The Crow

The night is growing deeper and deeper, the blackened sky pulling you in, and you feel as though you're suffocating under the thick blanket of the atmosphere, despite the crisp autumn air that fills your lungs and stings your exposed skin. Your eyes water as a bitter wind whips and bites at your face, and you rub your hands together furiously in a desperate attempt to retain a bit of warmth. It's October the 30th, and you find yourself walking, though you can't honestly pin the reason for it; you felt a compelling need to go out on this particular night and wander the streets alone, despite the Legend.

As you walk, you hear a noise behind you, the rustling of leaves, and you whip around. Perhaps it is the dark that has you feeling so easily frightened, or the chilling cold; whatever it is, you turn, your subconscious expecting the worst, preparing yourself for a slow and arduous death.

However, you can see no monster in the street, ready to flay you like an animal; there is no horror of the dark waiting to rend you limb from limb. There is merely a crow, and it is looking straight at you, as if staring into your very soul. You find it chilling, perhaps more frightening than the creatures conjured by your own twisted imagination, but you cannot bring yourself to look away.

The crow opens its beak, and you expect to hear it caw, a sound so like nails on a chalkboard. However, this night seems to defy all of your expectations; what comes out of this crow's mouth is not some vile shriek, but words:

"Know you not the ancient lore
That wills your kind behind closed doors
On this, the night that evil surely lurks?
Your foolish curiosity
Will surely be the end of thee
As you fall victim to darkness' works.
With this curse, I bid you, die
At just the same moment as I
And feel the overwhelming agony.
This time tomorrow, in this street,
The victim of an evil feat;
Your story ends, a woeful tragedy."

You stare at the crow for a moment, and the Legend comes to mind; it is the legend of the singing crow, that which speaks in verse on this night, cursing to death the first being it comes to pass. You are frightened beyond comprehension for a moment, but you will yourself to relax. You must be tired, very tired; surely you imagined it, due to your previous fright. You simply need to go home and lie down.

You turn from the crow, and it caws, flying away, but you can swear that with each flap of its wings, it is repeating a single word: "Soon... soon..."

It takes a while, as you have walked far, but you finally get home and lie on your bed. You toss and turn all night, dreaming of the crow, and of its hideous words. There is a sharp pain in your chest, but you cannot move, cannot cry out, and you fall into a deep, yet restless sleep.

Morning never comes. You feel as though you can hear voices, but they are muffled. "Cardiac arrest... Time of death... Appeared to be in good health..." What does it mean? Why can't you move? Why can't you open your eyes?

Finally, you wake up. It is two minutes to midnight on October the 31st. You stand, but your body lies there, covered in a white sheet. This is not your home, and as you look, you realise, with no small amount of horror, that your chest is not rising and falling. You must be dreaming. You must be.

You feel compelled to walk again; this time, you cannot resist the urge. Your legs move, whether you wish them to or not, and you find yourself walking towards that same street in which you met the crow the night before. As it was with last night, there is nothing, nothing but leaves and darkness and that biting wind.

Suddenly, you see something, out of your peripheral vision. You look, and you understand. A void fills your chest, and your throat feels constricted. There, lying before you, is the crow, its beady eyes staring into nothing, staring into your soul, and a bullet piercing its black, little heart.