The screen flickered, and I saw the inside of the gas station, the man at the counter tapping his fingers as he waited for customers. The frame rate was low, and the screen jumpy and somewhat out of focus, but the door opened and a dark shape entered.
It crawled along the ground, propelling itself forward with a single stump-like arm attached to a greater mass of black, similar in shape to a man’s torso. The attendant pulled a gun from under the counter and began firing, bullets gouging into the floor, but the dark shape leapt onto him, swirls of black shredding his shirt in seconds. Then the camera blurred out, censored by the news team, but not before I saw what had been on the man’s chest.
A tattoo of a swastika.
I shut off the television, staring at the tattoo on my arm. My muscle spasmed slightly, and it twitched, making me jump backwards. And in my panic, I began to drink, downing a fifth of whiskey before I could think it through. But before I passed out, I remember doing one thing.
I set the camera of my laptop so it could view my bed, and I pressed record. Then I took four more shots, until I couldn’t remember slipping away.
And today, I watched the footage. Watched as the dark swirls of ink peeled from my skin, twisting away until they formed an imitation shaped like my own body. Watched as it limped from the room, now as a torso with two stumpy arms, the collection of pictures and designs moving together in a single mass.
It returned with the light of dawn, holding a flap of skin with a tattoo on it up to the camera on my laptop so I could see the picture. Then it then pushed the skin onto my bare chest until they meshed together, and I had a new tattoo. A tattoo of a globe, one that I knew too well.
A warning.
And I wonder what will happen when all my skin is covered by ink, and its template is complete.
Crows
In college, I struggled to make ends meet. Most of my meals consisted nearly entirely of ramen noodles, garnished with a scrambled egg if my finances were stronger than usual, combined with the weekly splurge of a candy bar and soda each Friday. I worked a part time job, but city rent was expensive, my classes were too tough for me to work more than twenty hours a week, and my parents had cut me off the year before.
I was desperate, searching for any solution to bring in spare cash. And eventually, I found one.
It started as a joke among my friends.
“You know, Tony,” said one of my roommates as I poured a sad portion of noodles and half a spice pack into boiling water, “even the pigeons in this city have better meals than you do.”
“Meals?” countered another one of my roommates, laughing. “Hell, I bet they even have higher savings in their bank accounts than him.”
They laughed, and I ate my soup with a frown. But the idea stuck in my head, and that night I lay awake, pondering.
I’d often picked up spare change on the sidewalk on the way to class – nothing huge; a penny here, a dime there, maybe a quarter if I was lucky. But that was just a small portion of the city – from end to end, there was likely a small fortune hidden in the labyrinth, small rewards gleaming from cracks in the sidewalk and among the weeds. I didn’t have time to retrieve them, but someone did.
And that someone was test subject number one: Jeffrey the crow.
I’d made friends with Jeffrey the year before as he hobbled outside my apartment, pecking for food along the street. His beady eyes had squinted at me as I walked to class, following me as I ate a granola bar for breakfast, a splurge I could justify since I had worked an extra hour that week.
“Caw,” he cried, flapping his wings to flutter just past my head to land on the path in front of me. “Caw!”
“Get,” I said, clutching the granola bar tight and trying to sidestep him.
His head tilted as he shuffled to stand directly in front of me and he cawed again. Expectant. Waiting for me to pay the toll to use his path.
So I left him a tiny piece of the bar and continued walking. And Jeffrey never forgot my gift.
Every morning, he waited for me outside and we developed a relationship, a one-way tribute where I would share a crumb, a noodle, or some other minute piece of food on my way to class. And over time, Jeffrey grew on me – plus, I realized just how smart Jeffrey could be for a bird. For instance, after a month, he learned I never left my apartment on weekends, so he stopped showing up outside my door on those days. And after two months, he started giving me trinkets in exchange for the bits of food.
They were always small – a bit of string, a button, maybe a hair tie. But every so often, maybe once every two weeks, Jeffrey would bring me a coin. And now, with the idea fresh in my head, I’d decided to capitalize on that.
So every morning that Jeffrey brought me a coin, I gave him twice as much food, plus a raisin, which was his favorite treat. For two months, Jeffrey failed to realize the trend, instead complaining on the days where he received his normal portions. Then, during the third month, something clicked. And Jeffrey only brought me coins from that day forward.
At first, it was only amusing. Using my collegiate level math skills, I calculated that Jeffrey was contributing about 60 cents per week on average to my net worth. Enough to bolster my diet with two to three bananas a week.
But Jeffrey had friend crows, ones that had watched our interactions from the street but never approached. And eventually, they too learned the pattern, until by the time I graduated, twelve crows brought me presents each morning, a whopping $7.20 a week, equivalent to just over a pound of bacon at the store. It became a running joke among my roommates, but their eyes still widened in awe as the crows queued up each morning bearing gifts.
I was sad to have ended my project when I graduated – it had been fun, but I’d landed a job at a plant six hours north of my college, and this job brought home far more bacon than crows could. So I packed my belongings into my car, feeding Jeffrey one last time as I prepared to move into my new apartment. He squinted his eyes and hopped closer as I started the engine, and I frowned, sad to see him go.
So on a whim, I took Jeffrey with me.
He didn’t seem to mind the ride, especially the boiled peanuts I fed him from the gas station at our first stop. And he took a particular interest in the heating vents, fanning his wings out to absorb their warmth.
Civilization drifted away as we drove – fewer buildings appearing until we were deep in the countryside, forests taking over where I was used to streets. And on arrival, I released Jeffrey from my car as I unpacked into my new place, watching him hop after me with each trip until he eventually grew bored and fluttered off.
Each morning, he still met me, quickly growing used to my schedule and still bringing coins in exchange for breakfast. And the other crows in the area were observant to this outsider, watching our exchange, until only ten days in, they too started finding coins for me. I smiled – it looked like I wasn’t going to leave my project behind after all.
But each day, fewer coins showed up at my doorstep – in the countryside, there were far fewer coins to be found. And Jeffrey started bringing other objects again, nudging them towards me for food, until six weeks in, there was no spare change left to be found. I felt bad for him, having drawn him away from his home, so I still paid him in full – two peanuts for each item. Though now there were twelve crows that showed up at my door, and the number was growing each day.
And then, one day, Jeffrey brought me something different. Standing on the path to my car, he dropped something small and white onto the ground. Something hard that bounced, that made the hair on my neck raise as I recognized it.
A tooth. More precisely, a molar – what looked to be a human molar.
“No, Jeffrey,” I said, stepping backwards and pulling a quarter from my pocket. “You have to bring me quarters. Not... not this.”
“Caw,” he said, insistent and flapping his wings. He tilted his head as I walked to my car, picking the molar back up and landing on the hood. “Caw.”
With a soft tink, he
dropped it on the metal, scratching at it, his eyes narrowed. Swallowing, I reached forward and grabbed it through my mittens, then handed him a peanut out of guilt. I suppose I should have expected him to bring something like this every once in a while, and I put the thought into the back of my head.
But the other crows had been watching the transaction. And by the end of the next week, their numbers had reached two dozen.
Every morning, they flocked to me as I waded through them, cawing and flapping, each searching for a reward. And each with something new in their beaks. They dropped it to the ground as I bit my lip, watching the small white objects come to rest on the concrete.
Teeth. Twenty-four of them, one for each crow.
And every day, they brought more. Even after I stopped rewarding them, they continued to show up on my doorstep, dropping the teeth in a mound, their eyes angry as I refused to give them payment but instead swept the teeth under my porch. Other crows still picked up on their behavior, and their number still grew larger as more teeth would be deposited.
It’s been three months since Jeffrey brought the first tooth. I don’t know where they find them, or how they can be so plentiful. I don’t want to know, because wherever they are getting them from, it must be nearby.
But what I do know is that I now have five pounds of human molars under my porch.
The Gates of Hell
The following is the final entry from Ash Sterling’s journal, the last of his family line, and leader of a crew of thirty that died in a mine collapse that resulted in the permanent closing of the mine. It was recorded by his maid, who believed him insane.
***
In the first week of eighth grade, my teacher asked my class to research our nationalities. Reinaldo, in a seat to my left, said he could track his lineage a hundred years back to his ancestors sailing across Atlantic from Spain. John, to my right, was half German, and being barely twenty years after the end of World War II, his lineage stopped suspiciously short on his father’s side. Tim was English. Mary, French. Chang, Chinese.
Then, after calling upon the rest of the class, Ms. Francisco peered above the lip of her clipboard at me with a frown. “Bring your project forward. It’s time for you to present.” Even after one week of school, Ms. Francisco and I had already found several differences between us. Undoubtedly, she had heard of me from my teachers reaching back until kindergarten.
I knew she had waited to call upon me last after seeing my project, a poster board blank save for four black and white photographs super glued onto a bed of dirt.
“This is my father,” I said, pointing at the bottommost picture, which was in color, “Aiden, from the mine.
“And this is his father.” I pointed at a black and white photograph of a man with a scraggly beard reaching down to his waist. “Vulcan, from the mine.
“And this is his father, Fino, from the mine.” I gestured at a still photo, slightly out of focus, of my great-grandfather leaning on his pickaxe.
“And his father, Saraph, from the mine,” I finished, pointing to a hand-drawn portrait of the earliest ancestor I could find. Despite the years, the age gap, and the errors of the artist’s hand, visitors at my house often remarked on the likeness between me and him. Perhaps it was the angle of the nose, the set jaw, or his narrow face. But I thought it was his eyes – searching, always searching from its place above the mantelpiece, though his body was long buried in our backyard.
“And I am Ash Sterling, from the mine.”
“No, Ash,” said Ms. Francisco, her voice taking the tone of a lecture to one who was slower than the rest of the group. “What nationality are you? What country is your family from?”
Ms. Francisco had moved here the year prior, and she was unfamiliar with the culture of our town. My family was known as one of the mud-walkers, with a line that stretched back to the opening of the mine. Some people even joked behind our backs, saying that us mud-walkers were so dirty that we crawled out of the mine itself. But we were proud of our heritage.
“Here,” I replied. “We’ve been here since the mine began, and no one can remember further.”
“Well, it’s not like you just popped out here,” said John, the German, giggling from the front row. “Everyone comes from somewhere.”
“We’ve been here since the beginning of this town. And everyone does come from somewhere, don’t they, John? Even the Nazis.”
My foot was in the principal’s office before the giggles subsided, and I took the chair I had claimed as my own by the door. I had been there so often that the cushion had begun to conform to the contour of my ass, and my father no longer put up a show to the principal that he cared when he picked me up.
“You done did right, Ash,” my father said, a cigarette smoldering out the left side of his mouth. “The mine gave us everything we got and will continue giving. Like Father done said, you just got to dig deeper. We done been here longer than anyone. This is our town. It doesn’t belong to these outsiders.” He flicked the cigarette, and an ember fell on his exposed arm, but his face remained still.
A little ember never made us Sterlings flinch.
That was twenty-five years ago, and today, my father coughed the last of the dirt from his lungs before I immersed him six feet under in it. And on his deathbed, he asked me to look behind the portrait of Saraph on the mantel, where I found a small leather-bound notebook. Like all things in our house, dirt fell from the pages as I brought it to his bed.
“Ash, don’t never forget who you are. The mine…the mine is our birthright. This is the journal of the grandfather of my father, Saraph. Many said he went insane in his age, but I think he saw some truth. Keep it. It belongs to you now.”
I took the journal from my father, and he fell away from this world, a cigarette burning to a stub still in his lips. When I tried to lift him from the bed, I knocked over an ashtray on his dresser, and it scattered over his sheets and lifeless form. Despite hours of scrubbing, I never could remove the stains that outlined where his body had rested upon the sheets, and the holes remained where the live embers had burned into the cloth. Sometimes, when I walk past his room deep in the night, I can just smell a whiff of smoke from inside.
I had worked in the mine since I was seventeen, and by twenty, I was known as one of the best men who had ever set foot in the tunnels. And when my father passed, I took his position as head of our forty-member team, known for exploring deeper than the others in search of fresh silver veins.
Each night, I built a fire in my fireplace, stared at Saraph’s picture with the same searching eyes that would stare back, and read his notebook. Saraph’s words often wound in circles that could well have contributed to why he was deemed mad. But I was determined and picked out the passages that seemed to bear the most importance.
From Entry 1: Thirty of us escaped from that wretched place, and earth has closed behind us. We escaped like none ever had, but left behind treasure, a treasure too heavy to carry. Here we shall build our town.
From Entry 24: The brightest gems are found the deepest. This we know. This we have known and have seen with our own eyes. And we shall take them.
From Entry 39: Silver from the mine, connect to the silver in us. The pure belongs to us.
From Entry 47: The tunnels collapsed overnight with my hope. They seal us off.
From the Last Entry: We have failed. Soon age will take me. Alas, I am reclaimed.
And as the years passed, I drove my team deeper into the mine. I had dreams that filled my mind at night. Dreams of silver below, stretching farther than I could ever reach, to the core of the earth that burned hotter than I could even stand.
I had explored all of the deepest regions of the mine but could find no new silver. All the regions but one.
“Today we investigate the softer tunnels,” I said, staring out at my team. The majority of the members had families stretching back as long as mine, though there was a clique of outsiders who had only been on the team for a generation o
r two. At my statement, one of them spoke up, his voice crumbling like fresh dirt.
“The soft tunnels? The ones prone to collapsing, without enough stone to hold them steady?”
“Those are the ones. The last time they were touched was a hundred years ago, at the opening of the mine. Technology has advanced since then, and we can reach what our fathers could not.”
“It’s too dangerous, even now,” he said, and the other outsiders murmured around him in agreement.
“We press on, whether you come or not.”
Five of the outsiders left our team that day, and our numbers dropped to thirty-five. We began carving into the soft tunnels.
Progress was fast as the rock here was already broken apart from tunnels that had fallen in years before. As we dug deeper, we found bones in the rock, bones that looked far too much like my own and were accompanied by mining helmets and tools. On the hard walls, I could see where pick axes had once bored into the stone, until even those fell away and the hard rock returned. But then, five weeks into digging, we broke into soft rock again.
On these walls, I could see the marks of digging utensils unlike I had ever seen. They looked like five-prong rakes, and it took me a day to realize they matched the contours of my own fingernails and appeared as if they dug up, not down.
Then we found more bones, though these were accompanied by no mining gear. Their ends were scorched, burned into ash that flaked away as we removed them.
Dissent grew among the outsiders, and two more quit.
“I don’t like it,” said one of the remaining three. “How’d these bones get here? Ain’t nobody been this deep. Maybe fell through in an earthquake?”
“I dunno,” said the other, his headlamp flickering. “Maybe they ain’t human. Maybe something else lives down here. Some other creature.”
Then the third whispered, in a voice that echoed down the cave walls and caused even my best men to stir in their boots.
“Maybe we should stop digging. Maybe we weren’t meant to dig this far.”
Tales of the Sinister: Twelve Terrifying Stories Page 6