I've never really gotten along with crows. Sure, I know, they're better than seagulls. At least crows don't go out of their way to poop on your car, or your house, or you newly washed hair like seagulls do.

But crows are nasty. They have this way of looking at you, as though they're wondering what you taste like, and whether they can fit their beaks round you. As though they're smarter than people, and know things we don't.

Kind of scary.

Okay, I know that's kind of a silly way of looking at crows. That's what Jordon says anyway. He's always telling me that I let my imagination do all my thinking for me. But then, he's the really, _really_ logical type.

Jordon's my best friend. Not my boyfriend or anything, but the kind of friend you trust to walk you home even when there's someone waiting to beat you up, or to help you with the homework you put off until the very last minute.

That kind of friend.

And it doesn't matter that he's head of the debating team, while I spend all my afterschool time in drama club. We sort of stick together.

But anyway, the thing with crows is kind of a funny story. Not funny ha-ha, but funny in the other way. The weird way.

It all happened last October. Close to Halloween, but not on the night itself. Jordon and I always walk to school together (okay, he kind of walks his bike, and I just walk, but you get the idea) and all we could talk about that day were the plans for the Halloween dance. Somehow I'd convinced him to help out with the decorations, and we were pretty well at each other's throats about exactly what we wanted to do.

"I still say we should stick to black and orange streamers and traditional witches and black cats and stuff, Ashley. That's what people want for Halloween." Jordon's voice was still calm as ever, but I could tell he was getting frustrated and a bit angry.

I didn't much care. I was the one with the imagination, so I was the one who was in charge of design.

"No way. We want something different. Something really scary. Something that says "Halloween", but that doesn't get used in every store window. Something like..." I paused, looking about frantically for something inspirational. There wasn't much. A few scraggly evergreens by the side of the road. Houses. Telephone poles. Cars. The road itself.

And a group of five crows perched on the power lines.

"Like crows?" Jordon had followed my gaze. "Those might do, I guess."

"No," I snapped. "Not crows."

Jordon grinned at me, his anger forgotten in the fun of being able to tease me. "There's nothing evil about crows, Ash. They're just birds. But if you're this scared of them, maybe other people are too. They'd be perfect as the decoration theme for the dance."

I shook my head. "I said not crows. They're just spooky. And not in a good way."

We walked on in silence till we reached the school, though Jordon had a little grin on his face the whole way. As he leaned down to lock up his bike, I grabbed his shoulder, meeting his eyes. "I mean it, Jordon. No crows. I'm in charge here, remember?"

He just grinned again. That should have been a clue.

By second class it was all over the school. Other members of the decoration committee kept coming up to me and thanking me for coming up with the crow theme. They all thought it was so cool. I didn't know what to say. I sort of smiled and thanked them. But I bit my nails right down to the skin.

That day there was only one main course on the cafeteria menu at lunch. Rumors were flying that some sort of bird had gotten into the kitchen, and pecked at half the food till it wasn't safe to eat.

That afternoon, while I was in the office getting the decoration money from old Mr. Brett, the principal, one of the math teachers came rushing in. There was a reddish smear on her sleeve, and she was shaking just a bit.

"Dave, we have a broken window in room 104." I don't think she'd noticed me sitting there in the corner. If she had, she'd never have called the principal by his first name. "Some stupid bird flew up against the glass. A crow, I think." She shook her head. "The funny thing is that the creature just flew off again afterwards, right as rain, but the glass shattered, and one shard nicked me a bit."

She held out her arm, which I could now see was dripping blood.

Mr. Brett glanced at me quickly, pressed the decoration money into my hand, and shooed me out of the office.

But I was already starting to worry.

On the way home with Jordon I refused to speak to him. There were a lot of crows about. More than earlier. More that I could ever remembered seeing in that area. They were watching me, I could tell.

I shot Jordon yet another angry glare, and heard him clear his throat.

"Look, Ash, I'm sorry, okay? Maybe I shouldn't have pushed the crow idea on you. But you're taking this way too hard. I know you have some belief that crows are dangerous, or supernatural. But they're not. Supernatural stuff doesn't exist. I mean if the bad stuff like vampires and witches and possessed animals existed, so would the good stuff, like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. And even you have to admit that sort of thing is bogus."

I didn't bother to answer. There were too many crows listening in, and I didn't want them to hear the names I really wanted to call him.

It was worse the next morning. The trees which had been turning red and gold with changing leaves were black with crows. Even my parents commented on how unusual it was to see so many at that time of year. Mom went out three times to check that they hadn't gotten into the garbage.

School that day was really strange. Everyone went about their business as normal, going to classes, laughing, shoving a bit in the halls, but there was a weird, tense feeling underlying everything. And no one seemed to want to thank me anymore for the cool theme idea.

In the acting class I caught a crow trying to climb in through a slightly open window. I slammed it closed, and tried to ignore the look the bird gave me. My teacher started to lecture me about closing windows quietly, but when she saw the crow she just sort of frowned a bit and shrugged.

Jordon was waiting outside my locker after last class. He didn't say anything, but when I started to pick up my pack, he grabbed at it first and slung it over his own shoulder. I picked up the heavy box of decorations and together we walked towards the gym.

The rest of the decoration committee was there already. Huge cloth and paper crows were scattered over the floor, ready to be tacked up. The art classes had been busy.

Jordon and I started stringing up streamers, forcing ourselves to smile at the friendly, familiar black and orange. We worked for a few hours. The gym was really kind of nice. There were no windows. You couldn't see what was going on outside.

Then the lights went out and we couldn't see anything at all.

Someone screamed, and I heard a huge crash as one of the tall ladders went over. That led to more screaming.

But then, across the frantic noises, Jordon's voice rang calm and clear. "Is everyone okay?"

"Yes."

"I am."

"I think so."

Everyone reported in as unhurt, except the one boy who'd been on the ladder. He thought his ankle might be sprained, but he wasn't sure. Jordon immediately worked his way over towards the injured person. He'd always done well in first aid.

"But what happened to the lights?" I'm not sure who it was that first asked that. It was hard to tell in the dark.

"I don't know." I found my pack in the dark, and started scrabbling through it. "Does anyone else have a flashlight?"

I clicked mine on it time to see Jordon nodding. It made sense. Both he and I lived a long way from school and neither of us took the bus. Flashlights were useful.

I flicked the beam about till I found Jordon's flashlight, and tossed it over to him.

"Okay. I..." I swallowed. "I'm going to go out and see if I can figure out what happened to the lights. It's got to be the breaker, right?" I swallowed again, then continued. "The rest of you guys stay here. I don't think having a lot of us groping about in the dark would be a great thing."

Jordon caught my eye for a moment, and frowned, but then a moan from the injured guy caught his attention and he got back to work on the sprained ankle. No one else seemed to want to talk me out of going out into the hallway alone, so I started towards the door.

My flashlight was a small one. The beam it cast barely showed anything. When I opened the door and slipped out into the hall I thought at first that the black shapes I saw were shadows. I was halfway to the office when the first feathered body hit me in the chest, and I felt talons rake my shoulder. More shapes swooped towards me. I think I might have screamed as blood ran down my arm, and the pain I was feeling slowly sunk in. I dropped the flashlight.

Then my scream turned into a low, purring growl. I felt my flesh and muscles shift. The tip of my tail twitched as I launched myself at the first bird.

I had the lights back on within a few minutes. Somehow the breaker had been thrown, at about the same time the duty teacher had somehow gotten locked in the office. Pretty soon the teacher had taken charge of the sprained ankle, and we were back at our decorating.

"You were right, you know," I told Jordon, reaching for the tacky looking cardboard crow he was handing me. "If there are nasty supernatural things in the world, there sort of have to be nice ones as well. It's logic."

I burped, blushed, and covered my mouth with my hand. A few damp black feathers drifted through my fingers, settling on the floor.

I never have gotten along well with crows.

The End

Marcie Lynn Tentchoff is an Aurora Award winning Canadian poet and writer. Her work has
appeared in such magazines as On Spec, Weird Tales, Altair, Talebones, and
Dreams of Decadence, as well as in various anthologies.

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