‘Ameena!’ I cried. ‘Get away from the window!’
‘What? Why, what’s—?’
I heard the glass shatter and the shutters break almost before it happened. The wood splintered into slivers no bigger than matchsticks. A streak of screeching black tore into the room, catching Ameena on the side of the head and sending her spiralling to the floor.
Sparks were already buzzing through my brain as the bird rocketed towards me. It crossed the room in a heartbeat, flying faster than my startled brain could work. The power was there, but I wasn’t quick enough to use it. The bird’s black beak pulled open and a piercing screech escaped from within it.
For a fraction of a second I saw myself reflected in its eyes, crouching there, hands in front of my face, like a statue of a coward. And then the bird was too close for me to see anything but black.
Something bumped against my legs from below, knocking me backwards. I felt a sharp, sudden movement; saw a brief blur of speed; and the bird was gone.
Down on the floor, the crow struggled briefly in Toto’s jaws. Then, with a crack of bone, the bundle of black feathers went silent and limp. It made a soft plop sound as it landed in a messy heap on the floor.
Toto looked lazily up at me, licked his chops, then settled back down to sleep.
I wasted a few seconds getting my breath back. My eyes were still fixed on the dog, who had already begun to snore. My mouth was dry as I swallowed. ‘Good boy.’
Ameena and I both stood up at the same time. Blood oozed from a deep gash on her forehead, but she didn’t even acknowledge it. She was at the window again, her body tucked out of sight, her head angled so one eye could look out.
I darted over to join her, positioning myself on the other side of the shattered shutters, so we were standing on opposite sides of the window. I stole a glance outside, and felt an icy band of fear tighten around my throat.
The Crowmaster was prowling around outside the house. He looked a little different from when I’d last seen him. His dungarees had four or five large tears in them, and one of his sleeves had been ripped right off. Whatever damage Toto had done to his body looked to have knitted together again, but he seemed to be limping a little on his impossibly skinny legs.
I glanced back at Toto. ‘Good boy,’ I whispered again.
The torn clothes weren’t the only things to have changed about the Crowmaster. A tall, crooked hat was now pulled down on to his sack-cloth head. It had a wide brim and came to a point at the top. It looked like a hat from a fancy-dress witch’s costume, but tatty and torn, and chalky with dust.
On his left shoulder sat a crow. Its claws were dug in deep, and its head was constantly on the move, swivelling this way and that, its eyes scanning the entire area every few seconds.
All of a sudden, the bird’s head stopped moving. Its gaze locked on to something on the ground. The Crowmaster skulked towards the object, his own empty eye sockets looking blankly into nowhere.
‘What’s he doing?’ Ameena whispered, as the spindly figure folded at the waist and scooped the item up. He held it up to the bird. Its head cocked side to side as it studied the rectangle of shiny plastic.
I realised what it was before the Crowmaster did, and remembered what had happened just as the birds had been about to finish me off. A shudder of excitement shook my body.
‘The number you were calling me on,’ I said quietly. ‘The mobile.’
‘What about it?’
I nodded towards Marion’s telephone. It was the old-fashioned kind, with a dial instead of buttons. ‘Call it again.’
‘What? But—’
‘Hurry up,’ I hissed. ‘I’ll explain in a minute.’
I heard Ameena move, but kept my eyes on the scarecrow. After a few moments, the dial of Marion’s phone began to click and whirr as Ameena called the number.
If I hadn’t been expecting it, I wouldn’t have noticed it at first. The crow gave a sudden flap of one wing and its master stumbled ever so slightly, losing his balance for the briefest of moments.
The bird turned its head and lashed out with a sudden peck, taking a chunk right out of the scarecrow’s battered hat. The hand holding the plastic object came up, trying to knock the bird away, but this only seemed to make it worse. It gave a menacing caw and began to claw furiously at the Crowmaster’s shoulder.
‘It’s ringing,’ Ameena told me.
The object in the scarecrow’s hand suddenly lit up. I knew the phone would be ringing, but I couldn’t hear it over the panicked squawking of the crow. It hurled itself away from the Crowmaster and flapped erratically around the garden, weaving wildly, as if suddenly blinded.
‘It’s the phone,’ I realised. ‘However he’s controlling them, the phone interferes with it. It breaks his hold over the birds.’
I turned from the window. ‘Without the birds, we can beat him!’ I cried. ‘Don’t ask me how, but the phone signal messes him up. We can stop him. We have a weapon!’
The chiming of the ringtone was suddenly behind me. It came from nowhere, grew quickly louder, and then faded just as fast. It stopped completely when the phone disintegrated against the living-room wall, showering the room with pieces of plastic and metal.
Outside, the crow banked down and took up its perch on the Crowmaster’s shoulder. The scarecrow’s face scraped back into a humourless smile.
‘Correction,’ said Ameena. ‘We did have a weapon.’
Chapter Thirteen
CAUGHT BY THE CROWS
Toto’s low growl made me turn towards him. He was standing up, his whole body tensed. The short hair on his back stood on end, all the way from his neck to his tail. His ears were raised and his gums were drawn back into a snarl. His dark brown eyes saw nothing but the figure beyond the broken window.
When a bird came hurtling through the hole and into the room, he snapped it from the air, just as he’d done with the last one. It was dead before it hit the ground.
But this one hadn’t come alone.
Seven, eight, maybe nine of them – it was hard to tell for sure – came in together in tight formation. They split up inside the room, forcing Toto to circle on the spot, as he tried to keep an eye on them all.
The dog’s growl turned into a bark and he lunged at the closest of the birds. His powerful jaws clamped closed on its tail. The crow squawked angrily but pulled itself free, leaving Toto with a mouth full of black feathers.
Over the dog’s barking and the screeching of the birds, I heard another sound. It started like a soft ripple of applause, then swelled quickly into an ovation. It came from everywhere – all directions at once – louder and louder, faster and faster with each passing moment.
Ameena had heard the sound too. It was impossible not to. ‘What is that?’ she asked.
‘It’s more of them. It’s more crows,’ I replied, shoving her towards the door that led out into the hall. ‘Move, move, move!’
The roaring of wings flooded into the room behind us as we stumbled through the open door. Toto barked, yelped and howled, snapping at anything that came close.
‘What about the dog?’ Ameena asked. ‘We can’t just leave it there.’
I risked a glance back into the living room. Toto’s jaws were the only part of him I could see. The rest was buried beneath a writhing blanket of black, the carpet below him already awash with blood.
The living-room door gave a firm click when I pulled it closed, cutting us off from the scene I knew was about to play out.
‘It’s too late,’ I said. ‘There’re too many of them!’
As if proving my point, the window in the kitchen shattered, and more of the birds pushed in through the gap. There wasn’t even time to pull the kitchen door shut. Instead, I bounded on up the stairs, with Ameena at my back.
‘Move!’ she screamed. ‘Go, go, go!’
I thought back to all the times Ameena had pretended something was chasing us, in order to make me move faster. Mr Mumbles in the garden. A giant snake i
n the school. I knew that this time was different, though. This time death really was snapping at our heels. Birds were pouring out of the kitchen, moving as one, like a dark and dangerous river flowing towards us.
We thundered up the final few steps and sprinted along the upstairs hallway. In the rooms on either side, the wooden shutters were shaking in their frames, as more and more of the crows fought to force their way through.
I made for the one room I hoped would be safe. There were no shutters on my bedroom window, just the heavy, solid wardrobe wedged in front of the glass. The birds were big, but they wouldn’t be able to break through that.
Would they?
Charging at the door, I grabbed for the handle. Ameena staggered into the bedroom behind me, her arms over her head, screaming at me to ‘Close it, close it, close it!’
With a slam that shook the room, I shut out the birds. They threw themselves against the door, hammering into it with a series of short, rapid thuds. The birds were strong, but the door was stronger. It held in place. For the moment.
I turned to Ameena. She was standing by the bed, her hands still held protectively above her head. Her eyes were on the door. They twitched nervously whenever another bird struck against the other side.
‘Are you... are you OK?’ I asked her. She didn’t reply. ‘Ameena. Are you—?’
‘Of course I’m OK,’ she snapped. She brought her arms down and turned away from the door, but it didn’t take a psychologist to see through the act.
‘It’s just, you seem a bit... jumpy.’
‘Jumpy?’ she said with a snort. ‘I barely survived an attack by the world’s fattest man. I walked and hitchhiked, like, a hundred miles through the night to get here, to find you unconscious on the ground, a dead body in the bedroom, and an eyeless scarecrow dude in the garden.
‘Outside that door there’re a million birds waiting to eat us, even though, as far as I was aware, birds – actual, proper bird birds – don’t eat people!’ Her voice had been getting higher and higher through her rant. She stopped, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again her tone was much closer to normal. ‘So taking all that into account, I think a certain amount of jumpiness is understandable, don’t you?’
I nodded, too scared to speak in case she bit my face off. Ameena was right, she did have every reason to be edgy and nervous, but the fact was I’d never really seen her behave like that before. Even though we’d both faced death a dozen times or more over the past few weeks, none of it had seemed to scare her. Not properly, anyway. She had laughed it all off, and I’d taken confidence from that. Seeing her so frightened frightened me even more.
‘Look, I’m fine, OK?’ she said with a soft sigh. ‘I just... I’ve never liked birds, that’s all.’
‘Me neither,’ I said. ‘One got caught in my hair when I was a kid. It was horrible.’
‘Unfortunate,’ she said. A grim expression hardened her face. ‘One killed my mum.’
‘What?’ I spluttered. ‘God. Really?’
She tried to fight it, but she couldn’t. A devilish grin lit up her face. ‘Nah, don’t be stupid.’
‘You’re sick!’ I said, but inside I was grinning too. Ameena was laughing and joking again, and just like that I could feel my fear ebbing away. Maybe we’d get out of this yet.
The thuds against the door soon became less frequent. They’d stop for twenty or thirty seconds at a time, then catch us by surprise when they started up again. The birds couldn’t get inside, but the birds weren’t the only thing we had to worry about. I took the high-backed wooden chair from the corner of the room and wedged it against the door handle. If the Crowmaster tried to get in, he wouldn’t find it easy.
Ameena slumped down on to the bed and lay back, her eyes closed. For a long few moments I was unsure what to do. Had she really hitched and walked all this way to find me? If she had, she must’ve been exhausted by now. Letting her have a few minutes’ sleep probably wasn’t a bad idea.
‘So, you going to fill me in on what’s been happening?’ she asked, not opening her eyes. ‘Or do I have to guess?’
‘No, I’ll tell you,’ I said. ‘Just not sure where to start.’
‘Start by sitting down,’ she said, patting the edge of the bed beside her knees. ‘You’re making the place look untidy.’
I hesitated, then lowered myself down on to the bed as casually as I could. I didn’t want to lean back in case I accidentally brushed against her legs, so I perched right on the edge, using my own leg muscles to keep me hovering a millimetre or two above the blankets. My thighs began to burn almost immediately. I’d have been more comfortable standing.
‘Right then,’ she said, her eyes still closed. ‘I’m all ears.’
I started talking, beginning with the train and ending there in the room with her. I told her about the mega-baby and about Joseph. I told her about the bird at the station, and the one that had shattered the windscreen of Marion’s car. I told her all about the dog in the forest, the eyeball under the bed, and the monster in the Marion suit. I stopped short of telling her what the Crowmaster had said – about me being the one who would open the doorway and bring on the end of the world. I would make sure that never happened, so it wasn’t something she needed to know.
‘So, that’s it,’ I said, when I’d reached the end. ‘That’s you up to date.’
Silence.
‘You’re sleeping, aren’t you?’ I said.
‘No, just thinking.’
‘Oh. Thinking what?’
‘Thinking we’re screwed.’
‘Oh. Right. You think?’
‘Yep. Unless you’ve got any bright ideas?’
‘They’ve stopped.’
Ameena opened one eye and squinted at me. ‘What?’
‘The birds,’ I said, tilting an ear towards the door and listening. ‘They’ve stopped. They’re not trying to get in.’
We both listened for what felt like ten minutes, but in reality it must have been closer to two. Not a creak, not a sound came from anywhere in the house.
‘They’ve stopped,’ Ameena said. She moved her legs and I leapt up off the bed, making room for her to swing her feet down on to the floor. Together we crept closer to the door, both holding our breath as we listened again.
This time we listened for longer. Three minutes. Four minutes. Five. My heart was beating so hard I thought for sure Ameena would hear it, but if she did she didn’t let on.
‘Think they’re gone?’ I whispered.
Ameena gave a slight shrug, then slowly reached towards the door. With the knuckle of her middle finger, she gave three short raps on the wood.
Nothing responded. Nothing moved.
‘Think they’re gone?’ I asked again, hardly daring to believe it.
Moving with great care, Ameena eased the wooden chair away from where it was pressed against the door handle. ‘Only one way to find out,’ she whispered. I saw her hands shake as she wrapped them around the handle. She glanced upwards, steadying her nerve, then inched the door open a crack, just wide enough to see out.
CAAAWRAAAK!
‘Nope,’ she said, closing the door just in time to stop a fat crow forcing its way in. ‘Still there.’
‘Damn.’
‘That’s exactly what I was about to— Good grief, check out your face!’ Ameena gasped, as if seeing my injuries properly for the first time. I realised I hadn’t had a chance to look at myself since the Crowmaster had smashed my nose, and I could only imagine what I must look like. I could see my own cheeks while still looking straight ahead, which I was fairly sure wasn’t normal.
Ameena reached up and gingerly touched the swelling around my eyes. I gave a gasp and pulled back, my nose throbbing with pain at the pressure of her fingers.
‘That’s got to hurt,’ she whistled, her eyes darting over my bruises.
‘Does a bit.’
‘You look like a big potato man.’
‘Thanks.’
A bird batter
ed itself against the other side of the door. Ameena caught my arm and we both took a few steps away. ‘Can you do something about it?’
‘The birds?’
‘Your face.’
‘Oh. I… I’m not…’ I gave a shrug. ‘Dunno. Don’t think so.’
‘Why not? You healed up from that stabbing in, like, an hour. This isn’t as bad as that.’
Ameena was right. After Billy Gibb had stuck a knife into my stomach, my abilities had set to work fixing the wound. I was more or less powerless while I healed, but since the alternative was bleeding to death, I couldn’t really complain.
But this was different.
‘It just kind of… happened then,’ I explained. ‘By itself. Nothing’s happening this time.’
‘Maybe it’s a—’ A bird thumped against the door. ‘Wow, they’re annoying. Maybe it’s a subconscious thing. You would’ve died if you hadn’t healed up last time. Maybe your subconscious took over and made sure you stayed alive.’
I nodded. ‘Could be.’
‘But maybe you can do it consciously too. If you focus, or concentrate, or close your eyes and make a wish, or whatever it is you do.’
‘Can’t hurt, I suppose.’
Ameena’s eyes flicked over my swollen face. ‘Well… it might a bit.’
I smiled weakly and shut my eyes – although they were so puffed out they were almost closed already. I could feel Ameena watching me, and although I knew my abilities were real, I couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid. I had no idea if this was going to work, and for some reason I desperately wanted to impress the girl standing across from me.
Heal, I thought, as clearly and firmly as I could. Heal up now.
The pain didn’t flinch. It stayed there, like a tight band around my head, squeezing everything together.
‘You started yet?’ Ameena asked.
‘Not yet,’ I lied. ‘Just about to.’
‘Roger that,’ she said.
I tried another approach. Maybe if I imagined the bones clicking back into place then they would. Keeping my eyes tight shut, I tried to picture my broken nose straightening itself out; the bones knitting back together into—
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