The crow didn’t look different to others. It was jet black and it’s feathers shone as if kissed by starlight. It’s eyes were black marbles that flickered with sentience and it was missing a toe on it’s left foot. It always sat perched on the tree outside my bedroom window. It did not move, though I’m sure it must have done, for even sentient crows need to eat. Did it wait till I slept? Did it leave only when I crept out of bed to go to work? I tried to tempt it over with some bread one day but it did not budge. It was keeping watch; of what I do not know.
It started to madden me, this bird that did not move and was always watching. I started to shut my curtains for some privacy. It felt silly, as I pulled the linen together, to be so bothered by a bird. Then one crisp autumn day I opened them once more and found that it had moved, to a perch closer to my window. I chucked a stone at it. It’s wings spread apart and it hovered for a while before returning. I threw a brick, then prodded it with a stick. It would leave for a moment but always return. My little feathered stalker.
Then it spoke.
I thought it was my neighbours at first. It was a strange voice, not human, it was guttural, like it came from the pit of some cavernous belly. Bed. It said, bed. Over and over and over, until it felt as if it was the only word I knew. I shut the curtains, closed the window, and as I crept into my linen refuge, it crawed it’s awful song even then, bed, bed, bed, bed.
I went to work, came home and went to bed to that awful song; my sad little prosaic routine and the feathered stalker who had become an intimate part of it. It is not a beautiful story, I will grant you. It soon learnt a new word. Sad, it would say, sad, sad, sad, sad.
I started to consider that it might all be in my head; the feathers, black as night, and the crackling voice that sprung from them. Why was it all so awful? Didn’t the world know I could stand no more? A woman who no longer loves me, a father who yells when he drinks, a boss who hates me and a bird who can’t keep quiet.
Dead, it would say, dead, dead, dead, dead.
Why did it have to haunt my bedroom? My candlelit solace in which I retreated from all my woes, why did it have to follow me here? All the pain, the agony, the empty nothing that threatened to consume any light that might have persisted within me, why did he have to add to it? Sit on some other perch I thought, terrorise my neighbours with the beautiful daughter, the happy dog and the fancy car. That would not do. Oh no. Pain my mother had said, only multiplies. The wound on my soul was festered, dripping yellow with maggots.
Then one day it made a nest and little white eggs filled it. It did not need to breed. That was the last thing I needed, more talking crows. The bird was stubborn, yet it’s eggs sat vulnerable. I knocked the pile of sticks and fluff down with a long stick. I stabbed the butt of it into each egg. Cloudy whites spilled out and little wet feathers sat deflated amongst goopy lines of red. The crow watched. I did not think that crows could cry but they do and it did. I almost felt bad, but then I thought better. If I could not be happy then why should the crow? It sat on my windowsill that night and it cried a different song.
Bad it said, bad, bad, bad, bad.
Then it was on my window sill and I thought to grab the bird and strangle the life of it, but it evaded my hands like oil in water. I bought a pellet gun, but it was of no use for it dodged each shot with perfect ease. In the darkness of the night, the moon would cast its shadow all over my room. It sat there, it’s wings stretched tenfold and it’s beak a pointed spear. I would shiver with fear with every small twitch. Bad it would say, bed, sad, bad, bed, sad, bad, dead.
I felt like it was in me, that it would smash through the glass and peck the eyes out of my skull. Crows do not forget. They remember, like an elephant, every little wrong is cast like marble into their little pea-sized brains. It must be all they think of, so very little space there is for anything else. Have I bothered it before? Neglected to give it my last piece of bread? Was that why it had come to haunt me? I had destroyed it’s eggs now. It would never forget.
It infiltrated my dreams. I lived under the shadow of it’s wings. It put dark thoughts there in the tender root of my brainstem, it lived there as it did on my sill. Bad, it said, dead, dead, dead. I awoke one night to the window cast open. It was inside now and on top of the dresser. It’s left leg was in my lit candle, but it did not shy from the fire.
“I’ve been watching you.” It said, fear had overtaken me, I sat shivering with the sheets at my chest as if they might protect me from it’s wrath. “I came to you a friend. You were always so lonely in that bed. I thought to keep you company.”
It was bigger now I thought, it’s legs longer. It spread it’s wings and small little charcoal hands emmerged at their tips. It flew, with it’s flaming foot, and sat on the edge of my bed frame. It’s eyes were wider now and it’s beak had shifted inwards. I reached out for my phone so I might call for help, but it was not where it usually was. I was helpless.
“Yet you are rotted beyond saving.” It said, It’s feathers fell as if weightless to my carpet. It had flesh underneath; charcoal tinged with red. It’s talons had turned into little toes with long yellowed toenails. “Everyone hates you. You are a burden on all. Even your little crow despises you so, now that her little eggs lie rotted in your yard. Pain multiplies. You have spread it all around you like a plague or a famine, but no more.”
“You… are… no crow.” I gargled. I felt as if all feeling had been ripped out of me, so terrified I was, for the crow that had sat on the tree in my garden for so long, was not a crow nor had it ever been. It was six-foot tall and had a face with a black hole at it’s centre and it was sucking me in, but not my flesh, but my very soul.
My mother’s bedtime stories, twisted into the agony of her dying breath. My lovely wife turned angry and sour. I don’t love you. I don’t love you. The thought of her in bed with Michael from accounts was all I could see. The pregnancy test she had held so hopefully, was gone now and the bloody show in our bed was all that was left.
“Perhaps you are right yet perhaps all crows are like me. I know not.” It sucked and sucked. “But I will have my vengeance. You will work and never rest. You will sleep but wake tired. You will eat but never feel full. When you die you will live again. When you close your eyes you shall see me, your little crow, and I will suck out more and more, until all that is left is the living dead.”
It’s limbs twisted inhumanely. The little spindles of it’s legs twisted and cracked and retreated back up into a new plumage of jet black feathers. A beak poked out of the black hole and it’s empty black eyes pondered my fear as if it were a delicacy.
“Dread.” It said, “Dread, dread, dread.”
I considered, still shaking from the horror of it all, that dread might be the only thing worse than fear.