Time is an unstoppable train on which we are all forced to ride, helplessly strapped in as it thunders down life’s tracks towards its one and only station in a dark place known as death.
“Get out of the way you stupid bird!” Frank Chambers yelled, watching a large crow drift down from the dense evergreens and settle directly in front of him on western Maine’s highway 9. There was no time to stop and Frank would be damned if he was going to swerve to miss a crow with a death wish. He grimaced at the feel of the crow’s body rolling beneath the chasse of his 2005 Mustang, a car his wife told him was nothing more than a product of a mid-life crisis at which he replied as long as I’m not screwing around on you who gives a shit? He glanced in the rearview mirror for the inevitable explosion of black feathers, but what he saw made him jam in the clutch and slam on the brakes.
The tires screamed, painting black stripes on the asphalt and sending thick plumes of blue smoke into the air. Frank stared unbelieving at the crumpled form of a person wearing what appeared to be a black cloak, lying in the middle of the road. “Holy shit,” he whispered. No way did he mistake a person for a crow flying down from a tree, and even if he did, a person would have gone over the hood and into his windshield, and how could a body even fit under the car? Way or no way, the figure lying in the road appeared to be human. He pushed in the button controlling his hazard lights and yanked up on his emergency brake. Heart pounding, he pulled in the handle of his door and stepped out.
The fragrant smell of pine and the acrid smell of burning rubber filled Frank’s nostrils. He observed the blue smoke drifting lazily away in an eerie formation resembling the face of a man with his mouth yawning into a great silent scream. He looked back at the figure lying on the road. It remained motionless. Any wildlife in the surrounding woods fell silent or took flight, leaving the throaty rumble of the car’s exhaust the only sound to be heard. He looked up and down the road, wishing on one hand for a car to appear bringing help with it, and in a darker part of his mind, wishing no one to come so he might have time to drag the body into the woods.
He took a tentative step towards the figure and felt a bead of sweat trickle down his back, tickling his spine like the tip of a long bony finger. He knew he should have been running over to help, or at least calling 911 on his cell, but something made him hold back. Something made him uneasy. He took another step and stopped when he thought he saw movement among the black folds covering the shape. His heart thudded, and he now caught the smell of something else mixing with the pine and rubber, something sour, something dead. He forced himself to take another step then felt a scream build in his throat as the figure pushed itself to its feet in a sort of blurred slow motion.
Its cloak hung around its tall frame while a long, loose hood hid its features. Frank wanted to turn and run, but his legs wouldn’t respond to the messages his brain frantically sent their way, as if his fear chilled blood had somehow clogged the communicative passageways. The figure turned its hood in his direction, and though its face remained concealed in shadow, Frank could make out the rough features of a man grinning at him. The man turned and moved towards the woods, his black robe billowing out behind him like trailing smoke. The length of the robe hid his feet, giving him the appearance of floating rather than walking. He reached the edge of the road and moved effortlessly up the embankment before disappearing into the forest of trunks.
Frank’s paralysis finally broke, and he ran on wobbling legs to his car. In the last sixty seconds, his mind had skipped from ‘Please don’t let him be dead’, to ‘How can I hide the body before someone finds out’, to ‘I think I’m actually losing my mind’. Things were getting weird... way too weird, and it would be one thing if this were the first time something strange had happened, but it wasn’t, oh no, not by a long shot.
From what he could remember it started about a week ago when he thought he saw a spider the size of small dog skitter under his bed. He had nearly shit a brick at the sight of it, but when he got down on his knees (a good ten feet away from the bed) to make sure he wasn’t just seeing things, the only thing lurking there was a black sock. Spider or sock - he had spent the night in a hotel and had his house fumigated the next morning. A couple of days later while on his way to work, he just missed hitting a deer. Deer jumping across highway 9 wasn’t weird, but Frank could have sworn this one had two heads. By the time he looked back, the deer was gone. Then two days ago, at the intersection of Belmont and High, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his uncle sitting in the back seat... his dead sexually abusive uncle. Well, that little scare nearly caused the second brick to be shit in one week, but when he turned around, he only saw his own reflection in the back window. Today, however, there was no sock, no ‘did that deer have one head or two’, and no reflection to cause the mind to question itself. He did see the man lying in the road and did see him get up and disappear into the woods.
Frank reached his car, threw himself in the seat and slammed the door. This was insanity, had to be, but the thought he may have been going insane didn’t do anything to make him feel better. There had to be a logical explanation... had to be, and if anyone would know what it is, it would be Todd Justin. Todd was a good friend, but he was also some kind of religious nut, or at least he went to church every Sunday making him a religious nut in Frank’s mind, and religious nuts may know something about... about what? About the supernatural? Admitting his experiences were supernatural was about the same as admitting insanity, or at least one slippery step from it, but right now he didn’t care. He had to talk to someone about this, and sooner rather than later.
He jammed the gearshift into first and hit the gas, leaving the crow man behind as fast as possible. With a shaking hand, he reached into his front pocket and dug out his cell phone. Flipping it open, he punched in Todd’s number.
###
Frank pushed open the glass door to the Elite Café’ and was happy to see Todd had beat him there. As he stepped in, he felt something like dread press in on his chest when the silver bell above the door jingled. He supposed he had heard that bell a hundred times over the last five years, but until now, he hadn’t noticed it. The crazy thought this might be the last time he would ever hear that bell ran across his thoughts the way a spider may run across its web... or under a bed.
The Elite was laid out like a 1950’s diner with a long line of booths positioned along a wall of windows facing highway 9. A long bar with round swivel type stools running along its front, separated the dining area from the kitchen. The smell of fresh coffee and frying bacon hung deliciously in the air. Frank walked past the juke box, ignoring Elvis’s advice not to be cruel to a heart that’s true, and slid in the booth across from Todd.
Todd lifted a cup of coffee to his lips, took a sip and set it back down. “Ok Frank, so are you going to tell me why I had to take an unwanted dose of crap from Cindy for making her take the kids to daycare two days in a row?” Todd smiled while he said this, but Frank knew there was a bit of a jab in it too. A jab he damn well deserved for dragging his friend out at 7:00 AM to hear some bullshit about dead uncles and crow men.
Bonnie Pavelka walked up to the booth carrying a pot of black coffee and an empty cup, her red hair blazing brighter than usual from the sun shining through the window.
“Hi Frank, I’m guessing you want a cup?” She held the white porcelain cup toward Frank and looked at him expectantly.
“Yeah, sure,” Frank said, not looking at her. She set the cup down in front of Frank and proceeded to fill it with steaming black coffee. It smelled great and seemed to bring back a bit of reality to what he had been going through. “Thanks Bonnie.” This time Frank did look and gave her a weak smile. Bonnie smiled back and moved on to the next booth.
“Well...” Todd said.
Frank lifted his cup and took a welcome sip of Bonnie’s finest. He set it down on the table and looked at Todd. He thought about just forgetting the whole thing and not telling him anything. After all, if he kept his mouth closed, no one would ever know what he had been seeing, or at least claimed to be seeing, but before he could talk himself out of it, he just blurted it out.
“Todd, I’ve been seeing some weird shit.”
Todd raised one eyebrow. “Weird? What do you mean weird?”
Taking a deep breath, Frank told Todd about the spider, the two headed deer, his dead uncle, and finally about encounter with the crow man less than an hour ago. Not able to look Todd in the eye while he told him of his encounters, Frank had been examining his coffee cup like he had never seen one before. Now he was done, he looked up.
Todd was staring at him with no readable expression, and Frank found himself wishing Todd would laugh and tell him it was only his imagination, but would that make things better? Wouldn’t that just mean he really was losing it? But if Todd didn’t think he was crazy, then what would that mean? Would that mean this ‘weird shit’ really was happening? With one sentence, Todd mercifully ended the debate.
“You know, I’ve heard of something like this before.”
“Are you serious?” Frank asked. Now the decision was made, Frank felt relief and laughed to himself. Losing it must somehow be worse than seeing dead uncles or crow men.
“Yeah, I’m serious. Only the stuff you’re seeing is different from what I’ve heard about.” Todd took another sip of coffee and looked at Frank over the rim of the cup.
“Different?” Frank asked. “What do you mean different? And where have you heard about this before?”
Todd set his cup on the table and adjusted his wire rimmed glasses. “What you’ve described is... well... darker or possibly evil.”
“Evil? Alright Todd, just tell me what the hell is going on, and don’t give me one of your sermons about good and evil.” On more than one occasion, Todd had tried to talk Frank into his way of thinking about right and wrong, God and Satan, and the overall wellbeing of his soul. Frank knew it was all just bullshit, but Todd’s good qualities allowed Frank to overlook the badgering.
Todd stirred his coffee with the cheap Elite Café spoon, making sharp clinking noises in his cup while Elvis moved from not being cruel to letting everyone know they ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog. “Sometimes people need to hear sermons, and I’m afraid this might be a good time for you to listen. And nothing personal Frank, but I think I may have one up on you when it comes to personal salvation.”
“Is that right?” Frank said raising his eyebrows. “You know I’ve never really said much about it, but what about the fact you drink, gamble, keep cyber porn on your computer and cheat on your taxes? Isn’t that breaking at least one of the twelve commandments?”
“It’s ten, and none of that stuff matters as long as you go to church every Sunday, are nice to your neighbors, and give your full one percent tithe to the church.” Todd glanced away while laying out this last revelation apparently not having convinced himself of it.
“I thought it was ten percent, but you know what? Right now, I don’t give a shit. Let’s get back to where you’ve heard about this happening before. You’re not the one with dead perverted uncles cruising around in your back seat.”
“All right, but I think after I tell you, you might reconsider.”
“Yeah, okay- whatever, just get on with it.”
“Okay.” Todd took a deep breath. “It was about five years ago, right before my grandma died. Being her only living relative, at least the only one who cared, I would go to visit her at St. John’s every day, and things were as good as could be expected for an eighty year old woman who survived a mild heart attack. She was lucid, remembered the names of all her doctors, and even complained about the incessant moaning and groaning of the other ‘old farts’ as she called them, in the rooms next to hers. Well about two weeks before... before the end she started seeing things. Things like-”
“Like what?” Frank asked.
“Just hold on, I’m telling you.” Todd gave Frank an impatient look. “Things like a crystal clear mountain stream running down a hillside just outside her window when her window faced nothing more than the parking lot. She said she saw Coco, her pet poodle walk past the door to her room.”
“Well maybe somebody brought the dog up to see her. I’ve heard dogs can sometimes make people get better and-”
It was Todd’s turn to interrupt. “Coco had died a year before grandma had her heart attack.” Frank nodded and wished he had seen his childhood dog Biscuit rather than his Uncle Lester riding in the back seat.
Todd continued. “The doctors discounted it, attributing it to the affects of the pain medicine, but she had quit taking the pain meds a week before. Then she said she saw grandpa. She said he was just standing at her door, smiling in at her with a twinkle in his eye he hadn’t had since he was in his twenties. When she called out to him, he only held up three fingers before fading away like... well, like a ghost.”
“What was the deal with holding up three fingers?” Frank asked, momentarily lost in Todd’s story and forgetting about his own.
“Yeah, check this shit out.”
“Add cussing to the list right behind gambling,” Frank said, almost laughing. Todd flipped Frank the bird causing them both to laugh.
“Well you boys seem to be having a good time,” Bonnie said, walking up to their booth. She looked at Frank. “You look a heck of lot better than you did when you first sat down. Warm up?” Bonnie started the pot towards Frank’s cup.
“No thanks, I’m good,” Frank said, putting his had over his cup.
“How bout’ you Hun?” Bonnie lifted the pot toward Todd.
“Sure, why not,” Todd said, pushing his cup to her. Bonnie titled the pot, pouring in a splash of coffee as she had done a thousand times before, not spilling a drop.
When she left, Frank said, “Okay, now what about the three fingers?”
“Like I was saying, check this stuff out.” Frank rolled his eyes. “It was exactly three days from when she said she saw him to when she had another heart attack and died.”
“Whoa, no way,” Frank said, shifting in his seat when he felt goose bumps crawl up his arms. “What about the stuff she was seeing, did you talk to her about it?”
“Yeah, we did. She called it a reality slip.”
“A reality slip? What’s that?”
“Grandma may have had no idea what she was talking about, but she said she heard it from her mom who heard it from her mom and so on. She said the moment someone is born, an hourglass is set on God’s shelf with the exact amount of sand they are allowed for their life. Some people have a glass full of sand while others only have a little. She said the closer the sand gets to running out, the thinner the wall gets separating the world we live in from the one we go to when we die. I guess not everyone can see through the thin spot, and she didn’t have an explanation on why some people did and some didn’t, I just know she could.”
Todd’s words were sinking into the soft flesh of Frank’s brain like the talons of a hawk... like the talons of a crow. If the thin spot between Todd’s grandma and the world beyond allowed her to see things like beautiful streams, her beloved pet, and her loving husband, then why was he seeing giant spiders and sex maniacs? Frank felt the palms of his hands grow wet with sweat.
Todd got up and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “I got to hit the restroom.”
Frank grabbed Todd’s hand and looked at him with eyes growing wider with understanding at each passing second. Seconds Frank now counted as precious. Seconds possibly ticking away the last moments of his life before sending him to a world inhabited by crows disguised as men.
“Hey, take it easy Frank. I’ll be right back.” Todd pulled his hand from Frank’s and gave him a concerned look as he headed to the restroom in the back of the café.
Frank laid his hands on the table and stared absently at them like a man waiting in his cell for the executioner to slide back the heavy steel bars and tell him-
“Hello Frank.”
Frank felt his heart leap to his throat at the sound of the guttural voice addressing him from across the table and the repulsive yet familiar smell of rotting flesh. He looked up to see a man dressed in a long flowing robe so black it seemed to suck in the very light from the room. His hood hid all features except a long curved nose and thin white lips struggling to hold back the ragged yellow teeth beyond.
“Todd!” Frank yelled, but the restroom door had already closed. Frank looked around, but to his amazement, no one seemed to notice the strange figure sitting across from him. Turning back, Frank gasped, “Who the hell are you and why are you following me? What do you want?”
“You know your friend was right about quite a few things. Not everything though.” The crow man laughed. It was the sound of dry bones rubbing together. “No, not everything, but enough to be surprising for one of such limited intelligence.”
“What are-” A clicking noise came from inside the crow man’s hood and Frank suddenly felt like his mouth had been stuffed with cotton, choking back his words and leaving him gasping for air.
The crow man’s white lips parted in a grin filled with an impossible number of teeth, teeth resembling the blade of a wood saw. “For example, the hourglass concept is very good. Everyone does have an hourglass issued to them, and when the sand runs out, as is the case with Billy Dalton...”
The crow man turned his cloaked head to the window. Frank looked out to see a large Nordic Ice truck veering off highway 9 and bounce over the curb. “Yessss,” the crow man hissed. “Good ol’ Billy Dalton’s sand just ran out, and right now he is slumped over the wheel of his truck, death issued in the form of an exploding artery just in front of his heart.” Frank watched in horror as the truck smashed aside two parked cars and rumbled straight towards the café. The crow man continued in his wet croaking voice. “Is it just coincidence you were sitting here when Billy’s sand ran out, setting in motion a string of events that will ultimately cause your death? And if you hadn’t decided to stop here and talk to your friend Todd, would have your sand still ran out a few seconds from now? Curious to think about isn’t it Frank?”
Frank sat mesmerized by the approaching truck, now only twenty yards away. He could see Billy Dalton’s body flopping limply in the truck’s cab like a stuffed animal. The truck’s front wheels hit the curb along the sidewalk just outside the window, sending the front of the truck three feet off the ground and Billy’s body flying somewhere below the dash. Frank wanted to scream, want to run, but nothing worked. His legs wouldn’t stand up under him and his arms wouldn’t push him away from the table. His eyes were locked on the mechanized death bearing down on him in the form of a Peterbuilt eight ton box truck hauling twenty-five hundred pounds of block ice.
The front tires made contact with the sidewalk, bouncing the truck and its huge steel grill into the window facing Frank. But the instant the grill made contact with the glass... it stopped. Everything stopped. Frank could see the glass bulging towards him from the force of the truck, but it didn’t break. He turned and saw Bonnie standing twenty feet away, her hands to her face, the coffee pot she had been holding heading towards the floor, but somehow suspended above it. Coffee stretched from the gullet of the pot, frozen in air like a still frame photo. Jim Tiller, Elite Café’s head grill and fry chef, was in the process of ducking behind the dining bar. His eyes were wide and unblinking, his white paper hat hung inches above his head, apparently left there when he began to duck faster than paper hats could move.
Frank looked toward the rest room where the door was half open and Todd’s foot was in view. “Todd!” Frank yelled, but his shout sounded flat and distant. In the background, seemingly unaffected by the ‘reality slip’, Jail House Rock spilled from the juke’s speakers like all was okay with the world. Frank stared at the jukebox wondering who in the hell queued up all the Elvis anyway.
As if reading his thoughts, the crow man said, “Ah, one of my favorites. Don’t you think so Frank?” Frank jerked his head back toward the hooded figure and tried to speak again, but only a dry clicking sound emanated from his throat.
“Despite the rumors, Elvis really is dead you know, has been since 1977. His flamboyant lifestyle opening the throat of his glass and allowing the sand to descend just a little quicker than originally planned.” The crow man fell silent as if pondering this fact, but quickly went on. “You asked who I am. I am your guide. Your guide to make sure you find your way to... well, let’s just say to where you are going.” A low scratchy chuckle escaped between the white lips and serrated teeth.
Frank looked back at the window. A war zone of tiny fractures had road-mapped their way across the glass. He could see shards of glass separating from the surface of the window, some already pointing toward him like a thousand sparkling arrows.
“Come Frank. While we have a moment, and I do mean a moment, I want to show you something, something your friend Todd mentioned. The crow man lifted his cloaked arms from under the table and reached across, slipping his hands around Frank’s wrists, only instead of fingers, talons squeezed into his flesh. Frank’s mind went back 30 years where at the zoo his dad made him pose for a picture with a huge parrot clamped to his arm. Only the parrot’s feet didn’t burn his skin and smell like week old roadkill.
Frank was suddenly filled with the sensation of falling while at the same time the café seemed to melt around him, replaced by a huge wall of shelves stretching into the distance in all directions. He looked down and felt his bladder let loose, sending warm fluid down his dangling legs and into his shoes. What looked to be a never ending chasm had replaced the floor of the café. Frank watched uncomprehending as large drops of urine dripped from the ends of his shoes and slipped soundlessly away until they disappeared from sight.
He looked up to face shelves filled with hourglasses. Thousands, millions, or maybe billions of them, each one with varying amounts of sand split between the two cone shaped halves. Some glasses were shattered and laying on their sides with sand still in the ruined upper cone, while others actually had sand moving upward into the top half. A brass plate was attached to the shelf in front of each hourglass. Frank squinted to the make out the writing on the one directly in front of him and wasn’t surprised to read his name engraved in the tarnished brass plate.
Frank looked up at his hourglass, his heart pounding hard. He willed his eyes to close, but they wouldn’t, they just continued to stare at the few remaining grains of sand slipping unstoppable toward the glass throat. The wall of hourglasses shimmered, and then faded out as the café rushed back in. Only his hourglass remained, now held between the leathery claws of the crow man’s talons. Then, as he watched, helpless to turn away, the last grain of sand fell through the small opening.
Through the glass, Frank could see the distorted face of the crow man. His hood now pulled back exposing his elongated head with black hair slicked back in feathery clumps. Black, pupiless eyes shined through the thick glass. Then, with ultimate finality, Frank heard the last words of his life.
“Times up Frank.”
###
Todd stepped out of the restroom to the sounds of Bonnie’s screams. He just had time to register she had dropped her pot of coffee, when the café exploded into a roar of glass, bricks and wood. He ducked down just as a dinner plate sized piece of glass cut through the air above his head disintegrating into the wall. Salt shakers and chunks of laminate tabletops flew across the room smashing into the dining bar. A red vinyl seat from one of the swivel stools crashed into the juke, stopping Elvis before he advised anyone who may be listening to stay off his blue suede shoes. Water from a broken pipe sprayed onto the mangled hood of what looked like a Nordic Ice truck, hissing and sending up small tendrils of steam. Loose wires swung from the ceiling, spitting out white sparks when their ends touched together.
“Son of a bitch,” Todd said, stepping into the ruins of the dining area. Bonnie’s ear piercing screams had diminished to sobs, which was definitely a relief. Jim Tiller stood up from behind the counter, the hair he normally combed over his bald spot now hung to one side in long, greasy strings. Other Elite Café patrons were making their way over to the focal point of the carnage, pointing and already giving ten different versions of what happened. Todd looked down and felt his stomach threaten to force up his breakfast when he saw Frank’s blood soaked arm poking out from under the bumper of the truck.
“Somebody call 911!” Todd yelled, running toward the wreckage. “I think that’s Frank and-” Something moving under the truck caused Todd to skid to a stop. He felt his skin crawl from the base of his spine to across his scalp. A large crow moved from the shadows and hopped on Frank’s outstretched hand. It shook, ruffling its feathers, and then appeared to stare directly at Todd. It cocked its head from side to side, as if to get a good look, then with a loud caw, it flew off Frank’s hand and through the hole in the café’s wall.
Todd turned slowly to Jim who was in the process of pushing his hair under his newly torn and dust covered paper hat. “Jim, please tell me you saw what I just saw.”
Jim looked at Todd and grunted. “Are you serious? How could I miss a big ass truck smashing the hell out of my diner? Son of a bitch probably cost me fifty thousand dollars!”
“No, not the truck Jim, the crow, the fucking crow (add cussing to the list) that crawled from under the truck and sat on Frank’s hand! Tell me you saw it,” Todd pleaded.
“Todd, there was no crow, I think I would have seen something like that. Are you sure you’re all right?”
All color drained from Todd’s face and he put his hands on his knees. “No Jim. I don’t think I am.” This time breakfast didn’t stay down.
