yessleep

I apologize. It’s taken me weeks to get around to writing the last part of my story of how I managed to escape that terrible peninsula and the horrors there. It’s not that I have forgotten, oh no. Those images flicker in my mind every waking moment- the hanging body, Craig holding Louisa’s cat up high, the feathered scarecrow tied to the pole twitching, the seagulls circling high above the crashing waves. You can read about those events here:

As I start typing, I hear a crow cawing outside my window. I pause, smile and go to the window. The beautiful black bird swooped low enough that I could see the glint of its friendly eyes and the gleam of sunlight on its glossy feathers. You may think I would avoid crows after everything that happened on Kingsley, but no, I owe them my escape, and the sound of their cawing outside my urban high-rise comforts me.

Let me tell things in order, as you are supposed to. My therapists tells me to journal, and I find that has created a sloppy habit where I just jumble up events and write about the first things that pop up- the taste of crose jam, the beaked children, Nick- no, there I go again. I draw a deep breath.

By some miracle, the car keys are left hanging where Nick had left them the night before, which now feels a million years away. I snatch them, and make my way gingerly around Violet’s dangling body. The smell of congealing blood pooled by her feet fills my nostrils. They must have killed her while I was hiding in the rocks.

No time to wonder if I could have saved her. I run to the car, and jump in, and start driving. I remember trying to think if I should go find Nick.

As I hesitate at the lane, not sure whether to turn towards the highway leading out of Kingsley, or towards the interior of this damn town for a desperate attempt to find my lover, I hear a loud meow from inside the car.

I shriek and look in the mirror. The girl Louisa sits up, pulling away my jacket that she had been hiding under. On her lap is her beautiful golden cat, staring me with unblinking green eyes.

“Take me with you” she says. “I don’t want to stay here- Craig will kill her. You saw for yourself.”

“Louisa- your parents?”

Her eyes fill up. “My mom died. They said it was corvid but I know it was Craig- he killed her because she left the peninsula, just for a day, to visit grandma. She wasn’t from Kingsley, you know, and they just always hated her here. Craig said she broke the rules and brought corvid back and had to die. She wasn’t even ill! And dad was too scared to do anything. I hate him!”

How can I tell this distrssed, scared child to get out of my car? “Ok Louisa, you can come for now. But tell me, do you have any idea where they might have taken Nick?”

“He’s probably tied up in the field- you know- where we all were yesterday. He’s been tar and feathered, and they’ll kill him later.”

“So he’s still alive?”

Louisa shrugs. “Probably. They sacrifice before sunset, when the birds are most active before settling down”

I can’t hesitate any longer. How could I live with myself knowing I had left Nick alive to suffer a terrible death?

I turn the car towards the fields, and Tabby meows loudly again.

Louisa guides me. Within five minutes, the scarecrow come into sight. I cry out at the unrecognizable figure of what was Nick- the sad human figure covered with black lumps of tar and feathers. The tar has already cooled, but I know it was hot when they first flung gobs of it at his body from the nasty burst blisters dotting his skin where it is exposed, his chest and face and back. The feathers dangle crookedly in odd angles. The sun is low.

Louisa told me me to stop behind some bushes. On the other side, the scarecrow pole is almost close enough to touch. I get out of the car, and without thinking, call out “Nick!”

His head and limbs twitch in response. Louisa from inside the car cries “What are you doing! You can’t help him now!”

As if to prove her point, a shout goes up. And then I see- the children at the feet of the scarecrow pole, all costumed in black wearing beaked orange masks. They all start shouting and pointing at me. In response, yelling came from the far part of the field, and we see the adults running towards us.

I look straight up at Nick.

Maybe I am imagining this to absolve myself, but I swear I saw his mouth move through the feathers stuck on his face. “Go. Please go.”

Louisa is frantic now, and Tabby is hissing. The children are trying to push through the bushes to get us as the adults arrive. Tears streaming down my face, I jump into the car, and start driving, hitting one child as it burst out through the bushes and stumbles in front of me. I hear it screaming, a mass of black cloth and small limbs floundering in the lane.

“Don’t stop don’t stop- please just drive- they’ll cut you off!” cries Louisa.

I don’t stop. I keep driving, the sun dipping lower.

We are only a few minutes from the highway, the ocean lying peacefully in the late afternoon ahead of us, and I think we are almost out when my heart sinks. From a fork in a road, a stream of people start pouring out in front, effectively blocking our way. And behind the crowd I spot, of all things, a police car.

Instinctively I slow down. “No no no” screams Louisa “please- no- not now!”

And then it happens.

I don’t understand, I can’t pretend to know why. My therapist has implied gently that i might have hallucinating from fear and hunger at that point, but she is wrong. It happened.

Black clouds of crows rose from the trees behind me and dove straight towards to the crowd blocking us. The cawing was deafening.

I came to full stop, and Louisa stopped screaming. We watched silence as hundreds of crows, darkening the sky and the road and ocean, flew at the crowd. They started screaming and running. The road cleared.

I didn’t hesitate any longer. Pressing my foot on the gas as hard as I could, the engine roared into life and we shot down the road. Outside, was a mass of black wings, screaming bleeding faces, flying hair and flailing arms but I kept my eyes straight ahead.

Within seconds, we had drove off the last peninsula road and onto the highway. I kept my speed. I glanced in the rear-view mirror. No-one was following us- all that could be seen was dark mass of shrieking humans and cawing crows. The sun dipped lower. The crows rose high.

I drove nonstop for two hours. Gradually the highway became more populated with cars. I caught sight of gas stations and chain coffee shops. Louisa had fallen asleep, and Tabby purred at me.

I was interviewed by police later, many many times. I told my therapist that I felt they were blaming me for not trying harder to save Nick, who was killed from what I could tell not long after we left Kingsley. She says that is my own guilt. Louisa and Tabby went to live with her mother’s family, who happened to be not far from me. I’ve visited her once since, and she doesn’t seem to remember Kingsley much. Amazing how resilient children are.

I go back to the window and look out. It’s dark now, but I know the crows are still there, watching over me.

But my story is done.

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