The Crowmaster

by Barry Hutchison

  My eyes met with his again, and I suddenly felt very ashamed for thinking so badly of the poor guy. I stood there, transfixed by the man’s mushy remains, until Joseph reached forward and swung the door closed.

  I blinked, the spell broken. ‘He’s… he’s… dead,’ I whispered.

  Joseph swiped his card across the door control button and the lock blinked red. ‘Well spotted,’ he said. ‘What gave it away?’

  ‘What did you do to him?’ I asked, missing the sarcasm completely.

  ‘Me? Nothing. I’ve been standing here with you. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Long story,’ Joseph said. ‘And one you’re probably best not knowing for the moment. I’ll clean it up. I’ll take care of it. That’s what I do. That’s how I help you, Kyle. I tidy things away. I tie up the loose ends.’

  I nodded, my eyes still fixed on the door. I couldn’t get the sight of the man’s remains out of my head. I think I muttered ‘OK’, but I couldn’t say for certain.

  ‘Go back to your seat,’ Joseph told me. ‘Try to act natural. You’ll be in Glasgow before you know it.’

  I nodded again, too numb to do much else. The door to my left slid open and Joseph gave me a nudge to start me moving along the aisle.

  Just before I started to walk, he put a hand on my shoulder. He may have been a small man, but his grip was like steel. ‘One thing you should ask yourself,’ he said, his voice quiet so no one else would hear. ‘Did that man die after he went into the toilet, or before?’

  The hand withdrew from my shoulder and I stood in the mouth of the aisle, waiting for the sentence to filter properly through to my brain.

  ‘After,’ I frowned, turning on the spot. ‘I saw him walk…’

  I left the rest of the sentence hanging in the air. The area around me was empty. Joseph had pulled his usual disappearing trick.

  I skulked along the aisle back to my seat. I kept my gaze on the floor, avoiding all eye contact for fear of somehow giving away what I’d just seen. As I walked, all I could hear was Joseph’s final question, repeating over and over again in my head like the steady clattering rhythm of the train on the tracks.

  Of course he’d died after going into the toilet. I’d watched him walk in. But the way Joseph asked the question, and the fact he’d even asked it at all, made me wonder if he knew something about the man-baby that I didn’t.

  Chapter Five

  MEETING MARION

  The change at Glasgow had gone smoothly enough, once I’d managed to find the other train station. It was hidden down a side street, and I’d arrived just as the dozen or so passengers were boarding the train.

  The carriage I was in was virtually empty, and I’d found a seat with no problems. We pulled out of the station just a minute or so after I sat down. I gazed out through the grimy window, watching grey concrete tower blocks trundle slowly by. After the fifteenth or sixteenth identical block had passed, I settled back in my seat and closed my eyes.

  Immediately I was confronted by the pleading stare of the mega-baby. Lost in the darkness behind my eyelids, all I could see was his wide face, wobbling atop his mushy remains like melted ice cream. His rubbery lips flapped open and shut, but no sound came out, just the choking stench of sour milk.

  I opened my eyes again, and knew at once that I’d been dreaming. The housing estates had been replaced by rolling expanses of greens and browns. They stretched off in all directions, becoming trees and hills and lochs in the distance. The scenery where I live is pretty impressive, but the sights I saw through the train window were picture-postcard beautiful.

  I’d sat there, admiring the view and slowly waking up, for something like ten or fifteen minutes. Eventually, a robotic-sounding female voice had announced we would soon be arriving at my stop.

  As I heaved my bag down from the overhead luggage rack, I felt an uneasiness in the pit of my stomach. I may have left some dangers behind when I’d boarded the first train that morning, but who knew what waited for me up ahead?

  * * *

  Nothing. That was what waited for me. Nothing and no one.

  The station was almost exactly how I imagined it would be – an old stone hut with a flimsy plastic shelter attached to one crumbling wall. There was also a clock mounted on the wall, but its hands were stopped at eleven fifteen. Moss grew around the clock’s face, so I’d be surprised if the hands had stopped at eleven fifteen any day recently. It had probably been frozen like that for months, if not years.

  I listened to the clattering of the train growing fainter, and wondered what I should do next. Marion was supposed to be at the station to meet me, but besides the building itself, there was nothing but hills and trees for miles around.

  I thought about phoning Mum. She’d given me the mobile phone she’d been keeping for my birthday, and topped it up with some credit so I could get in touch whenever I wanted. I think she was trying to reassure me she wasn’t just sending me away and cutting all contact.

  And then I remembered that the phone hadn’t been charged up yet. The battery was completely flat, so calling anyone wasn’t an option. It didn’t matter. Marion was probably just held up somewhere. Stuck in a traffic jam or something.

  My eyes wandered along the dusty, single-track road that led away from the station. Traffic jam, I thought. Yeah, right.

  My bag almost knocked me off balance as I swung it up on to my shoulder. I immediately swung it back down again, realising I may as well leave it beneath the plastic shelter while I went for a look around. It wasn’t like it had anything worth stealing in it, and even if it had, there was nobody around to steal it.

  The steps leading down from the platform were little more than cleverly arranged boulders. I picked my way down them, holding on to the rough stone wall of the station building for support.

  There was no path at the bottom, but a track had been worn through the tangle of grass and heather that surrounded the building. A soft wind swished through the foliage, and I realised its whispers were the only sound I could hear.

  I was completely alone – further away from any other human being than I had ever been in my life. There was nothing but me, the landscape and the flock of birds circling far, far above my head. It was strangely relaxing.

  The track curved around the back of the station building. I followed it, almost skipping along, until I realised I wasn’t actually alone at all.

  A battered old Morris Minor estate car stood in the small car park behind the station. The building shielded the four-space parking zone, making it impossible to see from the platform.

  The car was dark blue, with occasional spots of brown rust. Its entire rear end was clad with panels of varnished wood, giving the impression it was half car, half walk-in wardrobe.

  I knew right away it had to be Marion’s. I couldn’t remember much about Mum’s cousin, but I remembered enough to know this was exactly the type of thing she was likely to drive.

  The front door swung open and my suspicions were confirmed. Marion’s prematurely grey head popped up on the other side of the roof. One of the few things I could remember about her was the colour of her eyes. They were a striking shade of bright blue. They almost shone as she fixed me with a glare, gave me a curt nod, then stared down at my empty hands.

  ‘No luggage?’

  ‘What? Oh. Um, hi, Marion,’ I smiled. ‘I left my bag up there. I didn’t think…’

  She nodded again and climbed back into the car. The door closed behind her with a thunk.

  ‘I’ll just go and get it, shall I?’ I muttered. I waited for a moment to see if she’d pop back up. She didn’t, so I turned and backtracked up to the platform.

  When I got there I found another surprise waiting for me. An oily-black crow sat perched on top of my bag. Its wings were folded in against its back, and its head was tilted slightly to one side. The bird’s dark, beady eyes stared at me as I scurried up the stone steps and stopped.

  ‘Shoo,�
�� I said, stamping my foot hard on the ground. The bird didn’t flinch. I took a few steps closer and stamped my foot again, harder this time. The crow tilted its head further to the side, but otherwise did nothing.

  We watched each other for almost a minute, while I tried to figure out what to do next. I’m not keen on birds, not since the budgie we had when I was three got its claws tangled in my hair. My memory of the thing flapping and pecking at my head as it tried to get free is hazy, but even now, when I get up close to anything with feathers, I can feel myself getting nervous.

  And the monster perched on top of my bag was no budgie. For a start it must’ve been about fifty centimetres in length. Its beak was long and curved, with short feathery tufts covering the top. Its legs were long and spindly, tapering at the bottom into sharp-looking claws.

  The feathers, the legs, the beak; no part of the bird was any other shade but black. It didn’t just look like a crow, it was a perfect example of crowness. Like something from a creepy fairy tale. Or – I realised with a shudder – a horror story.

  ‘Right, come on, shift,’ I urged, clapping my hands loudly and shuffling towards my bag. The bird gave a faint caw, then hopped into the air. It appeared to beat its wings only once, but that was enough to carry it up to the roof of the station building. It perched there, watching with its dark eyes, as I picked up my bag and made my way back to Marion’s car.

  ‘You got it then,’ Marion said, as I clambered into the passenger seat. The inside of her car was as neat and tidy as it was chilly. I slipped my seatbelt on and pulled my jacket tightly around me. Somehow it felt colder inside the car than it did outside.

  ‘Yep,’ I replied, fighting to stop my teeth chattering together.

  ‘Right then,’ she said, cranking the engine. After four or five attempts it spluttered noisily into life. ‘Let’s be off.’

  Marion was twenty years and a few months older than my mum, which made her fifty-one. If you didn’t know, you’d swear she was pushing seventy.

  Her hair had gone grey in her late thirties, Mum had told me. Others might have tried to disguise it with dye, but not Marion. She wore it scraped back into a tight bun. It wasn’t the best-looking hairstyle in the world, but like everything about Marion, it was efficient.

  We had been travelling for almost ten minutes, the car swerving to avoid some potholes, and bouncing through those that slipped under Marion’s radar. We had travelled in silence for most of the way. Marion hadn’t said a word since she’d started driving, and I realised it was going to be down to me to break the ice.

  ‘So,’ I began, hunting for something to talk about, ‘the scenery’s nice.’

  Marion shrugged and made a short grunting sound.

  The suspension creaked as the old car thudded through another pothole.

  ‘How far is it to your house?’ I asked.

  ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said, nodding. ‘Twenty minutes.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  I turned towards the side window. Despite the cold inside, the glass had started to steam up. I wiped the condensation away with my sleeve, but it made the glass streaky and difficult to see through.

  ‘Nice car,’ I ventured. ‘Had it long?’

  ‘Too long,’ she said. ‘But I paid for it honestly. Not that you’d know anything about that.’

  I frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, sucking in her cheeks, ‘coming up here, running away. “Trouble”, that’s what your mother said you were in. Only one kind of trouble I can think of that’d send you running up here. Law-breaking trouble.’

  ‘Wait… you think I’m in trouble with the police?’

  ‘I should have told her “no”,’ Marion continued. ‘I don’t know what I was thinking. Harbouring a fugitive. At my age. But family’s family, and Lord knows your mother’s had a hard enough time of it.’

  ‘Marion, I’m not… I haven’t done anything wrong. I’m not a wanted criminal or anything.’

  She tore her eyes from the road for a fraction of a second and met my gaze. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘No!’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s… just some problems with a kid in school. Bullying, really.’ I smiled, even though I wasn’t pleased with myself for lying to her. ‘That’s all.’

  She drove along in silence for a few hundred metres. ‘Oh,’ she said at last. I could see her tight grip on the wheel relaxing. ‘I see.’ A flicker of warmth passed across her face and her thin, colourless lips curved into a smile. ‘Well then, why didn’t you say?’

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ I replied, pleased to see her smiling.

  ‘That’s a very fair point,’ she conceded. She took a deep breath and let it out in a big sigh of relief. ‘Well, that is good news. I was thinking you’d been up to all sorts. Let my imagination run away with me no end. You ever find yourself doing that?’

  I hesitated before replying. ‘It’s been known to happen.’

  ‘I’ll have to take the scratchy blankets off your bed when we get back,’ she said. ‘Put on some nice soft ones.’

  ‘You gave me scratchy blankets?’ I laughed. ‘That’s just nasty.’

  ‘I thought you were a crook,’ she said, her smile widening. ‘I was teaching you a lesson. You should have seen the slop I was planning serving up for dinner. A few days of eating that and you’d have been begging to be sent to prison.’

  ‘Cunning plan,’ I said. I was beginning to warm to Marion now that she wasn’t treating me like a murder suspect. ‘Except for one flaw.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’d probably still have been better than Mum’s cooking.’

  For a second I thought Marion was going to sneeze, but instead she erupted into gales of laughter. It was a loud, infectious laugh, and I found myself joining in.

  ‘Good point!’ Marion guffawed. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. Is she still as bad as she—’

  ‘Look out!’

  KA-RASSHK!

  The windscreen splintered into a wide spider-web pattern as something smashed against it. Marion stopped laughing instantly. Her foot shifted to the brake and pushed down hard. The tyres spat out dust and gravel and the car spluttered to a stop.

  We tried to look outside, but the cracks ran from one side of the glass to the other, making it impossible to see through. Whatever had hit the windscreen had hit it hard.

  ‘What happened?’ gasped Marion. Her hands were shaking and her face was pale. ‘What was it? Did someone throw something?’

  ‘I don’t… I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I saw something, and then it just…’

  Marion recovered from the shock before I did. She quickly unclipped her seatbelt, pushed open her door and clambered out.

  By the time I got out of the car, she was standing up in front, peering down at a lifeless black shape on the bonnet. She clicked her tongue against her teeth, then turned to look at me.

  ‘It’s a crow,’ she said glumly. I peered down at the mangled remains of the bird. ‘Nothing to worry about. Just a silly old crow.’

  Chapter Six

  LOST

  ‘Well, this is a first. This is a first for me,’ muttered Marion, as she traced a fingertip along one of the windscreen’s cracks. The bird was still on the bonnet, its neck bent back and its beak hanging wide open. ‘I’ve never known one to do that before.’

  ‘What, never?’ I asked.

  Marion shook her head. ‘We get a lot of low-fliers round here, and I’ve hit my fair share of them, but usually they just skite off the glass, no real harm done.’ She plucked a black feather from one of the cracks, studied it briefly, then let it float to the ground. ‘This one must have been going like a bat out of you-know-where to do damage like that. Silly little beggar.’

  ‘Are there a lot of them round here?’ I asked. ‘Crows, I mean.’

  ‘Hundreds. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, probably. Used to terrify me when I was a girl until a friend of mine sho
wed me they were nothing to be afraid of,’ replied Marion, turning her attention to the bird itself. It was on its side, with its legs buckled outwards in opposite directions. One wing was trapped beneath its body, while the other was bent right back above its head. From where I was standing, it looked like it was sniffing its own armpit. Or wingpit, if you wanted to get technical about it.

  It reminded me again of the man-baby in the train toilet. All the right component parts, but violently rearranged into something disturbing and unfamiliar. I shuddered and tried to forget the image.

  ‘Should I get a stick?’ I asked.

  Marion looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘To, you know, flick it off the car with,’ I said, miming the action.

  Marion’s hands wrapped around the bird. Its head flopped even further back as she lifted it, until its lifeless eyes were staring straight at me. ‘Or we could just, you know, pick it up,’ she said with a smirk.

  ‘Or we could do that.’

  She walked over to the edge of the road. ‘We’ll have to knock the windscreen out for now,’ she said. ‘Might be a bit draughty, but at least we’ll be able to — Ow!’

  The crow hit the ground with a soft thud. Marion’s hand flew to her mouth, but not before I saw the tiny river of blood trickling between her index finger and thumb.

  ‘What happened? Are you OK?’

  Marion was sucking the wound on her hand, and staring down at the bundle of black feathers at her feet. ‘It pecked me,’ she gasped, pulling her hand from her mouth to assess the damage. ‘The ruddy thing lifted its head and pecked me!’

  I stepped closer and gave the bird a prod with my toe. It didn’t move or do anything else to suggest it was still alive.

  ‘Must’ve been a nerve twitching or something,’ I suggested. ‘Like when you chop a chicken’s head off. Its body keeps running around.’

  Marion raised her eyebrows. ‘You’ve chopped a chicken’s head off?’

  ‘No, no, I haven’t, but I’ve heard that’s what happens. I read it somewhere, I think. Must have been something like that, because look.’ I gave the crow another poke. It rolled limply on to its back. ‘Nothing.’