Edited by, p.10
Edited By, page 10
Lorna got out fast and stumbled toward the cabin. She didn’t look over her shoulder even though she felt hot breath on the back of her neck.
They didn’t speak of the incident. For a couple of days they hardly spoke at all. Miranda drifted in and out of the cabin like a ghost and Lorna dreaded to ask where she went in the dead of night, why she wore the hide and nothing else. Evening temperatures dipped below freezing, yet Miranda didn’t appear to suffer, on the contrary, she thrived. She hadn’t eaten a bite from their store of canned goods, hadn’t taken a meal all week. Lorna lay awake staring at the ceiling as the autumn rains rattled the windows.
One afternoon she sat alone at the kitchen table downing the last of the Old Crow. The previous evening she’d experienced two visceral and disturbing dreams. In the first she was serving drinks at a barbeque. There were dozens of guests. Bruce flipped burgers and hob-knobbed with his office chums. Orillia darted through the crowd with a water pistol, zapping hapless adults before dashing away. The mystery woman Beth, and a bearded man in a track suit she introduced as her husband, came over and told her what a lovely party, what a lovely house, what a lovely family, and Lorna handed them drinks and smiled a big dumb smile as Miranda stood to the side and winked, nodding toward a panel van parked nearby on the grass. The van rocked and a coyote emerged from beneath the vehicle, growling and slobbering and snapping at the air. Grease slicked the animal’s fur black, made its yellow eyes bright as flames.
A moment later, Lorna was in the woods, chasing the bearded man from the party. His track suit flapped in shreds, stained with blood and dirt. The man tripped and fell over a cliff. He crashed in a sprawl of broken limbs, his mouth full of shattered teeth and black gore. He raised a mutilated hand toward her in supplication. She bounded down and mounted him, licked the blood from him, then chewed off his face. She’d awakened with a cry, bile in her throat.
Lorna set aside the empty bottle. She put on her coat and got the revolver from the dresser where Miranda had stashed it for safekeeping. Lorna hadn’t fired the gun despite Miranda’s offer to practice. However, she’d seen her lover go through the routine—cock the hammer, pull the trigger, click, no real trick. She didn’t need the gun, wouldn’t use the gun, but somehow its weight in her pocket felt good. She walked down the driveway, moving gingerly to protect her bum knee, then followed the road to the gravel pit where the van was allegedly parked. The rain slackened to drizzle. Patches of mist swirled in the hollows and the canyons and crept along fern beds at the edges of the road. The valley lay hushed, a brooding giant.
The gravel pit was empty. A handful of charred wood and some squashed beer cans confirmed someone had definitely camped there in the not so distant past. She breathed heavily, partially from the incessant throb in her knee, partially from relief. What the hell would she have done if the assholes her husband sent were on the spot roasting wienies? Did she really think people like that would evaporate upon being subjected to harsh language? Did she really have the backbone to flash the gun and send them packing John Wayne style?
She thought the first muffled cry was the screech of a bird, but the second shout got her attention. Her heart was pounding when she finally located the source about a hundred yards farther along the road. Tire tracks veered from the narrow lane toward a forty foot drop into a gulch of trees and boulders. The van had landed on its side. The rear doors were sprung, the glass busted. She wouldn’t have noticed it all the way down there if not for the woman crying for help. Her voice sounded weak. But that made sense—Beth had been trapped in the wreck for several days, hadn’t she? One snip of the brake line and on these hills it’d be all over but the crying. Miranda surely didn’t fuck around, did she? Lorna bit the palm of her hand to stifle a scream.
“Hey,” Miranda said. She’d come along as stealthily as the mist and lurked a few paces away near a thicket of brambles. She wore the mangy cloak with the predator’s skull covering her own, rendering her features inscrutable. Her feet were bare. She was naked beneath the pelt, her lovely flesh streaked with dirt and blood. Her mouth was stained wine-dark. “Sorry, honeybunch. I really thought they’d have given up the ghost by now. Alas, alack. Don’t worry. It won’t be long. The birds are here.”
Crows hopped among the limbs and drifted in looping patterns above the ruined van. They squawked and squabbled. The woman yelled something unintelligible. She wailed and fell silent. Lorna’s lip trembled and her nose ran with snot. She swept her arm to indicate their surroundings. “Why did you bring me here?”
Miranda tilted her misshapen head and smiled a sad, cruel smile. “I want to save you, baby. You’re weak.”
Lorna stared into the gulch. The mist thickened and began to fill in the cracks and crevices and covered the van and its occupants. There was no way she could navigate the steep bank, not with her injury. Her cell was at the cabin on the table. She could almost hear the clockwork gears of the universe clicking into alignment, a great dark spotlight shifting across the cosmic stage to center upon her at this moment in time. She said, “I don’t know how to do what you’ve done. To change. Unless that hide is built for two.”
Miranda took her hand and led her back to the cabin and tenderly undressed her. She smiled faintly when she retrieved the revolver and set it on the table. She kissed Lorna and her breath was hot and foul. Then she stepped back and began to pull the hide away from her body and as it lifted so did the underlying skin, peeling like a scab. Blood poured down Miranda’s chest and belly and pattered on the floorboards. The muscles of her cheeks and jaw bunched and she hissed, eyes rolling, and then it was done and the dripping bundle was free of her red-slicked flesh. Lorna was paralyzed with horror and awe, but finally stirred and tried to resist what her lover proffered. Miranda cuffed her temple, stunning her. She said, “Hold still, baby. You’re gonna thank me,” and draped the cloak across Lorna’s shoulders and pulled the skullcap of the beast over Lorna’s eyes.
“You came here for this?” Lorna said as the slimy and overheated pelt cupped her and enclosed her. The room went in and out of focus.
“No, babe. I just followed the trail and here were are. And it’s good. You’ll see how good it is, how it changes everything. We’ve been living in a cage, but that’s over now.
“My god, I loved you.” Lorna blinked the blood from her eyes. She glanced over and saw the revolver on the table, blunt and deadly and glowing with the dwindling light, a beacon. She grabbed the weapon without thought and pressed it under Miranda’s chin and thumbed the hammer just as she’d seen it done. Her entire body shook. “You thought I’d just leave my daughter behind and slink off to Never-Never Land without a word? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Give it a minute,” Miranda said. The fingers of her left hand stroked the pelt. “One minute. Let it work its magic. You’ll see everything in a whole new way. Come on, sweetie.” She reached for the revolver and it barked and twisted in Lorna’s hands.
Lorna didn’t weep. Her insides were stone. She dropped the gun and swayed in place, not focusing on anything. The light began to fade. She stumbled outside. She could smell everything and strange thoughts rushed through her head.
There was a moment between twilight and darkness when she almost managed to tear free of the hide and begin making the calls that would return her to the world, her daughter, the apocalyptic showdown with the man who’d oppressed her for too long. The moment passed, was usurped by an older and much more powerful impulse. Her thoughts turned to the woods, the hills, a universe of dark, sweet scent. The hunt.
Two weeks later, a hiker spotted a murder of crows in a raucous celebration as they roosted around the wrecked van. He called emergency services. Men and dogs and choppers swarmed the mountainside. The case made all of the papers and ran on the local networks for days. Investigators found two corpses—an adult male and an adult female—in the van. The cause of death was blunt force trauma and prolonged exposure to the elements. Further examination revealed that the brake lines of the van were sawed through, indicative of homicide. The homicide theory was supported by the discovery of a deceased adult female on the floor of a nearby cabin. She’d died of a single bullet wound to the head. A fourth individual who’d also lived on the premises remained missing and was later presumed dead. Tremendous scrutiny was directed at the missing woman’s estranged husband. He professed his innocence throughout the subsequent trial. That he’d hired the deceased couple to spy on his wife didn’t help his case.
Years later, a homicide detective wrote a bestseller detailing the investigation of the killings. Tucked away as a footnote, the author included a few esoteric quotes and bits of trivia; among these were comments by the Chief Medical Examiner who’d overseen the autopsies. According to the ME, it was fortunate picture ID was present on scene for the deceased. By the time the authorities arrived, animals had gotten to the bodies in the van. The examiner said she’d been tempted to note in her report that in thirty years she’d never seen anything so bizarre or savage as these particular bites, but wisely reconsidered.
The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven
I’m often asked which are my favorites of my anthologies. I used to have difficulty responding. It felt disloyal to name some and not others. But I got over it.
So, Supernatural Noir, published by Dark Horse Books in 2011—which is about exactly what it sounds like—is one of my favorites. I love the theme and I love the mix of stories in it. I enjoyed editing it so much that I’d be very happy to edit a second volume one of these days.
In any case, here’s a sampling from that volume: Laird Barron’s “The Carrion Gods in Their Heaven.” I’ve been publishing Laird’s work since 2004, when I first noticed his work, picking up “Old Virginia” for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection. I’ve been commissioning and/or reprinting a good deal of his short fiction ever since.
The Crow Palace
By Priya Sharma
(From Black Feathers: Dark Avian Tales, 2017)
Birds are tricksters. Being small necessitates all kinds of wiles to survive but Corvidae, in all their glory as the raven, rook, jay, magpie, jackdaw, and crow have greater ambitions than that.
They have a plan.
I used to go into the garden with Dad and Pippa every morning, rain or shine, even on school days.
We lived in a house called The Beeches. Its three acre garden had been parcelled off and flogged to developers before I was born, so it became one of a cluster of houses on an unadopted cul de sac.
Mature rhododendrons that flowered purple and red in spring lined the drive. The house was sheltered from prying eyes by tall hedges and the eponymous beech trees. Dad refused to cut them back despite neighbours’ pleas for more light and less leaf fall in the autumn. Dense foliage is perfect for nesting, he’d say.
Our garden was an avian haven. Elsa, who lived opposite, would bring over hanging feeders full of fat balls and teach us about the blue tits and cheeky sparrows who hung from them as they gorged. Stone nymphs held up bowls that Dad kept filled. Starlings splashed about in them. When they took flight they shed drops of water that shone like discarded diamonds. The green and gold on their wings caught the sun.
Pippa and I played while Dad dug over his vegetable patch at the weekends. The bloody chested robin followed him, seeking the soft bodied and spineless in the freshly turned earth.
Dad had built a bird table, of all things, to celebrate our birth. It was a complex construction with different tiers. Our job was to lay out daily offerings of nuts and meal worms. At eight I could reach its lower levels but Pippa, my twin, needed a footstool and for Dad to hold her steady so that she didn’t fall.
Elsa taught me to recognise our visitors and all their peculiarities and folklore. Sometimes there were jackdaws, rooks, and ravens but it was monopolised by crows, which is why I dubbed it the crow palace. Though not the largest of the corvidae, they were strong and stout. I watched them see off interlopers, such as squirrels, who hoped to dine.
After leaving our offerings we’d withdraw to the sun room to watch them gather.
“Birdies,” Pippa would clap.
The patio doors bore the brunt of her excitement; fogged breath and palm prints. Snot, if she had a cold. She touched my arm when she wanted to get my attention, which came out as a clumsy thump.
“I can see.”
Hearing my tone, Pippa inched away, looking chastised.
Dad closed in on the other side with a forced, jovial, “You’re quiet, what’s up?”
It was always the same. How are you feeling? What can I get you? Are you hungry? Did you have a bad dream last night?
“I’m fine.” Not a child’s answer. I sounded uptight. I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary to say, Go away. Your anxiety’s stifling me.
I put my forehead against the glass. In the far corner of the garden was the pond, which Dad had covered with safety mesh, unfortunately too late to stop Mum drowning herself in it. That’s where I found her, a jay perched on her back. It looked like it had pushed her in. That day the crow palace had been covered with carrion crows; bruisers whose shiny eyes were full of plots.
I sit in a traffic queue, radio on, but all I hear is Elsa’s voice.
“Julie, it’s Elsa. From Fenby.”
As if I could forget the woman who brought us birthday presents, collected us from school, and who told me about bras, periods, and contraception (albeit in the sketchiest terms) when Dad was too squeamish for the task.
“Julie, you need to come home. I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just come out with it. Your dad’s dead.” She paused. “He collapsed in the garden this morning. I’ll stay with Pippa until you get here.”
“Thank you.”
“You will come, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
Ten years and they jerk me back with one phone call.
The journey takes an hour longer than I expected. Oh, England, my sceptred and congested isle. I’m not sure if I’m glad of the delay or it’s making my dread worse.
The lane is in dire need of resurfacing so I have to slow down to navigate the potholes. I turn into the drive. It’s lined by overgrown bushes. I stop out of view of the house and walk the rest of the way. I’m not ready for Pip and Elsa yet.
The Beeches should be handsome. It’s crying out for love. Someone should chip off the salmon pink stucco and take it back to its original red brick. The garden wraps around it on three sides, widest at the rear. I head there first.
The crow palace is the altar of the childhood rituals that bound us. It looks like Dad’s lavished more love on it than the house. New levels have been added and parts of it replaced.
I stoop to pick something up from the ground. I frown as I turn it over and read the label. It’s an empty syringe wrapper. Evidence of the paramedics labours. The grass, which needs mowing is trampled down. I think I can see where Dad lay.
A crow lands on the palace at my eye level. It struts back and forth with a long, confident stride as it inspects me. Its back is all the colours of the night. It raises its head and opens its beak wide.
Caw caw caw.
It’s only then that the patio doors open and Elsa runs out, arms outstretched.
Job done, the crow takes flight.
Elsa fusses and clucks over me, fetching sweet tea, “For shock.”
“What happened to him?”
“They think it was a heart attack. The coroner’s officer wants to speak to you. I’ve left the number by the phone.”
“How can they be sure? Don’t they need to do a post mortem?”
“They think it’s likely. He’s had two in the last three years.”
“I didn’t know.”
“He wouldn’t let me phone you.” I don’t know if I’m annoyed that she didn’t call or relieved that she doesn’t say Perhaps, if you’d bothered to call him he might have told you himself. “Your dad was a terrible patient. They told him he should have an operation to clear his arteries but he refused.”
Elsa opens one of the kitchen cupboards. “Look.”
I take out some of the boxes, shake them, read the leaflets. There’s twelve months of medication here. Dad never took any of it. Aspirin, statins, nitrates, ace-inhibitors. Wonder drugs to unblock his stodgy arteries and keep his blood flowing through them.
I slam the door shut, making Elsa jump. It’s the gesture of a petulant teenager. I can’t help it. Dad’s self neglect is a good excuse to be angry at him for dying.
“We used to have terrible rows over it. I think it was his way of punishing himself.” Elsa doesn’t need to say guilt over your mother. She looks washed out. Her pale eyes, once arresting, look aged. “I don’t think Pippa understands. Don’t be hurt. She’ll come out when she’s ready.”
Pippa had looked at me as I put my bag down in the hall and said, “Julieee,” prolonging the last syllable as she always did when she was excited. Then she slid from the room, leaving me alone with Elsa.
Elsa’s the one who doesn’t understand, despite how long she’s known Pippa.
Pip’s cerebral palsy has damaged the parts of her brain that controls her speech. It’s impaired her balance and muscle tone. It’s robbed her of parts of her intellect but she’s attuned to the world in other ways.
She understands what I feel. She’s waiting for me to be ready, not the other way around.
Perhaps it’s a twin thing.
Pippa stopped speaking for several years when she was a child. It was when she realised that she didn’t sound like other children. That she couldn’t find and shape the words as I did. Her development wasn’t as arrested as everyone supposed. Dad, Elsa and her teachers all underestimated her.
