I was the designated driver, my turn always seems to come on a day when there is a celebration or a weekend, never on a Tuesday. 23.33 flicked over on the back lit, standard green display when the front end of the car started to slide out and as the adrenalin pumped the wheels caught the road surface just as quickly as they lost it. It was a dry night and the moon was surrounded by every star visible in the northern hemisphere twinkling like a sheet of cheap Christmas lights. Gaining control, the wheels straightened and I let out a deep breath and saw a quick red and white flash out of the corner of my eye. I had never before noticed it at night but tonight it was a colourful streak I just had to look at. And for that split second that I turned my head was when the toads could be seen in the slightly hidden dip. That part of a dip your headlights don’t reach until you car clears the preceding hump.
The car slid once more, my attention drawn back to where it should have been, the road was moving and so was the car, but the car had spun and was moving sideways. Then the migrating toads stopped and the car tyres gained purchase on the tarmac and flipped it onto it’s side, the screams of my friends as we were thrown about was deafening.
It wasn’t until the second impact came, the windows on the road side of the car shattered into small square safety cubes. Sparks emitted from the scraping roof bars until they got caught in one of last winter’s pot holes and the car started to roll over and over. Every single bit of dust, piece of paper, chewing gum wrapper and all other things that are strewn around a car started to tumble around with the small cubes of glass and as the other side of the car smashed on the road so did the windows, imploding more cubes to hit and hurt everything they touched as the car was spinning and tumbling down the road.
After revisiting the site many days after it all happened I found out that the car had finally come to a stop about one hundred yards down the road in the trees just passed the start of the forest. I am not sure how long I was knocked out for but I woke upside down being held safely in place by the seat belt and the now deflated airbag pouches all around me. I wasn’t actually feeling any pain until I release the seat belt and gravity took a hold of me and I fell onto the ceiling of the car. Gathering myself up I reached to the dashboard to my phone where the satnav app was indicating I was off track and need to turn around. I found the button to turn on the flash light and the upturned inside of my car was shrouded in the green glow light it was throwing out. When my disoriented vision started to pass I realised I was facing straight out of the windscreen of the car and I turned to see the back seat and check on my friends but they weren’t there.
I pulled my way out falling in a pile on to the pine needle covered soil and used the tree that had broken the momentum of the tumbling car to pull myself to my feet. Searching around the car I was unable to see where they were. I looked around from a stationary position and saw the wreckage all down the road; the full moon highlighted the white lines and a small area of the tarmac in brilliant chromium white. I walked, following the wreckage back down the road; a solitary squawk from a crow startled me and looking around I could see in perched on a tatty fence post back at the edge of the forest. As if it was stood to attention just where the deciduous trees ended and an open but newly planted field of trees started.
I walked up to and passed the crow, it never moved, I looked on the verge and down the walls close to the road when my attention was caught by a fiery glow in the trees a couple of hundred yards up into the forest. I climbed the fence near where the crow was standing expecting it to see me as a threat to it but it still never moved. Instead it let out a long screeching squawk followed by a small amount of little ones to follow. I didn’t really think much of that until there was what seemed like a distant reply, more squawks coming from the direction of the orange glow ahead of me. I stopped when I heard this and stayed there rooted with pain and the first pangs of fear until I was brought back to life by the flapping of the wings from the near distance behind me. What I now thought was a sentry crow took off a flew passed me very quickly and it was so close that it’s wings actually made contact with my head. This contact made me even more scared than I was and I dropped to the ground and shielded myself from anything else that may want to try and do the same.
From my crouched position I caught a glance of where the fiery glow was coming from and I could see that the glow was from a large fire in a clearing in the trees and there was movement. I stood up and ran as quietly as I could with high expectations to find my two intoxicated friends playing silly games around camp fire in the post party and post car crash state.
I reached the edge of the clearing and I could feel the heat from the fire hit my face but I wasn’t greeted by two idiots dancing naked around a fire in the middle of a cold autumn night but in the clearing there were more crows. I scanned the area before moving away and I could see on the far side of the fire was two solid trunks of wood standing bolt upright to about eight feet high. I moved further around and realise that there was rope draped over the top of each trunk and it was pulled taught. Tripping over my own feet I fell to the ground, as I picked myself up I saw that the taught ropes had one of my oldest friends tied and suspended between the two up rights. Quietly moving my position to get a better view I could see there were ropes ties to both ankles and the rope had been wrapped once around the base and tied off to a steak in the ground a few feet away. Although I am no engineer I would say these two ropes had been used to increase the tension so he was unable to move too much. Still moving I was now able to see that he was completely naked and sweat was pouring from everywhere. The start of blisters were beginning to form on his meaty bits, his thighs, pectorals, belly and biceps and it was then the realisation that he wasn’t sweating but it was his fat oozing from his body; He was being cooked.
My fall and my moving around to get a better view didn’t go un noticed and just a few feet away from me was yet another crow, it looked at me and then threw its head back and let out an ear piercing squawk and on hearing this from about 4 feet away another looked up and did exactly the same thing, threw its head back and squawk, this was then followed by every other crow around and after just a few seconds they all stopped and then simultaneously they all took off flying around in a big circle climbing higher and higher until they were well over the tree line staying in their formation.
Picking myself up I ran into the clearing and right up to the far side of the fire. Jasper was hanging naked tied by both hands and feet. When I saw this from a distance I was almost correct, closer scrutiny showed that he wasn't so much tied as someone had put pipes through his lower arms and upper legs with harsh rope fed through the pipes. The pipes through his arms must have been implanted through the gap between the radius and ulna using this to take the entire weight without being torn out from the soft fleshy skin and muscle surrounding the bones in the lower arm. His legs had two large metal rings pushed through the skin and looped around the bone on the inner thigh, but I was correct with the tensioner setup, tied tightly to the bottom of one post, the rope was fed through the two rings and around the bottom of the other post, the end then off to another ring and then the steak it was tied to. Primitive but affective setup, it worked for millennia so why not now?
Jaspers skin was bubbling and being burnt badly by the furious heat coming from the fire, for a very short time I stood so I could see his face and his hanging head and it wasn't until now I became scared for my own life. I stepped back when the heat got too much for me and in the outskirts of my vision, far above my head I could see the circling crows but I could only hear the violent crackling of the fire. I looked directly up to the crows and thought how Jasper was strung up like this, the crows wouldn’t be able to do it and how long was I unconscious in the car. As I looked around the clearing and my glance darted passed Jaspers strung body his eyes were open and his head upright this caught me complete unawares and the shock and fear threw me back and I landed heavily on a fallen stump, "Go now" Jasper said, "Go now before he comes."
I fell back further until I was on my back and trying to hide as much of myself behind the log, "GO NOW, OR YOU WILL BE LIKE THIS" Jasper shouted with more urgency than someone who wasn't in the position he was, saliva and blood spat from his mouth as he shouted and his voice stopped but he still seemed to be shouting, the blisters exploded one after another spraying a torrent puss out towards the fire. He sharply turned his head upwards and the circling birds, I watched the blackness of the circling birds change to the normal bluer black a clear night sky is, as they started to fly down to the clearing and slammed hard into Jasper, the poles and a large area around him.
Some of the birds missed their target completely, hitting the ground all around, crow sized flaming balls shot out of the fire, sending embers and fire into the air, the fireballs scattering all around the forest floor and even bouncing off the log I was hidden behind. The piles of burning birds didn’t just stay burning they got up off the floor and started flying and made their way back to Jasper like a phoenix.
The crows flew around Jasper pecking small bits of flesh off him, he hadn’t moved for a short time now and I took it he was now dead. One by one they started to land on him and peck the beaks wherever they could and tore large areas of flesh from his body. It was almost as if they had taken a number in line at the deli counter. One moved away and another took it’s place, except more and more were starting to land on my friends body until the murderous crows looks as though they could have been a body bag.
Before this night I was like the majority of people who had never thought about what tearing flesh sounds like and the squidgy sound it takes on when expertly removed in the beak of a crow, but when there is about one hundred crows tearing flesh and muscle the sound immediately registers as one thing that will never be forgotten for the rest of your life and beyond.
As the clearing was filled with more and more crows circling in a tempest frenzy trying to feast on my friends flesh, the roaring flames from the fire started to burn them and very quickly the fire spread through contact and the tempest changed into what I initially could only be Dante’s inferno and all nine circles of hell spread out before me.
Watching this spectacle and avoiding the falling balls of flaming dead birds I hadn’t really noticed the single, rather large, crow fly down into the very centre and land directly in the fire. The initial impact threw a definitive fire circle out in every direction, consuming all the remaining birds. It tore at everything it touched and consumed everything including the log I was hiding behind throwing it and me into the air and back a further ten feet. I hit a tree flat across my back and fell to its exposed roots just before the log hit, unable to muster up enough energy to flee the log landed across my right leg. The unnatural cracking sound my leg made accompanied by the searing pain made me physically sick and I blacked out.
I lay there on the ground as the darkness that took a hold of everything started to lighten, the stars in the night sky gradually appeared, seconds, minutes or hours later, who knows. The deathly silence in the air was then broken by my screams. As the pain centres of my brain realise there was pain and my who body reacted causing spasms to strike every muscle. The second and even louder scream was let free as the log rolled off my leg.
The embers or the fire took hold to whatever hadn't yet burned away and a small flame danced in the centre of the clearing. All around I saw trees and bushes on fire as well as the burning remnants of the flock of birds who had devoured Jasper. Through my tears, I could start to make out the shadows cast on the trees on the far side of the clearing and saw that Jasper was no longer strung up, the two posts that held him up were now only a couple of feet high and burning at the tops. The flames in the centre of the clearing playfully took hold over more un-burnt wood and as the flames grew, the flickering light it cast was going to be enough for me to painfully get away from there and back to the road. Not believing that anyone would actually stop for me in this condition at whatever time of night it was now, but this was my only choice.
I dragged myself back towards where I had entered the clearing some time earlier and as I entered the clearing, by the light of the still growing fire I could see a figure, a dark hooded figure sat next to the fire. Just sat there, sat there warming him or herself. I remembered thinking to myself it is at this point everyone in those cheap made for television movies thinks that salvation has arrived and they are there to help. I however thought that the vision of someone in a hooded cloak out in the middle of the woods sat next to a fire after what I had just witnessed was far too sinister so I tried my best to crawl away as quietly as I could but the pain I was feeling from my limp and dragging leg was so bad I thought that even the deaf would have been able to hear me.
I stopped sharply as I heard a relatively quiet, "Squawk". My breathing rate increased and I could feel the temperature drop. I looked slowly over to the fire whilst doing my best to quietly move backwards and the hooded thing was still sat there motionless, again a quiet squawk was in the air. I turned and pulling myself as hard as I possibly could my urges made me look back to the fire and the hooded figure had disappeared. The fear grew within me my urgently now and this spurred me back to getting out of there. Reaching the edge of the clearing I pulled myself up to standing with the aid of a stone wall and stood on my one good leg. The wall plus a good hop will mean I can get the one hundred or so yards back to the road quite quickly.
Squawk, louder and more definite this time, I couldn't make out where it was coming from. I glanced back to the fire and it was clear. Picking up the pace as much as I could I pulled myself along and hopped as best I could along the wall back to the road. In my haste I felt a pain that any one person should never be subjected to as I caught the top part of my injury on a dislodged stone in the wall. My dangling leg kicked my other leg and I fell to the floor and the pain shot right through my body, I reached down to the main area of the pain and I felt sharp bone and the dampness of blood oozing out of the open wound.
From above me I could hear the loud flapping, round and round until a quiet rushing of a large falling object and then an impact of two feet on stone, wood and mulching mud. A large hand grabbed me on one of my shoulders and picked me up roughly. I was man handled up to the head height and looking as the shadowy figure I saw what looked like a hood, the silent figure from the fire, back in the clearing. I was shaking up and down and then stopped but the hood wasn't a hood at all and the cloak wasn't a cloak either. From behind the figure opened two large black feathery wings that it gently flapped as if it was either getting ready to take off or fanning the flames of hell until from the field, the other side of the stone wall was a I heard the shouts of a group of people. I looked over and saw what could only be described as a small army or a large village. The thing that held me turned its head to look over to them and for the first time I saw the silhouette of a black beak and the bleak feature of a man crow, crow man, a damn big crow.
The thing dropped me to the floor and I fell on top of the dry stone wall. The garrison cracking of many guns echoed throughout the hills and across the moors. There was no large falling of a massive crow to the ground but instead the disassembling of a forest full of crows flying up into the free sky and the gun fire continued and the thud, thud, thud of the dead bodies of normal hell raising crows fell in the fields, trees and even on the road.
A head appeared over the wall and I looked up to see my other friend the other member of our exciting party night out and the other survivor of the horror that this Halloween has turned into. But it turns out that this wasn't the first time this has happened. I was transported back to the pub up the road on the corner and its original name was The Moors Watcher and it was built to keep an eye out over the moors for the Crow Master who comes out once a year to feast on whatever and whoever it can.