Haunted Canada

by Pat Hancock

  He liked the building, too. With its high ceilings, dark wood panelling and cushioned window seats, it reminded him of a castle or a mansion in a movie.

  Then the bird arrived — and ruined everything.

  It was the first thing Cito noticed when he walked in that night. It sat perched on a tall pedestal to one side of the arched entrance to the children’s section.

  What’s this? he wondered when he spotted it. A new security guard waiting to swoop down on book snatchers? When he got closer, though, he realized that the bird’s swooping days had ended long ago.

  It was big. And it looked even bigger mounted on the branch that served as a stand. Its ruffled black feathers had lost their sheen and its dull slate-grey toes ending in long, curved claws looked dry and brittle. One of the stiff wing feathers was bent near the tip and poked out at an awkward angle. But the fine feathers covering the head were sleek and smooth and the slightly parted beak seemed poised to emit a screeching cry.

  It was the beady yellow eyes, though, that bothered Cito the most. They seemed to glow with an eerie light all their own. He stared up at them as he sidled past and they stared back, cold and menacing.

  Creepy, he thought, as he slipped into a chair and dropped his writing folder onto the table in front of him. He needed to come up with a third verse for a poem that was due the next day.

  How about, “Crow, crow, go away. Stand in front of a Chevrolet?” he mused, stealing another peek at the sinister sentinel. He felt as if its eyes were following his every move.

  Why don’t you go read a book or something? he asked silently, and turned back to his work.

  He sensed Miss O’Toole, the librarian, standing behind him even before she spoke.

  “So, it’s poetry tonight, is it?” she asked. Then she smiled and pointed at the bird, “I’m sure you’ll write a great poem with him here.”

  Cito frowned. What on earth was she talking about?

  “He helped a writer before, you know,” Miss O’Toole added, “or at least we think he did. The research isn’t complete yet, so we’re not absolutely sure, but it looks as though this is the same stuffed bird that once shared a room with Edgar Allan Poe. Mr. Herzig — he runs the antique store around the corner on Peckford — discovered it. When he suggested displaying it here, we were delighted.”

  Seeing the puzzled look on Cito’s face, she paused. “You’ve heard of Poe?”

  Cito suddenly recognized the name. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Poe. He made horror movies, right? Like the one about the guy who accidentally buries his sister alive in a tomb in the house and she finally claws her way out. Then, when the guy sees her standing there all bloody and everything, he goes crazy and they both fall down dead and their mansion crashes down on top of them. He did that one, didn’t he?”

  Miss O’Toole was smiling. “That sounds a bit like ‘The Fall of the House of Usher.’”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. The special effects are pretty good for an old movie. I’ve seen it twice … it’s sort of scary, isn’t it?”

  “I’m sure it is. I haven’t seen the movie. But I have read the story and I remember it very well. Edgar Allan Poe wrote it more than a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  “Uh oh.” Cito felt foolish. “Then he couldn’t have made the movie, huh?”

  “No, but he did write some pretty scary stories that have been made into movies. I’m pretty sure there’s a film version of ‘The Pit and the Pendulum,’ too.”

  “Oh yeah, that was gross,” Cito blurted out excitedly. “It had all those rats and that axe swinging over the guy’s head and the walls squishing in around him.”

  “So you do know Poe.”

  “Well, I’ve never read his books or anything.”

  “And you probably wouldn’t like them too much just yet. The writing is very old-fashioned and they have lots of description, and you’re more of an action story fan, aren’t you?”

  Cito nodded.

  “But Poe wrote poetry as well,” she added.

  “That’s funny,” Cito chuckled.

  Miss O’Toole caught on instantly and laughed, too. “You’re right, but most of his poems weren’t funny — especially not the one about him.” She pointed at the bird again.

  No wonder, Cito thought as he looked up at the huge crow. There’s nothing funny about him. He’s horrible.

  With its wings folded against its body and its head cocked to one side, the bird seemed to be listening to the conversation. For a moment, Cito was transfixed. He felt trapped in the evil glare glowing from the creature’s cold, yellow eyes.

  Miss O’Toole’s voice broke the spell.

  “The poem is about a man who’s very sad and lonely because the love of his life, Lenore, has died. One night, he’s all alone in his room. He hears knocks at the door and tapping sounds at the window, but nobody’s there.

  “Finally, he opens the window and a big black bird walks in and perches over his doorway. At first, the man’s happy for the company. But then the bird starts to drive him crazy because it keeps saying the same word over and over.”

  Cito shuddered. He didn’t want to hear any more. But Miss O’Toole kept talking.

  “Mr. Herzig says that all the evidence he’s collected so far shows that this is the same stuffed bird that was in the furnished room Poe was renting when he wrote the poem about Lenore. Looking at it all the time inspired him to write it. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Luckily, Cito didn’t need to answer. At that moment, Mr. Leno came over from the reference desk to ask Miss O’Toole for help.

  That night, the bird’s menacing presence distracted Cito so much that he changed seats three times. No matter where he moved, it seemed to be watching him.

  At one point, he deliberately sat with his back to it, but that just made things worse. Even when he couldn’t see them, he felt the spying, prying yellow eyes boring into the back of his neck. No matter what he did, he couldn’t shake off the eerie feeling that there was something unnatural about the bird, something that made his hair stand on end.

  When Cito arrived at the library the next Tuesday, he headed straight for the cushions across from the aquarium. As he passed the bird, he kept his head turned away so he didn’t have to look at it. He leaned back into the cushions and relaxed, watching the angelfish playing follow-the-leader though the elodea.

  “Can’t get me here,” he whispered triumphantly. He opened his book and started reading.

  But he had spoken too soon. When he looked up, a black reflection was shimmering on the glass of the aquarium. The beady eyes and parted beak were unmistakable.

  Impossible, Cito thought. It’s too far away, and the angle is all wrong. He closed his eyes, then looked again. The image of the bird was still there.

  He scrambled off the cushions and made for the empty window seat on the other side of the room. Miss O’Toole raised a warning eyebrow when he banged into a chair on the way.

  “Oops,” he whispered. Out of the corner of his eye, he stole a quick glance at the bird and was relieved to see that its head was turned in the opposite direction. But his relief was short-lived.

  Like someone who keeps bending a sprained finger hoping to find that it has stopped hurting, Cito kept checking on the raven. The next time he looked, he realized that he could see part of its right eye. Moments later, the whole eye was visible. When he looked again, he could see both eyes. Slowly but surely, the bird had turned its head. Its stare carried an unspoken threat that made his blood run cold.

  He turned away quickly and blinked several times. When he looked back, the bird’s wing tips were quivering and rising ever so slightly. It’s trying to fly, he told himself. But it can’t. It’s dead.

  The piercing shriek that followed was more than Cito could handle. He clapped his hands over his ears and crouched on the window seat, waiting to feel the talons he was sure were about to sink into his neck.

  Instead, he felt a hand tugging at his arm and heard Miss O’Toole sa
ying, “Don’t be afraid. It’s just the fire alarm. Stay calm and walk over to the door with me. Come on now. Let’s go.”

  Cito struggled to his feet, feeling ridiculous. Then he smelled the smoke. He snatched up his backpack and followed the librarian and the other kids she was herding toward the front door. As he passed under the archway, he couldn’t resist taking a last peek at the bird. What he saw stopped him in his tracks.

  It was no longer staring at him. Its eyes were shifting from side to side, its wings were quivering, and its beak was opening and closing, as if it were trying to speak.

  “Miss O’Toole, look,” Cito croaked, pointing at the raven.

  “What? Is someone else back there? Where?”

  “There,” Cito pointed.

  “Oh, Cito, this is no time to worry about the bird. Come on, let’s go.”

  As Miss O’Toole nudged him toward the exit, he heard it — a low squawking sound. Again and again, all the way to the door, it echoed faintly above the din. It was the bird’s voice, of that he was certain, and it kept squawking what sounded like one word — “Nevermore.”

  A month later, the library reopened. The fire had been a small one, confined to the area between the main desk and the arch. And although Cito was wary of returning, he’d had his fill of Mrs. Fonseca, the babysitter Mom had found. So, two days after the library opened its doors again, Cito was back.

  When he walked in, the first thing he noticed was the new carpeting. The old oak counter that had served as the front desk was gone, too. It had been replaced by a sleek white one that angled off on each side to form a U-shape.

  And over near the archway on the right, where the pedestal had stood, was a large new revolving stand bulging with paperbacks. Cito scanned the rest of the main floor. The bird was nowhere to be seen.

  He breathed a sigh of relief and headed for the big table. He sat down and dug out his history notebook, ready to study for a test he had the next day.

  But try as he might, he couldn’t concentrate. He found himself looking up every now and then, as if to make sure the bird was really gone. Good riddance, he thought.

  But he couldn’t get it out of his mind. He could still see the piercing eyes, the shuddering wings, the gaping beak — and he could still hear the horrible squawk.

  Miss O’Toole slipped into the chair beside him.

  “The bird was lost in the fire,” she said, as if reading his mind. “I felt terrible leaving it behind … and I felt even worse explaining what happened to Mr. Herzig. Luckily, he wasn’t nearly as upset as I thought he would be.”

  “How come?” Cito asked.

  “Well, it seems that the bird wasn’t Poe’s raven after all. Mr. Herzig was terribly disappointed. When all the evidence was added up, he realized he was wrong. Apparently, our bird was just somebody’s worthless old stuffed crow.”

  Cito frowned. He wasn’t so sure. “What if Mr. Herzig was right?” he began cautiously. “What if the evidence was wrong?”

  Miss O’Toole smiled indulgently. “No, Cito. I’m afraid that’s just wishful thinking.”

  As she stood up to leave, Cito suddenly knew what he had to do. He stopped her with a question.

  “Wait. Can you show me where to find that poem you told me about?”

  “Of course. Come with me.”

  Cito followed her as she wound through the aisles in the main stacks.

  “It should be in here,” she said, pulling a fat book off the shelf. “Yes, here it is, ‘The Raven.’”

  Cito took the book back to his table, spread it open and began to read.

  The first line wasn’t too bad. “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” was easy enough to follow and it had a nice ring to it, too. But it was downhill after that.

  Cito got the part about someone tapping at the chamber door and the bit about Lenore, but he had trouble making sense of the other long, rambling lines.

  Frustrated, he turned the page. The raven finally showed up in the seventh verse.

  He struggled on. “Ghastly and grim,” it said. Poe had that right, he thought.

  Then his heart skipped a beat. The word leaped out from the end of the next verse. He stared to make sure he was really seeing it.

  Cito ran a shaky finger down the next two pages. There it was, at the end of every one of the next ten verses. The word the raven kept repeating — “Nevermore.”

  Cito stared as the words blurred and a vision swam before his eyes. His head was spinning. He saw a man sitting at a desk in a cold, dark room. The only light came from the flickering embers of a dying fire. The man was scribbling furiously, his eyes blazing with fear. A huge black bird was mounted on a stand behind him. It was screeching one word — “Nevermore.”

  “Cito?”

  Cito jumped.

  “Sorry,” said Miss O’Toole. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I was just wondering if you found what you were looking for.”

  “Uh, yes, thanks,” Cito mumbled, handing her the book. “I don’t need this anymore.”

  Anymore. Nevermore. Poor Lenore. The words bounced around his head. Poor Poe, he thought, stuck in a room with that … thing!

  And poor Mr. Herzig, he thought. But it’s just as well he doesn’t know that he had Poe’s bird all along. He’d be so disappointed that it’s gone. But I’m not, he thought, as he stood up to leave. I never want to see that bird again. Nevermore.

  BOTTOM OF THE NINTH

  Donny Adams wasn’t just a fan. He was a believer. He didn’t just cheer on his team, hoping they’d win. He believed they’d win — but only if he did his part, too.

  It hadn’t always been that way. When he was nine, Donny had been content to be a spectator. It had been fun to put on his new Condors cap and take in a few games with Dad. They would munch their way through a big bag of peanuts, stand up every time the wave rolled by, cheer wildly whenever a Condor got a hit, and sing along with the crowd whenever the loudspeakers blared “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”

  The next year was even better. For Donny’s tenth birthday, Dad surprised him with tickets to five home games — the best seats in the stadium, behind home plate.

  The Condors won all five games, doubling Donny’s excitement and pleasure. He sat spellbound through each one, watching the players’ every move and learning everything he could about them and the game itself. He wore his cap to each game and waved the copper-and-gold Condors pennant he’d bought with his own money.

  Donny kept the pennant in a place of honour over his bed, beside the team picture he’d carefully cut out of the newspaper. And, whenever he could find the time, he watched his favourite team play on TV.

  The Condors did well that year, finishing second in their division. But what was good for the Condors was bad for Donny. The next year, more fans bought season’s tickets, making it harder to get good seats in advance. Ticket prices went up, too. That spring, Donny and Dad managed to take in four games, but they sat in the bleachers high above left field. When the Condors lost every one of these games, Donny told Dad he’d just as soon not go to Baylor Field anymore.

  “It’s not much fun sitting up in the nosebleeds,” he’d explained. “You can’t really see the game.”

  This was true, as far as it went. But Donny had another reason for not wanting to go, one he didn’t share with Dad. The way he saw it, when he was sitting behind home plate, the Condors had won. When he sat in the bleachers, they lost. The least he could do was to stop bringing his team bad luck. He’d stay home for the rest of the season and cheer them on in front of the TV. If that helps them win, it’ll be worth it, he decided.

  But there were some days early that summer when Donny wondered if the price of a Condors’ victory wasn’t a little high. Gone was the fun of sitting with Dad among thousands of other fans, eating peanuts, smelling popcorn, doing the wave. Gone, too, were the many afternoons he might have spent tossing a ball, going to a movie or just goofing off with his friends. Whenever he had to ch
oose between his friends and a ball game, he chose the game. After a while, his friends just stopped calling him.

  Once, he tried inviting some of them over to his house to watch a game with him. This had been his mother’s idea. But Raoul had cheered for the Gators, Jason kept grabbing the remote and changing the channel to see how the wrestling was going, and Brad had teased him about arranging his pennant and the cards of the players in the Condors’ starting lineup on the coffee table. The Gators won that afternoon, and Donny was pretty sure he knew why.

  “They ruined everything,” he complained to his mother later.

  “Is that how you see it?” Mom had asked. “Maybe you should take a closer look at yourself,” she added tersely, before leaving him alone to tidy up the living room.

  What’s with her? he wondered as he straightened the cushions and collected the empty pop cans. I didn’t do anything. They just don’t understand, and neither does she. Neither, he realized a week later, did his dad or his younger brother, Ian.

  The next Thursday evening was picture-perfect, as only a late July evening could be. Mom was on the back porch stripping paint off an old kitchen chair, and Dad and Ian were off on a bike ride. Donny had turned down their invitation to go along. He had to get ready for the game.

  “Come on. It’ll be fun. We’ll be back before dark,” Dad had said. “The game can wait just this once, can’t it?”

  “Not for Donny, it can’t,” Ian piped up. “He’s baseball crazy.”

  “Am not.”

  “Are so.”

  “Wrong. I just don’t want to go anywhere with a snot-nosed little …”

  “Stop it, you two,” Mr. Adams interrupted, and hustled Ian out the door.

  Good riddance, Donny thought, as he went upstairs to collect his good luck charms. He came back down wearing his Condors cap and carrying his pennant, a pile of trading cards and a poster of high-octane starter Billy Batista. The poster was a last-minute addition, but Batista had pitched a shutout the last time he’d gotten the call, so Donny felt sure having his poster out would bring him luck on the mound.