A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters and the Macabre

by DeAnna Knippling

  “I woke up one morning in West Branch, and I could smell Vivi break; it was something you couldn’t sleep through, like a gas leak. I sat up in bed and threw off the covers. Within a minute I was driving to Coralville, speeding like a demon down the side roads.

  “But I was too late. When I pulled up, Vivi was standing on the sidewalk with her hair down and her feet bare, wearing nothing but a bathrobe open at the front, screaming at your stepfather. She had a cleaver in her hand, and he had blood running down his face and undershirt. The police pulled up to the curb, and Vivi was off like a shot, disappearing through the bushes around the side of the house, over a chain-link fence, and gone.

  “The cops, who were too scared not to talk to me, didn’t have anything to go on but what your stepfather could tell them. She’d tried to kill him with the cleaver, stopped, pulled a pair of t-bone steaks out of the fridge and seared them until they were black on the outside and bloody in the center, eaten them both, and run screaming out of the house. I followed the scent. The trail led to an abandoned house on the outside of town.

  “I pulled up beside the house, smelling booze and sex all over the place. I had to light a cigar before I could get out; I found myself itching to cause some mayhem myself, following a scent like that. I heard a crack, and a man wearing only his shirt came running out of the house.

  “A second later, the windows broke, and fire poured out and downward onto the ground, it was so heavy with death. The fire poured and poured until it reached the sidewalk and only stopped when it reached my feet.”

  I said, “Why didn’t you put the fire out? Like you did with me?”

  “She wouldn’t let me.”

  I screwed up my face like I was going to cry, but I was thinking about that fire, and how it would feel to put blood all over my wife’s face, lock her to her bed, and set the whole house on fire. Aunt George punched my shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise.

  “Pay attention,” she hissed. “The docs said she had a stroke, and that there was a gas leak, but I know better. When we were kids, she was just as bad as me. Worse. She killed a horse one time. Tore its throat out. Uncle Scott took her aside, and after that she wasn’t the same. Always pretending to be the upstanding type, too cold to let butter melt in her mouth. She wouldn’t kill a fly.

  “She couldn’t take care of you. You reminded her too much of what she gave up, and it would set her off.

  “You don’t know how proud I am of her, Mike. She could have taken a lot of people with her, and she didn’t. But then again if she wouldn’t have been so stupid in the first place, if she’d paid her dues and lit the fires, done the small killings, she’d be alive today to hold your baby girl.”

  She chewed on the cigar, then stoked it until it glowed through the ash.

  “You have to decide whether you want to be a monster—or be like your mother—or be like me.”

  She waved the cigar over the coffin, which seemed to soak up the smoke. It was probably just the wind.

  —

  After the “funeral,” I took Serenity back to her mother. I had another nine months before I was done in Afghanistan. And I wanted my daughter when I came back. So I had to play nice.

  What got me was, I was still paying Tammy’s rent. She was sleeping with a cattle-lot worker, in my own bed no less, and letting me pay her rent.

  Serenity screamed with rage when I handed her over to her mother, and I knew I’d eventually win, as long as I kept my head on straight.

  —

  And then I got back in the car with Aunt George and went home.

  Aunt George’s apartment was in the old Opera House; even the paint has turned from white to sepia. I opened the screen door and almost had a heart attack from the second-hand smoke. And the way nothing had changed. The Felix-the-Cat clock; the prints of semi-naked, fat women; the barstools at the kitchen counter.

  Aunt George started a pot of coffee. I stood there dumbstruck until she pointed me at a stool. “So you decided not to kill her. I can see it on your face.”

  I shook my head. “I want my daughter too much.”

  “You’re going to have to live with it,” Aunt George said. “The feeling of wanting to kill, and not being able to kill. You’re the only person alive, save your mother, your daughter, and your great-uncle Scott, that I haven’t wanted kill at some point or other. The whole human race, the only reason they’re alive is that I need them to make a world for you and the rest of the people I love. And to keep me out of jail. Not much of a reason, but good enough, I guess.”

  “You ever kill anyone?”

  She nodded. “That’s a story for another time. Stories, I should say. But tell me about when you started having the dreams.”

  —

  I was in Afghanistan looking for some Taliban in the Safid Mountains. It was the most beautiful country I’ve ever seen, nothing like Iowa. Not that Iowa’s not beautiful, but in Afghanistan the mountains erupt out of the ground like a reverse waterfall, with cliff edges like knives. It was the kind of place where your neighbors can’t see you, and you can’t see them, and everything’s sharp under the sun. Black and white. Life and death.

  It was in a cave. We were following a tip from a man who had been turned out of the Taliban for beating another man to death over a dog, of all things. The man had been frothing at the mouth by the time we’d found him, so angry that he was willing to betray his group.

  I went inside first.

  The cave was covered in dark tiles carved or molded with tiny, sharp-edged marks, with a fire pit in the center. The place was abandoned; we were too late to catch anybody. But I could tell from the state of the garbage in the corner that they’d been there not long ago.

  On one wall was a group of tiles, each no bigger than the tip of my thumb, that together showed a winged, footed snake surrounded by smoke and fire. I looked at it for two seconds and passed out. My squad had to drag me out.

  I used to be the kind of guy that other guys go to for advice, because I could see things from all sides. I used to be the kind of guy that stopped other guys from shooting when they shouldn’t.

  I haven’t been the same ever since.

  —

  “I’m going to kill John Fox,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I said it. I was in the same mood as when I tried to set my house on fire, feeling nothing, only knowing what had to be done.

  “No,” Aunt George said.

  “I am. Really I am.”

  Aunt George gritted her teeth. “You’ll do it alone, then, so I can take your daughter when Tammy flies off the handle and won’t keep her anymore, and you’re on death row. Damn it, Michael. Just because a man steals your worthless wife, that’s no reason to kill him. It isn’t.”

  “I want to send Tammy a message.”

  “She doesn’t give a damn, Mike. Scaring her won’t do you or your daughter any good.”

  We argued, but that was the end of it. To tell the truth, I wasn’t disappointed. What was John Fox? A man too scared to serve his country. A man who walked in cow shit all his days. A man who fucked a woman whose only talents were writing dirty letters and giving birth to Serenity.

  —

  That night, I had one of the dreams. About the family god. I liked thinking of him like that; it sounded right.

  I was in the cave again, only the fire was lit and smoke filled the room. I breathed in the smoke like it was clean morning air. The god stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the room. I’d always been afraid of it, but not because I feel like it’s going to attack me. The god’s big, bigger than a man. You could call it a dragon or a dinosaur, but that’s not right. It’s a serpent, as thick around as my chest, with hips and legs supporting it off the ground. The god stands before me and holds its wings over its head, feathered wings big enough to suck the air out of me when it beats them. Then the god shakes his wings and drops to the ground, waddling sinuously toward me. I’ve never seen anything so awkward, yet so fast.

  The fear i
s a sick feeling, and then I’m angry. I pull my lips back and bare my teeth; the god grins up at me and puts his forelegs on my shoulders. I fall backwards.

  This is usually where I wake up. But this time, the god pushes his snout into my chest like I’m made out of cotton candy. He pulls my heart out and crushes it between his teeth. Blood, dripping with fire, squirts from between his teeth. The sick feeling goes away entirely, and all that’s left is hate. I hate the god. I hate myself. I push the god away and run out of the cave.

  Suddenly, I’m on a highway, bathed in moonlight. There’s a truck in front of me, driving fast.

  John Fox is in that truck.

  I catch up to him easily and land in the back of the truck. He swerves. I run my nails across the glass in the back window, then tap it. It splits and tumbles out of the frame, pebbles of glass.

  John Fox screams and runs the truck off the road. The truck rolls in the ditch, and I fall out, but not before the truck crushes one of my wings and part of my chest.

  I drag myself off the road, toward the truck. It hurts, but I know I’ll be fine as soon as I make the kill.

  John Fox eels out of the truck’s back window. The doors must be jammed. He’s got a shotgun, which he raises toward me.

  A shape darts out of the sky and slams into Fox, knocking him down. At first I think it’s the god, but its skin is yellow-silver under the moonlight, like Aunt George’s hair.

  She stands between me and John Fox. I drag myself closer to them, and she hisses at me to back off, whipping the tip of her tail against the ground in annoyance.

  I try again, getting to my feet. She bats at me. I hiss back at her. Then I hear the grass rustle in the field and go still. A deer leaps across the road, and I jump after it without thinking, catching it. The blood smears over my face, my forelegs, my belly, then flashes as it catches fire and turns to smoke. I lean back and shriek in exaltation as the fire spreads into the fields.

  —

  The next morning I woke up and heard the cops outside the apartment. I wasn’t surprised when they asked to see me, but I was surprised when a neighbor came out of her apartment and volunteered the fact that she’d seen both my Aunt and I at the kitchen table not half an hour before John Fox died in a fiery wreck, two hundred miles away. She’d been snooping in the window, hoping to get a look at me, having heard so much about me from my Aunt.

  John Fox was dead, then.

  I waited until the neighbor and the cops were gone. “Did you kill him?”

  Aunt George had a black eye. “I dragged him out of the fire. But not fast enough. He punched me in the face, and I passed out for a few seconds.”

  “Why did you stop me, if you were just going to let him die?”

  “You’re my family,” she growled. “Give me a little credit for trying to keep you from turning into a monster.”

  “I am a monster,” I said.

  “Not that kind.” She lit two cigarettes and passed me one.

  I smoked it.

  * * * * *

  When Zubalo had finished telling his story, his beak opened and closed over and over again, and he moaned like a dying chicken. His feathers were puffed out and his claws tapped on the mirror, as though fear were inside the glass, knocking to get out. A thin thread of shit dripped out of him.

  His friends, who at first had gathered under the mirror, edged away from him, their claws dragging in the dirt on the overturned roof of the truck cab.

  Crows don’t speak of it, even amongst ourselves, but it is so: if a storyteller displeases his audience, then the other crows turn on him. If only one or two of us dislikes a story, well, then there is no danger. But if a flock of crows moves together, and more and more crows join it, then a storyteller might be pecked to death, little more than a pile of bones remaining.

  It hadn’t been a bad story. But the fear had gripped him, in the middle of the telling. If a good storyteller can brazen through a bad story, a bad storyteller, well, can drop a good story into the dirt.

  “Stop!” Old Loyolo shrieked.

  But the chicks would not stop. They crept up on Zubalo, more and more chicks joining their ranks. Their throats thrummed with malevolence, and even some of the elders were feeling the pull.

  The first chick reached Zubalo’s feet and pecked him in the chest. It drew no blood, not then. But it was as though the wind had been unloosed from the clouds. A mass of chicks rushed at Zubalo, pecking and clawing and cawing madly.

  Facunde whispered into the girl’s ear. Her eyes widened, her mouth opened, and her chest shuddered, as she took in a long, twitching breath.

  “Stop!”

  The chicks froze. The girl’s shout was the sound of a gun, it was the sound of a hunter.

  “I liked it,” the girl said. “It was good enough. He’s just a baby. Stop pecking him.”

  A few chicks, unable to restrain themselves, got in one last peck before they hopped away. Old Loyolo’s eyes followed them, and counted them all.

  When Zubalo was finally revealed, his head was tucked under a wing. His feathers were scattered, and even a few patches of skin showed through.

  There was blood on the mirror now.

  Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if the story was good or not. It only matters that sometimes when the elders are listening, it all turns flat. As thin as a picture. As false as a reluctant lie.

  As bitter as a writhing pebble in the throat.

  Now that the girl had spoken, it felt as though a kind of barrier had been broken, as if a thin film of ice on a cold stream had been shattered with a sharp gray stone. We waited with bated breath, but she only settled back into her nest of blankets, with thin pale hands pulling the pink wool blanket further over her head, tucking the sides together under her chin. Facunde settled back on her shoulder, worrying at the stained, stinking blanket with claw and beak until the girl’s ear was visible again.

  Outside, the storm had thrown the night across us even earlier than usual. The world outside the window of the truck appeared thick and white, but its lightness was a lie: the world was dark but for a single light that rose high over the dumping ground. We were buried in the snow’s shadows, the inside of the cab a lightless, hollow gray.

  After everyone had settled again (and after Zubalo had hidden, almost buried, under the wings of his friends, who had abandoned him before but were back now, which Zubalo put up with; it can be very cold without one’s fair-weather friends), Old Loyolo said, “I have another story for you. That is, if you would rather not go to sleep for a while. It is dark out, and it will be a hungry night. Better to sleep through as much of it as you can.”

  But the girl shook her head.

  Old Loyolo cleared his throat. “Very well, then. Facunde, tell another story.”

  “Me?” She ruffled up her feathers, and the girl squinted her eye shut to keep out Facunde’s disgruntled, thrusting wing feathers. “I just told a story!”

  “Not so,” Old Loyolo said. “Zubalo told the last story.”

  “What about Gorria? Or Ibarrazzo?”

  “They tell pleasant stories. Stories for summertime, stories for fat bellies in autumn. You and Machado, you have always been the ones to collect human stories that go well on a winter night.” He sighed. “Elke, my Elke used to be the one who had to tell all the stories in the winter.”

  “Where is Elke?”

  “Elke is dead, Facunde. Elke died in the autumn while you were piling sticks in your grief. The one who taught you all of your stories—”

  “Not all of them!”

  “Died while you were buried under your grief. She was killed by hunters, Facunde, and you did not come to tell stories at her boneside.” Because Loyolo was looking at Facunde, he was also looking at the girl, who retreated further into her blankets, the pink wool falling over her eyes, as though she, too, felt guilty.

  But it was not guilt she felt. She was grieving, too, you see. For her father, for her brother. For her dead.

  And for you—but not
for you, for an eidolon called Mother.

  Facunde rattled her beak in annoyance and, without leaving the girl’s shoulder, said, “Fine! Another story, when I am poor of stories! When I owe all my best stories to someone I didn’t even pay my respects to! Because the storms forgive me, if I grieve my mate! And if I carried a burden that none of you could ever understand!”

  She throated this to the roof of our bower; she screamed it at the winter wind.

  But then she looked at me. Well, I was the exception, with her bead in my mouth, wasn’t I?

  6. A Ghost Unseen

  Hey man, thanks for coming, and, um, hang on a sec before you hand me that. I’m sorry to be such a pain, but I have this plan. The thing is, I’m a horror writer who can’t see ghosts, and I want to do this experiment.

  What I tell everyone, from my agent to my lawyer to those kids who did this article on the writing rooms of successful horror authors last year, is that my house is haunted. Which is actually true. This four-year-old kid supposedly drowned in the pool in the back yard in the 1960s, right after the house was built. The pool’s filled with gravel now. I bought the house because it was supposed to be haunted. I mean, I asked the realtor to sell me a haunted house, and she did.

  And then I got here, and I couldn’t see it. But of course I still bought it.

  It’s the front room that got me. Blood red. The nuts who’d owned the place before me did it. I bought this place just so I could write in this room. I can sit at my old roll-top desk over there, punching the keys on my laptop—they sound just like typewriter keys except for the semicolon, which makes this little scream. The whole place smells of old books and leather. Spilled wine. A little dirt from the coffee table where I put my boots all the time.

  And blood. This room. It’s so inspiring.

  Except lately.

  I found out I got the big C, man.

  All week I’ve been numb. I couldn’t type a fuckin’ word. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t eat. I sat out in the back yard on my rusty old patio chair next to the filled-in pool and chain-smoked until my tongue felt numb and covered with ash. I read books and put on headphones and lay in the sun, because who’s scared of skin cancer now, bitches? Fuck it.