Growing Grounds

Chapter 12: With Crows Come Changes

The comfortable spot she had been in seemed to be moving. The babies pulled to the side closer to the chair. Finally, to get comfortable again, or partially comfortable, Tammy had to sit up, put her feet on the floor, and lean her weight on the chair arm closest to the chair.

Listening to Matt foraging around in the fridge, and then the cabinets, Tammy examined the chair that she had avoided since the incident. Somehow, the chair didn’t seem as menacing as before; it even looked less scary.

These things were not just side effects of being pregnant and of her hormones seesawing either. These changes were physical things that she could point out. The color of the wood looked lighter, the texture smoother and less grainy, and she could swear that the tiny faces wore minute Mona Lisa smiles now.

With Matt so close by, she would not get up to investigate these things. No. Tammy continued to stay far enough away from the chair to keep Matt from questioning her about it. She’d had enough questions about that damn chair, thank you very much.

But, the babies pulled in that direction again. Tammy put her hand against the side of her belly and rubbed in a circular motion, hoping to quiet them. She knew it was impossible for her to feel their movements at this early stage, but there it was—they were moving and she could feel it.

It sounded as if Matt had found the box of toaster pastries and was heating a pair in the toaster. To avoid being persuaded to move closer to the chair, Tammy stood and walked to the front door. Pulling back the curtain from the window on the left side of the front door, she peeked out, checking for crows.

One lone crow stood in the center of the porch between the front door and the steps. Keeping one oily eye on the door, the bird hopped, opened its beak as if to caw, then closed it again, and hopped forward another step.

What was it doing out there? Waiting for scraps? Maybe someone else had been feeding them and now they were looking for another handout from someone else? She didn’t know, but she was glad the yard had cleared of them.

Again, the crow opened its beak as if to caw, but no sound came out. It blinked several times quickly, and closed its beak again. This time, when it hopped, it caught sight of Tammy in the window.

Standing very still, Tammy thought if she didn’t move, it would go away. She was wrong. The bird hopped toward the window, moving its head to keep her in view with that one shiny eye. Standing a few inches from the glass, the bird looked upward at her, and opened its beak. This time a double squawk came out, sounding like nails on a chalkboard.

Tammy gasped at the sound. The crow made the sound again. This time the double squawk sounded as if the bird was trying to say a word. Tammy watched as the bird’s head bobbed up and down, its mouth open, tongue working. It squawked, “Am-ee!” It bounced backward two hops and looked up. “Tam-me!”

That crow had just said her name, or she had just crash-landed in the realm of crazy. Maybe she should just go on up to Daisy Lawn and ask for a padded suite that adjoined Cindy’s room. She and Cindy could swap stories about talking animals and animated furniture that took them on fantastic journeys. Yes, that would be marvelously entertaining.

“Tam-me! Tam-me!” The crow cawed her name loud enough that Matt should hear it all the way in the kitchen. Taptaptaptaptap! “Tam-me!”

Was the crow begging entrance? Was that little s**t knocking on the door and calling her name? She backed away from the window and the door, unsure if she should go ahead, open the door, and invite the insanity in for tea; or run away, ignore it, and act as if everything was fine. Just fine.

Matt came to the living room as Tammy headed for the sofa, meaning to lie down for a while and just ignore the bird—and the insanity. Just fine.

“What the hell?” Matt walked to the window and looked down at the bird. “That little black devil is knocking on the door.” Matt laughed. “Quoth the Raven, nevermore! It’s like something from an Edgar Allen Poe work.” He kicked the bottom of the door. “Brave.” He opened the door, stomped his foot, and yelled.

Tammy heard the flutter of the crow’s wings as it took flight. Good. At least the bird was real. But it wasn’t really talking, you know. That’s the part that’s batshit crazy.

Tammy knew that. Tammy knew that very well. “Thank you. I was just going to ignore him, hope he’d go away. Guess we live too far out to have annoying nosy neighbors, so we got stuck with the annoying, slightly scary crows, eh?” She flopped onto her side about as gracefully as an elephant on ice, and adjusted the pillow under her head.

“Yeah, well let’s hope that he doesn’t teach that neat little trick to any of his friends or family.” Matt shut the door, walked to the sofa, and gave Tammy a quick kiss.

“What trick?” Had he heard the thing calling her name? Part of Tammy hoped he had heard that very thing; the other part of her hoped he had not. It might be easier to deal with the thought that all her marbles were not securely in place rather than to deal with the ramifications of a talking crow.

Matt stopped in the hallway, and answered, “Knocking on the door like that. Can you imagine that whole yard full of crows banging on the door like that? Drive us crazy, for sure.” He chuckled and continued to the kitchen.

Yeah, Tammy thought, for sure.

Matt yelled from the kitchen, “Hey, you want a pastry?”

“No, thanks. I’m still mad at you, by the way.” Tammy laid her arm over her eyes.

“Yep! I know.”

I really want to know what moss tastes like. Tammy could feel the soft, fuzzy texture and could almost taste the green, earthy flavor as she dozed.

* * * *

After the front yard filled up with crows the first time, Matt had taken notice of how Tammy had gone into the living room and sat in the sofa chair closest to the chair. She had professed hatred for that chair, and even gone so far as to accuse the chair of kidnapping her and dragging her off into the woods. After that, she had refused to even sit in the living room, saying that she didn’t want to be near the evil thing. She was sure it had bad intentions towards her and she was terrified of it.

Until the crows came that first time, anyway. Of course, he knew that pregnancy sometimes did strange things to women and the way they thought about things. A kind of priority shift happened when a woman got pregnant. Maybe she realized that the chair was an inanimate object, devoid of intentions, one way or the other, towards her. It was just a piece of wood, after all. After the crows, Tammy had even taken a nap on the sofa in the living room—something she never would have done before.

Still, her actions bothered Matt on a level that he couldn’t quite grasp. Something was wrong with her; he could feel it, sense it. Was her body in more stress than would be normal for a normal pregnancy? She had told Matt that she was carrying twins. This was another topic over which she refused to be swayed.

There was also the point at which Tammy had thought the crow on the porch was saying her name and knocking on the door. The part about the bird knocking, Matt could understand. When Tammy had told him about the crow vocalizing…well, that part he could not understand. He had heard the crow squawk a few times, but it never sounded like the bird was saying human words. Matt had gently tried to explain to Tammy that crows didn’t use human words and that she was just spooked because of the horde of crows that had chased her inside. An argument broke out and Matt, being very conscious of Tammy’s condition, bit his tongue and let the subject drop.

These things bothered Matt a great deal. There was no one around that he could discuss them with, either. He thought about going to Tammy’s doctor with his concerns, but with mental instability so close in her family, he thought it might not be wise to involve any doctor at this point. Her next appointment in December might be a more prudent time to bring it up, if things worsened.

Tammy was still sleeping at almost nine on Saturday morning. Matt had been awake for most of the night, unable to sleep because of his nagging concerns and that lingering discordant notion that something was wrong with his wife. His pregnant wife.

Wanting to have a light breakfast, Matt was disgruntled when he had gone through the fridge and the cabinets in the kitchen for the fourth time, finding nothing that stirred his appetite at all. I’ve turned into a foraging critter in my own house.

Giving up, he put on some coffee, only half a pot since he was up alone, and walked toward the living room. The day of the crows, he had noticed that the chair seemed different—the miniature faces, for instance, seemed to wear little, knowing smiles. They had not been smiling before. That was something he was sure about. Not daring to mention this to Tammy, Matt had avoided examining the chair for fear that Tammy would see him and question. Having lied to her once about the chair already, he definitely did not want to do it again.

The late morning sunlight shone through the windows in a way that threw the chair, sitting in its corner right where Matt had left it, into a deep shadow. Determined to see it in the light, to properly examine the thing, Matt grabbed the armrests and carefully pulled the chair into the broad swath of light, and then he backed up a few feet to look for any bigger changes that might have taken place.

The color of the wood seemed a few shades lighter than he remembered. That, he could put down to the fact that he hadn’t really paid much attention to the color before, and the chair sat in the corner, where light didn’t usually reach. Wood darkened with age, in Matt’s experience, but this was not an overly worrisome development for him.

The chair had felt the same under his hands when he moved it, too. No leathery skin, no heat, just plain old wood. No visions of s*x and violence this time either. All the same, Matt’s heart refused to beat normally. Instead, his heart beat erratically, skipped beats at times. His palms sweated. What was different about the overall look of the chair? Why did it seem that something fundamental had changed, but he couldn’t see what it was?

Moving closer, Matt wiped his damp palms on his jeans. Those tiny faces were smiling. The smiles, plainly visible in the bright light, looked scary. They were smiles that said those little demon-like faces were hiding something monumental, something Matt would never ever be able to understand. Not liking the way those faces and smiles made him feel, Matt moved on to the armrests and the seat of the chair.

At the place where the armrest connected to the back of the chair, Matt saw a dark splotch. About the size of a pencil eraser and brownish-red. He had cleaned the chair thoroughly before bringing it into the house. How had he missed that? Or, was it new? Scraping at the splotch with his fingernail, Matt detected no raised place as if it might have been a drop of paint, dried there for years. Maybe it was a drop of wood stain. The man who built the chair had made other furniture from wood, so it would be a good guess that the man also used wood stain from time to time.

But it looks like a drop of blood.

Yes, it certainly looked like a drop of blood, dropped there decades ago maybe, and long dried, flaked away, leaving only the stained spot on the wood. A ghostly reminder of whoever had dropped the blood there. Matt didn’t want to think about the tiny stain—whatever it was, it had happened a long time ago. He had missed it when he was cleaning probably because he was excited with his find and was in a hurry to bring it inside to show to Tammy. Nothing more than that.