Branches creaked and cracked under the weight of so many birds, ravens on every bending bough, painting the pines inky-black. A shiver scratched at the base of my spine. When the migraines came on it felt like an electric storm, fast-moving flashes of light and dark gathering at the corners of my eyes, my world shrinking to a trembling tunnel. If I collapsed in such a place, I was sure these birds would drink my eyes from the sockets.
“Don’t be scared,” I told Kaiser, my voice a little loud to be heard over the ravens. “They call it a ‘murder’ when so many flocks gather. No, that’s not right. A murder is for crows. Flocks of ravens are called an unkindness. An ‘unkindness of ravens’ is the right term.” I coughed into my gloves, because naming them correctly had not taken away any of their dark magic. “I know, I know. Ornithologists are major fans of understatement where ravens are concerned.”
His hackles up, Kaiser turned back toward the house.
“Not yet,” I called after him. The old dog had shat himself the day before, right at the door to the backyard, and I didn’t want any more messes. It was only seven in the morning and I had meant to walk the dog and then get back inside and start working on my programming for The Land. The first week of my convalescence had passed and I had little to show for it. I knew if I had any chance of getting this project done, I had to establish a regular schedule: creativity only came if you made time for it. Let Kaiser finish his morning business and then we could take shelter. But the dog wasn’t cooperating, spooked by the ravens.
I figured he needed some encouragement, so I unzipped my pants. The cold nipped at my nether regions, but I shut everything out, the ravens’ sonic disturbance, my failures so far to make progress on my program, the sorry work I had done as a self-appointed detective investigating the mystery of Maura, the weeks I’d spent with my privates hooked to a catheter. The golden arc I managed to carve into the snow felt triumphant, but Kaiser only sat on his haunches, unimpressed. I quickly zipped my pants.
I shared the dog’s unease. It wasn’t just the sight of so many ravens massed together bothering me. I sensed something else stirring in those birds, a carrion cry up in their heads, a darkness that had harried them here. Inside my brain I picked up a vibration, a humming of fear and hunger ahead of the long winter night, joining with a sibling shadow inside them. These birds were only birds, I reminded myself, just animals, and so who knows why they do what they do, but I couldn’t shake a supernatural sense of foreboding. What had Pastor Elijah called the devil? The Enemy. He was here. I sensed Him. He had come with the birds. In the trees I heard the steady splat of their shit dropping from the branches as they emptied themselves. I put up the hood of my parka in case any winged overhead.
Finally, Kaiser finished his business and the two of us were hurrying through the falling snow along a compacted path we had made between the back door and the grove. Flashes of color lit up the edges of my vision, dark approaching wings, the onset of another migraine. This one was going to be a doozy. I was jogging as quickly as my aching hip would allow when I slipped in the snow and went down hard, striking the back of my head. Before I could rise again, the migraine had me in its talons, pinching until it punctured through membrane. I cried out thinly, so intense was the agony, as I fell back in the snow. It was like the shadow I had sensed up in the birds’ heads had overtaken me, pecking and shredding light and sanity from my brain.
I believe I went unconscious. When the pain finally released me, I believe I even dreamed, encased in the warmth of my parka. I saw Maura again, that first time at Bay City Mutual. I had known before I even met her that I would like her. Transferring from a branch in Duluth where I’d been living with a cousin and attending Lake Superior College part-time, to Aurora Bay where I was starting school at NMSU, I had read the list of names ahead of time and tried to imagine my new life there. Maura Cosette Winters stood out among the list of tellers. I remember putting my finger on her name, whispering the pure musicality of it aloud, all iambic pentameter, the same cadence as a beating heart. Maura. I already knew before I even saw her that she would be beautiful.
And Maura was. She had wild, gingery brown hair she tried taming in a bun, but wisps were forever escaping in a spill of curls down her neck or wavy strands she had to brush from her large, mercurial eyes. Her high cheekbones and olive skin made her look foreign among the pasty white northerners that inhabited Aurora Bay, like she stepped from the pages of a story Scheherazade told to save herself from the Sultan’s executioner. She wasn’t like anyone I’d ever met before. Quiet and reserved at first, she shook my hand formally when we met, and something caught within me when I looked into her eyes. Her eyes shifted color in different lights, green one moment, then blue or brown. She slid her hand from my own and walked away. That day, she had hardly said two words to me.
Our small bank branch kept longer hours and a smaller staff than main locations. A few nights later we closed together for the first time. Near the end of a long day, I got stuck dealing with a rich old crank who was shutting down his checking account, angry it didn’t pay him enough interest. I had tried getting him to keep the account open at least until he spoke to our investment specialist the next day, but he proved intractable. This would mean trouble for me in the morning when our manager came in. Harry Larkin hated losing accounts, especially premium, gold-star accounts. That this guy earned any interest at all on a checking account made it exceptional, but it wasn’t good enough.
While I went through the procedures, the old man further treated me to a long harangue about how he shouldn’t have to pay taxes for education because he already put his own children through school. By the time I had his account closed, a cashier’s check for his substantial balance printed, I had heard an earful about the troubles with the world these days. I should have just let him walk away, but everything about this squat little man bothered me, even the clothes he wore: a turtleneck with high-water golf pants and Italian loafers with no socks on. He had the hairy feet of a hobbit. I handed him the check, and the words “Good luck on your quest” just slipped out because I doubted he would find a better deal at any other bank.
With him halfway out the door, I thought I could get away with a little sarcasm, but his gray wattles flushed a dark purple above his turtleneck. His heavy-lidded eyes narrowed. “What’d you say?”
I shrugged. “I only meant to wish you well. Have a good night, sir.”
One fat vein pulsed in his balding pate. Even if he was no longer a customer, he wasn’t going to let this go. “You were mocking me.”
I shrugged again, which further infuriated him.
“I’m going to let your manager know about what you said,” he said, jabbing a finger at my tie. “I will be filing an official complaint.”
“Sir,” Maura said, stepping in. “I’m the Ops. Supervisor. I can help you.” She locked her till and came around the counter, opening the half door that separated us from the rest of the lobby, empty of any actual management at this time of night. Maura guided him over to the desk and pulled out a chair for him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, because there were other customers in line to deal with, just the low murmur of her consoling voice as she scratched something down on a blank form. They talked for a long time—long enough that I was sure I was in trouble—before finally he left, Maura escorting him out the door, the guy glaring in my direction, muttering something about “this insolent generation.”