AlcyLeyva_AndThenThereWereCrows_EbookFormatting_Nook

by And Then There Were Crows (retail) (epub)

  Following this, there was a moment that nothing happened—a long pause after the most violent thirty seconds I had ever seen in my life. And then my roommate’s body continued to expand, twist, buckle, flatten into impossible shapes. This wild ink blot, contorting itself like a cartoon drawn by a raging alcoholic, shot up into the sky.

  The stars seemed to go out as the night around me began swallowing up every source of light possible. The air grew thicker, like trying to inhale syrup, making it almost impossible to breathe. Small charges of crackling black energy leapt from its skin, striking the concrete, the walls, the street signs. The parked cars that were struck began wailing, horns honking, high beams sending columns of pure light through the darkness, windshield wipers pumping away. I dodged a few of the strikes myself as they arced around like black lightning bolts.

  Then everything drew back into the creature’s body, slowly at first, but then with a force that felt as if it were trying to suck me in, too—a black hole in the middle of Queens.

  Suddenly, the air softened. The stars blinked back into the world. Even the parked cars each slammed shut, one by one by one. And when it was all done, the round, impish body it had before was gone. Now what stood in front of me was six feet tall, with gangly arms. Its legs, no longer hooved and fragile, bent at rounded knees and flexed under its weight.

  Sensing me nearby, the demon staggered over to where it heard my drawn out breaths. Around us, rubber-necking neighbors began filing out onto the street, poking their heads out of their windows to find out what was going on. A few whipped out their phones to call 911, others to film me lying in the middle of the street as this silhouette drew close.

  The demon stopped and lowered its head over me.

  There I was again, lying at the feet of this creature, having survived my second life or death situation in a week. But unlike the time in my apartment, I was fully conscious of what was standing in front of me—the nightmare that had moved into my spare room, took over my bathroom, hijacked my TV.

  Tilting over me, it was easy to see that its head was now two times larger. Even the little flaps on the sides of the head were longer, more rigid, with a curl that ended in a sharp point. Two seams began forming around the front of the head. The creature stood, scratched at them like a kid picking his scabs, and bent downward again. After a few repeats of scratching then staring, the seams tore open, and two yellow, perfectly circular eyes blinked back at me.

  I’ll admit, as my senses suddenly came back to earth, as the world around me quieted and dulled itself back into some semblance of normalcy, I should have been happy that I wasn’t dead. I mean, twice in one week, I had come seriously close to losing more than my sanity and my apartment. And both times, I had managed to come out of it (somewhat) intact. I should have been grateful. I get it. No doubt. That should have been front and center, my first thought.

  But the truth was, staring up at those large, yellow eyes—eyes as large as dinner plates—and having seen the demon attached to those eyes eat another human being, made me realize that I had been lying to myself the entire time. That there was no coming back from this, no way of getting my life back. Petty was on her way to raise hell. My parents could be coming back at any moment, any second, and all of them would finally find out how much I’ve let the whole thing go to shit.

  And there was something else. Call it a premonition or whatever. Part of me started realizing that there was a time coming when I was going to wish I had died in that alley, under the sputtering streetlights and honking cars. That I was going to regret that it was Palls, not me, who choked to death in my apartment that night.

  In that moment—and this is all the point, the whole “lesson” to this whole first bloody chapter—that somehow, someway, I was going to look back on my first week and realize that all of it was a joke, that all of it was nothing, a veritable cake-walk, freaking Fiji, compared to what was really coming for me.

  “KFRM!” the demon hiccuped in a deep voice, a whiff of thick aftershave on its breath.

  “Bless you,” I said softly.

  CHAPTER 8

  Only a day after Petty had shown up announced, the same night I was forced to watch a demon—my roommate—munch on a human being, I actually woke up to find a video of the whole thing on the internet. Sure, you couldn’t tell it was me exactly. But I knew. Filmed from a cellphone, the clip was of a blurry but scared to death woman sitting in the middle of the street and a long shadow looming over her. The schmuck holding the camera phone was adding his own screaming commentary the entire time. Several hundred “Share” button smashes later and the video hit a million views in a few hours, two million by morning.

  I had gone viral.

  At first, the Internet did as the Internet does. Conspiracy theories, slow motion takes, message boards dedicated to finding out if it was a hoax or not. I even found a few groups talking about combing through my neighborhood, because the video featured the sign outside the auto body shop down the block. But when that well ran dry, the public affection mutated and not even an hour after posting, a “remix” video was released. On this version, the audio was bumped up with the guy’s voice on the video autotuned so badly that it sounded like a seal having a five-minute orgasm. Within a week, downloads of “Run Bitch, Ommagahd!” had tripled the amount of views on my video.

  Then the guy on the clip hit up the late night talk show circuit. Then it was made into the slogan for bean-stuffed hot dogs. And like that, my one hundred seventy hours of fame via the viral video labeled “A Demon in Queens?” sank quietly into the dark ether of the web.

  I enjoyed living in a swipe left society where there was zero surface area left for absorption. Not with text crawls and phone buzzes and poop emojis firing at us from all sides, at all times of day. On trains, on bathroom stalls, commercials for commercials hidden in remastered, rebooted pre-sequel movies (in 3D!). That’s why I tried to not stay around in public after my attack. Left all of that the hell alone. The supermarket delivered my groceries and I duct taped a poncho to stand as my front door. I didn’t want to become the wild weird world walkers I had tried to be part of a few weeks ago. The ones with the dumbfounded faces and glazed eyeballs—a side effect of becoming so oversaturated with information that most of it’s expired before you can even process any of it. Flushed before it caused you serious harm.

  If only siblings were the same way.

  Picking up Petty at the airport, I’ll admit made me feel a bit split. The good and the bad.

  First, she was my little sister that I hadn’t seen in a year.

  And that’s as far as the good stuff goes.

  Petty had a way of speaking that was always wrecking ball material, like blows to your gut. I always felt wasted after talking with her on the phone and I wasn’t looking forward to spending any time with her. Luckily, neither did she. As soon as she hopped in the cab, she asked to be taken to a hotel. I don’t know what her problem was about staying in my parent’s house or why she even flew back here in the first place, but she kept to herself the entire ride. After getting my ass kicked, I was damn thankful for the silence.

  This is how it continued for the next few days. She didn’t call or come knocking. She stayed to herself. Again, it made my life easier so I didn’t ask why. I had my own problems back at home.

  The next morning, my roommate’s door swung open and he slunk out. On the demon front, where blobby hung out mostly in his room, this version of him was always in the kitchen or on my couch. The only time he showed any signs of life were when he watched commercials. He still loved doing that, sometimes chuckling to himself. But now with his big, yellow eyes glowing and his overall clumsiness, he came off as a loafing teenage stoner. Couple that with my fear that he was going to make an hors d’oeuvre out of someone and you can already see that I was on edge every time. I didn’t worry about my safety. The guy still didn’t seem to care about me at all.


  That’s not entirely true, I thought, as he took the controller and plopped down in the chair with his long legs over the side. A piece of me started wondering if he had shown up to somehow, I don’t know, save me? That he had scarfed down that guy as a way of coming to my rescue? It had been rattling around my mind for a long time, but I quickly bound it up and flushed the thought away. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

  So there I was, stuck in a holding pattern between my god awful sister and a lazy demon. I needed some kind of stupid miracle to make things right. Instead, I poured myself some cereal.

  And then the news came on.

  “A new local story out of Manhattan,” the newscaster at the scene explained. “‘We just want to be heard’. That’s the sentiment being held by the cult calling themselves ‘The Beguilers’ who, this week, have up set up shop here in Washington Square Park.”

  The news crew was busy interviewing one of the cultists while the rest of the flock, only four or five others, pranced around and beat a drum wrapped in cellophane. All of them wore linens which looked like curtains from a 99 cents store. All of them sported shaved heads, men and women alike. And in the middle of those shiny heads, all of them had carved a symbol of a clock on their foreheads.

  “We are the Beguilers,” the lead idiot said, looking right into the camera. “We are followers of the true dark. We hear the songs of the Tower of Night.”

  Suddenly, another man jumped onto the screen. He wore black guy-liner and held up a sign with a sorry ass looking snake on it with the speech bubble saying, “U Don’t Ssssspeak For Me!!!”.

  “We, the followers of the Eldest Snake, the truest believers of our Dark Lord, are disgusted, and in fact, a bit insulted, by the lies being spread by the so-called Beguilers and we believe that any association and /or comparison to these weekend fanatics gives the true servants of the Darkest Heart a bad name.”

  “The Beguilers are the disciples of the Heart of Endless Torment,” the lead baldy said, moving his way back into frame. “We enthrall the masses to sip of sin. Give your blood to the Eater of Screams. Follow him to … Really, Donny? You’re going to shove me now?”

  “Screw you, Phil.”

  “Screw me? Reeeeeal mature!”

  “Real mature is your shitty offshoot cultist hacks trying to act important.”

  “You wanted to leave, Donny, so we let you leave. No one said anything. No one got in your way.”

  “And what ended up happening?” Donny exclaimed and poked his finger in the air emphatically. “Look who took charge after that! And what are your qualifications for that position? Hmm? Um, well, Phil here carves a stupid clock into his forehead with a paperclip, so let’s all vote him in, right? The voices spoke to me like they did to you, Phil!”

  Crossing his arms, Phil shook his head slowly. “Always patronizing. At least I don’t look like I found my followers waiting in line at a Shake Shack.”

  Donny slapped Phil in a headlock, Phil tried to punch Donny in the gut, and the reporter’s arm got snagged on Phil’s garb, making for one action packed segment of news.

  I totally bypassed the drama of the two grown men going at it on live television, too focused on what I saw over the reporter’s left shoulder. Right there, right in that spot, was a homeless man that wasn’t actually a homeless man in the background, scaring away a bunch of pigeons from their dinner. The man, wearing sunglasses and a trench coat, scooped up the breadcrumbs and shoved them into his pockets. I wasn’t 100% sure if I saw this right, so I dashed to the screen and nearly pushed my nose through it. It wasn’t until said non-homeless man dumped himself on a park bench and threw his head back to snack on his perfectly harvested bounty that I realized who it was.

  After almost two weeks, I had found Barnem.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Captain Cross,

  Whisk us away on advent-uuure.

  Captain Cross,

  The sea winds are a-blowing,

  Fore the mast,

  And change ye sails.

  Oh, Captain. My Captain.

  Land ho! Land ho!”

  As I got dressed to head out, I couldn’t believe that I was hearing that song. I can’t even say how many times I’ve heard it growing up and was doubly shocked to see the demon watching it. So shocked, in fact, I kind of stood there watching it myself, wondering what the hell I saw in the show as a kid.

  The room looked like a mockup of a pirate ship, but a terrible one with cutout waves and mobiles with little boats on them. As an adult, it was painfully obvious that the whole thing was being done on the most anemic budget ever and, therefore, was the hottest mess you will ever witness in a kid’s show.

  A colorful parrot puppet appeared out of a box (who the hell keeps a parrot in a box?) as the children sitting on the carpet ended their Captain Cross song.

  “Aw, what a crackerlicious day we had, kids!” the puppet parrot squawked.

  The children went apeshit as a man walked out from a side curtain, allowing the camera to sweep over him. It was Captain Cross. Given on a public access channel, the Captain Cross Show was a staple of growing up for most children, but you sure couldn’t tell that from the man’s slouching posture and bored expression. He was dressed as I remember him: a sea captain with a blue double breasted jacket and black buttons, a fanciful hat with a single feather curling out of it, black tights and dandy boots with silver buckles. What I didn’t remember was that horrible spray-on tan that made it look like someone drew a man’s face on a tangerine and slapped a powdery white wig on it. Even the man’s eyepatch sagged, never really standing in place.

  Cross fell into his large wooden captain’s chair and crossed his legs as if the world disgusted him.

  “Hello, children. Today was exciting, huh?” The words falling out of his mouth were were barely audible. He then looked right into the camera and asked, “What was your favorite part of today, lil’ lubbers?”

  It was easy to see, with this extreme closeup of the man, that he was in his late fifties, with thick age lines around his forehead and bad makeup trying to hide the puffiness under his eyes.

  “My favorite part was when our friend, Cracker Barrel the parrot, learned where the treasure was hidden,” a little blonde girl sitting a few feet from him said. The sticker on her chest said her name was Caitlyn.

  The Captain sighed. “Please don’t be a rude little bitch, Caitlyn with a ‘y’. There’s already enough of those in the world.”

  CHAPTER 10

  It only took me an hour to get into the city, but I ran at full speed from Bleecker until my lungs burned. Luckily, when I got to the park, I spotted him within a minute or two. The angel hadn’t budged an inch from his spot on the bench.

  He wore a brown trench coat and up close, I could tell that the sunglasses he wore were totally broken. His arms were splayed out to the sides of the bench, his head pointed to the sky as his brown, stringy hair hung in an absolute mess.

  I tried my best to make my voice as soothing as possible. “Hey there, buddy. How’s it going?”

  “No. Go away. Fuck off.” His head didn’t even budge.

  I cleared my throat slowly. “Barnem. It’s me.”

  This made him pause. “Grey?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “Hi. Can I—”

  “No. Go away. Fuck off.”

  “I need you to hear me out. You have to come back. Things have gotten …”

  He peeked at me. “Worse?”

  “Weirder.”

  He crossed his arms. “Not interested.”

  “Look, last week—”

  “Whatever you’re about to say, whatever it is, totally and completely does not pertain to me, Grey.”

  “Wrong! Totally wrong!” But that was all I could say on the matter. My lips felt instantly chapped, my thr
oat stuffed with sand. This was the first time I had been in a public space since the attack, and it made me realize that I wasn’t the same since it happened. I couldn’t keep from shuffling my feet and looking around. I couldn’t help feeling like something was watching close by. Even in the middle of Washington Square Park, in broad daylight, with over a hundred people going about their business around me, I felt like too many ears were tuned into my thoughts; like they could hear the worst parts of me. Was my voice too loud? Did I smell?

  “Okay, all right, Barnem. But why don’t you stop by the apartment with me for a few minutes?”

  “What for?”

  And then the dam broke.

  “Because the freaking demon ate someone and my sister’s here, ready to make my life a living hell, and on the way here, I gave a kid selling candy on the train a dollar for these little crackers but it was mostly air in the bag,” I yelled without taking a breath. I could feel my face turning red. “So I asked for at least fifty cents back and you know what he told me?” I finally stopped to take a breath.

  Barnem’s head popped up. “You’re an idiot.”

  I looked around. “Wow. Good guess.”

  But this wasn’t what the Seraphim meant at all. The update I gave him must’ve lit a serious fire under his ass, because he stood up from the bench, stretched his back, and said, “Fine. But let me take a piss first.”

  He hopped over the partition for the dog park and started unbuttoning his pants. I tried to get as far away as possible, but instead ended up running into someone with a carved clock on his forehead. It was the creeper from the newscast, the cult leader. Up close, the carving in his skin was nothing like it looked like on the news—the way the skin was ripped into, the darkness of the scar. His buddy, Phil, mentioned that he had done the job with a paperclip, but it looked more like the work of a rusty nail.

  I backed away. Every part of me was shaking. “Can you be a peach and not step on my air there, buddy? Thanks.”