Seeing Crows

by Matthew Miles

  “I’ve already got an idea,” Tom said.

  “You’ll have to share it with me later,” I suggested. “That’s my favorite stuff, too.”

  “Really? You like gore?” he asked. “Or like, supernatural stuff? Creature flicks? Slasher?” He had that enviable buzz of someone who is truly enthused about something, every little detail you see an inspiration. I remembered that feeling.

  “Sure, I like a good cut ‘em up, man,” I conceded. “But not much really frightens anyone anymore,” I added, feeling like I somehow needed to sound a little more mature, or sophisticated. “Except maybe the news,” I joked.

  “You mean, like 9/11 or something?” Tom asked.

  “Yeah, like 9/11,” I murmured.

  “That was really scary,” Tom said, serious.

  “I was there,” I shared, unable to help myself.

  “Really?” Kevin asked. “Like, close?”

  “I mean, I was in the city, not the towers,” I explained, trying to avoid perpetuating my lie, and remembering how the whole nation froze that day. We all just stopped dead in our tracks. We all want to escape that memory still.

  “Wow,” he said.

  The fact that our country had come to grips with what happened on 9/11 is almost as scary as what actually happened, I thought. There are some who will never really forget what happened that day, some who will wake every day with a still fresh wound from what they saw, or felt, or lost, while for the rest of the nation, 9/11 had become just a slogan to rally behind, to lash back out at the world, to help us repress our terror at the revelation of our sudden, unanticipated vulnerability. We were not the unassailable bastion we had believed; our corner of the world was no longer safe. The dangers that ravage other parts of the world on a daily basis had reached our impenetrable, golden, white shores.

  Now that is a horror story.

  It’s the same way we let ourselves pretend that waving a flag is enough to make a nation strong, replacing real emotion and real beliefs - real actions - with symbols and slogans, and trudge forward under the illusion that these gestures are enough, that we’ve done our duty.

  So we can get back to the violence on our TV screens, the safe, entertaining kind of violence that doesn’t threaten to tear the very seams of our society, doesn’t challenge us to really think about who we are and what we truly stand for, how others might see us and what we represent. To become better people.

  “Do you have any stories with you?” Tom asked.

  “I always carry them with me,” I told him. And added, after a moment of reflection, trying to play the teacher and spout something wise or profound, “Our stories are always with us.”

  “Cool, I want to read them,” he said.

  I had won at least one of my students over.

  I could get used to the idea of being a teacher.

  I swung by and rounded up Moose and Brian, and then Tilly and Molly, before heading back to grab Tom and Kevin. They didn’t have much time to settle but I thought I’d give them a tour and get it out of the way since they had all registered pretty quickly and it was still early. Maybe I could chase down Charlie before the cookout. I showed them how to get back to the central clearing in front of the main lodge, where the cookout would be later, and where my cabin was.

  “If you guys need anything at all,” I said, “Just come over and knock on the door. But definitely knock on the door!” I added, feeling optimistic.

  “Hey, is there any place to swim around here?” Kevin asked.

  I hesitated for a second, thinking of the little waterfall and swimming hole, wanting to keep it a secret, a hideaway for Charlie and me. “There’s a lake over here. We have a lifeguard on duty while you guys aren’t in classes.”

  “There’s a waterfall, too,” Tom said. “Right down this trail.”

  So much for secrets.

  He started down the trail and the other campers went after him, Moose kicking Brian in the ass while he tried to talk to Molly, ducking under tree branches as he went. We made it to the clearing eventually but everybody came to a dead stop, as soon as they got there, right in front of me, and I sensed an immediate disturbance in the air, shock registering on the faces of the kids.

  “Oh my God,” I cried once I saw what they saw, pushing my way past them, only to crumble to my knees at the sight, the campers all erupting into screams, a violent hysteria taking over us all.

  Charlie lay sprawled across the rocks next to the water, her head twisted at an impossible angle to her torso, bent as if looking way too far back at me, her arms akimbo, like a deformed swastika. Her entire body was naked, exposed, suddenly not so beautiful, her dead gaze shooting blankly up across the unsympathetic rocks at the edge of the waterfall. Broken splinters of bone stretched the flesh around her knees and elbows, jagged and blood-stained ends piercing through the skin, fierce bursts of red and white color across black and blue stretches of flesh. I was afraid her whole body would collapse, formless, if I tried to lift her.

  “Oh my God,” I barely managed to whimper again, looking at pools of blood collected in the rocks and crevices that her flesh and bones had been smashed upon.

  I closed my eyes, but saw her just as clearly in my mind, the image painted there in bold colors. I wanted this to not be real; I wanted that body to still be alive. I wanted that body to breathe. I wanted that body to swim lithely around me again. I wanted that body to brush up against me. I wanted that body to be anything but what it was.

  *8*

  Marianne agreed to keep an eye on Tom and Kevin, Tilly and Molly, and Brian and Moose for me. I was still shaken up from finding Charlie dead like that; the kids weren’t much better, but for me, I couldn’t get over that I had been there with her only a few hours before, and I struggled with not only the horror, but my confusion over how it could have happened.

  I knew this left Marianne with a handful, chaperoning my kids; she had her own students and the whole camp was in an uproar. But seeing Charlie, her body bruised and broken, haunted me and I couldn’t get the image out of my nerve-wracked brain. I had to have been there, right before she died; whether explicably or not, I felt guilty.

  I wanted to sneak back to my cabin through the woods straight from the clearing, which really wasn’t that far, just so no one would find me randomly on the trail. But I didn’t even make it past the central clearing when I heard Dalia hiss my name.

  “Jones,” she said briskly, waving me toward where she lurked behind a cabin on the central clearing, right where I had planned on ducking into the woods.

  I looked around quickly, saw no one else was near, or watching me, or anything else. I stepped behind the building with Dalia. “What are you doing over here?” I asked, continuing to scan our surroundings.

  “Waiting for you,” she hissed, like it was obvious.

  “Waiting? How did you know I’d be here?”

  “I’m very intuitive,” she explained.

  “Good skill for stalking,” I suggested.

  “Jones, the police are looking for you.”

  I leaned back against the wall. I was still shocked from the sight of Charlie; I didn’t want to deal with Dalia, who I liked, much less the police, who I did not. I needed a few minutes alone to think through this. Something told me I wasn’t going to get it.

  “Did you go out there with her?” she asked me intensely. “Everyone is saying you and Charlie went out to the falls together and that’s why the police want to talk to you. You two went out together and now she’s dead.”

  “Oh my God,” I groaned.

  It sounded really bad that way.

  “Did you go out there with her?”

  “I did - yes, I did,” I said, “but we came back here together. That’s the last I saw her, I swear. We came back here together.” Somehow I didn’t sound so matter-of-fact when I spoke, even though it was the truth. This was not going to go well.

  “What did you do with her?” she asked.

  “No, God, no, Dalia,”
I said, knowing what she was thinking. “Please stop. We went out there, we went swimming. She’s not like that. Seriously,” I pleaded. I couldn’t believe she was jealous over a dead girl.

  “Alright,” she said, peeking her head out around the corner. “Look, you’re going to have to talk to the police, but except for me, you don’t even know they’re looking for you, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said.

  “Alright, then,” she said, glancing around the corner of the cabin again. “Come over to my cabin – they’re going to look in yours first. We’ll buy you some time to get your head together. Then sit down with them and just tell them what happened. The truth - what you did together and when you last saw her. It’ll be okay.”

  She made sense; I was glad to let someone else think and make decisions. Maybe it was a good thing she found me, after all. I followed her as she cut through the woods like I’d planned to do, except over to her cabin instead. We went in and she closed the door behind us, pulling the curtains shut. She pulled me onto the bed and I laid there in her arms, shaking. “I don’t understand. Did she fall from somewhere? What happened?”

  “No one knows yet, Jones,” she told me. “Just relax. It’s not your fault, you didn’t have anything to do with this.” She rubbed the back of my head and held my head against her chest.

  “Do people think I had something to do with this?” I asked her, trying to focus but having a difficult time with my face in such close proximity to her breasts, offering a soft cushion for my cheeks, the lace of her black undershirt impressing me with its gentle textures.

  “Nobody’s saying anything,” she said, her voice soothing, her chest purring in my ear. She continued to stroke my head, lulling me into a comfort I didn’t dare surrender to. “Everybody’s just freaking out right now.”

  “I got to go see the cops,” I sighed.

  “You can tell them you were with me.”

  “Dalia,” I started to protest, looking up at her, but her gaze stopped me. She squirmed beneath me, sliding down along the length of me, until her face was right in front of mine. Last night was a warm-up, not a fluke, I happily supposed, by the look in her eyes. I wasn’t going to resist. No matter what I’d been through. Fuck the police.

  The police.

  “Oh my God,” I sighed heavily. “I’ve really got to go. The cops need to talk to me still.”

  I don’t think I was convincing; Dalia just continued staring at me with the same wicked grin. “Come on, Jones,” she whispered, her voice dangerous and coy. “While the police are looking for you.”

  I knew I should go, but my body rigidly forbade it; I smiled, my will melting, my brain turning to jelly, my eyes crossing, trying focus on her lips, hovering so near mine, even as I heard my name shouted.

  “Jones!”

  Something was banging as loudly as my blood.

  “Jones!”

  The police were at the door.

  I cursed, imagining a mountain of twisted metal and rubble at the foot of a great obelisk to the sky, me climbing my way out of it to answer the door. The world conspired against me.

  *9*

  “Are you alright?” Dr. Phillips asked me, from behind his desk. He sat sideways, his face turned toward me, one leg up and crossed over the other, his right arm fidgeting with a pen on the desk. Charlie was his niece, I reminded myself, something I had only learned that morning. He was visibly upset, but seemed to have his emotions in check for the most part, directing his concern toward me.

  “I’m a little in shock, I think,” I said. “I was with her just this morning. I mean, I didn’t even really know her, but just the same. I feel horrible - and I know it must be worse for you. You don’t have to worry about me, Dr. Phillips. Really.”

  Only hours before, I had chased her against the current below the waterfall, always darting just out of my reach, bursting suddenly and occasionally above the surface of the stream. Eventually she got tired, or tired of the game, and let me slip my arms around her at last and I had held her light, buoyant body in my arms, her face poking above the water and resting on my shoulder, her legs kicking above mine.

  But I couldn’t recall that beautiful vision now, though, without it shattering and eroding into a crushed and lacerated pulp of shapeless, torn flesh, slipping out of my fingertips. There weren’t even enough bones left unbroken to lift her from the pool of blood collecting between the impartial stone, the jagged rock edges, beneath her.

  With the patience of a psychiatrist, looking intently at me, Dr. Phillips said, “I am worried about you, though. If you need to leave the camp, I understand. But the police want you to stay.”

  I realized there was less sympathy in his voice than I had thought, that he was grimacing so intently that I started wondering if he was actually just trying to feel me out, get a read on me. Like I might be hiding some secret guilt.

  Of which I was feeling plenty, even though I wasn’t actually guilty of anything.

  “I don’t think the police would let me leave,” I said, shifting uncomfortably in my wooden seat, under the gaze of the moose head behind Dr. Phillips. It was easier to focus on that than him, fearing his anger or judgment.

  “Well,” he said slowly, as if pondering it. “You’re not officially a suspect.”

  “Person of interest,” I offered.

  He nodded. “Nobody thinks you did this,” he assured me, despite my perceptions a moment ago. “You’re just the last person known to be with her, so anything you remember, whether you realize it or not, could be of some importance.”

  “Did somebody do this to her, or did she fall?” I asked.

  “I don’t think the police know, to be honest,” Phillips said. “You’ve talked to them more than I have actually. Did they tell you what they thought? Mention any kind of leads?”

  They hadn’t; that’s not how policing works.

  Detective Sarah Washington was the investigating officer, and she had questioned me at some length earlier, after the discovery, after dragging me out Dalia’s bed. Her hair was pulled tight around her skull, her frame tightly uniformed, her hips armed with a pistol and a nightstick, a walkie-talkie and handcuffs. She was serious business and I never dared look away from her, for even a second.

  She demanded my absolute attention.

  “What were you and Charlie doing at the waterfall this morning?” she had asked, her gaze stern. I listened for any hint of accusation in the tone. Everything about her was stern, the crispness of her uniform, the tightness of the buns in her hair, the handle of her pistol protruding from her hip, its cold, black steel complementary to her icy demeanor.

  “Swimming,” I told her.

  “Were you romantically involved?” she asked.

  “I just met her.”

  “Whose idea was it to go swimming?”

  “Hers.”

  “How did she know about it?”

  “She’d been there before.”

  “With who?”

  “A boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, or something.”

  “How do you know about this?”

  “She talked about it.”

  “I thought you just met her.”

  “She had problems with the boyfriend,” I explained. The pace of the questioning was making me nervous. I had nothing to fear, but I felt like I was forced to defend myself - and the truth wasn’t enough of a shield. “She talked a lot about it. I didn’t ask.”

  “What else did she tell you?

  “She had scars, from her boyfriend. He was abusive,” I said, uncomfortable from the heat of the interrogation, and the swamp of August, broiling together in a sweaty simmer. I shelled out brisk, honest answers to her curt questions. I hadn’t hurt Charlie, I was willing to tell her what I knew so she could find out who did. “I think she felt the need to explain before we went swimming. Because I’d see them.”

  “Any feelings toward Charlie?”

  “I felt sorry for her.”

  Or at least I had tried t
o feel sorry.

  “Did you make any sexual advances?”

  “We just went swimming. It was her idea.”

  “You didn’t try anything? Get shot down?”

  Like I would admit that.

  “Is this really relevant?”

  “Just trying to clear you of any motive.”

  “She didn’t want to fool around.”

  “What was your reaction?”

  “I was disappointed, sure. She’s hot. Was hot.”

  “Angry?”

  “No,” I said. “Look,” I muttered, trying to help Officer Washington. “She seemed a little messed up in her head. About an abortion, about an abusive boyfriend. I think her self-esteem was low. She wanted to see how I reacted to the scars. She wasn’t looking to have sex or anything.”

  “That seems likely.”

  Bitch.

  “Then what did you do?” she asked.

  “We swam for a little while, and then I walked her back to her cabin. That was it, I went back to mine.” Sure, I had hung around there, hoping for an invitation in, long enough that it would have been awkward with anyone else. But Charlie just laughed at me and sent me sweetly on my way.

  “Hm,” she grunted. “I can believe that.”

  Whatever. Asshole.

  Dr. Phillips tightened his lips grimly as I recounted the interrogation with Officer Washington. I could tell by his eyes that he didn’t know what to really believe. “They have to ask that stuff,” he offered. “What do you think?”

  “About what happened to Charlie?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He eyed me carefully.

  I couldn’t believe his temperance.

  “I’m pretty confused. She went back and jumped off of the waterfall? She was a little depressed and emotionally a mess, maybe, I could tell. She went out there to make herself feel better. I was respectful, Dr. Phillips,” I insisted, fixing my gaze on him. “I didn’t really try anything. She seemed happy while we were there. But maybe she got home and none of it mattered. I couldn’t help her for real. Not just like that.”