Keene Brian - A Gathering of Crows

“Here.” Axel handed the boy the cane. “You take this. You remember what I told you about it, right?”

Bobby nodded emphatically. “Yes, sir. You said it was magic because it came from Mrs. Chickenbaum.”

Axel laughed. “That’s right. Mrs. Chickbaum. Now, we’ll only be gone for a minute. We’re just gonna creep upstairs and have a look-see—make sure all of the bad men are gone. While we do that, you just hold onto this old stick. It will keep you and your mother safe. Okay? Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good boy.” Axel patted his shoulder and then turned toward them. “All right, let’s go see what’s what.”

The four of them hesitated at the bottom of the stairs, each one waiting for someone else to go first.

“Age before beauty,” Greg said to Axel and Paul as he made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “You two were the ones who wanted to go.”

Grumbling to himself, Paul started slowly up the stairs. Gus followed him. Greg and Axel stared at each other.

“Go ahead,” Axel said. “I insist. I’m old and I’ll only slow you down.”

Greg followed along behind his brother. He heard Axel creeping along behind him. The wooden stairs creaked beneath their feet and the handrail shook slightly. Greg worried that the stairs might collapse under their combined weight. After all, the house was nearly as old as Axel was. There was no telling how much damage time and insects had done over the years. That would be a hell of a way to go— surviving the massacre outside only to break their backs in Axel Perry’s basement.

When they reached the top, Paul opened the door. They turned around and glanced back down the stairs. Jean and Bobby stood at the bottom, staring up at them from the darkness. Greg raised his hand and waved.

“You guys be careful,” Jean called. “And please hurry back?”

“We will,” Axel said. “And Bobby, you just hold on to that walking stick. Okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Perry.”

“We’ll be right back. I promise.”

As they crept through Axel’s house, Greg turned to the old man.

“You shouldn’t tell the boy that old stick is magic.”

“Why not? It makes him feel better—safer. Where’s the harm in that?”

Greg shrugged. “I guess.”

“And besides,” Axel continued, “how do you know it’s not magic?”

Greg shook his head. “Crazy old man.”

“I’m not the one who thinks the NOW controls the world.”

“It’s NWO, not NOW. How many times do I have to tell you people that before you’ll listen?”

Paul and Gus crossed to the windows and peeked outside.

“See anything?” Greg asked.

“Nothing,” Paul said. “Even the bodies are gone now. It’s like nothing happened.”

“Well, that’s the worst part, isn’t it?” Gus turned away from the window. “Not really knowing what’s happening? I mean, if this was a tornado or a blizzard or a flood, we’d know what to do. We’d know how to protect ourselves. But after everything that’s happened tonight, we still don’t have the faintest fucking clue what we’re dealing with here.”

Greg walked to the front room. The others followed him. When he began unlocking the front door, his brother stopped him.

“You sure about this?”

“Sure I’m sure,” Greg replied. “You and Paul looked through the windows and didn’t see anything, and it’s quiet now. I reckon that whatever happened, the worst is over now.”

The locks clicked open. Greg turned the doorknob and opened the door—

—and something tall and black and foul-smelling grabbed his face and yanked him outside. Smothered, Greg was unable to scream.

The others did it for him.

“So,” Donny asked as they walked along, “if you’re not Amish anymore, then what’s up with the clothes and the beard and the hat? Couldn’t you dress a little more… I don’t know, modern? Stylish?”

Levi sighed and tried to conceal his annoyance. He’d been asked questions like this hundreds of times, and his answers always remained the same.

“I’m single,” he said. “I thought that women might be attracted to the beard. All of the magazines and talk shows say that beards are back in style now. And as for the hat, I wear it for the same reasons anybody else wears one—to keep the sun out of my eyes and the rain off my head. And to hide my bald spot.”

“Shit, Levi. Just get hair plugs.”

“Haven’t you ever read the story of Samson? Mess with a man’s hair and you take away his power.”

Donny chuckled nervously. Levi could tell that the younger man wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, and that was fine by him. In truth, Levi privately wished that Donny would stay quiet. Even though they were currently shielded from the enemy, there could be other dangers around, and there was no sense in advertising their presence. Plus, he needed to think and he could do that better if Donny was silent.

“What about the buggy? Why do you drive a buggy if you’re not Amish?”

“Have you seen the price of gas lately?”

“Good point.”

Finally, Donny stopped talking. Gritting his teeth, Levi tried to focus. He sensed the soul cage overhead, just as Randy had said it was. The boy hadn’t known its true name or purpose, of course. He’d thought it was merely a prison to keep them from leaving the town. In truth, it was a construct of great willpower and malice, a mystical barrier designed to capture the souls of all living things that came into direct contact with it. Judging by the amount of energy it was giving off, the cage had captured many souls indeed. Levi wondered if he could dispel it before the soul cage’s creators had a chance to feed off its contents, but then decided against doing so. Better to save his strength for the main task, rather than wasting it on the cage. If he was successful, the souls trapped in the cage would be free. He only wished it wasn’t too late for those the entities had already fed on directly.

The corpses that had filled the streets earlier were missing now. A few small piles of dust remained behind, but most of these had vanished, as well, eradicated by the cool, swift breeze. Levi slowed their pace as they passed by the hanging tree that Randy had mentioned. The carving was still there, stark against the bark: CROATOAN.

How was it connected to what was happening here? The methods and goal—eradicating every living thing in an entire town—were those of Meeble, but their adversaries obviously weren’t him. What did it all mean? Levi couldn’t help but picture their dilemma as a puzzle spread out on a tabletop. In the center of the puzzle was a hole, and until he found that missing piece, the full picture wouldn’t be revealed. Somehow, the entities stalking Brinkley Springs were connected to Meeble and the Thirteen. The question was, how?

His thoughts turned to revenants and shades. Could the black figures be one of those? Shades were spirits, the shadowy ghost of a dead person. The term stemmed from several sources, including Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Divine Comedy. In Greek mythology, the dead lived in the perpetual shadow of the underworld. The Hebrew version of the shade—the tsalmaveth—translated as death-shadow. While the entities certainly had shade like attributes, he didn’t think that was what they were. Likewise, they didn’t seem to fit the definition of a revenant. But then again, many of those definitions were faulty. The term had been assigned to creatures that were not revenants, but Siqqusim, a race of beings able to inhabit the bodies of the dead. In Akkadian literature, when Ishtar and Ereshkigal threatened to “raise up the dead to eat the living and make the dead outnumber the living,” they were referring to casting Siqqusim into corpses. They were zombies, rather than revenants, but it was a distinction that was lost on both.