Daddy Crow Bones
When the wind changed direction and began to blow bitterly down from the Highlands, scouring the long grass and bringing flecks of snow in its wake, Thomas Fallon knew that his past had finally caught up with him.
There was something in the pregnant sky, a darkening around the horizon and a sense of approaching forces. The chickens hadn't laid overnight and refused to come out of the hen house. There was a strange free-fall nausea in his stomach and occasional glimpses of things flapping in his peripheral vision.
He had taken his morning walk across the fields, looking out at the other houses, dotted at infrequent intervals across the rolling arable countryside, the shadows of the hills in the distance seemed darker and the wind almost blew words at him, hollow vowels trying to take enough form to make meaning, always failing.
On his return to his mottled grey and pink stone farmhouse he began to ready himself, mending fences, stringing barbed wire along the perimeters of the small-holding as if creating a redoubt. On his weekly trip to the feed store he began buying up canned goods. He ordered more propane and filled jerry cans with diesel at the petrol station in the local village. These he stockpiled in the old blue shipping container behind the house.
He didn't know what form the attack would take but he was certain that after all these months it was due. He could never outrun it.
He pulled down the old rusted pig shed, using its rusted brown corrugated roof to barricade an open gateway into the top field which he'd been meaning to get to.
He boarded up the broken window in the back room that he never went in. He surveyed the broken tiles on the sagging slate roof, colonised by archipelagos of khaki moss. They would have to wait. He felt shame when he realised how far he had let things slide.
Every so often he'd look up, listening to the hissing in the scots pines which towered over his house, or to creaks in the silvery beeches which reached into the vast sky, their branches splitting into clawing fractals.
His neighbours wondered at his sudden industriousness, watching him work on his repairs like a man with a deadline. Willy Macgregor when working one of the adjacent fields called to him to ask if everything was alright got no answer, just a wave. But then Thomas had always been a queer one. Not a sociable man, and not really known in the area - still an incomer after fifteen years. People recognised something military in his bearing and behaviour, but knew little more. No wife. No family. No past.
No one ever went past the front gate of his smallholding.
As Fallon worked he wondered why he was even bothering with the physical defences. Whatever was coming would largely disregard them, but the work gave him a sense of purpose and he knew that with every repaired gate smeared with tar and sprinkled with broken glass what he was really doing was preparing himself.
The real defenses were the ones he laid at night, creeping the boundaries of his property and burying the bones of dead crows at three feet intervals. It had taken months to catch them all, little traps laid around the vegetable patch. He hadn't bothered to move the ragged scarecrow who stood there, impotently flapping in the wind, ignored by the laughing crows who came to feed.
There was never a shortage of crows.
He muttered the words he had written months before and sprinkled salt across his porch, flicked oil from an old green vial on his door and windows.
After his work Fallon sat in the threadbare armchair in front of the peat fire running his fingers through his beard and listening to the wind in the chimney, starting at every hiss from the grate. To one side of the fireplace was a fan of raven feathers and driftwood. To the other hung his axe.
He sat in a state of constant tension till the pain behind his eyes became the norm. The sense of something just out of his vision grew worse. He watched the shadows cast by the firelight for so long it seemed to him they were the active element, pushing back against the light and straining ever to reach him in his place of safety in front of the hearth. He drank.
At midnight he heard laughter outside, carried on the wind then carried away again. He stood, unhooking the axe from the fireplace and flicked open the leather guard, sliding it off the metal head and running his thumb along the freshly sharpened edge. He felt reassured by its well balanced heft, although he knew that it would likely be of no use.
He went to the window, carefully parted the curtain, and peered out into the darkness. There was no moon, the darkness was complete and all he could see was his own gaunt reflection squinting back at him. Taking a deep breath he went the front door, unbolted it, unlocked it and opened it, bracing his weight behind it just in case. He glanced down and saw the thin line of salt sprinkled across the threshold.
The darkness had swallowed everything. He couldn't even make out Willy Macgregor's houselights half a mile away. There was a cold fresh wind blowing through the yard, through the pools of dim light from the curtained windows. As his eyes adjusted he could just make out the familiar shapes of the shipping container, the chicken coop and his battered landrover. Then a deeper shadow darted across his field of vision, faster than any man could have run.
"I know you're there," he called into the darkness, "I'm ready for you."
A voice croaked out of the darkness, hollow and amused, "No you're not, Thomas Fallon. You think some bird bones are going to stop us? You forgot to do the stretch behind the hen house. Your hens are dead now, Fallon, and we are here."
He felt a plunging shame, he wouldn't have made such a stupid mistake ten years ago. The drink had made him stupid.
"Show yourselves then," he said, gripping the axe.
"Well we'll show you something, Thomas Fallon," came a different croaking voice from further to the left.
A figure emerged from the darkness into the crack of light cast by the open door. It was a shambling, ill formed broken shape, as if staggering from an accident, or as if just born, or both. His rotten mildewed clothing hung in rags around his mis-shapen limbs and his head hung before him, shielded by a battered old rain hat. When he raised his lolling head, Fallon found himself staring into a faceless plastic carrier bag. It was the scarecrow from the vegetable patch.
Laughter came again from the boundaries and Fallon wondered if they truly had made it through his circle of bones or were just goading him.
The scarecrow lurched closer, blind and feeling his way with his floppy boots, groping with loose woolly gloved hands which didn't seem to contain fingers. Fallon considered laying into the figure with the axe, but didn't want to step over the threshold. Instead he backed away, slamming the door and bolting it.
Then the hammering started, not just on the door, but simultaneously on the windows. That was it then, they were through the boundaries, physical and otherwise. Fallon wondered if he'd really ever understood the true nature of his foe. He only hoped that the salt and the oil would do more.
There was a smashing of glass from the back room. He went to the doorway and looked around the corner.
The scarecrow was climbing in through the window, shards of glass ripping at the old trousers, spilling straw on the floor. The blind creature fell forward onto the carpet and started crawling, feeling his way across the room. There were laughing gutteral voices at the window but nothing else came through.
Fallon stepped away from the crawling thing before him and backed into the living room. The scarecrow stood up and, gripping the door frame followed him. Then it stopped, motionless as if awaiting further instructions.
"Did you think you could avoid paying tribute?"
The croaking voice was coming from inside the house. Fallon looked beyond the scarecrow and saw a shadowed figure stood in the doorway, furled and black with dark eyes staring into his. Something feathered and taloned.
Fallon's knees loosened and he sank to the ground. Tears ran down his face.
"Please, not again, don't make me do it again," he said.
"Come now, Fallon. Did you think that your little make believe rituals could keep us away? We are part of you now. Crow bones and holy oil? And salt? It's offensive."
Fallon clutched his head, the ache had become a searing pain in the temples, "I won't do it. I won't!" he screamed.
"Who missed this one?" said the shadow, nodding at the scarecrow, "just a hitchhiker. A nobody. Just roadkill. There were no questions were there? Even after you pinned what was left of him out in that little spot where the neighbours can't see. Did you watch us feed? Don't pretend you didn't enjoy it Fallon, I know what you like. I know he wasn't the first."
"It wasn't me, it was you," said Fallon, "you made me."
"No Fallon, you made ME. And did you think that turning what was left into this...thing, would really scare me away?"
The scarecrow suddenly lurched towards Fallon, arms extended.
"We need to feed, Fallon. Find us something or we'll make do with you."
Fallon lashed out with his axe, swinging at the scarecrow's face, ripping through the carrier bag to reveal the mouldy skull beneath, picked clean, empty sockets staring blankly ahead.
"He was tasty, Fallon," said the shadow in the corner, "my brothers and sisters enjoyed this one. His jellied eyes, his tongue, the fat from his belly, the red and blue ropes inside. Find us another."
"No!"
The scarecrow staggered forwards and behind him the shadow unfurled its wings, fanning out black and vast to fill
the room.
Fallon grabbed the scarecrow and pulled it forwards, shoving it into the fire, holding its skull face into the flames. It caught, the flames eating through the straw and old clothes, filling the room with light and making the winged shadow scramble back into the corner.
Fallon stood, his eyes streaming. The curtains were on fire, he covered his face from the heat and smoke. He tried to find his way to the door.
Something rose up behind him. He turned to see the burning scarecrow, its skull eyes perfect hollows of black, reaching out to grab him, to pull him close as the flames engulfed them both.