place. If Caw’s not going in, I am.
“Can you all stop talking about me as if I’m not here?” said Caw. For once, the crows ceased their bickering. It was a rare occurrence since Shimmer had joined the group. Crows were stubborn. They liked to argue, and they liked having the last word even more. All except Milky, the white crow that Caw had grown up with. In all the years in the nest, he’d spoken less than twenty words. Caw wished the old crow was still with them.
He stood up, stretching his lower back and casting a glance back along the street. None of the buildings in this part of town was inhabited any more. The families had all moved out when the jobs dried up after the Dark Summer – the secret war between ferals that had broken out eight years ago. A broken and rusted scooter lay in a gutter full of leaves, and below, in a tree in a front garden, hung a lopsided swing, its cords frayed.
Caw wondered for a moment what it had been like growing up here. Had he played with other children from these now-abandoned houses? It was hard to imagine sounds of laughter in a place so dismal and heavy with silence. He began to make his way up the driveway towards the house, heart thumping. The front door was boarded up, but he could climb in through a window easily enough.
You can still turn back, said Glum, remaining stubbornly perched on his branch.
It was easy for Glum to say: this house meant nothing to him. But for Caw, it was everything. For so many years his past was a blank – an open sea with no charts to guide him. But this place was a landmark, and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. Who knew what he might find inside?
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the crumpled photo – a picture of his parents, from happier times. Crumb had given it to him. The pigeon feral hadn’t wanted Caw to come tonight either – grumbling that it was “a waste of time”. Caw let his thumb brush across his parents’ faces. They looked almost exactly the same as they had when he found them in the Land of the Dead. He’d only managed to share a few precious moments with them, and it had left his heart aching for more. Where better to find out about them than this place?
He owed it to them not to turn back.
As Caw laid a hand on one of the boards over the door, he found that it was loose. He gripped the edge firmly and easily yanked it free, rusting nails and all. The others posed no more bother, and soon he’d cleared the way.
Caw sensed the crows behind him and turned. Sure enough, all three were perched on the ground.
“Let me go in alone,” he said.
Shimmer nodded and Screech hopped back a few steps. Glum looked away with a dramatic toss of his head.
There was a light switch inside, but Caw wasn’t surprised that nothing happened when he pressed it. The air was cool and musty. In the gloom, he made out overturned furniture and pictures hanging lopsidedly from the walls. A grand staircase rose from the entrance hall up to a landing, then doubled back on itself to the first floor level. Caw thought he saw something move up there – a rat, or a bird, perhaps, but when he looked again there was nothing.
Caw felt a dim sense of belonging. Small things looked familiar – a lampshade, a doorknob, a tattered curtain. Or maybe it was just his mind playing tricks, wanting to see something significant among the debris of abandoned lives.
Through an archway, Caw could see a sagging couch and wires protruding from a wall socket, and as he walked towards it the view opened on to a dining table.
A rush of fear turned his feet to lead. He knew this room from his nightmares. It was here that it had happened – beside that very table his parents had been murdered by the spiders of the Spinning Man. The table was covered in dust now, but Caw couldn’t bring himself to step any closer.
Instead, he turned back to the stairs. They creaked as he climbed. With each step, a haunting nostalgia swelled in his stomach. When he reached the first floor, his feet carried him automatically towards a door with a small placard in the shape of a train. Painted on it were words he recognised from Crumb’s lessons – “Jack’s Room”.
Jack Carmichael.
That had been his name, once.
Caw took a deep breath and pushed the door open.
On the opposite wall, his eyes fell on the window and his knees turned to water. The memories, so dream-like, crystallised into a feeling of pure fear. Caw gripped the doorframe to steady himself.
He remembered the firm hands of his parents as they dragged him from his bed and hauled him towards the window. Their fingers had been so tight it had hurt and their ears had seemed deaf to his screams of panic. Then his father had opened the window and his mother had thrust him out. Caw had watched the ground spinning towards him, felt the terror rising as he fell …
He took a deep breath as the power of the memory faded.
For years, that had been his only remembrance of them, festering in his mind. Their heartless abandonment. Now he knew it wasn’t the full story. It was just one line in a tale that had begun centuries ago – a tale of ferals at war with one another. His parents hadn’t been trying to kill him – they’d been protecting him, by getting him as far away from the Spinning Man as possible.
Caw opened his eyes, looking away from the window. He was trembling.
The rest of the room was practically empty. A couple of shelves held scraps of paper; and bundles of old clothing had been pushed into one corner. Caw hadn’t been expecting the room to be preserved like a museum, but still he felt a rush of rage. Someone had taken all of his things.
The anger seeped away as quickly as it had come, leaving only a numb sorrow. Of course the house had been ransacked and looted. Plenty of petty criminals had taken advantage of the chaos caused by the Dark Summer. Caw guessed a nice house like this would have made for easy pickings.
He let his feet carry him across the mould-covered carpet towards the window. The glass was cracked, and he rubbed a sheen of condensation away with the cuff of his leather jacket. Outside the night was still, the stars bright in a cloudless sky, the moon glowing softly.
Caw sighed. Crumb was right – there was no point in coming here. The past was dead.
Then, in the trees below, he saw something. A pale face materialising from the darkness beside a tree trunk.
Caw’s heart jolted. The face didn’t move at all, just stared up at him. It was an old man, with skin so white he might have been wearing make-up like a clown. Who was he? And what was he doing here, in Caw’s garden?
Caw gripped the window frame. He tried to yank it up to call out to the man, but it didn’t budge. He heaved again and it gave a grating screech. He was about to open his mouth when he heard a panicked intake of breath at his back.
“Who are you?” said a voice.
Caw spun round and saw the pile of clothes in the corner stirring. There was a girl lying there, wrapped in a sleeping bag. She was skinny, with dark tangled hair framing her grubby face. She looked a year or two older than him.
Caw stepped back until he collided with the window. His leg muscles wanted to run, but fear paralysed him. He found his voice.
“I …” he started. But what was he supposed to say? Where to start? Her eyes were defiant, but scared too, he noticed, his fear dipping
