As the Crow Dies by Kenneth Butcher

Author:Kenneth Butcher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Linden Publishing
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 22

Montford Avenue

Dinah was deep in dreamland. She felt herself flying, overlooking where she lived on Montford Avenue in a house built in 1921 and most recently renovated in the neighborhood’s 1990s renaissance. She lived there with two other women. Montford was a mixture of large estate houses, modest cottages, and a few stately apartment buildings, all put together by the same artisans who had created the Biltmore Estate. The predominant aesthetic was Arts and Crafts.

The house Dinah lived in was no exception to this. She had the attic floor, where, as she swooped down in her dream, she caught a glimpse through the dormer window, observing a pleasant room under the slanting planes of the roof.

The room had, to be generous, a lived-in look. The shades on the other windows were drawn most of the way, creating a subdued light. On the small stand beside the bed, Dinah’s iPhone was inserted into a speaker/charger. On the floor beside the bed were the crumpled clothes she had peeled off and dropped the night before—or, more accurately, when she had arrived earlier that morning. She had been exhausted and needed her sleep and needed more of it now. Flying was fun. She spread her arms and the air hit her face and she felt refreshed and not as exhausted as she’d been the day before.

That morning, Richard the crow was, in fact, standing on the roof and looking in through the dormer window. The crow saw the girl lying on the bed, covered by a light flannel sheet pulled up to her neck. Her bare arms were exposed, one beside her body, one running under the pillow, where the wild abundance of hair spread out.

After checking the roof, Richard tapped on the window. He tapped three times, paused, and then tapped three more.

She raised her head with apparent difficulty after the second triad of taps. The crow cocked his head at the window, then tapped three more times. This time, she came awake with a start, looking around for the source of the tapping. She flipped around under the covers, opened the drawer of her bedside stand, and took out her gun, all in one smooth motion. She scanned the room with eyes and gun in a methodical sweep. The crow watched her with one cocked eye, then tapped twice more on the pane.

Dinah heard the taps and saw movement at the window and sprang out of bed, holding the sheet against her body. As her head cleared, she approached with caution. The crow tapped again, and she looked at him before putting the gun on the bookcase beneath the window, undoing the lock, and opening the sash. The crow did a little hopping dance for her, opening and closing his beak.

“Richard?” she said.

The crow bobbed his head in an exaggerated motion and gave out caws that certainly sounded like a positive response, even to Dinah’s untrained ear. Unsure what to do next, she took another step forward and slowly extended

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