. Scare you. Do whatever I gotta, to make you do them special tricks of yours.
‘Y’see, boy, he reckons that every time you do them special tricks, the closer this here world of yours comes to disaster.’ I felt his breath and spittle on my face as he yanked me even nearer to him. ‘There’s a gateway between your world and ours, he says, like a great big barn door, all locked up tight. And he reckons you the only one with the keys to unlock it.’
‘Wh-who does?’
‘Don’t tell me you don’t know, boy! Your daddy,’ he said. ‘Your daddy reckons you going to be the one to throw open them doors and let all us monsters loose.’
‘He’s wrong,’ I slurred, pushing open my eyes. The world swam, never quite finding focus. ‘It won’t happen.’
‘Oh, I
know it won’t happen, boy,’ the Crowmaster nodded. ‘It won’t happen ’cos I ain’t gonna let it.’ He caught the confusion on my face and that laughter hissed out from within him again. SS-SS-SS-SS. ‘Y’see, I got to thinking. I got to thinking, why share this place with anyone?
‘I been stuck back in that hell-hole for nigh-on fifty years. Fifty years of being hunted and tortured by all them ugly freaks. Fifty years of scrabbling about in the dirt and the filth, like a hog. Fifty years of having to fight and kill every damn day just to stay living. Fifty. Long. Years.’ He stabbed a finger towards the skeleton on the bed. ‘Because of that. Because of her.’
‘But… she didn’t forget you,’ I wheezed. My forgetting Mr Mumbles was what sent him to the Darkest Corners, but Marion had been talking about her imaginary friend just the night before.
Flecks of foam were forming around the scarecrow’s mouth as he ranted. ‘But she outgrew me. She didn’t need me no more, so I ended up stuck in there with all them things.’ He shook his head and spat on the floor again. I was no longer sure if he was even talking to me. ‘And what, he wants me to bring all that here? He wants me to go back to living like that? Like an animal? It ain’t gonna happen. This here world is gonna be mine. Mine and my babies’. Ain’t no one else gonna share it.’
‘S-so… you’re going to let me go?’ I asked.
His whole body was racked by his sickening laugh. ‘You soft in the head, boy?’ he said. One of his long, pointed fingers jabbed me in the chest. ‘Ain’t you been listenin’? I’m gonna kill you.’
He pushed me towards the window. I fought against his grip, but it was too tight. I hammered his arms and kicked at his chest, but he was too strong. I screamed at him – pleaded with him – to stop, to let me go. But he didn’t listen.
The January wind howled at my back, forcing its way up inside my T-shirt like an icy-cold hand. From the corner of my eye I could make out the ground. It looked hard and solid, and a long way away.
I screwed my eyes shut and concentrated, frantically trying to bring my abilities under control. But the wind, the pain, the scarecrow’s rasping laughter – they all made it impossible to focus.
The Crowmaster Page 8