The Crow That Wasn't
Copyright© 2026 by Harry Carton
Chapter 1: Jamal
“Tell me again why we’re out here at three in the morning?” Jamal’s breath curled into the cold air as he shifted his weight against the chain-link fence. The streetlight above them flickered, casting jagged shadows across his face.
His companion, Marcus, didn’t answer right away. Instead, he rolled his shoulders back, the leather of his jacket creaking softly. “You ask too many questions,” he muttered, eyes scanning the empty lot ahead—a concrete slab littered with broken bottles and crumpled fast-food wrappers.
Jamal sighed and rubbed his hands together. “Man, I ain’t askin’ for fun. It’s freezing, and this place looks like it’s gonna collapse if we stare at it too hard.”
Marcus smirked, finally turning to face him. “You ever seen a crow up close?”
Jamal frowned. “What the hell kinda question is that?” He glanced up at the flickering light, half-expecting to see one perched there. “Yeah, I seen crows. They’re everywhere.”
Marcus didn’t blink. “Ever see one that don’t act like a crow?” His voice was low, deliberate. The kind of tone that made the back of Jamal’s neck prickle.
A sharp gust of wind sent a crumpled paper bag skittering across the lot. Jamal shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Man, you sound like you ‘bout to tell me some horror movie shit.” He tried to laugh, but it came out dry, brittle.
Marcus finally moved, stepping away from the fence with a slow, deliberate gait. His boots crunched over broken glass. “Watch,” he said, and then—Jamal swore—his outline wavered. Like heat rising off asphalt in July.
Jamal stumbled back, his shoulder blades slamming into the chain-link fence with a metallic rattle. The sound was swallowed by the night as Marcus’s form dissolved—not like mist, but like something unstitching itself from the world. His edges frayed, black threads peeling away, unraveling into the air. Then, with a sound like rustling newspaper and snapping twigs, Marcus was gone.
A crow stood where he’d been.
Not just any crow. This one was larger, its feathers glossy under the flickering streetlight, with eyes that burned like hot coals. It tilted its head, staring at Jamal with an intelligence no bird should possess.
Jamal’s pulse hammered in his throat. “What the FUCK,” he whispered, the words barely audible over the wind.
The crow didn’t move. It just stared, those coal-black eyes locking onto Jamal’s with an intensity that made his skin prickle. For a heartbeat, Jamal wondered if he was dreaming—if he’d nodded off against the fence and slipped into some fucked-up nightmare. But the bite of the wind against his cheeks was real. The metallic taste of fear in his mouth was real. And the crow—Marcus—was still there.
“Yo,” Jamal croaked, his voice cracking. “This ain’t funny, man.”
The crow let out a low, rattling caw—almost like a laugh—before hopping forward, wings half-spread. Jamal flinched, but the bird didn’t attack. Instead, the crow spread his wings and enveloped Jamal in black feathers. Its beak grabbed the back of Jamal’s jacket and it lifted off the ground — five feet, ten, twenty, thirty.
Marcus imagined Jamal’s heart was pounding in his chest, his blood pressure now sky high. Marcus mentally laughed at the wording — sky high — no, he was not going to try out at the comedy club. His beak slid around Jamal’s throat and tightened. Not so tight that the forensic boys and girls would have anything too solid to work with, but enough to make them wonder. They’d maybe match the pattern against other ‘random’ deaths in Boston, Philadelphia, and Detroit.
The crow dropped the body from forty feet in the air. Jamal’s body landed on the rusted-out Chevy Silverado and made a soft crunch, the head dangling over the opened door, disguising the neck marks.
For a heartbeat, the crow circled overhead, a black smudge against the flickering streetlight. Then it banked sharply, diving toward the far side of the lot where the shadows pooled thickest.
IF he could have looked at the image, Jamal’s empty stare would have seen the air shimmering. The crow was gone. In its place, Marcus stood silhouetted against a gutted warehouse doorway in human form, his outline wavering at the edges like a heat mirage. He smiled to himself. “Another death by un-natural causes” he told himself. “One more pusher gone from this neighborhood.” The police would never be able to solve this one. How had a street pusher fallen from the sky in an empty lot in the middle of an abandoned industrial park in an unused part of Brooklyn.
Maybe he got so high from the ecstasy and cocaine. He got high from his own drugs and then fell onto the Chevy. Get it? He fell from his own high? Nope. He’d never make it to the open mike night at the comedy club.
He shook himself all over. The change always took a second to wear off. His mind drifted back a dozen years to when he first came into this world.
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