The Thieving Crows

Cold bodies inside

Looking back, a few things should have alerted me to the fact that a single and frightening story was hatching in two different worlds simultaneously. Linked by a dweller in both. 



For one, the notices of missing jewellery now replaced those of missing pets usually stuck around buzzing street lamps.  Then an ominous storytelling of crows started gathering around my shared front porch on Troupand Avenue. This happened somewhere betweeb the wet and wind of October and definitely the night before the curtains arrived. The birds' black capes gleaned with magic and mystery as they screeched their curses to the tenants.

And then the curtains arrived.

Flamboyant purple paisley hung next door to me. Unapologetic and almost as though it had never been otherwise.

Following the curtains, equally inconspicuous, was a figure reading by candlelight just inside the front door, now standing ajar. A black header on the white pages stood printed in the dark: Ornithology.

A few nights later I walked my friend out after our monthly visit (always-always on the last day of the month - come hell or... well that's about as bad as it gets) and saw a familiar figure standing by the clubhouse - addressing what seemed to be a parliament of owls. I would not have been able to recognise the figure between the flickering, buzzing streetlight and the groups of strangely dressed childre with fists full of sweets, if he did not have a book under his arm.

The name, this time printed on the front cover in large, glistening black letters beadily eyed passers-by. Ornithology. 

Now completely intrigued by the stout, sallow man with the beak-like nose, ruffled black hair and eye patch, I did not even think it strange that an aerie of hawks was keeping watch; waiting in the trees above the opening.

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At this point this is all starting to look a little far-fetched. Too far fetched for you to believe what happened the next day in fact, but I have the picture here to prove it:

I was driving behind this very cooler truck and noticed that the right latch was undone. I mused at what could happen if the door flew open and maxed the volume on Classic FM, immediately forgetting again.  Bach’s Toccata and Fugue was thundering from the radio and I thought of Dracula playing the organ, surrounded by his faithful bats. 

Here it is, if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

As the piece reached its zenith, bats climbing the air in my mind, the truck screeched to a halt on the slick tar. Red break-lights shone through the grey day and the door flew open, vomiting out its insides like icy bricks: A murder of frozen crows.

Black bits of ice thumping over my windscreen and crushing beneath my wheels, red lights screaming danger, I looked up and saw a sticker in the top right corner of the flapping door – the blue writing clear as day in the grey.  Cold bodies inside.

The picture is a bit blurry, so I’ve blown it up for you to see:

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Single-minded in my desire to retreat to the sanctuary of my apartment that afternoon, I again paid no attention to the wake of buzzards circling the clubhouse, nor the apartment next door once again looming empty.  In fact, I may not ever have noticed at all.

Only a few weeks later when the events had time to settle in my subconscious and additional details had come to the fore, did I realise that a saga had been unfolding in two worlds, linked by a resident to both.

The characters:

A pawn, my nieghbour, had the skills to communicate with feathered foe and access to human means of disposal such as cooler trucks. Able executed the events while gaining the opportunity to interact with and study birds in a way which would turn his fellow scholars green.

A parliament of mastermind owls, fearful of what the ill-omened crows might bring to the quiet, leafy complex… or take away from it.

The savages of the air, ravens, waiting for a reasons to kill.

And the bald, faithful mourners, the buzzards, informing those who care that lives had been lost.

The motive:

It became clear once I found a brown envelope under a layer of dust, fallen and forgotten in between the kitchen cupboard and the fridge. A notice of the AGM the evening of the 31^st of October.

Venue: The Clubhouse.

On the agenda: The Thieving Crows.