They were chanting quietly, but their voices were almost drowned out by the cries and moans of the gomers in the cart they pulled. They were packed in tightly, twenty or more – the sacrifices made in the fog I’d snuck past that morning
The memory of the fear I had felt returned, so keeping an eye on them I idled Bone Shaker along, moving it slightly faster than they were walking, ready at an instant’s notice to open up the v-twin and getting the hell out of there if they moved toward me. I was behind the sparse shelter of trees and bushes lining the highway and at least a quarter mile away, but seeing the grim purpose in how they progressed into the meadow set my teeth on edge. I’d seen religious cults before and never liked them; I feared their blind single-mindedness, the inherent danger behind their cruel and heartless belief that they were right and every one of them wanted to burn the world to the ground and kill all the non-believers. Every religion is a death cult.
As I gradually pulled ahead of the cult at a slow idle, I became aware that it was growing dimmer beneath the canopy of trees that over-arched the highway. At first I thought that the foliage was getting thicker and blocking out the dim crimson light that glowered through the clouds, but when I looked up, the sickly green leaves I had gotten used to on the spindly trees had turned black.
The black leaves were long and spade shaped, coming to a point. At first they were sparse, but grew thicker as I moved under them and then I saw that they weren’t leaves at all.
The tree branches above were covered in crows.
Hundreds. Thousands. Every branch of every tree festooned with shiny black crows perched almost shoulder to shoulder. Though most were watching the procession on the other side of the meadow, the ones above me on branches that reached over the highway were watching me, their black marble eyes tracking me as I passed beneath them. Their silence was unnerving – not a single caw or croak disturbed the still air.
I looked back across at the procession, then surveyed the meadow between us and saw that more than random rocks nested there in the stunted grass. The expanse was littered with hundreds of human skeletons tied to the rocks, their clothing shredded as their flesh had been shredded. Their yellowed bones a testament that real death was possible in Betwixt by being gomered by a cult then left as an offering for the silent hungry crows.
I kept moving, limiting my pace to maintain the balance of tension between me and the crows, not daring any sudden movement or noise that might break the homeostasis of the spell that existed there under the trees. The crows watched and waited for their feast.
Part of poem I’d read once from Galloway, Scotland came to mind, unbidden. In it two crows talking about their plans to eat a dead English knight;
You'll sit on his white neck-bone,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue eyes
With a lock of his golden hair
We'll thick our nest when it grows bare
Crows were carrion eaters, and in a land of the dead I supposed that’s why they were the only birds I’d seen.
After a time the numbers of crows grew less, the living black leaves growing sparser until I could see the dull green once more.
As I left the crows and the procession behind, I gave Bone Shaker a taste of throttle and as I built speed I passed a second red boulder, this one bearing just the white symbol that had been on the crow at the entrance. And when I passed it, I looked back and saw the far side was the same as the first; a single black crow, the same symbol on its forehead. They were marker stones, a warning to all travellers that this was sacred ground where non-believers were sacrificed to become crow bait.
I opened up Bone Shaker’s throttle, giving it her head, the roar of its exhaust drowning out the terrible silence behind me.
"BETWIXT (where the dead things go)"
Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC
