This story originated from a challenge within an online group I am part of. If you accepted the challenge you would receive an item in the mail. You then had 24 hours to transform that item into a story. The picture above is where my story begins. There were ultimately 24 of us who participated and the results became a book called Found Objects.
So without further ado ....
Two Crows
Rod Serling's voice, “A study in black and white, imagine an earth devoid of color, scorched earth, and bleached bones.”
My Grandmother’s house was going to be torn down. All of the relatives had taken most anything of value. I was the sole grand kid that hadn’t had a chance to get anything. I wasn’t really interested in “getting” something as much as I just wanted to see the old place one more time before the bulldozer came.
The house that my grandfather had built at the turn of the century was on a piece of property that had been in the family for almost two-hundred years. I let myself into the house and was hit with the smells from my youth as well as the stale smell of disuse. I went from room to room, all pretty bare now. I pulled a scrap of peeling wall paper down and stuck it in my pocket as my souvenir of the place. As I was about to go I notice the wood stove in the corner and thought about it for a moment. I never remembered it being used. I went over to it and opened the door thinking in the back of my mind what a great place to hide something in plain sight. I was disappointed though, just a few cobwebs. Then I pulled out the clean out tray, the black metal box that catches the ashes and bit of charcoal and anything that won’t burn.
To my surprise there were two small skeletons amongst the pile of ash and charcoal and a couple of nails. My mind began to do mental gymnastics, how had they gotten in there. If they came down the chimney, then surely there would be feathers as well as bones. Had they been burned in an armload of wood? If so how had they escaped the fire and not burned up. I was fascinated and repulsed at the same time, but for some reason I couldn’t take my eyes off of them. I’d been staring so long, I thought I saw one of them twitch. I took a picture of it with my cell phone and then I found some old newspapers and carefully packed it up. I wanted it to make its way back to my Dad so I could ask him a couple of questions.
I showed the picture to Dad and he said he had no idea. Then I brought out the actual artifacts and I saw something in his eyes for the briefest instant and then it was gone. Somehow I knew there was something not quite right about this and I continued to badger him until he broke down.
The story he told me was as strange as they get.
“The land that your Grandmother’s house sat on once belonged to the Indians and it seems our family didn’t acquire it under the best terms. The Chief of the tribe didn’t want anyone building in that area because it was supposed to be sacred and our ancestor (I guess it must have been your Great-Great Grandfather) was offered some land further away. Well further away needed more clearing and wasn’t as close to the spring. So he ignored the chief and began to build but it was slow going. First the mule he was using to drag logs to the homestead went lame and was several weeks of doctoring before he was good to work again. After the mule was well enough to work some deer got into the corn field and your Great-Great Grandfather got his rifle to scatter them and maybe get some venison for the winter. He shot into the cornfield and the deer scattered but he saw one go down. When he went to retrieve it, there lay his mule. At that point the cabin came to a standstill, but he finished it off as best he could with saplings to make a lean-to.”
“About this time the Chief sent one of the shaman to speak to the crazy white man and to explain that all of the bad luck that had befallen him was because of where he was building. Great granddad shooed him off and for good measure threw a rock at his retreating form. Well the bad luck continued and the rock hit the shaman in the back of the head and he collapsed on the spot. Well Great-Great granddad didn’t want any trouble from the tribe so he rushed over to help the man only to find him dead. He dragged the body to the river and threw it in knowing it would be carried downstream.
“A couple of days later as he was working on the lean-to he noticed another Indian coming up the path. To his shock and horror, it was the shaman he’d killed a couple of days earlier. He was so distraught he picked up his rifle and shot at him thinking it was a ghost. He struck the man in the chest and he collapsed dead on the path. Now my Great-Great Grandfather disposed of this body the same way as the last.”
“He left the homestead as it was and made his way back to town where he worked for a couple of years as the blacksmith’s apprentice. He’d saved up enough money to get a mule and some more supplies and he made his way back to the homestead, but this time he moved further down where the chief had suggested. He built his cabin and later your Grand-dad built this house on the same property, the cabin was used for storage for a while and then they pulled it down.”
“Every year on the anniversary of killing that second Indian, two crows would show up and spend the day pecking at the windows of the cabin. This went on until your Great-Great Grandfather died. We later found out that the tribe had two shamans and they were twins. It’s no wonder he thought he was seeing a ghost. Your Grandmother told me this story. Ever since then two crows would show up from time to time and start pecking on the windows. Every time they did somebody in the house would die within a couple of days. Your Grandmother always said they were a bad omen and she would kill them if she could. She tried poison bird seed, shooting them with bird shot, nothing phased them. She had become obsessed toward the end since she was the only one living in the house now. She’d told me once the only way to get rid of them was to burn them and that she would do it if it was the last thing she did. So the best I can figure is they showed up and somehow your Grand Mother caught them. Maybe she nailed them to a chunk of wood so they couldn’t get away. I guess she put them in the wood stove and burned them up and then she died in her sleep. Until you went there and looked in the wood stove, nobody but your Grand Mother knew they were there. I would bury them somewhere and try to forget that you ever saw them.”
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