The Crows

1:2 [The Creepy Old House]

He watched the house from his usual vantage point under the trees, acid-scarred hands thrust into his pockets. The builders had done a decent job. She must be complete by now, a brickwork phoenix rising from her nest of decay. He could feel her getting stronger, waking up, seeing the world again through clear panes of unbroken glass. Soon it would be just her and him, like it ought to be, the new owner surplus to requirements.

A few months ago, he'd lit the bonfire up on the Weald under the Blue Moon, cut open some girl and spilled her steaming guts on the frost-hard ground to read his own future in the firelight.

Thirty-three days left.

He'd been waiting for this for years, nearly all his life: what was thirty-three more days? From tomorrow, only thirty-two. Ditch-eels of excitement writhed in his chest. He considered breaking the owner's neck when it came to it, nice and quick, no need for a fuss. The 'how' had been vague, but the omens indicated he would bear a share of the guilt regardless, so it might as well be on purpose.

His fingers twitched.

The newcomer was a city-breed but not quite what he'd expected; there was an underlying brittleness about her, a frailty that Fairwood usually exploited when she found it. He knew the house's little tricks. She always called out strongest to broken things.

(Not me, though: I'm the One and Only. Naun broken about me.)

He shifted on the well-worn spot beneath his favourite tree, determined to believe his own assertion. She called to him because he was special. That was all.

Anyway. Wyrd bið ful aræd, as the Saxons said, things always go as they must, and he was going to get everything he ever wanted. After sixty years, the protection that guarded against his blood-kin would be broken and he would be the sole master of the arcane artefact Fairwood protected. He giggled to himself in his soft, child-like way. Everything would play out in the next few weeks, and all he had to do was let it happen.

He could wait.

While he waited, having a neighbour was a novelty that hadn't yet grown old, no matter how long he watched. She had been sleeping underneath in the cellars or the old crypt, emerging bleary-eyed and hard-hatted in the mornings to wander around the rubble and builders' vans. His mother had always wanted a girl, heron-slender, vixen-light, and Ricky sometimes imagined his non-existent sister like this woman, only with the wide, straight Porter nose and darker hair. He was gratified to find the neighbour was nothing like his imagined sibling in many other ways. Attachment made everything more difficult.

(Resentment, he chided himself, don't lie.)

He shook off the darker thoughts and moved closer to the wire fence, watching.

Very soon, the builders would leave for the last time and the new neighbour would be all alone.

It started to rain over The Chase, cold drops splashing onto his hood, the shower building up to a deluge.