The Book of the Crowman (33 page)

Skelton turned back to regard their captive.

The boy stood between two hefty Wardsmen, but with his top hat he still appeared to tower over them. He was secure enough, though, with his wrists restrained behind his back by an old pair of police handcuffs. Four more Wardsmen stood ready. Pike, vibrating with singular intent, held in his right hand a crude brown leather bag which had exuded heavy clinks and rattles as they’d walked to the hill from their carriage. Pike, his hands like slabs and his face like granite, dwarfed them all. In Skelton’s mind he was greater than any other man, a giant walking among mortals.

“Take him to the tree,” said Skelton.

A blowtorch gleam lit Pike’s eyes and Skelton faced the throng. There was no need to hold up his hands; the crowd was almost totally silent already. In the tones of a wheezing headmistress, he addressed everyone assembled.

“They said he was evil made flesh. They said he would bring Armageddon. But we, the Ward, who swore to protect this world, have hunted him down since the days of the first prophecies. And now our future is assured. Forget what you’ve heard. He is not a demon. He is not Satan. He is
not
almighty. He is just a man. A powerful man, true, but mortal like any other. Neither he nor anyone is powerful enough to stand against the Ward. Let his death unite us, for in his death we will all find salvation. People of the future, I give you the Crowman!”

Skelton stepped back and presented the scene unfolding behind him with a flourish. Pike stood apart from the tree while the six Wardsmen bound their prisoner to it. They used rope to stretch his hands up and back around the trunk, forcing his chest forwards. Ropes also held his torso, hips, knees and ankles keeping his legs apart. This made an X of his body without permitting his feet to touch the ground. Pike checked the ropes and nodded to the Wardsmen who retreated from the hill and joined the silent crowd.

Skelton approached the tree. He assessed the prisoner with satisfaction.

“Everything you’ve taken, you’ll give back today.”

He looked at Pike.

“Whenever you’re ready.”

Pike dropped his bag to the ground. It landed with a muffled clank and its slack brown lips parted to reveal dull glints; shafts of metal, shafts of wood. Skelton retreated a few yards and then, quickly realising he would be the useless third wheel, descended the hill to stand at the head of the crowd.

Pike forced Gordon’s fingers open with the edge of his left fist and held the point of a tarnished four inch nail to the centre of the boy’s palm. He looked into the boy’s eyes. A single strike from the lump hammer, with Pike’s strength behind it, sent the nail cleanly through the centre of Gordon’s hand and an inch into the tree. The second strike forced the nail head deep between his carpal bones, pulling the skin of his palm into a deep pucker.

A scream accompanied each metallic thump.

Pike stood back. Not satisfied, he drove a second nail into the hand just above the wrist, this time breaking through the bones within to pound the nail home. He spiked Gordon’s other hand in the same manner. For the elbows and knees he used six and eight inch nails respectively, six inch nails again for the boy’s feet and ankles. Pike cut the ropes which had prevented Gordon from struggling, leaving his body supported by twelve slim junctions of steel and dead oak.

With his victim thus transfixed, Pike was ready to begin his work.

At the sound of the first hammer strike, the entire crowd drew breath, Green Men and Wardsmen alike. If it was the sound of wind whispering over water, the Crowman’s scream was the coming of the storm.

Denise’s hands flew to her mouth to stifle her response. As the hammering progressed, her fingers stole down past her breast to cover her womb. She was certain Gordon’s child, not much more than a soul circling a few cells at the moment, would be able to hear the death of its father; a death that had afforded her a little more life.

This was wrong. So, terribly wrong.

Gordon was not the Crowman.

She knew that because she had spent a little time sharing the journey Gordon had taken
in search
of the Crowman. No. This was nothing more than the Ward using Gordon as a decoy and a symbol of their supremacy and power. If they could catch and kill the Crowman, they were almighty and indomitable. It was a trick to destroy all resistance. When she looked at the haggard, beaten faces all around her she could see the trick was working; better than any magic or miracle the Crowman himself had ever performed, whether real or imagined.

Truly now, the Ward held the future in their grey-gloved fist.

Beside her the stinking ragman danced on the spot, his body tugged and jerked by excitement or madness; it was impossible to say which. He seemed to find the unfolding horrors at the top of Cracks Hill delightful and amusing. She kicked out at him, striking the calf of one crooked, diseased looking leg. He stopped his manic jigging for a moment and turned his blind, pockmarked face toward her.

“There’s no call for violence,” he said, his voice like gravel under hobnailed boots.

“You can’t see what’s happening,” she said, weeping. “They’re torturing him. They’re going to kill him.”

The blind man shrugged.

“Unlikely.”

Without eyes in his head, it was hard for Denise to decipher his expression.

“You don’t understand. He’s only a boy.”

“He’s not a boy.” The ragman seemed to glance up the hill, which she knew was impossible. “He’s a man. And soon he’ll be so very much more.”

Disgusted with his insanity, she spat on the man’s rags.

“He’ll be nothing if he’s dead, you cretin.”

The madman ignored the spittle dribbling down the front of his pauper’s gowns. He turned back to her and his face seemed to look down towards her belly.

“He’ll be survived,” he whispered.

“What did you say?”

That was the moment when Pike, satisfied with his joinery, slit the bonds holding most of Gordon’s bodyweight. The ropes fell away and the boy’s cries took on a more anguished edge. Again the assembled masses reacted, this time in a low murmured wail.

Pike parted Gordon’s coat and tore open his shirt in a single movement. He took a hunting knife from his workbag and held it up for Gordon and his audience to see. He used it to slit Gordon’s belt and the waistband of his trousers and underwear. His coat gaping wide, and his body exposed both to eyes and implements, Gordon’s breathing came fast and deep. His lithe chest expanded and contracted with great heaves and his pale stomach ballooned and flattened in time. Those standing near enough could see the high-speed rhythm of his heartbeat pulsing many times during each snatched round of respiration. The muscles in his legs tightened and quivered. He strained against his rivets, unable either to free himself or ease the effect of gravity.

At the centre of Gordon’s chest hung a dark amulet and Pike snatched this from him, seeing it only as an obstruction to his work. He flung it high and far down the hill. Instinct driving her, Denise held up her hands and caught the falling object. It seemed to come right to her, to
home
. She pressed it close to her chest and then hid it in a pocket before pulling her grey shawl even tighter around her. It was cold enough that day, but the wind brought the temperature down still further. She didn’t know if it was cold or shock making her shiver but she was unable to stop herself from shaking. Nor did she want to watch what Pike did to Gordon but her eyes would not close.

They observed; and they recorded everything.

As Pike positioned himself to one side of his captive and raised his knife, giving the greatest number of people a view, a noise rose up from every direction. Denise prayed it was a rallying of Green Men, ready to attack the unprepared Ward and set Gordon free. Even Pike, deaf to his victim’s screaming, seemed able to hear this new sound. He paused. Looked around and then up.

It seemed like distant laughter at first. Laughter coming down from the sky. Faces in the crowd turned this way and that, much as Pike had done. They saw what he saw: dark clouds progressing from every point of the compass. It could have been a storm, some kind of tornado. The clouds converged from four directions in a spiralling pattern, gradually closing a circle of darkness overhead, shutting out the light like a tightening black whirlpool. At first the eye of the twister was almost as broad as the horizon but when the clouds approached, darkening and thickening as they streamed into one another, the eye contracted. The light began to be choked from the sky.

The laughter was not laughter at all but the solemn cries of every corvid in the land. The magpies; the jackdaws; the crows; the rooks; the ravens. Their mingled calls grew louder as they approached, becoming a single harmonised voice, a single tone; the sound that came before the world was made; the sound that echoed still throughout creation. Like a vast choir of black feathered monks, they sang this note into the ears of every assembled witness, sending the vibration into their very bones, causing every chest to hum, every head to throb with their beautiful terrifying chant.

The aperture of brightness above Cracks Hill was strangled to a tiny pupil through which a column of grey light illuminated the black oak, its black-coated hostage and his black-hearted tormentor. Pike looked up into the light, into the impossible vortex of birds that wheeled above him, his face more grim and determined than ever, his sunken eyes resolute.

The sky was black but for that one pinpoint of light. Denise looked at the people around her. The captive Green Men held expressions of hopeful astonishment. Was this their reprieve? Nature putting a stop to the madness of the Ward? The Wardsmen’s faces showed fear and doubt. Had they been fighting for the wrong side all this time? The wind created by the beating cyclone pushed straight down. The black feathers decorating many of the captives fluttered. Rags and uniforms flattened against their wearers.

The cawing ceased but the vibration remained, buzzing in the bones of every man, woman and child. Denise felt it deep in her belly. Above them now the only sound was the sweep and whine of wings. The neat hole at the centre of the birds became ragged edged. It cracked open as the birds broke formation. They began to descend, looking for perches wherever there was space. In seconds every tree for miles around was black with their gleaming bodies. Every rooftop in the surrounding villages was blanketed: rooks and magpies, wing to wing with jackdaws, crows and ravens. Those who could not find a perch landed on the ground and took up their places facing the black oak. Cracks Hill itself was smothered save for a ring around the tree.

The grey day they’d woken to was gone. Sunshine lit the landscape bringing colour to everything it touched. The sky was so blue and cloudless Denise wished she could fly up into it. It was a cold day but the air was still now and the touch of the sun on every head and every pair of shoulders was like a blessing from a kindly and forgiving creator.

The world was utterly silent and Cracks Hill had become its focal point.

Megan took her place at the front of the crowd.

No one appeared to see her. Perhaps they were too focussed on the tree at the top of the hill to notice. She pulled the fur-lined hood tightly over her head and held it closed below her chin. Though it was a clear bright day, nothing could warm away her dread.

The one called Pike, a man who reminded her of the things she’d seen in the cave below the windmill, stepped forward and raised his knife. Perhaps the assembled masses thought his opening actions were symbolic in some way but she knew better. The first two cuts were simple revenge.

Gordon, his muscles strained and quivering watched with wide eyes as Pike stepped forwards and placed the blade against the top of his right thigh, in the dip below his pelvic bone. With a single draw, Pike opened his flesh, cutting ligament from bone. Gordon’s twitching thigh muscle collapsed towards his knee and was still.

His screams began anew.

Pike moved his blade to the left side of Gordon’s face. Holding the boy’s hair to keep his head still, he dug its tip into the left orbit, scooped his knife in a rough circle and liberated Gordon’s eye. He threw the ruined, sagging organ down the hill to Skelton who crushed it under his boot.

To Megan, Gordon’s very screams were knives, cutting into her body, cutting away at the ties that bound them together, slicing through the weave and taking this precious boy away from her. Nauseated and weak, she fell to her knees.

Pike removed Gordon’s genitals next and threw them to the crows. The birds hopped back, flapping and startled. Then they closed rank to squabble over the tender off cuts. All around Megan, people began to weep and moan, Wardsmen and Green Men together, to hold out their hands to Gordon even though they could neither touch nor comfort him.

Pike used his blade to open Gordon’s belly from sternum to groin. He held the dripping red blade in his mouth as he forced his massive grey fingers into the wound to tear it wide open. He looked into Gordon’s face as he snagged a loop of intestine around one thick, callused finger and backed away down the hill. Gordon’s guts followed, tumbling out of him onto the dirt. Mist rose from them and from the great cut in his abdomen. The slippery mass of coils disentangled and lengthened as Pike receded from the tree until, several yards away, they reached their limit, pulling Gordon’s grey-blue bowels through the lower lips of the knife wound and momentarily exposing his stomach at the top. When Pike dropped his piece of intestine, Gordon’s tugged-upon stomach disappeared again.

Pike walked back up the hill, with difficulty because of his damaged leg. At the top he wiped his knife on a cloth and returned it to his battered leather workbag. He regarded the boy for a few moments before picking up his tools up and limping stiffly away. Crows and magpies scattered as he stomped between them but they soon closed rank behind him and, when he reached a safe distance, they leapt onto Gordon’s entrails and began to feast.

Megan looked back into the crowd. Every face was pale, barring a few Wardsmen who seemed to find the cruelty amusing or even boring; nothing they hadn’t either seen or performed themselves in the basements of some dark Ward substation.

A girl had fainted near the front of the throng. Megan took a step towards her and saw the hand which still gripped the Crowspar. She knew this girl. At some point in the future, in a city somewhere much nearer Megan’s home, Denise would either drop or throw this crystal, leaving it for Megan to one day seek out by journeying through the weave. She found herself wishing that Denise, racked with guilt, had killed herself in the dry fountain where she’d retrieved the Crowspar.

Gordon’s voice made her look away.

“Help me,” he whispered. “Please. In the name of the Great Spirit, I beg you. Somebody help me.”

Some of the Green Men in the front ranks moved tentatively forwards but the armed Wardsmen stepped into their paths. Gordon wept and screamed at the sight of his unmade body, pecked at now by hundreds of hungry corvids. He begged for an end to his pain but he could not die.

“Why?” he cried out eventually.

Megan stepped away from the crowd. No one tried to stop her. It was clear that none of these people could see into the weave but the starving corvids scattered at her approach. She walked straight up the hill, careful to step over Gordon’s extruded offal. When she stood before him, his good eye was closed as he shook his head in denial of everything.

“Why is this happening to me?” he cried.

“You sacrificed yourself,” she said.

Gordon stopped shaking his head and stared at her with his single eye.

“You.” He almost smiled. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

“I’ve been with you all along.”

“Can you help me? Please? Help me to die quickly at least. Not like this.”

“I’m so sorry, Gordon. I can’t change any of this.”

Bloody tears of frustration and anguish coursed down his cheeks. Megan caught glimpses of his lungs pumping within his deflated torso. It was almost more than she could bear to see him like this but if he had to suffer it, she knew she must at least be a comfort to him for as long as she was able to stay. Forcing himself to concentrate, his entire body quivering with the effort of focusing on Megan, he said:

“Tell me one thing, then. I know you know the answer. Where is the Crowman? Where is he? He promised he’d be here. He gave me his
word
.”

“He is, Gordon.”

Gordon scanned the crowd with his blood misted eye.

“I… I can’t see him.”

“You don’t need to. You
are
him. You are the Crowman, Gordon. He is what you were born to become.”

Gordon twisted his head from side to side in, almost laughing at the stupidity of what she was saying.

“No, no, no. That can’t be. I’ve been searching for him…” He seemed to weaken then, to become confused. “I thought I’d found him… but I lost him again. He left me alone.”

“No, Gordon. He is with you. Your spirit and his are united now. He has become part of you and you a part of him. You made the ultimate sacrifice. You have given us the future.”

“I’m so tired,” he said. “I’ve come all this way and…”

“It’s alright, Gordon, I promise you. This will soon pass.”

Gordon stiffened against the nails holding him to the tree and screamed.

“I don’t want to die!”

Blood shook from his face, spattering her coat. She heard the whisper of wings and glanced up. Three crows landed in the highest branches of the black oak. They sat there above him, cawing in mirthful disdain.

His voice dropped to a hushed breath, the whisper of a small, frightened boy.

“Please… Please don’t let me die.”

She saw his breathing slacken and his heartbeat wane. His head dropped forward. She reached up and held his face in her hands.

“You mustn’t be afraid, Gordon,” she whispered. “You cannot die. And we will meet again someday. I swear it.”

She kissed his forehead, his blood-sticky lips.

Something pulled at her, drew her back. She thought she was slipping away down the hill at first. The draw became stronger and she knew than that
he
was bringing her back, back through the weave to her time. Gordon must have felt it.

“Don’t leave me,” he said, his face still falling towards his chest. “I’ve been so alone.”

“I’ll never leave you, Gordon Black. I love you.”

The pull was irresistible. It lifted her from the ground, up and away from the hill. To her left, the sun had dipped low towards the horizon, it was red now; stained by his blood.

In the tree, the crows called out their throaty rattle, proclaiming the death of Gordon Black and the coming of the Crowman. Megan rose higher, saw more. She was able to see behind the black oak where Gordon’s body now hung, mercifully limp and relaxed. Walking away from the tree was a tall man in a coat of black feathers and wearing a black top hat. Many more feathers poked from its brim and twirled in his long black hair.

He turned back to her, removed his hat and bowed with a flourish.