THE CROW AT MY WINDOW - PART II: THE OLD AGREEMENT I did not sleep last night. Not because Dante returned. He did not. And somehow, his absence troubled me more than his presence ever had. For three nights that sable emissary had haunted my window, motionless beneath the sickly pallor of the moon; a black blemish upon the glass which seemed less a bird than some fragment of the outer darkness given feathers and purpose. But last night the branch stood empty. The woods beyond it were terribly still. Not peaceful. Expectant. It was precisely midnight when the first sound came. Tap. My eyes opened. Tap. I sat upright. Then, Tap. Three. Always fucking three. I looked toward the window. Nothing. Only my own pale reflection staring back from the glass. Then came another sound. THUMP. Beneath me. The floor trembled. THUMP. Something in the walls groaned. Then, THUMP. Silence returned. But it was no longer an empty silence. Something had filled it. There are moments when the human mind perceives a thing before reason permits us to understand it. Some ancestral faculty, older than language, whispers: Do not look. I did not look. I made coffee instead. Some horrors deserve caffeine. At 3:17, Dante returned. He appeared upon the sill without sound. Behind him, others had gathered. Three upon the roof. Two upon the fence. None moved. None cried. Their multitude of black eyes were fixed not upon me... but upon the earth. Dante carried something. I opened the window. “Bit fucking late for correspondence.” He released it into my palm. A stone. Small. Black. And horribly cold. Not the coldness of winter. This was the cold of deep places untouched by sunlight; of forgotten crypts and buried things upon whose graves mankind had unknowingly built its little cities. Upon it had been carved a crown. Crooked. Primitive. Bexxy's crown. My heart sank. “No.” Dante lowered his beak. Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound awakened something within my memory. Something I had spent years starving. “I said no.” Again. Tap. Tap. Tap. I turned the stone. There were markings upon its reverse. At first they appeared meaningless; wretched little angles and crooked lines whose geometry seemed somehow offensive to the eye. Then I remembered how to read them. God forgive me. THE CROWN HAS RETURNED. For several moments I could only stare. The spoon. The walnuts. The watching murder. The dungeon. The coronation. Dear Bexxy believed herself the victim of an increasingly elaborate conspiracy orchestrated by one remarkably vindictive crow. She was wrong. Gerald had not been conspiring. Gerald had been preparing. “Goddammit, Gerald.” Dante bowed. Then, THUMP. Every crow outside lowered its head. My amusement vanished. The sound had not come merely from beneath the floor. It had come from somewhere beneath beneath; from some impossible depth for which distance ceased having useful meaning. And worse... something about it felt familiar. I looked toward Dante. “The Agreement?” Tap. Yes. A single strike. Cold recognition crawled through me. “Still binding?” Tap. Fuck. I looked again upon that crooked crown. “How long?” Dante did not answer. Instead, he turned east. Toward Bexxy. And understanding came upon me not as revelation, but remembrance. The old stories had never spoken of a King. They spoke of the return of one. Crowns rot. Kings die. Generals are replaced. But the office... the office remains. And beneath our houses, beneath our roads, beneath every comfortable little monument mankind erects to convince itself that the earth belongs to us; older things remember. I closed my hand around the stone. “Tell Gerald I'll honor the Agreement.” Tap. “But Dante...” He stopped. “If he's awakened what I think he has...” Something scratched beneath the floor. Slowly. Not like claws. Like something enormous dragging itself against the underside of the world. Then came three faint knocks. Tap. Tap. Tap. Dante recoiled. That frightened me more than anything. Because until that moment I had believed the tapping belonged to the crows. I had been wrong. Perhaps the crows had merely learned to answer it. I looked at Dante. He looked at me. Neither of us spoke. We did not need to. Gerald had crowned Bexxy. Kitten had received the walnut. The murder had gathered. And somewhere beneath my dear friend's home, something ancient had recognized its King. But now... something beneath mine had recognized me. Dante opened his wings. “Tell our dear King,” I whispered, “that Gerald's war did not begin beneath her house.” The crow paused. “No.” I looked down toward the darkness beneath my feet. “Tell her nothing.” Dante departed. The night swallowed him so completely that for one dreadful instant I wondered whether there had ever been a bird there at all. Then I noticed something upon the sill. Three words had been scratched into the wood. Not by Dante. The marks came from the inside. PHASE ONE COMPLETE. I stared at them for a very long time. Then somewhere beyond the trees, or beneath them, or perhaps from that immeasurable gulf of black earth separating mankind from whatever dreams below; came a sound. Low. Ancient. Familiar. Hmmm. I closed my eyes. “Gerald, you feathered son of a bitch.” So. Bexxy has her crown. Kitten has her walnut. Gerald has his army. And Dante? Dante has come to remind me of something I had prayed time itself might forget. The Old Agreement has been invoked. And somewhere in the dark... something has answered.