The faster I tried to run, the more the trees fought to slow me down. Bare, spindly branches whipped at me, tearing at my hands and face like tiny claws. The steep forest floor seemed to be growing around me, wrapping itself around my wrists and ankles, gripping me, holding me back. I didn’t even try to delude myself. There was no way I was outrunning the birds.
A nano-second before I heard the first caw, the sparks electrified my skin. The sudden shock made my legs kick out and I leapt like a startled frog, covering over two metres in a single bound. Right behind me, the first of the following crows crashed, beak-first, against the hillside.
Another jolt buzzed through me, and this time I was hurled to my right. A second bird failed to pull up in time. It gave a startled squawk as it slammed into the scrub beside me.
Slowing only to boot the beast as hard as I could, I kept moving. The ground was rising sharply, becoming almost a wall of dirt, held together by the roots of a huge tree that towered above me.
Kicking my feet in against the muck, I caught a trailing root and climbed. One metre. Two. I was over halfway up the curved wall when the next bird came at me. Again, the electrical buzz zapped through me, but this time there was nowhere to go. I could only keep climbing as the crow swooped at me, its curved claws outstretched.
I ducked my head, protecting my face. Pain exploded at the top of my spine as the crow’s talons dug into my neck. Clinging on to the root with one hand, I threw the other back over my head, fist clenched. The punch missed the bird and threw my balance off. Helplessly, I spun so I was facing away from the embankment.
For a moment I thought the forest was alive. Birds moved on almost every tree, hopping over one another, pushing others aside as they jostled for position. An audience, fighting among themselves for the best view.
I spun further, still holding on with one hand. I cried out as the crow dug its claws in deeper, and almost didn’t hear the irritated croak the bird gave. I quickly realised why the bird had made the sound. My half-turn had bumped the thing against the wall of soil.
I gritted my teeth and twisted at the waist, swinging myself back around towards the wall until I could press my feet flat against the steep curve. The bird gripped tighter and the wave of pain almost made the muscles in my arm give up. But I clung on, knowing I’d probably only get one chance to rid myself of this nasty pain in the neck.
Roaring, I kicked with my feet and swung out with my free arm, hurling myself around in a half-circle so my back was rushing towards the wall. At the same time, I brought my head sharply up and back.
Realising what was about to happen, the crow released its grip. By then it was too late. It dropped down below my shoulders just as my back was driven against the tightly packed dirt. The bird gave a strangled cry, then dropped past my legs and rolled clumsily down the hill.
I had no idea if it was dead, but nor did I have any intention of stopping to find out. Gripping the tree root with both hands, I clambered up the rest of the embankment, the thrashing of wings already filling the forest behind me.
With my muscles burning, I heaved myself up over the top of the wall. The ground here was flatter, sloping only very slightly upwards. I scrambled forward on my hands and knees, my tired legs not able to give me the explosive start I hoped for. My right hand slipped on something wet and I almost landed face-first in a quivering mound of reddish-brown flesh and greying fur.
It was the dog – well, part of it, at least – that first dog I’d encountered here in the forest only yesterday. The dog I’d seen torn to shreds. The dog I had at the time assumed must be…
Toto. The word winked up at me from the dull grey metal of the animal’s nametag, which poked out from a fold in the blood-soaked fur.
Toto.
Toto. Toto. Toto.
The word repeated in my head, over and over, like the steady clattering of an express train.
Toto. Toto. Toto.
Toto. Toto. Toto.
How could this be Toto? If this was Marion’s dog, then what about the one at the house? The one that had appeared from nowhere at just the right moment and saved me from—
The crows. In that brief moment of confusion, I had forgotten the crows.
They suddenly filled the space around me; clawing, screeching, snapping, croaking, flapping, biting at me.
Terror gave me the strength to push against them, hands over my head, until I was on my feet. Blindly I staggered onwards, tears streaking my face, a hundred different agonies stabbing through my skin.
Panic smothered my power and kept me from using it. All I could do was keep my head low and try to run, but even that proved too difficult. With the birds covering every part of me, I fell forward on to the forest floor.
I couldn’t see through the mass of beaks and wings and feathery bodies, couldn’t hear a thing above their crazed screeching. I was lost in a blizzard of black, inching along on my hands and knees, waiting for one final, inevitable strike.
But then, without warning, the crows moved away. They pulled back, leaping off me and curving upwards to be swallowed by the darkening sky. I crawled forward, every centimetre of my skin awash with my blood, until a pair of dirty black boots blocked my path.
I stopped crawling and for a moment just lay there, looking at those boots. This was it then. It was over. He had found me.
I rolled on to my side and managed to turn my head enough to look up. The face that looked back was not the one I had expected to see.
‘Come on, get up, we need to move,’ Ameena urged, bending down and catching me by the hand. She pulled hard, but her grip slipped on my blood-soaked skin, and my arm dropped back down on top of me.
The world blurred and turned shades of grey, like an outof-focus old movie. A tingling, like pins and needles, prickled at the back of my head. It wasn’t my abilities this time. It was sleep. Or unconsciousness. Or something more.
I could feel Ameena’s hand on my face. It brushed against my cheek, leaving behind a tickly imprint of her palm. The numbness in my skull eased, and a vague focus returned to the world just in time for Ameena to slap me again.
My cheek was still burning as she grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me into a sitting position. I could make out her face close to mine, her eyes wide. Panicked. Bloodshot.
‘Wake up, dammit,’ she shouted, raising her open hand. ‘They’ll be coming back. Wake up!’
‘O-OK,’ I muttered, ‘just please… stop hitting me.’ I leaned a hand on her shoulder. ‘Help me up.’
‘No time,’ she replied, glancing up into the treetops, ‘I need you moving on your own steam if we’re getting out of here.’ She looked me up and down, and I could see the doubt in her eyes. ‘Can you heal yourself?’
I frowned. Even this tiny movement sent pain rippling across my face and down through my body. Far overhead, a crow cawed.
‘Let me rephrase that,’ Ameena said, the urgency obvious in her voice. ‘Heal yourself. Now.’
‘I… I don’t think…’
She leaned in closer still, close enough for me to smell the Crowmaster’s stink on her clothes. ‘Listen, kiddo,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll spell it out. We. Are. Going. To. Die. Both of us. Here and now.’ She peered up into the trees again, then back down at me. ‘And your mum next. He’s going to finish what he started. And then, when he’s done with her, he’s…’
Ameena continued to talk, but I was no longer listening. I was concentrating on my wounds, feeling the pain from every one of them, making a map of every injury. I had healed before, and I was sure I could do it again, if I could only figure out how.
I tried to focus on each individual pain at the same time, imagined the wounds knitting together, sealing shut. An itchiness crept across my skin, up my arms, around my neck, and down my back. Steadily, the itching grew in intensity, until my whole body felt like it was burning.
‘I can’t!’ I hissed, feeling that my skin would blister any second. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Come on,’ Ameena said, and her voice was little more than a growl at the back of her throat. ‘I need you healthy.’
The words, and the way she said them, made me hesitate. Her eyes seemed to bore into me, wide and bloodshot. That smell from her clothes flooded my nostrils.
The smell of the Crowmaster.
‘What do you mean, you need me healthy?’ I asked her. ‘Need me for what?’
Her pause was so short it was barely noticeable, but it was there. ‘So we can, you know, run for our lives?’
I pushed backwards on my hands, studying her face. ‘The birds flew away,’ I said, partly to her and partly to myself. ‘When you arrived, they all flew away. Why would they do that?’
‘How should I know?’ she shrugged. ‘Now come on, if you’re not going to fix yourself we need to move.’
She held a hand out to me, but I didn’t take it. My eyes searched her face. She looked like Ameena. She spoke like Ameena. But Marion had looked and sounded like Marion right up until the point the scarecrow had burst out of her skin.
‘Get away from me,’ I said, my voice shaking.
Ameena raised her eyebrows. ‘Say what?’
‘You’re him,’ I spat. ‘Aren’t you?’
The thing that looked like Ameena shuffled forward on its knees. ‘What are you talking about?’ it demanded. ‘We don’t have time for this.’
I let it get closer. Didn’t stop it closing in. Didn’t resist when its hand caught me by the arms. The monster opened Ameena’s mouth, spoke with Ameena’s voice, but I had no interest in hearing anything it said. With a sharp jerk of my leg, I drove my knee hard against its jaw.
The thing cursed and swore like Ameena would, but I was beyond being fooled. I knew the truth – the horrible, sickening, heart-breaking truth.
I couldn’t watch it happening, though. I couldn’t sit there and watch the Crowmaster tear his way free from inside the skin of my friend. I wouldn’t watch it.
With a final kick against what had once been Ameena’s shoulder, I sent the thing sprawling backwards over the embankment and rolling down the hill.
And then, finding strength from who-knows-where, I got to my feet and ran further into the forest, Ameena’s voice crying, ‘Kyle, come back!’ as I made my way up the hill.