M(eating) Crow

Folks,

I have been a huge fan of science fiction and fiction that we will call macabre since I first learned to read.  One of my favorite writers is Poe, although HP Lovecraft maybe the better of the two.  Poe is credited with popularizing the short story form and indeed is also credited as established the detective fiction genre that has dominated literary fiction and that translated so well to television.

I still remember going to the movies and watching those Corman and Hammer horror flicks and going home and not sleeping well for a few days.  I think my favorite was Premature Burial - I think Ray Milland was in that - I sat there in the Odeon theatre in Saint John and watched it twice. Of course Premature Burial is based on a Poe story - my favorite story of his was The Tell-Tale Heart - although if pressed I would admit to equally liking, The Fall of The House of Usher.  Stephen King, more than once, has taken Poe themes and run amok with them - The Shining, being one example.

A Poe favorite of mine is his poem, The Raven.  I don`t know whether many of read the graphic novel, The Crow by James O`Barr or have seen the movie based on it - which I think is excellent.  They both remind me of Poe`s poem and I ma not even sure O`Barr had that in mind when he wrote it.

My mother quotes an expression every time she sees a crow - or a few, it always comes out out the same way, after sighting the first crow, `One crow sorrow, my mother always used to say that ...`  Her mother, my grandmother, was quoting from an ancient fable, referring to numbers of crows seen at one time,

One's sorrow, two's mirth,
Three's a wedding, four's a birth,
Five's a christening, six a dearth,
Seven's heaven, eight is hell,
And nine's the devil his old self.

It is interesting that as the number of crows increases the collective becomes more sinister - could that be why a group of crows is referred to as a `murder`.  Because crows only group for one reason- to kill.

Now this leads naturally - or unnaturally - to Daphne DuMaurier`s short story, `The Birds` - which Hitchcock turned into  memorable film - even if the only thing it had to do with the short story was the title.  There is something very sinister about birds of a certain size - humming birds, chickadees, canaries, robins - lovely.  You up the size a bit and all of a sudden you can see their eyes more clearly - and those eyes - there`s no compassion in them - in fact there`s nothing - it`s like staring into an abyss - if the eye`s are the window to the soul - there`s no soul in there - what is in there is ...... well it`s Stephen King`s most fearsome creation, Randall Flagg, that is what is in there.

So I am in Bryce Canyon today at Rainbow Point, looking south across the Grand Staircase, from the top of it, and this Raven-Crow lands right there beside me.  It`s huge - and it`s eyes are looking right through me - not at me, through me.  I take a few pictures of it - it turns so it sees me with one eye, then the other. That`s fine - I move north to the next view point and just start to take some photos and the Raven-Crow returns. Hmmm.  I take some more pictures of it and pretty soon it is joined by another one - thank goodness.

But then I think - we started with one, now two - if we start accumulating more friends then ....

I move onto the next observation point and ..... no Raven-Crow beasts - but within a few minutes two start cawing from a tree - and I literally jump.  I see two more flying out over the canyon expanse .. night is falling now and I am the only person left in the Canyon because I want to get the sunset shots - the temperature is falling rapidly and and wind picks up ... and then  I realize that I am ten miles deep inside the park and no one knows I am here as the Visitor Center has closed an hour previously. 

The two crows over the canyon take a long sweeping arc that has them riding the winds towards me and the other two Raven-Crow beasts in the tree.  All of a sudden my head is spinning, I hear strange voices seemingly from the Raven-Crow beasts, the canyons geometry now seems cyclopian, there is some eldritch ululation coming from behind me.  I stagger as I turn my head, and ....oh no ...it can`t be ....

TO BE CONTINUED ....