Keene Brian: A Gathering of Crows

“Why bother?” The large one nodded toward Brinkley Springs. “That has achieved our first goal—to instill unease and seed their fear. The soul cage will do the rest, once we construct it from the five points. Don’t waste time here. Why rend metal when we could be ripping flesh instead?”

Side by side, the five figures walked down the mountainside, laughing as they went. The grass in the clearing withered and died in their wake. The fog grew thicker. Trees groaned. A mother bear, crazed with fear, slaughtered her own cubs rather than letting them fall victim to the presence permeating the mountain. Then she repeatedly smashed her head into a gnarled, wide oak tree until brains and bark littered the ground. Deep inside its den, a rattlesnake swallowed its own tail, jaws opening wider to accommodate its length and girth. Driven by a nameless, unfathomable fear, a herd of deer flung themselves from a cliff and burst open on the jagged rocks below. A pack of coyotes that had been tracking the herd followed along a moment later, dashing themselves upon the deer’s broken bodies. Bones splintered. Blood splattered.

Overhead, a thick bank of clouds drifted over the moon, slowly covering it until it was gone from sight.

Down in Brinkley Springs, the darkness grew deeper and the dogs began to howl.

When the power went out, Axel Perry was sitting in the wicker rocking chair on his sagging front porch, sipping a bottle of hard cider, listening to the spring peepers and thinking about his dead wife. For a few seconds, he didn’t notice the electrical outage. After all, he had no radio or television playing in the background. The only time he watched television was when the West Virginia Mountaineers were playing, and he had no patience for the radio these days—the country stations all sounded like rock stations, and everything else was just the white noise of talk radio. Axel hated talk radio. Everybody was a conservative or a liberal these days, with no room for folks in the middle of the road. All of the good stuff had moved over to satellite radio. He’d thought about buying one, but money was tight and satellite coverage here in the valley was spotty at best. Most of the time, the signals were weak or constantly interrupted. The same thing happened with cell phones and wireless Internet service. Axel had dial-up Internet service that his son and daughter-in-law had bought him to go along with the computer they’d given him for his birthday. They’d come to visit for a week—driving all the way from Vermont to Brinkley

Springs—and had taken him to Wal-Mart and picked it out from the computers on display. Then they’d brought it home and made a big deal out of showing him how to work it. They said he’d be able to stay in touch more often, and that they could send him pictures of his grandkids instantly—he wouldn’t have to wait on the mail. He’d tried it a few times, but his curiosity had soon waned. Looking at pictures of his grandchildren on a computer screen just wasn’t the same as looking at them while paging through a photo album—and neither option compared to actually holding the kids in his arms or hearing them laugh and play in his backyard. Plus, staring at pictures of the grandkids just made his loneliness and sadness that much more complete.

At least once a day, Axel wished that he would die. If he’d had the nerve, he’d have killed himself. But he didn’t have the nerve. What if he messed up? What if he made a mistake? What if he lay there in his home, paralyzed or wounded and unable to call for help? Who would find him? The answer was nobody, because no one ever checked in on him. He was an old man living alone in an old house, with only his old, waning memories to keep him company.

He missed his wife, Diane—gone ten years now, not from cancer or a heart attack or diabetes or any of the other plagues that came with old age, but from a drunk driver. They’d taken a bus trip together to Washington, D.C., to see the cherry blossoms for their fiftieth wedding anniversary. On the way back home, a drunken driver had drifted into their lane and sideswiped the bus. The bus driver then swerved off the road and hit a tree. A few folks were injured, but most escaped without a scratch.

Except for Diane. She was thrown forward and banged her head against the seat in front of her— hard enough to cause her skull to separate from her spinal column. The doctor had called it internal decapitation. Axel had called it abandonment, and although he missed Diane every day and had been distraught over the loss, there were times when he grew angry with her for going off and leaving him behind to fend for himself. Learning to live on his own had been hard, and he still hadn’t mastered it. Even now, with a decade to get used to the idea, he still found himself opening his mouth to tell her something throughout the day, maybe a passing comment regarding something he’d read in a magazine, or a bit of gossip he’d heard down at Barry’s Market. Sometimes at night, he’d roll over and reach for her and wonder where she’d gone.

Still, he went on. He survived. What else was there to do?

Sitting on the porch at night, drinking a bottle of beer or hard cider (but never more than one; otherwise, he’d pay for it the next morning by spending an hour on the toilet) and listening to the spring peepers brought him peace and comfort—or at least as close to those things as he could get. The tiny frogs usually showed up in late March or early April. By the end of April, their nightly chorus was as ever present as the sky or the moon and stars. A million tiny chirp like croaks echoed from the riverbank and surrounding mountains. Sometimes, their song was muted, but it was never interrupted altogether. It would continue until fall, when the weather started to cool again.

A stray cat darted across the lawn. Axel called to it, but the wary animal kept running. He’d thought about getting a dog or a cat to help ease his loneliness, but had ultimately decided against it because he didn’t know who would take care of it if he passed on.

The chair creaked as Axel leaned back and stretched. He raised the bottle to his lips, took another swig and closed his eyes, letting the sound of the peepers wash over him. Diane had always enjoyed listening to them, too. Unlike most of the other things they’d shared, he didn’t get sad when listening to the frogs. Their sound seemed to buoy his spirits. Listening to them made him feel close to her.

“I miss you, darlin’. Wish you were here tonight.” Across the street, Bobby Sullivan sat on a pile of dirt in his front yard, playing with Matchbox cars. A plastic car carrier—one of the little ones that looked like a suitcase—was open before him, and more cars littered the ground around the six-year-old’s feet. He made vroom-vroom sounds as he guided the cars through the dirt. His mother, Jean, hollered for him through the screen door, telling him it was time to come inside. Smiling, Axel watched the boy linger, slowly putting his cars away, trying to milk as much time as possible before his mother called for him again. Sure enough, she did, her voice more insistent this time. Bobby shuffled toward the house, shoulders slumped dejectedly. He paused to wave at Axel. Still smiling, Axel waved back. Bobby went inside. The screen door banged shut behind him. The Sullivan’s porch light came on. The kitchen light glowed through the window. Inside, Jean and Bobby would be sitting down for supper. Occasionally, Jean brought a plate over to Axel. Most times, though, they ate as a family. Axel didn’t know anything about Bobby’s father, if he was alive or dead or if Jean even knew who he was. He guessed that didn’t matter. The two of them—mother and son—made a fine family.

He glanced down the street. For-sale signs dotted many of the yards. The signs were as weathered and faded as the houses they advertised. Weeds grew up around them, the yards not mowed since the owners had left. Axel had known most of the people who lived in those homes at one time. They’d been his neighbors, and in many cases, his friends. Now they were gone, just like Diane—passed away or moved on, living in a retirement community or with their kids or, in the case of some of his younger neighbors, some place where the economy was better and taxes were lower and jobs still existed. He wondered what would happen to his house when he died. Would it sit here like all these others, dying slowly from wood rot and neglect?