The Book of the Crowman

by Joseph D'lacey

“They did what they’ve been doing all along. Following Gordon Black. He led them right to him.”

  She tried to hide her shock but judging by Jerome’s quizzical expression didn’t completely succeeded

  “You alright, Denise?”

  “Yeah. Yes, I’m fine. Felt a bit dizzy for a moment, I guess.”

  “All the more reason why you should stay here. I’ll see you tonight.”

  Jerome was so rushed and tense he hadn’t even kissed her before walking out the door again. As soon as he’d gone, she was out of bed and dressing as fast as she could. In the bedroom wardrobe there were still clothes – left by the previous vicar and his wife, she assumed. She found a crocheted grey shawl of the softest wool and pulled it around herself, cowling her head, before setting off.

  Now, having sweet-talked a couple of Wardsmen, she stood in the ranks of spectators, north of the road and at the base of the hill, directly below the twisted black oak. Beside her stood a filthy blind cripple, dressed entirely in ropes of rag. The smell from him was worse than the odour of the unwashed. He stank of decay, as though he were rotting alive. He swayed from foot to foot and nodded to himself like a madman, pointing up the hill with crooked, nail-less fingers.

  Unlike the captive Green Men, he was undaunted and uncowed by the situation. The Wardsman appeared not to be bothered with him; he seemed too crazy and too physically broken to be of any use to either side. She would have given him a wider berth had it not been for the press of the throng all around them. There was nowhere else to stand.

  64

  Dempsey had managed to evade capture with his small band of sub-commanders and fighters. Other collections of battle-ready survivors had made good their escape too, having met and agreed on a plan in a field near the canal bridge outside Yelvertoft.

  The simple reality was that they had neither the numbers, the equipment, nor the supplies necessary to face the Ward in open combat a second time. They might never be able to muster such a force again. There just weren’t enough people left with the strength to fight.

  No. Their war would become a guerrilla affair once again and, as before, they would take to the still-living parts of the land and hide there, in the hills and the forests, living wild. All the towns where they’d had influence would now be taken over by the Ward. Even Coventry would fall.

  They’re welcome to it, thought Dempsey.

  What good was a city now to anyone? Nothing would grow there. No clean water flowed there. There was no game to hunt and nowhere to keep animals. That the Green Men had held the city had been good for morale. Such a triumph had been a source of pride. But now, for the sake of survival, they needed to go deep into the land and stay there. It was the one place the Ward had no understanding of and no interest in, a place where their agents couldn’t survive for long.

  Dempsey had brought his fighters on a circuitous route to a group of abandoned farm outbuildings to the east of the Ward’s position. He would have kept his men moving if he hadn’t had his binoculars. He used them regularly to make sure they weren’t being followed and they’d shown him the massing of humanity around the base of a single, bald hill west of their temporary hideout.

  He spent much of the morning glancing at the activity, shocked by the numbers of Green Men that had been captured. It had been a brutal and utterly demoralising defeat from which they could only run and hide. It shamed him and he saw the same disgrace in the eyes of every one of his cobbled-together troop. He feared the Ward were rounding up the captives for a mass execution.

  That was until he saw a small group of Wardsmen leading one man up the hill and into the shadow of an old, dead tree.

  He managed not to say “Oh, dear God” out loud.

  His fighters did not need to know about this. But Dempsey needed to know so that he would have something to tell them, some outcome that they could take away from this, even if it was merely a story about how evil the Ward had become. It was better that they hear it as a story and not see it for themselves.

  When he began to weep that afternoon, his binoculars held to his streaming eyes, they asked him what was wrong. He didn’t reply. He watched and cried until nightfall when, under the generous cloak of its darkness, he led them on into the countryside, away from the cities forever and into the waiting arms of the land.

  Skelton struggled to walk up the hill, even though they traversed it to make it easier for him. He held his bandaged forearm close to his body. When their party reached the top, he was perspiring in spite of the heartless wind and cold, and his chest was hammering dangerously. A sharp pain under his breastbone caused his sweat to chill.

  Don’t let me die here! Not now!

  The pains became an ache and ebbed away. Skelton heaved several sighs. Once his pulse had settled he cast his eye over the assembled throng.

  There were faces, of Green Men and Ward, watching from every southerly direction, ranged as far back as the outskirts of the village. He was impressed – he’d never seen such a vast mass of people and he knew, as he looked at them, that news of what they were about to do would extend from every mouth assembled here to the ears of every person they ever met and so on, possibly forever.

  Only now did the Ward’s achievement really begin to hit home. They were saving history and making history all in the space of an afternoon. All the work, all the logistics of the chase, the nights spent awake, the treks back and forth across the country, the loss of life, the loss of his eye and of the mobility of Pike’s leg, all of this now had meaning, all of this would now be paid back to them in the public destruction of one man.

  65

  Skelton turned back to regard their captive.

  The boy stood between two hefty Wardsmen, but with his top hat he still appeared to tower over them. He was secure enough, though, with his wrists restrained behind his back by an old pair of police handcuffs. Four more Wardsmen stood ready. Pike, vibrating with singular intent, held in his right hand a crude brown leather bag which had exuded heavy clinks and rattles as they’d walked to the hill from their carriage. Pike, his hands like slabs and his face like granite, dwarfed them all. In Skelton’s mind he was greater than any other man, a giant walking among mortals.

  “Take him to the tree,” said Skelton.

  A blowtorch gleam lit Pike’s eyes and Skelton faced the throng. There was no need to hold up his hands; the crowd was almost totally silent already. In the tones of a wheezing headmistress, he addressed everyone assembled.

  “They said he was evil made flesh. They said he would bring Armageddon. But we, the Ward, who swore to protect this world, have hunted him down since the days of the first prophecies. And now our future is assured. Forget what you’ve heard. He is not a demon. He is not Satan. He is not almighty. He is just a man. A powerful man, true, but mortal like any other. Neither he nor anyone is powerful enough to stand against the Ward. Let his death unite us, for in his death we will all find salvation. People of the future, I give you the Crowman!”

  Skelton stepped back and presented the scene unfolding behind him with a flourish. Pike stood apart from the tree while the six Wardsmen bound their prisoner to it. They used rope to stretch his hands up and back around the trunk, forcing his chest forwards. Ropes also held his torso, hips, knees and ankles keeping his legs apart. This made an X of his body without permitting his feet to touch the ground. Pike checked the ropes and nodded to the Wardsmen who retreated from the hill and joined the silent crowd.

  Skelton approached the tree. He assessed the prisoner with satisfaction.

  “Everything you’ve taken, you’ll give back today.”

  He looked at Pike.

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Pike dropped his bag to the ground. It landed with a muffled clank and its slack brown lips parted to reveal dull glints; shafts of metal, shafts of wood. Skelton retreated a few yards and then, quickly realising he would be the useless third wheel, descended the hill to stand at the head of the crowd.

  Pike for
ced Gordon’s fingers open with the edge of his left fist and held the point of a tarnished four inch nail to the centre of the boy’s palm. He looked into the boy’s eyes. A single strike from the lump hammer, with Pike’s strength behind it, sent the nail cleanly through the centre of Gordon’s hand and an inch into the tree. The second strike forced the nail head deep between his carpal bones, pulling the skin of his palm into a deep pucker.

  A scream accompanied each metallic thump.

  Pike stood back. Not satisfied, he drove a second nail into the hand just above the wrist, this time breaking through the bones within to pound the nail home. He spiked Gordon’s other hand in the same manner. For the elbows and knees he used six and eight inch nails respectively, six inch nails again for the boy’s feet and ankles. Pike cut the ropes which had prevented Gordon from struggling, leaving his body supported by twelve slim junctions of steel and dead oak.

  With his victim thus transfixed, Pike was ready to begin his work.

  At the sound of the first hammer strike, the entire crowd drew breath, Green Men and Wardsmen alike. If it was the sound of wind whispering over water, the Crowman’s scream was the coming of the storm.

  Denise’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle her response. As the hammering progressed, her fingers stole down past her breast to cover her womb. She was certain Gordon’s child, not much more than a soul circling a few cells at the moment, would be able to hear the death of its father; a death that had afforded her a little more life.

  This was wrong. So, terribly wrong.

  Gordon was not the Crowman.

  She knew that because she had spent a little time sharing the journey Gordon had taken in search of the Crowman. No. This was nothing more than the Ward using Gordon as a decoy and a symbol of their supremacy and power. If they could catch and kill the Crowman, they were almighty and indomitable. It was a trick to destroy all resistance. When she looked at the haggard, beaten faces all around her she could see the trick was working; better than any magic or miracle the Crowman himself had ever performed, whether real or imagined.

  Truly now, the Ward held the future in their grey-gloved fist.

  Beside her the stinking ragman danced on the spot, his body tugged and jerked by excitement or madness; it was impossible to say which. He seemed to find the unfolding horrors at the top of Cracks Hill delightful and amusing. She kicked out at him, striking the calf of one crooked, diseased looking leg. He stopped his manic jigging for a moment and turned his blind, pockmarked face toward her.

  “There’s no call for violence,” he said, his voice like gravel under hobnailed boots.

  “You can’t see what’s happening,” she said, weeping. “They’re torturing him. They’re going to kill him.”

  The blind man shrugged.

  “Unlikely.”

  Without eyes in his head, it was hard for Denise to decipher his expression.

  “You don’t understand. He’s only a boy.”

  “He’s not a boy.” The ragman seemed to glance up the hill, which she knew was impossible. “He’s a man. And soon he’ll be so very much more.”

  Disgusted with his insanity, she spat on the man’s rags.

  “He’ll be nothing if he’s dead, you cretin.”

  The madman ignored the spittle dribbling down the front of his pauper’s gowns. He turned back to her and his face seemed to look down towards her belly.

  “He’ll be survived,” he whispered.

  “What did you say?”

  That was the moment when Pike, satisfied with his joinery, slit the bonds holding most of Gordon’s bodyweight. The ropes fell away and the boy’s cries took on a more anguished edge. Again the assembled masses reacted, this time in a low murmured wail.

  Pike parted Gordon’s coat and tore open his shirt in a single movement. He took a hunting knife from his workbag and held it up for Gordon and his audience to see. He used it to slit Gordon’s belt and the waistband of his trousers and underwear. His coat gaping wide, and his body exposed both to eyes and implements, Gordon’s breathing came fast and deep. His lithe chest expanded and contracted with great heaves and his pale stomach ballooned and flattened in time. Those standing near enough could see the high-speed rhythm of his heartbeat pulsing many times during each snatched round of respiration. The muscles in his legs tightened and quivered. He strained against his rivets, unable either to free himself or ease the effect of gravity.

  At the centre of Gordon’s chest hung a dark amulet and Pike snatched this from him, seeing it only as an obstruction to his work. He flung it high and far down the hill. Instinct driving her, Denise held up her hands and caught the falling object. It seemed to come right to her, to home. She pressed it close to her chest and then hid it in a pocket before pulling her grey shawl even tighter around her. It was cold enough that day, but the wind brought the temperature down still further. She didn’t know if it was cold or shock making her shiver but she was unable to stop herself from shaking. Nor did she want to watch what Pike did to Gordon but her eyes would not close.

  They observed; and they recorded everything.

  As Pike positioned himself to one side of his captive and raised his knife, giving the greatest number of people a view, a noise rose up from every direction. Denise prayed it was a rallying of Green Men, ready to attack the unprepared Ward and set Gordon free. Even Pike, deaf to his victim’s screaming, seemed able to hear this new sound. He paused. Looked around and then up.

  It seemed like distant laughter at first. Laughter coming down from the sky. Faces in the crowd turned this way and that, much as Pike had done. They saw what he saw: dark clouds progressing from every point of the compass. It could have been a storm, some kind of tornado. The clouds converged from four directions in a spiralling pattern, gradually closing a circle of darkness overhead, shutting out the light like a tightening black whirlpool. At first the eye of the twister was almost as broad as the horizon but when the clouds approached, darkening and thickening as they streamed into one another, the eye contracted. The light began to be choked from the sky.

  The laughter was not laughter at all but the solemn cries of every corvid in the land. The magpies; the jackdaws; the crows; the rooks; the ravens. Their mingled calls grew louder as they approached, becoming a single harmonised voice, a single tone; the sound that came before the world was made; the sound that echoed still throughout creation. Like a vast choir of black feathered monks, they sang this note into the ears of every assembled witness, sending the vibration into their very bones, causing every chest to hum, every head to throb with their beautiful terrifying chant.

  The aperture of brightness above Cracks Hill was strangled to a tiny pupil through which a column of grey light illuminated the black oak, its black-coated hostage and his black-hearted tormentor. Pike looked up into the light, into the impossible vortex of birds that wheeled above him, his face more grim and determined than ever, his sunken eyes resolute.

  The sky was black but for that one pinpoint of light. Denise looked at the people around her. The captive Green Men held expressions of hopeful astonishment. Was this their reprieve? Nature putting a stop to the madness of the Ward? The Wardsmen’s faces showed fear and doubt. Had they been fighting for the wrong side all this time? The wind created by the beating cyclone pushed straight down. The black feathers decorating many of the captives fluttered. Rags and uniforms flattened against their wearers.

  The cawing ceased but the vibration remained, buzzing in the bones of every man, woman and child. Denise felt it deep in her belly. Above them now the only sound was the sweep and whine of wings. The neat hole at the centre of the birds became ragged edged. It cracked open as the birds broke formation. They began to descend, looking for perches wherever there was space. In seconds every tree for miles around was black with their gleaming bodies. Every rooftop in the surrounding villages was blanketed: rooks and magpies, wing to wing with jackdaws, crows and ravens. Those who could not find a perch landed on the ground and took up the
ir places facing the black oak. Cracks Hill itself was smothered save for a ring around the tree.

  The grey day they’d woken to was gone. Sunshine lit the landscape bringing colour to everything it touched. The sky was so blue and cloudless Denise wished she could fly up into it. It was a cold day but the air was still now and the touch of the sun on every head and every pair of shoulders was like a blessing from a kindly and forgiving creator.

  The world was utterly silent and Cracks Hill had become its focal point.

  66

  Megan took her place at the front of the crowd.

  No one appeared to see her. Perhaps they were too focussed on the tree at the top of the hill to notice. She pulled the fur-lined hood tightly over her head and held it closed below her chin. Though it was a clear bright day, nothing could warm away her dread.

  The one called Pike, a man who reminded her of the things she’d seen in the cave below the windmill, stepped forward and raised his knife. Perhaps the assembled masses thought his opening actions were symbolic in some way but she knew better. The first two cuts were simple revenge.

  Gordon, his muscles strained and quivering watched with wide eyes as Pike stepped forwards and placed the blade against the top of his right thigh, in the dip below his pelvic bone. With a single draw, Pike opened his flesh, cutting ligament from bone. Gordon’s twitching thigh muscle collapsed towards his knee and was still.

  His screams began anew.

  Pike moved his blade to the left side of Gordon’s face. Holding the boy’s hair to keep his head still, he dug its tip into the left orbit, scooped his knife in a rough circle and liberated Gordon’s eye. He threw the ruined, sagging organ down the hill to Skelton who crushed it under his boot.

  To Megan, Gordon’s very screams were knives, cutting into her body, cutting away at the ties that bound them together, slicing through the weave and taking this precious boy away from her. Nauseated and weak, she fell to her knees.