on the highway, we sat in silence for a moment, blinking, as if we had
awakened from a dream.
Mom, I love you, and I always will. But what the hell were you thinking?
Sasha shifted gears and drove forward.
Mungojerrie made that sound of loathing again. He changed positions in
my lap, so his forepaws were on the door, and he gazed out the side
window, at the dark fields into which the serpent horde had slithered
toward whatever oblivion it was seeking.
A mile later, we reached Crow Hill, beyond which Doogie Sassman should
be waiting for us. Unless the snakes had crossed his path before they
crossed ours.
I don’t know why Crow Hill is named Crow Hill. The shape of it in no way
suggests the bird, nor do crows tend to flock there more than elsewhere.
The name isn’t in honor of a prominent local family or even a colorful
scoundrel. Crow Indians are located in Montana, not California.
No crowfoot grows there. And history has no record of braggarts
regularly trekking to the top of this mound to gloat and boast.
At the crown of the hill, an enormous outcropping of rock rises from the
surrounding gentle contours of the loamy land, a solitary gray-white
knob like a partially exposed bone in the skeleton of a buried behemoth.
Carved on one face of this monument is the figure of a crow, which is
not, as I once thought, the source of the name. Crude but intriguing,
this carving captures the cockiness of the bird yet somehow has an
ominous quality, as though it is the totem of a murderous clan, a
warning to travelers to find a route around their territory or risk dire
consequences. On a July night forty-four years ago, the image of the
crow was scored into the stone by a person or persons unknown.
Until curiosity had led me to learn the origins of the carving, I’d
assumed that it dated from another century, that perhaps it had been
chiseled into the rock even before Europeans set foot on this continent.
There is a disquieting aspect to the image of the crow, a quality that
speaks to mystics, who have been known to travel considerable distances
to view and touch it. Old-timers say this place has been called Crow
Hill since at least the time of their grandparents, however, and
references in time-yellowed public records confirm their claim. The
carving seems to embody some primitive knowledge long lost to civilized
man, yet the name of the hill predates it, and evidently the anonymous
carver meant only to create a pictorial landmark sign.
This image was not like the bird on the message left with Lilly Wing,
except that both seemed to radiate malevolence. As Charlie Dai had
described them, the crowsor ravens, or blackbirds left at the scenes of
the other abductions were also unlike this carving. Charlie would have
remarked on the resemblance if there had been one.
Nevertheless, the coincidence was creepy.
As we approached the crest, the crow in the stone appeared to be
watching us. The raised planes of the bird’s body reflected white in the
headlights, while shadows filled the deep lines that had been cut by the
carver’s tools. This was a colloidal stone, and chips of some shiny
aggregate perhaps nuggets of micawere scattered through it. The carving
had been artfully composed to position the largest of these chips as the
eye of the bird, which was now filled with an imitation of animal
eye shine and with a peculiar quality that some visiting mystics insist
is forbidden knowledge, although I’ve never understood how an inanimate
hunk of rock can have knowledge.
I noticed that everyone in the Expedition, including the cat, regarded
the stone crow with an uneasy expression.
As we drove past this figure, the shadows in the chiseled lines should
have shrunk from us in the rapidly diminishing light, as the entire
carving settled into darkness. But unless my eyes deceived me, for an
instant the shadows elongated, violating the laws of physics, as if
trying to follow the light. And as the crow disappeared into the night
behind us, I could have sworn the shadow pulled loose of the stone and