There’s a crow on the mailbox. It just sits there, beady eyes trained on the house. It doesn’t caw or ruffle its feathers when the mailman arrives with a pile of catalogs and circulars and whatever other junk that keeps coming to the house. Seemingly unaware of the avian watcher, the man scowls and jams the stack on top of yesterday’s mail. And the day before’s. And… well, for however long it’s been.
I consider going out and collecting it all, but the crow’s there, silently watching. Never mind. Anything important comes by email, anyway. I draw the curtain back over the window and head to the kitchen. Perhaps Shelly would like a cup of tea.
***
The ever-present feathered sentinel is still perched in the same spot, but the carrier doesn’t drop off today’s mail. He just glances at the rain-soggy flyers drooling out of the mailbox’s mouth and keeps walking. The crow catches my eye and clacks its beak like it’s won some sort of skirmish in this bizarre war of wills.
It hops off the mailbox and, with a few lazy flaps of inky wings, lands on a branch of the cherry tree in the yard. When we moved into the house, Shelly bought that tree as a whip-slender sapling. She said it signified new beginnings and good fortune. The once smooth branches are twisted and hunched. A wry smile crosses my cracked lips. We’re the same, me and that tree. Two old ladies past our prime but hanging on.
The crow hops from foot to foot on the branch in a bobbing two-step and the last of the autumn leaves float to the ground. My stomach frog flops.
“Get lost, you stupid bird!” I cringe at the thready sound of my voice. It used to be a strong, buttery contralto.
The bird doesn’t get lost. It makes a friend. The second crow settles on the branch next to the first and offers me an identical, melancholy stare.
I turn my back on the pair, a defiant gesture, and go upstairs to check on Shelly. The comforter is pulled up over her head. I always loved her frizzy locks. They made a walnut-hued halo around her face. It was the thing that attracted me to her all those years ago.
She cried when the chemo made every last curl fall out. I told her she was still beautiful. It wasn’t a lie, but I stayed in the shower until the water ran cold where she couldn’t hear my ragged, chest-heaving sobs.
I smooth the blankets and gather up yesterday’s cold, untouched tea on the bedside table. Allspice for healing, lavender for longevity, sweet cicely for spirit. Shelly prefers chamomile. I should have used that as the base, but the damned crow distracted me.
***
The crows now number three. I shiver and a sticky foreboding clings to me like a spiderweb. Three is a historically spiritual number in myth and legend. A warning, an omen. The birds’ patience seems infinite as they sit in an uncanny vigil.
My joints ache. I’m unsure if it is age or the promise of winter. I’ve always felt the turning of the seasons, and change is coming.
The dark trio settles on the cherry branch like too-realistic figurines. I imagine they too know that there’s a change coming. But we’re awaiting different things.
A muffled thump comes from above. I climb the stairs to tend to Shelly. She’s all that matters.
***
This morning, hoarfrost rims the windowpane and the row of maples across the street reach their skeletal branches toward a steel gray sky. The cherry tree in the front yard is covered in a strange canopy of black leaves. A dozen, two dozen, too many to count, the crows sit in the gnarled old tree, feathers ruffled by a breeze that doesn’t seem to touch anything else.
The neighborhood is vacant and hushed. Still, they wait.
My face flashes hot. If it’s up to me—and I’ll make sure it is—they can wait forever.
A soft moaning comes from upstairs. I hurry to the bedroom.
Shelly’s skin is so dry, like crumpled parchment stretched over bone. I do my best to be gentle as I rub lotion on her skin, but arthritis makes my fingers stiff. She doesn’t complain. I’m sure she knows I’m doing my best. Everything I do is for her.
***
There’s a tap, tap, tippity, tap coming from the front window.
I fling open the shade and battery-acid bile claws up my throat as I come face to face with a sharp beak.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Though they all look the same, I can tell this is the first crow rapping at the window, like some parody of Poe’s raven. Its fellows watch from the cherry tree.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The glass spiderwebs. Oh, no you don’t.
I scavenge linen-closet shelves and old chair backs and hammer them over the window frame. My hands ache, holding the nails in place. It takes longer than I would have liked, this messy crisscross of wood. But it will keep the damn bird at bay.
I hope.
Tap… tap… taptaptaptaptap.
***
The bedroom smells sour, like rotten flesh and grave dirt. One could pass it off as a dead mouse in the wall. I light a candle—wood betony and rue. Not just to cover the smell, but to ward off evil spirits. I put on a record. Puccini. Shelly loves opera.
I blink back a tear, wishing I still had the voice to sing along with the familiar aria, instead of this old witchy croak.
The record drowns out the incessant tapping.
For a moment, I let the music remake me into the woman I used to be, waltzing around the room, my aching knees forgotten. Shelly watches me with shark-dead eyes.
I pretend her sallow skin isn’t stretched over her skull like a death mask, that I can’t see the bone white of her jaw where rot has nibbled away her apple-blush cheeks. Just like I used to tell her how beautiful she was when the treatments turned her bald.
I shake my head. There’s nothing left for the cancer to consume.
Her hands, fingers tipped with gnarled, yellowing nails, twitch on the bedclothes. They say fingernails grow after death, but it isn’t true. It’s the skin that shrinks back, exposing the nail beds.
A swollen tongue clacks over withered lips.
“What’s that dear? You’d like to dance?” I sweep her into my arms, ignoring she’s become nothing more than a bundle of animated bones and maggot-ridden flesh.
We twirl around the room. I tell myself the scratching whisper in my ear is a harmonic descant to Puccini’s diva. Surely Shelly wouldn’t ask me to let her go after all I’ve sacrificed to keep her close, safe from those feathered harbingers of the Beyond.
The record skips and the warbling soprano falls silent. Something crunches beneath my feet, surprisingly loud in the sudden hush. I look down and cold sweat trickles down my spine.
“No!”
The salt circle around the bed, the one that tethers Shelly’s spirit, is broken, scuffed by my shuffling feet. She laughs, a dry, raspy cackle, reminiscent of the crow’s ka-caw.
Downstairs, wood and glass shatter. The crows are inside the house.
