Tales of Crow- The Complete series Box Set

by Chris Ward

  ‘Um, no.’

  Slav had just started to laugh at his bad pun when the phone rang again. He pulled it out of his pocket and started chattering into it, only to stop suddenly, his eyes going wide.

  ‘Another problem,’ he said, turning to Ken. ‘Something strange has been running about in the town. Something birdlike and on fire. A devil, he said.’

  Ken was about to ask who “he” was, when Slav switched on the police car’s blaring siren. With the window open, the noise filled the car like a giant alarm clock, destroying any chance of conversation. Instead, Ken turned and looked out of the window, into the dark.

  They pulled up outside a bar halfway across town. A man came running out at the sound of the siren and leaned into the police chief’s window. After a few minutes of gasping, desperate exposition, the man hurried back into his bar and pulled the door shut. Slav turned to Ken.

  ‘It headed up the main street. That’s pretty much all I could understand around his crazy religious shit.’

  He pulled the car away from the kerb, with the siren thankfully off this time. As they headed up a slight hill away from the village, they passed a large, well lit hotel. Ken wanted to ask Slav to let him out, but part of him was intrigued. There was no doubt in his mind that Professor Crow was in Heigel somewhere. If Jun had also figured it out, he was probably in danger. The boy was hotheaded and driven by revenge; neither did he have a police chief—however much a crackpot—to protect him.

  ‘Look, there.’ Slav pointed out into a dark meadow where flames were spitting up into the air. At this distance it looked like a bonfire. Slav parked by the side of the road and they both got out.

  ‘Do you have a gun?’ Ken asked.

  Slav barked a strange laugh and shook his head. ‘Not out here in the country. Anyway, that thing’s probably dead. We’re after a murderer. They tend to run away from police. What’s the chance that the thing in the mask got mixed up in something silly and ended up shooting himself in the foot?’

  Ken frowned. ‘A man in a mask? Is that what you think stole that body?’

  Slav nodded. ‘What else could it have been? Look, my son loves your band, but you don’t know criminals like I do. Disguises are getting better all the time. With cameras on every corner they need to be.’

  Ken suddenly wished he’d asked to be left at the hotel after all. The police chief had no idea what he was dealing with. None of these idiot people did.

  ‘Bastard fool ran right through these cabbages,’ Slav said, shining a flashlight around him at a line of messy footmarks through the earth that had knocked aside several of the vegetables. Ken saw dark scorch marks on several and walked around them as if they were poisonous. Up ahead of them, the funeral pyre was beginning to die down. The outline of a human shape lay flat on the ground.

  ‘Now, what the hell is that thing?’ Slav said as they reached it. He shone his flashlight up and down the body, and Ken flinched back.

  It had once been human, there was no doubt of that. What was left was little more than a skeleton, and Ken saw the silvery glint of wires crossing over the bones like a metallic spider web. Flaps of scorched cloth and lumps of charred flesh were still stuck to its smoking body, but most of the torso was a gutted ruin. Ken hadn’t thought flesh could burn so intensely. It looked like someone had poured petrol over the body before setting it alight, yet according to Slav the figure had been seen running right through the centre of town. It had taken them five minutes in the police car, a distance he estimated at two miles at least. There was no way a man could run that distance while his body was engulfed in flames.

  One thing he knew instantly was that this wasn’t Professor Crow. A hard, bony protrusion stuck out of the man’s skull where the nose should have been, but it was immediately obvious that it wasn’t meant to be there. Whatever monstrosity this creature had been, it hadn’t been born this way.

  It had been built.

  ‘Look, I told you, didn’t I?’ Slav said, kicking at the smouldering beak. It broke away with a loud snap and fell into the mud. Ken didn’t bother asking about police procedures in this part of the world, and wondered again just how much alcohol Slav Wendall had drunk. ‘An elaborate costume. This bastard was dressed up as a bird to frighten people. I think we have our murderer, Ken. We now just need to find what he did with old Gretel’s body.’

  ‘I don’t think—’ Ken began, but his voice was cut off mid-sentence as something dark and flat and huge came sailing down out of the clear night sky to land behind the police chief.

  In the light of the last of the fire Ken saw a huge, serrated beak open wide as sharp talons reached for Slav’s back. The creature dropped to its knees and sank its claws into the police chief’s hips, twisting him around as it landed. Slav let out a weak groan as the creature pulled him down onto its beak and ripped him open from the abdomen up to the chin, as easily as a sharpened saw cutting through a rotten branch. Blood drenched the creature’s face as it tossed Slav away and stood up, something out of a child’s nightmare, black and red and shiny in the glow from the fire, huge bat wings spread wide.

  Ken screamed as it let out a screech so loud he thought his eardrums had burst, and he tried to run but simply staggered and crashed sideways into the mud. He heard footfalls squelching through mud as he tried to crawl away, his hands and knees slipping in the gooey earth.

  As its huge black wings loomed wide over his head, Ken didn’t think about Karin and Nozomi, or even Jun; he thought only of how easily that gore-covered beak had split open Slav Wendall’s chest, and the low deflating sound Slav had made as the last breath he would ever draw in was cut free from his lungs.

  17

  Meetings among strangers

  Jun wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but when he opened his eyes a grey dawn was poking in through the wooden shutters of the hut’s only window. He sat up on the chair and rubbed at his hip where the armrest had left a red imprint on his skin.

  Over on the bed, Jennie was sleeping soundly, the blanket pulled up over her face. Jun went to the door, pulled back the bolt, and cautiously looked out.

  The forest outside was waking up. A grey morning light hung curtains of dust down through the trees, and the undergrowth swayed in a light breeze. In the canopy, birds flitted from branch to branch, chirping greetings to their neighbours.

  It was beautiful; should have been beautiful, but Jun felt a sudden tightening in his chest, and realised the effect of his medication was wearing off. For a few seconds he tried to fight the growing panic, but when he realised he was losing he hurried back across the room to his bag, slung over a chair. He pulled out the packet of pills with his shaking hands and crushed one out of the foil. He chewed it down quickly, and even though it set his mind at ease his body would take a few minutes to catch up. He sat down on a chair and held his head in his hands, his eyes squeezed shut as he tried to forget about the forest encircling them like a menacing army.

  As always when he had an attack it was Akane’s face that rose up out of his memories, shining and beautiful, telling him she loved him, that she was at peace now. He had never forgiven her for the ease with which she had accepted her death, for the complete lack of fight in her eyes as she closed them for the last time.

  He gasped as a hand fell on his shoulder, and when he looked up for the briefest of moments he thought it was Akane standing there, dark brown hair framing her oval face. Then he realised the brown eyes were too light, the jaw just slightly too square, the lips a fraction fuller.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Jennie asked.

  Jun nodded, for a moment lost for words. ‘I … I … had an attack.’

  ‘A panic attack?’

  ‘I get claustrophobia pretty bad.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He smiled. He gripped the edge of the table and was relieved to see the shaking in his hands had begun to ease. He only had a couple of pills left, but he would be okay for the next few hours.

  ‘I’ve suffered from i
t these last few years. It’s mostly just forests and old places, though.’ He shrugged. ‘Put me in an elevator and I’m fine.’

  ‘Did something bad happen to you?’

  He nodded. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, blushing. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ She rubbed her head. ‘I feel awful. I haven’t had a hangover in years.’

  ‘We need to get back to the village. The forest isn’t safe.’

  Jun didn’t want to tell her that every moment he spent under the cover of the trees was like a rusty blade twisting around in his heart, but something in her expression told him she understood.

  ‘I need to get back to my tour group. I shouldn’t have abandoned my duty. I just … something bad happened to me too.’

  From the look in her eyes Jun could tell she didn’t want to talk about it either, so he just gave her elbow a reassuring squeeze, and they got to work packing up their things and headed out. Under the trees, the early morning light still cast shadows across everything, and Jun found himself jumping every time a branch creaked or a bush rustled, expecting another of those bird things to come leaping out.

  Certain he had killed or at least seriously injured the one that had attacked them, Jun led them back towards where the attack had happened, a couple of hundred metres downhill from the hut. Soon they came to an area where the leaves had been scorched and several branches broken.

  The burning creature had run off through the trees. Following the signs of damage, Jun and Jennie tracked its trail, looking around for the body. After half an hour they emerged from the trees and found themselves in vegetable fields. A few hundred metres further on, they could see the first of the town’s houses. The bluff rose up to the north of them, the castle perched on top like an eagle waiting to drop down on some unsuspecting prey.

  ‘What a stupid place to put a castle,’ Jun said. ‘What if there was an earthquake or something?’

  ‘I don’t think they get them in Romania,’ Jennie said.

  ‘Still, it’s about as inhospitable as it could get.’

  ‘What’s going on over there?’ Jennie said, pointing towards the nearest house.

  A group of people were loading cardboard boxes up into the back of a rusty old truck. There was an urgency about the way they worked in silence that made Jun nervous.

  ‘I think we should find out,’ he said.

  By the time they reached the family the truck was loaded and they were just about to leave. Jennie raised a hand and hailed them in Romanian. The truck pulled up alongside them as Jennie and Jun stepped out onto the road, and a gruff man with a wild beard wound down the window.

  Jun waited while Jennie talked to him in Romanian. Then, as the truck roared off, Jennie turned back to him, her face pale.

  ‘They’re leaving,’ she said. ‘They’re getting out of Heigel, and they said many others will also leave soon.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The police chief,’ she said. ‘Last night the police chief was murdered.’

  Ludvic stood by the mirror in his front room, checking and adjusting his hair. Outside the window, a hazy morning sun was rising out of the hills to the east, casting them with the same golden shine he hoped the tourists’ coins would soon be brightening up his palms with. He had ten signed up for today’s special forest monster tour, which to satisfy certain new regulations needed to charge a small additional fee, one which would secretly be split between Ludvic and Slav, who would accompany the group to offer extra security.

  As he thought about the money he would make from a simple walk in the woods, Ludvic scoffed. There was nothing out there in the forest to be afraid of. Even the bears were skittish and would bolt from any sign of humans, often long before they came within sight. It had been some years, but Ludvic had seen wolves killed in the forests before, and if he remembered rightly it had been the work of Bulgarian gypsies after the gall bladder or the spleen which they used in their herbal tea or something. There must be a caravan of them passing through. Pretty soon Slav’s men would find them and move them on, and the killings would stop.

  There was no disputing the old woman had been murdered, but she had probably just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps she had come across a group of gypsies trapping a wolf and tried to stop them. It was likely that even if Slav caught up with them, they would close ranks and hide the murderer. He’d be forced to order them back onto the road, passing them off onto someone else’s jurisdiction.

  Still, a few dead wolves was one thing, but a dead woman was generating excellent business.

  Ludvic glanced at the clock. It was almost eight a.m., and Slav was already thirty minutes late. Ludvic was due to pick up the customers for today’s tour from the Castle View Hotel at nine. He was just wondering whether he ought to call the police chief when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Just coming,’ he called, making one last adjustment to his hair, then giving his beard a tug for good luck.

  ‘Good morning, it’s me,’ came Slav Wendall’s voice as Ludvic approached the door. He frowned a moment because there had been something odd in the police chief’s tone, then he shrugged it off. Slav had been working the roadblocks into and out of the town last night, and had probably drunk a little too much vodka to relieve his boredom.

  Ludvic opened the door and felt his bowels loosen. He clenched his buttocks to stop him soiling himself, and put one hand on the doorframe to stop his knees from buckling. He stared at the visitor with tears of horror streaming down his cheeks.

  The creature standing there with a hood pulled over its face could only dream about being a man. Where a nose should be there was only a hooked, bony protrusion, the mouth almost hidden underneath it. His ears were overlarge, and his eyes were no colour a human should have, impenetrable black set into hollows where the skin was bleached white. His hair was mostly covered by the hood, but what Ludvic could see was patchy and tufted with little lumps that looked like the feathers of some mangy bird.

  ‘Good morning, sire,’ the creature said in a perfect rendition of Slav Wendall’s voice. ‘May I come in? I’d like a word with your good self if I may?’

  Ludvic staggered backwards, swinging a hand towards the door as if to slam it shut, but he missed, and his hand passed through air. The deformed man in the cloak stepped into the house, and the hand that reached out to push the door closed had fingers hooked like claws.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ Ludvic stammered.

  ‘Just a little word or two, sire. I have a proposition for you.’ The black eyes peered around the room, taking in the bearskin rug lying in front of a hearth, the hunting trophies on a mantel above, and the bottles of expensive foreign whisky in a cabinet in the corner. ‘One I think might help to grease your palm, so I say. I pay those who help me well, I can tell you.’

  Ludvic glanced behind him, looking for his shotgun, but when he looked back a heavy slap collided with his face and he stumbled to his knees.

  ‘That’s a good lad,’ the monster said. ‘Best to be sitting down when receiving unexpected news, isn’t that what they say?’

  ‘Who … are … you?’

  The man pushed back his hood and the abomination that was his face was revealed in all its twisted glory.

  ‘My name is Kurou, so they say, sometimes prefixed by professor, if one is being presented in a formal capacity. Pleased to make your acquaintance, sire.’

  18

  Lovers in trouble

  It was light when Crina awoke. She was lying on a remarkably comfortable bed in a room so well furnished and easy on the eye that at first she couldn’t remember where she was or what she was doing here. Then she rolled over and saw a window looking out on to sky, and she understood.

  A tower room of Heigel Castle.

  She was starting to move when something black appeared out of the sky, swooping down to the window ledge where it flapped its wings and
peered in through the glass towards her.

  A Romanian Black Eagle. One of the ugliest birds she had ever seen; the horrible thing made a vulture look pretty. Its head didn’t even seem to be on straight, being cocked at a permanent angle as if it was frowning, and one eye seemed slightly lower in its head than the other. The beak was a gnarled, twisted mess as if someone had rammed a burned tree branch into its face and it had got stuck there.

  The government had put a ban on hunting the hideous things some years ago, mainly because they were so hated as trash scavengers that hunting them was taught in schools, and they were routinely driven out of whatever habitat was misfortunate enough to be accommodating them. Some decade or so ago they had begun to roost in and around Heigel, and seeing a possible tourism opportunity, the local council had slapped a protected sticker on the species. As a result, visits to viewing spots had become a curious side stop on many tour group itineraries. From a distance they didn’t look so bad.

  However, Grigore had decided to stand in the election for the next mayor of Heigel, a mostly ceremonial position with few actual responsibilities, and one of the major points of his manifesto was to lift the ban on hunting the eagles. Driving them out, he said, would be akin to the Pied Piper removing all the rats from Hamlin. Of course, with his general status, he was almost assured a landslide win, regardless of his policies.

  As Crina watched, the eagle bent down and began to poke and prod at something just out of sight, below the lip of the window. It squawked, and something gave a quieter squawk in return. A nesting mother. Crina smiled. It was almost quaint, but as the eagle lifted its head and gave her a glare with the nearer of its misplaced eyes, she felt an overwhelming urge to knock the nest off the window ledge.

  She started to get up, only for something to jerk her back down.

  Her arms and legs were free, but something was tugging on her scalp. She tried to twist her head to look, but it was like pulling her hair out of a bucket of glue, and she only made it a few centimetres before she gave up.