Scaring the Crows Read online

  Yes, the voice said, talking would be fine. Just fine. Come in. Sit down.

  “Oh yes,” Edith said, stepping into the living room’s waiting dark.

  She felt her way to the couch and sat down at one end. She could feel the weight of something else on the other. She cleared her throat.

  “I think maybe we should have a little light. That’s only proper. A little light?” she asked.

  Yes.

  “Okay,” she said, and flicked a switch.

  Edith looked at what was sitting beside her on the couch… and winked.

  Big Plans

  He laid his new tie and freshly pressed shirt on the dresser. He took his sports coat from the closet and whisked it down before giving his new loafers a final polish.

  “Ben,” said Cathy, looking sleepily over at him from the bed.

  “What, hon?”

  “It’s five in the morning. Your interview isn’t until nine and it only takes an hour to get to the city.”

  “You never know about Pittsburgh traffic,” said Ben, adjusting his tie. “And there’s construction on 76 … How’s the hair? I think Ross cut it too short.”

  “Fine as always.”

  He ran his fingers through it, unconvinced.

  “Now how is it?”

  Cathy rolled her eyes. “Still fine … as always. I should get up and make you breakfast.”

  “No, not a chance. I didn’t mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep.”

  She shook her head. “This is an important day. You need to eat.”

  “I can make myself something.”

  “You need something more than just cereal.”

  Downstairs in the kitchen, Cathy tended the bacon while Ben stared out the window, a folded Still Creek Gazette untouched by his elbow.

  “You don’t need to be nervous,” she said, forking the bacon onto a paper towel and blotting out the grease. “You said you already got the job. It’s just a formality.”

  “I know. But the superintendent will be there. I’ve never met her before. And both principals this time. And the head of the English department. And there are two other candidates. If I blow it, they’re waiting in the wings.”

  “That won’t happen.”

  Cathy handed over Ben’s breakfast and took a seat beside him.

  “Tell me again what we’ll do with the money,” she said.

  Ben sipped his coffee and allowed a smile. “We’ll pay off all our loans. We’ll sell the house and move to Penn Hills, just ten minutes from the heart of the city. We’ll see shows and eat at a different restaurant every Saturday night. Then we’ll find three, maybe four restaurants that we really like and we’ll only go to those. The waiters and waitresses will learn our names. We’ll be regulars. And every Christmas our families will drive out from the country and we’ll take them to Pine Forest to see the light display—the biggest in Pennsylvania. And I’ll teach thirty years’ worth of students and attend seminars downtown every summer. And you’ll become head librarian at Carnegie University, or maybe Pitt. And every August before school starts up again we’ll fly somewhere different for vacation.”

  Cathy smiled. “Every time you say it, you add something new. There’s no need to fly somewhere for vacation every year. Driving is just fine.”

  Ben shook his head. “Well, maybe sometimes we’ll drive. But I’m sick of Harrisburg and Gettysburg and Baltimore and Washington D.C. I want Los Angeles and Chicago and Denver and Seattle. I want London and Paris and Rome!”

  “You’ve got egg on your tie.”

  Ben sighed and brushed it off.

  Cathy kissed his cheek as he stood to go. “Drive safe. Take deep breaths. Pop a mint before you start to talk. And watch out for that nervous twitch. Remember that, and you’ll do fine.”

  Two hours later, she picked up the telephone with a tremulous hand.

  “I did fine,” Ben told her.

  * * * * *

  She walked the three blocks to Stockton’s Grocery and spent twenty-two dollars before returning home laden with brown paper bags. She spent half an hour on the telephone.

  The small house they had shared for three years quickly filled with family and friends. There was a steady hum of life like bees in a hive, all bustle and work and business and laughter. Good smells wafted out from the kitchen and balloons bumped the ceiling in the dining room. Warmth saturated the living room, fogging the windows and hiding the cold outside.

  “There’s so much else we’ll be able to do,” Cathy told her mother. “So many new opportunities. So many new chances.”

  Her mother kneaded piecrust in a tin pan and smiled without looking up.

  “Big fish in a small pond, is that it? And Pittsburgh’s the ocean?”

  Cathy nodded. “No more debt. No more small, crowded rooms and second-hand furniture. No more leaky ceiling or rusted-out shed. All our lives, and now we’re moving out. That’s how it should be. That’s how it’s supposed to happen.”

  “It’s awful far.”

  She gazed at her mother for a long time. “Not so far,” she said. “Not so far. You and Daddy will come visit and spent weekends with us.”

  Her mother smiled again. Still, she did not look up. “Yes,” she said, and patted her hand. “Yes, that will be fine. It’s a wonderful chance. We’re all very proud of you.”

  Shortly before six, they heard Ben’s car rasp into the driveway and everyone fell silent.

  “Here he comes,” Cathy whispered. The house hummed with hidden life.

  As they waited, she looked around at the still, expectant faces. She smiled. Then, unexpectedly, the smile fell away, but it came back when Ben unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  The wind had flushed his cheeks and blown his hair into a mess of bangs. His eyes, so often red and tired at the end of the day, now twinkled with pent-up joy. The tilt of his mouth spoke of triumph. Before he could take another step, a benign flood of people bore him up and into the house.

  “Congratulations!” everyone cried. “Congratulations!”

  And when, an hour later, the phone rang and Ben answered it, no one thought to ask who it was. Well into the evening they celebrated. Cake and ice cream and beer and songs. Stories and future plans. Back-slaps and bear hugs. Ben stayed in the middle of it all, laughing loudest, telling the tallest tales, eating and drinking and taking all good wishes with a toothy smile. And if he looked a little tired now and then, who could blame him? It had been a long day.

  When the last of the friends left with the last of the family, they shut the door and stared at the litter scattered about the empty house. The smile fell from Ben’s face along with his color. His shoulders slumped. Cathy watched as he trudged up the stairs without another word, and it was only then that she remembered the phone call and realized what it meant.

  * * * * *

  He lay in the dark on the bed, above the blankets, shoes still on. Outside, wind beat against the frost-rimmed windowpanes and shook the eaves. The air felt thin and cold. The night was thick.

  Cathy crossed over to the bed and stared down at the darker shadow of her husband. She could hear his breathing. It was even but hard.

  She sat down beside him and did not speak.

  “It was an issue of clearances,” he said at last. “That DUI when I was nineteen. They didn’t know about that. I didn’t even think to mention it. Here it doesn’t matter so much, but there it does. I’ll never be a teacher in the city.”

  More breathing in the darkness. Cathy’s respiration found Ben’s rhythm and joined it, chest pacing chest.

  “There will be other jobs,” she said. “Other opportunities.”

  “Not like that one,” he replied. “Not like that.”

  She lay back on the bed, hair nestled beneath her head on the pillow. The mattress ebbed and flowed with their breathing, a living thing.

  “I wanted to give us something we never had before,” Ben said softly.

  “I know. But then again, I’m not as upset a
s I thought I would be. Strange.”

  A sharp movement, and Cathy knew Ben had sat up and was looking at her.

  “Tell me,” he said slowly, “what we would have done with all that money.”

  Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she stared up at the ceiling slats. “We would have paid off our loans,” she began slowly. “Then we would have sold our house here and moved to North Hills, just ten minutes from the heart of the city. We would have seen shows and eaten at a different restaurant every Saturday night.”

  Ben was very quiet beside her, still looking at her through the dark. She could see him faintly now.

  She continued, “Then we would have grown lonely and wondered why we had decided to move. We would have missed our family and friends. We would have missed the walks around town that we had once thought we would never miss. We would have invited everyone over for Christmas, but it wouldn’t have been the same. And each year fewer and fewer people would have come. And so, after ten years, we would have moved back here, to this town that’s small but not dying, and I would have taken my old job back as the Still Creek Elementary School assistant librarian, and you would have taken your old job back as a Still Creek High School English teacher. And we would have been very happy at long last.”

  She felt the bed creak as Ben lay back down. A hand found hers.

  A gust of wind rattled the storm windows, bringing with it a spray of late-season ice that clattered against the glass and aluminum siding.

  Inside, the room had grown very warm.

  Cathy sat up and flicked on the light. She stood quietly at the edge of the bed.

  “Please get up,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Get up. Put on your coat.”

  Ben got up, looked around the room, looked into her face and then went to the closet and took out his coat and put it on. He sensed, rather than knew, that now was not the time for questions.

  “Follow me,” she said.

  Cathy went ahead of him, down the stairs and, after hesitating, he followed.

  As they reached the front door she opened it and said, “Outside.”

  “What?”

  “Just step out.”

  Ben stepped out the door and she followed, shutting it behind them. They were out in the night.

  “What are we doing?” he asked.

  “Why, it’s May 17.”

  “That date,” he said. “It’s very familiar.”

  Cathy nodded. “Three years ago today, we moved into this house. Here.” She handed him a key.

  He looked at it for a long moment, then recognized what it was for. He put it in the front door lock, turned it, and the door drifted open.

  Cathy stepped in, turned, and said, “Come on. It’s the first day.”

  Ben smiled as he followed.

  Stapleton’s Dog

  The sullen wasteland spread out toward the overcast horizon.

  They stared at it with approval. Around them, a cold wind carried with it a colder mist, and the mournful cry of a bird they did not recognize echoed through the desolation. October, that most melancholy of months, seemed highly concentrated in the 280 square miles of dead bracken, rotting vegetation, slimy moss, standing water, and quicksand.

  “The greatest of the Dartmoor bogs!” exclaimed Tom Worthington, breathing in deeply. “Here we are.”

  “I wonder if it’s as dangerous as the great Grimpen Mire.” Stella, his wife of twenty-one years, rubbed her hands together to kill the chill. Even so, the flush in her cheeks wasn’t just from the cold. She was excited, Tom noted. She was happy to be here. Thrilled.

  “I’m sure it is,” said Tom, scanning the distance. “I don’t think Sir Arthur exaggerated his source.”

  Fourteen-year members of the Sherlock Holmes Society, they had been planning this visit for over a decade. Money was tight, but Tom’s prompting had gradually won Stella over, and here they finally were. Both smiled as they took a few tentative steps closer to the bog’s edge. Behind them the windows of the Gifford Bed & Breakfast glowed with light that promised warmth, food, and hot baths. Beneath their feet a fine, manicured lawn pushed away wildness with promises of croquet, picnics, and long walks on well-tended paths.

  Neither of them paid any of that any mind. Their hearts were already caught in the mire.

  “Doyle walked here,” Stella said, nodding to herself. “On this very yard. On these very moors. In that very marsh.”

  “And now, so will we.” Tom smiled.

  “So many years of saving, and here we are, where he was,” Stella went on. “And where he was is where Dr. Mortimer, Stapleton, Mr. and Mrs. Barrymore, Sir Henry, and dear old Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself still roam.”

  She reached into a coat pocket and withdrew a battered paperback. On the front cover a snarling, demonic hound glared out with fearsome red eyes.

  “Yes, dear,” said Tom. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “I’ve always dreamed of standing in this spot with this book in my hand … with you.”

  “For a while, it looked like that would never happen.”

  Stella glanced at Tom sharply. “I know. But that’s over now. It’s forgotten … Ancient history! I hardly remember his face.” She grasped his warm hands tightly. He noted that hers were very cold.

  “That’s good to know,” Tom said evenly.

  Stella stared at him a moment longer, then took a deep breath. In the time it took her to exhale, she had cheered again.

  “Well, what say we explore a little?”

  “Certainly,” said Tom. “Where shall we go first?”

  “The mire, of course!”

  She took six steps forward along what looked like a solid, mossy path. For a moment it held. Then the earth sucked, shifted, and gave way. Mud lapped at her heels, encircling them in a tight, clammy grip. She fell sideways. A heartbeat later she was knee-deep in stinking brown muck.

  “Help me, Tom!”

  A curse, a wallowing splash, a desperate heave, and soon Stella lay safe on the lawn, breathing hard. Tom, also drenched, drew in a ragged breath and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Stella snapped, still gasping.

  “I was just imagining the pony that Stapleton and Watson watched…The one that sank, screaming, to its death.”

  “I don’t think that’s very funny at all. It was a horrible scene. Doyle used it to provoke a sense of foreboding and foreshadowing in the reader, and he succeeded.”

  “And what did Stapleton say about the great Grimpen Mire when describing it to Watson?”

  Stella sighed, delved into her pocket for the paperback, flipped a few pages, and quoted, “‘Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place.’ Fine, fine. I see your point. I should have known better.”

  Tom grinned. “And then what does Stapleton say?”

  More thin pages flipping. “Um… ‘And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive.’”

  “Yes!”

  “I get it, Tom. All very clever.”

  “No, no. Don’t be angry. Here.”

  He reached down and hoisted Stella to her feet. He dusted her off, removed a strand of slime from her hair, and smiled.

  “Now for the surprise,” he said.

  “What surprise?”

  “Did the water slop into your boots?”

  “No. Good thing I wore the high tops.”

  “Excellent. Allow me.”

  Tom took Stella’s hand and led her forward. For a moment he thought she would hold back, but she followed him, even after her near miss. Whistling, he stepped, without hesitation, twenty feet into the mire without so much as a squelch…Stella right behind.

  “Tom! How—”

  “Nothing at all!” He bowed.

  “But—“

  “Oh, I did my homework. Corresponded with some of the locals and took notes. Got a map. Studied it. And here we are. And here we go!”

  He l
ed the way again, slowly but steadily, and when they stopped a second time the green grass of the lawn looked very far away.

  Stella could barely control her excitement. “I never imagined! It’s … It’s wonderful. Just like I thought it would be. How completely desolate! How horribly oppressive! Oh, Tom,” she said, kissing him briefly on the cheek, “how can I ever thank you?”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something,” Tom said. “But it’s my pleasure. My way of saying, ‘I want to start over.’”

  Stella hugged him tight. “But how much farther are we going? It’s getting dark.”

  “A ways yet,” Tom said. “See that low hill?”

  “What, way out there?”

  “It’s really more of an island. We’ll walk out, take a look around, then head back for dinner.”

  They moved on, Tom picking his way carefully, Stella following in his footsteps. At last, with the faded sun sinking into the heart of the mire, they reached the hill.

  “It really is more of an island,” Stella said.

  “Yes,” said Tom, climbing up the low rise to where two long stones jutted up like fangs. “See?”

  Stella nodded.

  “And you know something?” Tom asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “This is the very spot that inspired Doyle’s description.”

  Stella shook her head. “Description of what? The marsh?”

  “No. The place where the demon hound tore out Sir Hugo Baskerville’s throat.”

  “Really?” Stella shuddered. She reached out and took Tom’s hand.

  Despite the chill, his palm was very warm… so warm that she let go of it very quickly.

  “Really,” Tom said, then paused. “It is all very impressive, isn’t it? Just the way we pictured it?”

  “Yes,” said Stella, but now her tone was low, somewhat distracted. The wind had grown very strong and very cold. Dead rushes moaned and sighed. She shivered.

  “Bow-wow,” said Tom.

  She blinked, uttering a startled giggle. “What?”