by B.Y. Yan
help but compare the tremors of the tempest rolling inside the black clouds overhead to the voice of the monster I strived to put behind me. I drew up my collars but did not know where I was going, or where I should have gone. I was a victim in my own home, but a stranger in the world outside. In every leering window I saw unfriendly faces and heard the voices of sin, for I was in that time shoddily dressed for the occasion. I had nothing to cover my face, and less still to protect my body in my modest nightgown with its rents and cuts from where I had pushed out of the bushes beneath my window. Flashing white and brilliant as ivory in the darkness it was only a matter of time before I became a woman marked. I began to feel uneasy walking on alone. Every shadowy corner I passed seemed easy hiding places for jackals and wild dogs. Against my own wishes I took off running, never knowing just where to. But to this day I will tell you I had not misplaced my fears, for breathless I swung into a narrow crevice between two buildings, falling against the rough, cold stone with a hand pressed to my heart. And there in the stillness I heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps behind me pattering wetly against the rain-soaked cobble, and breathing which came hoarse and ragged but unseen in the darkness. I froze. I am not ashamed to admit it. I was only fourteen at the time, and to anybody that age tragedy was fantasy. I did not know what to do except that maybe I was in real danger. But that was also the hour before dawn, and I heard then the hoot of an owl, followed by a scream.”
“Ah!”
“It was the bravest thing I had ever done peeking out of the alley into the narrow street. I saw a short man in a ragged coat lying crumpled on the ground in a heap, and over him stood a tall man with his shoulders covered by a mantle of brown feathers. I never saw his face so I cannot say if he was masked like they say, only the tall boots he wore, as black as sin and the top of his hat aimed towards the sky. I dove back behind the cover of the wall and squeezed shut my eyes. When I opened them again dawn had broken over the walls, and a friendly hand was on mine. I met my Gantoine then, who walked the same beat as he does today a much younger man. And it was at the same corner where you found him that he discovered me and gave me shelter. He walked me home and convinced me to stay there, but happily when my eventual escape came it was into his waiting arms many years later.”
“And of the Owl?” Bailey asked eagerly.
“The man who was waylaid was later found strung up and dangling from the broken walls, beaten brutally and died long before any help could be rendered. Nothing was ever confirmed but when the outbreak of violence got out of hand some months later he was branded by supporters of the Owl a murderer and rapist. But I remember his as being the first of such incidents which marked the terrible year that you have been hot on the heels of.
“The call of the owl heard in the hour before dawn has long been spoken of as a dark omen foretelling coming tragedy. For the past centuries wars have been lost on its account, natural disasters have been attributed to its presence, and you will be hard pressed to find a man or woman today who has not grown up with the dreaded word in his ear as a warning against misbehavior from childhood. There is a nursery rhyme as well, though I cannot remember the lyrics at present. It is only after the black year that the saying has passed into urban myth, gaining in the process the embellishments you know of a terrible creature praying on the unjust and unworthy as a physical manifestation of the consequences of their sins.”
“But this man you saw,” he persisted.
“Fully grown then,” she answered. “Perhaps even a little over his prime, for I remember him hunching his shoulders. Aside from that, I couldn’t tell you anything beyond today he would be an old man, probably ill and dying in a bed if he has not passed already. Owing to my own unique experiences I have never believed in any after the first, and that an incident inimitable in its inception and conclusion.”
“And all the other bodies found strung up on walls?”
“What one man might achieve, others will imitate. You will find no shortage of such, my lord, if you keep up your search. But if it is indeed a legend you are after, I’m afraid you will never find it unless it is one you can invent for yourself.”
“Ah!”
She nodded, smiled faintly at him, this beautiful queen in her humble surroundings. Contrary to your suppositions and mine it only served to highlight those qualities of compassion, sympathy and warmth possessed in abundance by the lady in question. Bailey was at once reminded of the big sister he never knew, warning him kindly off his fantasies in the same loving way a mother might have a cherished son. He fell into a beaten silence then, and was laid up in his chair with his head in his hands for a long while until the glow from the fireplace had dimmed to the last flickers of yellow embers. She, however, began to self-doubt in that time. For her part she had begun with the best of intentions, but one look at the desperate figure of her houseguest sent her scurrying away to rouse her husband. “It is these notions I’ve put into his head,” she told him at the door to their bedchamber. “I meant well, but perhaps the truth was the last thing he needed to hear. Come along with me, and our powers together will set him to rights.”
“How?” asked her husband, hurriedly throwing on his nightclothes.
“Whatever it takes for us to keep him on, for he has become our responsibility the moment your invitation was accepted. Setting aside his position and power I have become fond of him in my own way.”
“I too,” her husband nodded. “He is a good fellow.”
“Then come quickly. We won’t shirk our duty at this crucial hour.”
Together they went into the common chamber but found the chair empty and the hearth cold. But a knock on Bailey’s door afterwards produced a rapid response. The fear that he might have gone away unannounced was unfounded in the end, for they discovered, much to their surprise, he was unpacking his luggage in very high spirits.
“Oh I have seen my errors, madam,” he told them. “You were my cure. Your words have inspired me onto a new course. Indeed, who’s to say my Owl was the last I will find? But whether as a spirit of justice or a demon of vengeance not of our world I have decided to approach the matter in an anthropological manner, and will henceforth be devoting my studies to the legacy your strange year has left behind. I shall not think myself into a rut again, for that way lies madness. But madness is as well doing nothing, so I fear I must trouble you for some days yet as a scholar of your local history. I will be staying then as you wanted, if you will allow me the pleasure of being a guest in your house for as long as I need to fix my case.”
“We are only all too glad to have you,” said husband and wife as one.
“Good. Then if you will help me with my bags, I shall be much indebted. A pair of hands from you, my good man, in getting things organized again, and a pair of scissors from you, madam, to help with these knots would not go unappreciated.”
To be continued in Issue 3: Death of the Owl
Keep reading for a sneak-peek at Death of the Owl
“To hear a hoot in the hour before dawn is to mean enduring ill-fortunes and worse woes still for the listener, especially if you’ve got something to hide. Here in these parts we call him the Lynchman’s Owl, and this is his call.”
Eye of the North Wind – the epic fantasy of a crippled secret defender of the wasteland king
The Lynchman’s Owl Serials – the Steampunk Noir Superhero who vanished twenty-years ago; but twenty-years later somebody has come looking…
Origins
Issues 1 (A Lynchman’s Owl)
2 (Legend of the Hour)
3 (Death of the Owl)
4 (Ibbu Harold Bailey)
5 (The Owl Returns)
Collection 1 (includes issues 1-5: the Complete Origins)
Adventures of the Owl
(Mercy of the Mighty)
(The Gorilla Press)
(The Lady of May-Tulip)
(Dead Cell)
(The Empress’s Diaries)
B.Y. Yan is a Chinese-Canadian author who someday hopes to do this for a living. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario but spends most of his time travelling between two opposite points on the globe on business with his wife Jeane, sometimes accompanied by a giant orange tabby cat. In his spare time, he has maintained the same great love since childhood for stories told through every medium imaginable.
The Lynchman’s Owl: Death of the Owl
It was not the voice she knew. It was not any voice she had ever known. It could not have been who she had anticipated meeting, and now all her planning, all she had practiced to say before Bailey, the Handyman from Pegging, was for naught. This was plainly somebody—or something— else altogether which had drawn her here; but now that she found herself in its presence it was apparent that she would not be allowed to leave without its permission. Madine nodded, hoping he would be able to see the gesture in the darkness.
“Take a seat, please.”
Furtively she looked all about herself. The cellar had been emptied after the arrest of the proprietor, and it stands to reason that aside from the corner which was occupied by her mysterious host there was very little room in the small space available for her. She settled, in the end, on the bottommost step leading upwards out of the cellar, out of this cramped realm of
