The Keeper of the Crows

by Kyle Alexander Romines

  He could see her breath when she mouthed the words. A soft sound came from the direction of the barn, and Gary glanced over at the worn building. At his feet, Lizzy finally settled into an uneasy sleep.

  When he turned back, the sound of the shutting screen door let him know Mary had returned to the warmth of the house. Gary was glad she chose not to press the issue. Communication was becoming more difficult between them lately. It was something he hoped was not a harbinger of things to come.

  It didn’t help that he usually grew more demanding during the fall season. For one, the harvest was frequently a stressful time for him. For another, it brought back bad memories from another time in his life.

  “Forget you, Logan Randall,” he muttered as he lit a cigarette. The farmer inhaled the smoke into his lungs. Gary knew smoking was a filthy habit. He tried to quit several times to satisfy Ben. Kicking the habit was more difficult than he anticipated, especially when things were so stressful.

  Jeffrey Daniels is dead. No, not just dead. Murdered. Maybe it means nothing, Gary thought as he sucked down another lungful. As much as he wanted to believe that, he couldn’t. Logan would not have driven all the way out here if it wasn’t serious.

  Going into the back room in the barn earlier spooked him enough as it was. He decided not to focus on what happened all those years ago. If Logan was right about anything, it was about not having regrets.

  Having a child, though, mellowed Gary. He was no longer immune to doubts. Logan, who never married, was clueless in that department. Gary doubted Logan ever put anyone first other than himself.

  Bottling it in is the worst part. Living in fear. Fear that, unlikely as it was, he would be found out. Fear of the unknown. It didn’t surprise him that Jeff came home. Jeff was always the one closest to what had happened that night. After all, he was living next to the Alistair Farm at the time. Gary was sure that was why Jeff moved away from Gray Hollow when his father died. He was never close to Jeff, so he couldn’t be sure; of all the people there that night, Jeff was the outsider.

  “That’s it,” Gary said. He flicked the cigarette away. He wasn’t going to think about this anymore. The door creaked when he opened it, and he left the porch behind.

  As he reached for the lock, Gary glanced out the window. He did a double take when he saw what looked like a shadow emerge from the barn. He was certain he was imagining things, but for a moment he thought he saw something like a pitchfork in its grip. Before becoming fully alarmed, Gary blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. He peered out the window again, but all he saw was the dark grass rippling in the autumn wind.

  The air was cooler than usual inside the house. Gary turned up the thermostat on his way up the stairs and flipped off the light switch. Outside, he could still see the glow of the Halloween lights. The lights were actually comforting to the part of his brain still disturbed by Logan Randall’s visit. On some childlike level, the lights made him feel safe.

  He looked into his son’s room. The boy was asleep, curled up next to a brown teddy bear. Gary frowned. In his opinion, Ben was getting a little too old for a stuffed animal. He was almost eight. If he could play sports, he shouldn’t be sleeping with a teddy bear.

  “Ben’s out of it,” Gary said when he entered their bedroom. Mary was already in bed reading a book.

  “Did you go over his homework?” Mary asked without bothering to look up.

  Gary pulled his shirt over his head and grabbed his toothbrush. He was supposed to help Ben with math.

  “I was going to, Mary, I promise. He’s asleep.”

  “Why did I have a feeling you were going to say that? You know Ben’s struggling. It isn’t hard to contribute.”

  Of course I contribute, he thought, frustrated. What else do you call rooting around in the barn for decorations?

  “Maybe you should do it,” Gary said, taking off his watch. “Aren’t you better at that sort of thing anyway? Math has never been my strong suit.”

  He instantly regretted his words, realizing they would probably start another fight about his involvement in his son’s life. With a sigh, he settled into bed next to her and waited.

  “That’s the truth,” Mary muttered dispassionately. Gary waited for the usual crack about his lack of a college education to come up, but it didn’t. He wasn’t sure if he should take her lack of caring as a good or bad sign.

  After a few minutes of total silence, the sound of barking echoed through the night.

  Mary looked up at him.

  “Are you going to put a stop to that?”

  “Honey, Lizzy’s probably chasing a rabbit or something.”

  The barking grew louder and more urgent.

  “Gary—”

  “Fine,” he muttered. Gary slid from under the covers. He looked under the blinds of the window and glanced down at the porch. The golden retriever was growling at something in the field.

  Gary’s eyes widened when he spotted a shadowy figure walking toward the house under the barn light. It was too dark to see who it was. The figure looked up at him, almost as if whomever it was knew Gary was watching.

  Did Logan come back? Perhaps the deputy forgot to mention something earlier. But surely he would have called, were that the case.

  “What is it?” Mary asked.

  “There’s someone outside. Stay here, I’m going to see who it is.”

  “For God’s sake, Gary, call the cops first.”

  He nodded and grabbed his phone. “That’s weird,” he muttered. “My phone’s not working.”

  “Neither is mine,” Mary said, surprised. “It’s dead.”

  “Try the landline,” Gary said. “I’m going to find out what’s happening.” He snatched his shirt off the floor. Gary was halfway down the stairs when he heard something that sounded like a yelp from Lizzy. He took off running down the steps. When the farmer threw open the screen door, he saw his dog lying on the ground, whimpering.

  “Lizzy!” Gary yelled. He knelt down next to her and ran trembling hands through her fur. There was no police car around. This was not the work of Logan Randall.

  An expression of horror crossed his face as he drew his hand back. It was wet. In the dim light of the lawn decorations, he could see blood on his hands.

  Then all the power went off. The lawn decorations, the barn light, and the house electricity faded. Complete blackness cloaked the farm.

  “Gary?” he heard Mary call from the house. “None of the phones are working.”

  “Stay there,” he repeated. Gary ran to the toolbox in the shed close to the barn. He shivered in the cold, his hands shaking. As he turned to go back to the house, Gary heard the screen door slam shut.

  He’s inside the house, Gary realized, and his skin started to crawl. He cast one furtive glance toward the dying retriever, then threw open the door to his house and stepped inside.

  “Mary,” he whispered. There was no response. The house was completely dark, with no sign of movement. Everything was quiet.

  He crept toward the bottom of the staircase. Gary’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, and he carefully inspected the living room and dining room as he passed them. The intruder could be hiding anywhere. He gripped the staircase and made his way up, listening quietly for warning signs.

  The door to his son’s room was open. Ben wasn’t in his bed. Then Gary heard something coming from his bedroom. He tiptoed inside.

  “Gary,” his wife whispered. She was on the floor next to the bed, holding Ben. Her hands were shaking. “There’s someone in the house.”

  “I know,” he replied. “I’m going to sneak back downstairs and get the rifle. You lock the door and don’t open it.”

  The floorboards creaked underneath him when he stepped off the last stair. Every hair on the farmer’s body stood on end. He snatched the keys off the counter and ran to his office to get to the safe. His foot caught on something resting in the hallway, and Gary slipped. The key fell out of his hands. He looked to see what he tripped ove
r.

  A pitchfork.

  “Gary,” a strange voice called in the darkness. The farmer scrambled backwards on the floor. A distorted shape stepped out of the shadows. Gary reached out and grabbed the key. The figure started toward him. Gary hobbled toward the safe. His ankle was sprained, maybe worse.

  The figure bent down, picked up the pitchfork, and continued walking slowly in his direction. Gary thrust the key into the safe hastily and removed the rifle, fumbling to switch the safety off.

  He could feel the intruder closing in on him. Gary swung the gun in the direction of the shadowy figure. His shaking finger pulled the trigger.

  The shell exploded out of the gun. It caught the figure squarely in the chest. The figure was picked up by the impact and thrown back into the next room.

  How? Gary thought, clutching the rifle tightly. No person would have been sent back that far into the air, even at such close range. He stepped back into the hallway.

  Through the window, a beam of moonlight illuminated the hallway. There was no body on the ground. Instead, he could see a lump of what looked like hay strung out over the floorboards.

  “Impossible,” he said. He ran his hands through the straw. He saw the shadow move on the wall behind him. Gary moved to get out of the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. The pitchfork slashed the front of his chest. Gary shouted in pain, firing again.

  This time, his shot went wild and shattered the window. A cool breeze swept into the house. Gary slumped to the ground, his head spinning in pain.

  Above, Mary screamed from inside the bedroom. The figure turned and headed up the staircase.

  “No,” Gary cried. He tried to stand, and his weight collapsed due to his ankle. He started to crawl.

  The figure staggered to the top of the stairs and pounded away at the door.

  ***

  Inside the bedroom, Mary remained frozen. Ben cried in her arms. Then everything went silent. She started to stand up, unsure of what to do.

  “Gary?” she whispered, inching closer to the door.

  The spikes of the pitchfork tore through the door. She screamed as the figure on the other side of the door ripped the pitchfork out and slammed it against the wooden door again and again.

  “Ben!” she shouted, searching desperately for a way out. Mary ran over to the window and motioned for her son to follow her. She tried opening the window, but it was stuck. Tears streaked down her face. Finally, she succeeded in getting the window open.

  “Ben, get out on the roof,” she said, urging him forward.

  At that moment, the door burst open. Mary screamed as a dark figure slowly walked into the bedroom. As it grew closer, the moonlight from the outside covered it in an unearthly glow. She found herself rooted to the spot, unable to look at anything except its horrifying stitched face.

  The pitchfork slammed into her, pinning her to the wall. She felt a sharp pain, and blood gushed from her body. The figure turned to the boy standing next to the window.

  A bullet slammed into the intruder. “Come on,” Gary shouted. He helped his son out onto the roof. He held Ben’s hand tightly, afraid their pursuer would rise again.

  Inside the bedroom, the figure picked itself up again.

  As Gary turned to move, his eyes locked on the dead body pinned to the wall. He lost his balance and fell off the roof, taking Ben with him. Everything went black.

  Disoriented, he opened his eyes. The ground felt hard beneath him. And cold. He could feel his blood leaking through his clothes and into the soil. Every part of his body was in pain. The rifle loomed in the distance.

  I fell, Gary remembered when he spotted the roof.

  Then he saw his son next to him, face down on the ground.

  “Ben?” he asked, trying desperately to wake his son. Gary shook the boy. There was no response.

  Gary thought he heard laughter coming from inside the house. He looked up into the window and saw a familiar twisted face looking down at him. When he blinked, the figure disappeared.

  For a moment, all was silent once more. Then he heard the creaking sound of the staircase coming from inside the house. The screen door swung open a few seconds later.

  Chapter Five

  It was still dark when Jezebel pulled into the driveway. Located on the western end of the county, the remote farm was almost completely cut off from the rest of Gray Hollow. She quickly decided not to wait for Logan Randall and got out of the car. When he did arrive, Logan was going to be testy. The deputy wasn’t happy to take her call so early in the morning. Jezebel put him in his place over the phone. She was the sheriff, and she intended for it to stay that way. Right now, their differences would have to take a back seat to the task at hand. They had work to do.

  She cleared her throat.

  “Mr. Brinkley?” Walking over to a dirt-covered truck, she found herself looking at a sixtyish man leaning against the vehicle. Jezebel spotted a young boy in the truck staring down at the floorboard.

  “That’s me,” he said in a weak voice, “Mike Brinkley.” His gray hair, peppered with remnants of black, was disheveled. He looked genuinely disturbed.

  Jezebel paused. The words caught in her throat. This was really happening. Someone else was dead. It was only yesterday they discovered the first body. It was too early to tell if the two killings were connected, but her gut told her they were. Jezebel didn’t believe in coincidences.

  “Would you mind telling me what happened?” the sheriff asked. “I realize we went over it on the phone, but I need you to go over exactly what you did this morning.”

  This changed the parameters of the investigation entirely. Jezebel had hoped to catch whoever killed Jeffrey Daniels quickly. Above all, she prayed it was an isolated incident. If other people were being killed, it was more than just some thief looking to score some money. Someone was out there murdering the people of Gray Hollow. Jezebel needed to figure out why, and fast. Before things escalated even further.

  “I had just settled down to bed last night,” Brinkley said. He stared at the silent house. “We live on the farm over past the creek. That’s my grandson, Tim, in the car. If I’d known what was waiting for us here, I never would have brought him.”

  Jezebel saw the bloodied carcass of a dog close to the barn. The yellow fur was mixed with a sea of red. She felt a stab of pity for the boy in the truck.

  “Around eleven or so last night, I thought I heard gunshots. Sounded like it might be someone poaching on Mary’s land, but I went over here this morning just to check.”

  “Mary?” Jezebel asked.

  “She brought us banana bread once when we moved here,” the old man said quietly. “She introduced herself, along with her boy.” The sheriff could hear the regret in his voice. She suspected the man was wondering how things might have been different if he went to the farm immediately after hearing the shots.

  “How many gunshots did you hear?” Jezebel asked.

  “At least three. Maybe more.”

  Jeffrey Daniels died from bleeding to death, not from a gunshot. We need to find the weapon, she thought. Maybe we can trace it.

  “So the victims were shot to death?”

  “That’s the strange thing. I didn’t see any bullet holes on the—on the bodies. Though I didn’t look too close,” he added quickly.

  “Two victims,” she said. “One in the house, one outside?”

  “That’s right. The boy is over there under the window. I didn’t move the body. Mary is in the upstairs bedroom.”

  When Brinkley phoned her, Jezebel called in both of her deputies immediately. Heavy was going to the office to start the paperwork, and Logan Randall was en route to the farm.

  “My deputy is checking up on the family. It shouldn’t take too long to identify the bodies. Did you know the victims well?”

  “No, I only met Mary once. We’re new here. Moved from Thistlewood last year. They mostly kept to themselves. I can tell you that there were three of them. Two parents and a child.”
>
  Which means the man is missing, she thought. He could be the one who owns the rifle. On the surface, domestic violence sounded plausible. But how does that relate to Jeffrey Daniels? This farm was on almost the opposite end of the county from where Daniels’ body was found.

  “When did you find the bodies?”

  Dust rose in the air on the gravel road in the distance as Logan Randall’s cruiser neared the farmhouse. Brinkley paused before answering as Jezebel’s deputy pulled next to her cruiser.

  “About 6:10,” he answered, his eyes on the approaching deputy. “Tim and I wake up early every morning to milk the cows. Checking up on Mary and her family seemed like the neighborly thing to do.”

  “Why did you wait until morning to call our department?”

  “I thought maybe they were shooting at a coyote or some animal,” he said. “Nothing around here is in season though.”

  “Sure you did,” said Logan Randall. “Wonder if the kid has the same story.”

  “Logan, that boy doesn’t look like he’s in any condition to talk right now,” Jezebel shot back. She was not in the mood to tolerate his attitude. Not today. “I need you to go behind the truck and examine the body while I finish up with Mr. Brinkley.”

  “Of course,” Logan replied. He hardly bothered concealing his contempt for her.

  “Sorry about that,” she said to Brinkley. “We can wait to take a statement from your grandson.”

  “Thank you. I’ve never seen him like this before.”

  Jezebel sighed. She couldn’t find fault with Brinkley for failing to call in the gunshots when he heard them. However, if he had, they might have been able to catch the killer in the act.

  “If you can, please tell me exactly what you did when you first reached the farm.”

  ***

  Logan Randall listened carefully to the conversation as he examined the body of Ben Davis. True, he could always go through the sheriff’s report later, but he knew there was always more to be learned from listening to a witness firsthand.

  Logan stood in this very location only a few hours ago. That fact unnerved him greatly, which was something he didn’t care to admit. Ben was dead. According to what the sheriff told him, so was Mary.