The Crow Talker
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I could eat too, said Screech, stretching his wings.
Like I always say, said Glum, with a shake of his beak. Greedy.
“Don’t worry,” Caw told them. “I’ll be back soon.”
He opened the hatch, swung out from the platform and into the upper branches, then picked his way down by handholds he could have found with his eyes shut. As he dropped to the ground, three shapes – two black, one white – swooped on to the grass.
Caw felt a little stab of annoyance. “I don’t need you to come,” he said, for what seemed like the thousandth time. I’m not a little kid any more, he almost added, but he knew that would make him sound even more like one.
Humour us, said Glum.
Caw shrugged.
The park gates hadn’t been opened for years, so the place was empty as always. Quiet too, but for the whisper of wind in the leaves. Still, Caw stuck to the shadows. The sole of his left shoe flapped open. He’d need to steal a new pair soon.
He passed the rusty climbing frame where children never played, crossed the flower beds that had long ago given way to weeds. The surface of the fishpond was thick with scum. Screech had sworn he saw a fish in there a month ago, but Glum said he was making it up. Blackstone Prison loomed beyond the park walls on the left, its four towers piercing the sky. On some nights Caw heard sounds from inside, muted by the thick, windowless walls.
As Caw paused by the empty bandstand, covered in graffiti scrawls, Screech landed on the step, talons tip-tapping on the concrete.
Something’s wrong, isn’t it? he asked.
Caw rolled his eyes. “You don’t give up, do you?”
Screech cocked his head.
“It was my dream,” Caw admitted. “It wasn’t quite the same. That’s all.”
The nightmare forced its way into his mind again. The man with the black eyes. His shadow falling across the ground like a shard of midnight. The hand reaching out, and the spider ring …
Your parents belong in the past, said Screech. Forget them.
Caw nodded, feeling the familiar ache in his chest. Every time he thought of them, the pain was like a bruise, freshly touched. He would never forget. Each night he relived it. The empty air beneath his wheeling feet; the crack and flap of the crows’ wings above.
Since then many crows had been and gone. Sharpy. Pluck. One-legged Dover. Inkspot, with her taste for coffee. Only one crow had remained at his side since that night eight years ago – mute, blind, white-feathered Milky. Glum had been a nest-mate for five years, Screech for three. One with nothing useful to say, one with nothing cheerful and one with nothing to say at all.
Caw scaled the wrought-iron gates, gripped the looping ‘B’ of Blackstone Park, and hauled himself up on to the wall. He balanced easily, his hands stuffed casually in his pockets as he walked along the top of it. For Caw, it was almost as easy as walking down the street. He could see Milky and Glum circling high overhead.
I thought we were getting food, said Screech.
“Soon,” Caw told him.
He stopped opposite the prison. An ancient beech tree overhung the wall, and he was almost hidden by its thick leaves.
Not here again! squawked Glum, making a branch quiver as he landed.
“Humour me,” said Caw pointedly.
He stared at the grand house across the road, built in the shadow of the prison.
Caw often came to look at the house. He couldn’t really explain why. Perhaps it was seeing a normal family doing normal things. Caw liked to watch them eating dinner together, or playing board games or just sitting in front of their TV.
The crows had never understood.
A shadow in the garden snatched him suddenly back to his nightmare. The stranger’s cruel smile. The spider hand. The weird ring. Caw focused intently on the house, trying to drive the terrifying images away.
He wasn’t sure what time it was, but the windows of the house were dark, the curtains drawn. Caw rarely saw the mother, but he knew that the father worked at the prison. Caw had seen him leaving the prison gates and returning home. He always wore a suit, so Caw guessed he was more than just a guard. His black car squatted in the driveway like a sleeping animal. The girl with the red hair, she’d be in bed, her little dog lying at her feet. She was about his age, Caw guessed.
AWOOOOOOOOO!
A wailing sound cut through the night, making Caw jerk up. He dropped into a crouch on the wall, gripping the stone as the siren rose and fell, shockingly loud in the moonlit silence.
From the four towers of the prison, floodlights flashed on, throwing arcs of white light into the courtyard and on to the road outside. Caw shrank back, sheltering under the branches, away from the glare.
Let’s scram, said Screech, twitching his feathers nervously. There’ll be humans here soon.
“Wait,” said Caw, holding up a hand.
A light blinked on in the upstairs room where the girl’s parents slept.
For once I agree with Screech, said Glum.
“Not yet.”
More lights came on behind closed curtains, and a minute or two later, the front door opened. Caw trusted the darkness to shield him. He watched as the girl’s father stepped out. He was a slender but tough-looking man, with fair hair receding a little at the front. He was straightening a tie and speaking into a phone clamped against his shoulder.
It’s the one who walks that horrible dog! Glum said, hissing with disgust. Caw strained his ears to hear the man’s voice over the siren.
“I’ll be there in three minutes,” shouted the man. “I want complete lockdown, a time-line and a map of the sewers.” A pause. “I don’t care whose fault it was. Meet me out front with everyone you can spare.” Another pause. “Yes, of course you should call the police commissioner! She needs to know about this, and fast. Get on it now!”
He slipped the phone away and strode fast towards the prison.
“What’s going on?” Caw muttered.
Who cares? said Screech. Human stuff. Let’s go.
As Caw watched, the girl appeared in the doorway of the house with the dog at her heels. She was wearing a green dressing gown. Her face was delicate, almost a perfect inverted triangle, with wide-set eyes and a small pointed chin. Her red hair, the same colour as her mother’s, hung loose and messy to her shoulders. “Dad?” she said.
“Stay inside, Lydia,” snapped the man, barely looking back.
Caw gripped the wall tighter.
Her father broke into a trot down the pavement.
The spider this way crawls, said a voice, close to Caw’s ear.
Caw jumped. He glanced up and saw Milky perched in a branch.
Glum snapped his head around. Did you just … speak? he said.
Milky blinked, and Caw stared into the pale film of the old crow’s eyes. “Milky?” he said.
The spider this way crawls, said the white crow again. His voice was like the rasp of wind over dried leaves. And we are but prey in his web.
I told you old snowball’s bonkers, cackled Screech.
Caw’s throat had gone dry. “What do you mean, the spider?” he asked.
Milky stared back at him. Lydia was still at the door, watching.
“What spider, Milky?” Caw said again.
But the white crow was silent.
Something was happening. Something big. And whatever it was, Caw wasn’t going to miss it.
“Come on,” he said, at last. “We’re following that man.”
This is ridiculous, said Glum. You’ll get us into trouble again, just like last night.
Caw ignored him. They reached the end of the wall, and the man took a right turn towards the prison gates. For a moment Caw panicked. He couldn’t follow without being seen. But then he remembered.
“Meet me on the roof,” he said to the crows, then slipped down and ran across the dark, deserted road. On the far side was an abandoned building, half demolished, with one wall completely gone, the insides exposed to the elements. Caw could see skeletal hulks of old machines within. Whatever they used to make, those days of usefulness were a long-forgotten memory.
Caw scrambled over the rubble up to the first floor, careful not to make a sound. He skirted boxes piled high with old books, their covers mostly rotted away. He climbed two flights of stairs towards a hatch that opened on to a roof of corrugated metal. Then he crept to the highest point, where Glum, Screech and Milky were already perched, just as Lydia’s father reached the prison gates far below on the opposite side of the street.
A dozen men and women in prison-guard uniform were standing in groups, illuminated by the floodlights, looking nervous but excited. Dogs strained at their leads, nosing the air.
The wailing siren cut out suddenly, and the vibrations faded on the air.
“Where’s that plan of the sewers?” said Lydia’s father. His voice carried clearly up to Caw.
One of the men laid a large sheet of paper on the hood of a car.
Caw’s heart quickened. He was right to think that Lydia’s father wasn’t just a guard. He was ordering the others around like he was in charge of the whole prison!
“The police will be here in the next five minutes, but we can’t afford to wait. The clock is ticking. Everyone get into pairs. One dog per pair. Fan out into the surrounding streets. Check every manhole cover. If you see them, call it in. Don’t try to apprehend them – you know who we’re dealing with. And be careful!”
The guards started to disperse, while Lydia’s father peered at the map. In a moment, he was alone.
Can we please go home now? said Glum, fluffing out his feathers. It’s freezing!
Hey, over here! called Screech.
Caw turned round – the youngest of the crows was perched at the other end of the roof. A faint grinding sound was rising up from below. Something’s happening down there, said Screech.
Caw looked at Lydia’s father. His head had jerked up, as though he’d heard it too. He swiftly folded the map and began to pace across the street.
Caw ran over the roof to join Screech, and stared down into the alley below.
It was empty, apart from a few strewn papers and some rubbish bins. One end of the alley forked into a maze of passages running between the buildings. The other, Caw guessed, eventually made its way to the main street near the prison.
With another grinding sound, the manhole cover directly below Caw turned. One side cracked open, then the whole thing lifted free and was tossed aside like it weighed nothing, spinning like a coin, then settling flat. Caw shrank back, peering over the roof’s parapet. Something small scurried out of the dark well in the ground. An insect, or maybe a spider. And then two hands emerged. Big, meaty hands. A huge figure heaved itself into the open. Caw saw a bald head, a great gleaming dome of skin stretched over skull. The man wore an orange shirt and trousers.
Suddenly it made sense. The guards in a panic. The search parties.
“An escaped prisoner,” Caw whispered. “That’s who they’re looking for!”
I can see that, said Glum.
The man tipped back his head and terror caught in Caw’s throat. Something was wrong with the man’s mouth. It was too wide, like his cheeks were split in a hideous grin. Then, after a heartbeat, Caw realised it was a tattoo. A permanent smile.
He’s a looker, Screech muttered.
The prisoner started to tear off his shirt, and called down into the manhole in a muted voice, “All clear!” Then the man tossed the ripped prison shirt aside and turned back around.
As Caw saw the man’s bare chest, he felt his bones turn to ice. A new wave of terror hit him, deeper than anything he’d felt outside his nightmares. Pure fear, straight from the darkest depths of his mind, undimmed by logic and impossible to ignore. It squeezed each of his nerve endings and turned his stomach to water.
Inked across the massive man’s chest was a tattoo that rippled with his muscles, almost as though it was alive. Eight legs, scurrying.
A spider.
And not just any spider. Its body was a looping line, and a spiky M-shape was emblazoned inside it.
Caw gripped the parapet, his mouth dry as dust.
It was the spider from his dream.
Beside him, Milky ruffled his feathers.
The tattooed prisoner leant over the manhole, took hold of a skinny wrist and pulled a second figure into the open – a young woman. She had black hair that fell to her waist and caught the streetlight like a raven’s wing. As she straightened up, she stood even taller than the man. The sleeves of her prison uniform were soiled with dirty water from the sewer, and she began carefully rolling them up. Her arms were lithe and muscled, as though she could wrap them around a person and squeeze their life away.
And then came a third person. He flopped out into the alley and scrambled to his feet, brushing down his clothes. He was less than half the height of the others and hunched over. He looked old, but he moved like a younger man. His eyes darted around in all directions.
“Finally, the smells of the city!” said the short man. “How I missed the delicious stench of rot.”
The big man cracked his knuckles. “Time to get back to business,” he said.
“We shouldn’t delay,” hissed the woman. Her voice was soft and sibilant. “It won’t be long before they work out where that tunnel leads.”
“Freeze!”
All three prisoners turned to the other end of the alley. A man stood silhouetted there holding a gun, its barrel glinting.
Oh dear, Glum said.
It was the man from the house. But the prisoners didn’t look afraid. Instead, the big one stepped forward.
“Warden Strickham,” he said. “What a nice surprise.”
We should go, said Glum. This has nothing to do with us. It’s—
“Human stuff?” whispered Caw. “I know. But in case you hadn’t noticed, I am a human, Glum.”
That wasn’t why he was staying, though. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he needed to know about that tattoo. He had to find out what it meant.
“You’re going right back to jail, Jawbone,” said Mr Strickham.
The big man, Jawbone, grinned for real. It twisted his face, making him look even scarier, like a hungry dog. “What d’you say, friends? Should we crawl back to our cells?”
The short man sniggered, and the woman’s tongue flickered over her lips. “I say we refuse his kind offer,” she said. “He tastes a little scared to me.”
Mr Strickham brought his other hand to the hilt of his gun to steady it. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m the one with the bullets, and a squad of police officers on the way.” He glanced behind him.
Suddenly Caw felt nervous.
“Leave this to me,” said Jawbone. “I’ll catch up when I’ve dealt with him.”
The others nodded and melted away into the alley – the short man shuffling, his tall companion almost gliding.
“Hey!” shouted Mr Strickham. “One more move and I’ll shoot!”
There was a flash and a deafening crack as Mr Strickham’s pistol went off. A warning shot, but the prisoners ignored it. The woman took one fork, the short man the other. The next moment they were gone.
“Just us now,” said Jawbone, moving slowly towards Mr Strickham.
“I don’t like this,” said Caw. “We should help him.”
In a flash, Jawbone lunged, and his shovel-like hand gripped the gun and twisted it from the Warden’s hand. With a cry of pain, Mr Strickham cradled his arm, backing away.
Jawbone tossed the gun behind him. “Never liked guns,” he said. “They kill too quick.” He reached out and gripped Mr Strickham’s neck, then hoisted him one-handed into the air. The Warden’s legs kicked out weakly as his face turned red, then purple.
Caw’s stomach churned with fear. It was a long way down from where he stood on the roof. He thought he could make it with a couple of jumps, but what then? He swallowed, and swung a leg over the parapet.
Then a new voice called out. “Leave him alone!”
At the end of the alley, a small shape had slipped from the shadows. Caw caught his breath. It was Lydia – the girl from the house! She still wore her pyjamas and a dressing gown. One of the laces of her trainers was trailing. How had Caw not seen her following?
Her father twitched in Jawbone’s death-grip, his face horribly contorted. Jawbone grinned, then threw him aside like a ragdoll. Mr Strickham slammed into the rubbish bin and collapsed in a heap.
“Lydia?” he croaked, managing to get to one knee. “Oh, God. No.”
Jawbone aimed a kick at Mr Strickham’s stomach and he crumpled with a moan.
“Dad!” shouted Lydia, rushing towards him. Jawbone grabbed at her, seizing a handful of her hair and yanking her round to face him. Her face twisted in pain.
“Let me go!” she yelled, scrabbling at his arm.
“Now!” whispered Caw to the crows. “Get him!”
He flipped around so he was facing the wall, then released his grip and plummeted, hitting the ground hard. He fell into a backwards roll, coming up to see that Screech and Glum had already swooped down on to Jawbone’s head. Kow-kow-kow! they screamed.
Jawbone dropped Lydia and swatted at the crows with his massive arms.
“Get them off me!” he bellowed.
The prisoner punched the air as the crows raked his face with their claws. A fist caught Screech and sent him crashing into a wall. He slid to the ground, but flapped away just as Jawbone’s foot came down in a stamp. Glum squawked and stabbed his beak at the prisoner’s eyes. Jawbone staggered, his spider tattoo writhing as he fought off the attack. Screech threw himself bravely back into the fray.
Caw rushed to Mr Strickham’s side, and he and Lydia helped him stand. At the same time Caw realised that the girl was staring at him, open-mouthed.
Mr Strickham frowned in confusion, watching the crows swirl around Jawbone in a blur of feathers. The giant was twisting like a man fighting shadows.
“Come on!” Caw said, pulling Mr Strickham away. “Run!”
But Mr Strickham staggered in the opposite direction, and Caw saw he was heading for the gun on the ground.
“Dad! Leave it!” said Lydia, running after him. Too late. Mr Strickham reached the gun. He wheeled around, bringing the barrel up to point at Jawbone. And the crows.
“No!” yelled Caw. He threw himself at the Warden’s arm, as the gun went off with a crack. The sound lanced through his ears, and Caw clenched his eyes shut against the stabbing pain. When he opened them again, Mr Strickham was mouthing at him furiously, but Caw couldn’t hear the words. He turned and saw Jawbone had gone, and so had his crows.
Gradually sound seeped through his eardrums.
“… saved us, Dad,” Lydia was saying.
“He helped him escape!” said Mr Strickham.
Lydia put a hand on his arm. “That man was going to kill you!”
The radio on Mr Strickham’s belt crackled and panicked voices came through. “Sir, where are you?… Shots fired! … Warden Strickham?”
Mr Strickham plucked the radio off his hip. “Alleyway between Rector’s and Fourth,” he said. “I’ve lost them.”
The hard lines of Mr Strickham’s face softened. He looked at Caw, and his nostrils twitched like he’d smelled something bad. Lydia was looking at him too, and Caw felt his face getting hot. “Who are you?” said Mr Strickham.
Caw didn’t know what to say. If there were police on the way he had to leave, or they’d send him to an orphanage. His eyes searched the roofline for the crows.
“Those birds,” said the Warden. “What was that?”
Caw backed away, letting his feet take him towards the other end of the alley. He felt trapped. The crows were right – he should never have interfered.
“Hey! You’re not going anywhere, young man!” said Mr Strickham. “I need a statement.”
Caw turned and ran. His ears picked up the sound of dogs barking again, not far off. He heard another crackle of a radio. He had to get back to the nest.
“Come back!” said Mr Strickham.
“At least tell us your name!” the girl shouted after him.
Caw reached the street, and saw cops running towards him.
Up here! Screech called.
Caw glanced up and saw the three crows perched on a chain-link fence twenty metres away, where the street ran to a dead end. One of Screech’s legs looked crooked, as though it was broken. He’s hurt, thought Caw. He’s hurt because of me.
There was a patch of wasteland beyond. The old railway station. Caw ran towards the fence.
Arcs of torchlight picked out his body and several voices yelled at him to stop.
He leapt on to the metal mesh, and swung his legs over the top, landing on the other side. When he looked back, he saw a dozen officers coming towards him, with three or four dogs. Lydia and her father were there too.
Caw slid down the embankment and out of sight.
“Hold it!” cried the Warden.
No way, thought Caw. He ran, and he didn’t stop until he’d doubled back to reach the park again. He peered at both ends of the street, making sure that no one was watching, then climbed over the gate. As he scrambled over, one of his flapping shoes came loose and fell to the street. No time to go back for it. He jumped down to the other side.
Finally, his pumping blood began to calm. He was safe here in the shadows. Home.
He walked slowly back to his tree, limping a little on one bare foot.
Well, that was fun! said Glum sarcastically, already in the nest as Caw clambered up.
Did you see me? said Screech. The way I got him? He hopped up and down, mimicking his actions. Peck! Scratch! Claw!
Caw heaved himself on to his bed and lay on his back, letting the sweat cool on his body. He suddenly felt very tired indeed.
I was pretty brave, right? said Screech.
“You were both incredible,” Caw told them.
Milky was perched at the side of the nest, looking completely unruffled. He hadn’t joined in the fighting. His blind eyes stared in Caw’s direction.
“What’s going on, Milky?” asked Caw. “Who were those prisoners?”
The old white crow was silent and still as a marble statue.
I think he’s done talking, said Glum.
“The spider,” said Caw. “I dreamed it. And then it was there in real life, on that prisoner’s chest. You know what it means, don’t you?”
Milky cocked his head and turned away.
“What’s going on?” he said.
Get away! yelped Screech, flapping madly. Intruder!
Adrenaline flooded through Caw’s body and he sat up, reaching for a weapon. He managed to find a cracked plastic spoon, just in time to see a head poking up through the hatch.
“Wow!” said Lydia, resting her hands on the timbers of the nest. “This place is amazing! It’s way bigger than it looks from down there.”