Unbidden

February 29th, 2021,

The black book in possession was bequeathed to Mary; Last Will and Testament of an estranged great uncle. Days earlier she had been ignorant about any surviving family members, both parents having died before she'd been born. Raised in a rural orphanage, the only real family Mary ever knew was her fiancé, Dimitri. Together, they coasted to a stop in their sedan up the drive of the isolated, seaside mansion.

'Quite the estate to leave to an outsider. Mary, I haven't seen report of life for hours,' confessed Dimitri. 'No stores, houses, or people.'

'It's modern,' she replied, seeming not to have noticed his candid admission. 'The letter told us it was hundreds of years old.'

The couple gathered their things, proceeding to the threshold. Mary procured the antiquated brass key, which had come in the wax-sealed envelope of the letter with the notebook. Strangely it fit, that skeleton in the door of the eerily contemporary structure. They went inside.

Within, certainly was not modern. Standing in the vestibule, Mary and Dimitri gazed in bewilderment over the innards of an interior old as Confederation. Woolen rugs, thick velvet curtains and ornate ancestral tapestries. Claw-footed leathern furniture, chesterfields, chaises, divans. Antique spinning wheel, typewriter and cylinder phonograph.

Abrupt, they were greeted by a gaggle of Victorian-dressed children whose faces were screwed up and permanently smiling. Like any youth their hair and dress were disheveled, shirts and blouses stained, faces and hands sticky. The lot of them took Dimitri and Mary under the arms, collected each's belongings, and in a chaotic frenzy delivered them upstairs, the eyes, noses and foreheads betraying strain of the twisted smiles. The bedroom was the only quarters at the end of a long, bland hallway. Once they were delivered, the kids left them to their own haunt's volition.

'Damnit, I forgot my phone in the car,' said Dimitri, as they settled in for the night. 'Should I go get it?'

Mary knew that, just like she did, Dimitri understood they wouldn't be leaving anywhere.

'Let's just go to bed,' she said, holding astray the covers. 'You can get it tomorrow. Close your eyes, you'll soon fall asleep.'

As they did. Morning came swift, they were ushered out of bed by the frenetic orphans. Dimitri found his place in an old study that opened on the kitchen. An endless of pile of parchment letters, tax-forms, page drafts, oversights and invoices littered the desk. He found himself drawn there by ineluctable energies that weren't to be questioned, thus never challenged or wondered about their nature, neither did. It wasn't the role to do so.

Mary tended the children and made a home. She empathized with each's claims, poulticed their wounds, calmed grievances, soothed tempers, heeded demands and fed mouths. It mattered not they lacked any communicative ability to speak, she'd comprehended everything perfectly - their Glasgow grins might've well been sewn and buttoned shut. Everyday as they found themselves baking, pies or cupcakes usually, herself beleaguered by the feverish urchins, she would gaze in on Dimitri.

'Want to come out and play with us, dear?' She'd be relieved from their onslaught only long as they perceived Dimitri instead - who never peered back - hungrily awaiting any type of response.

'I'm a little busy right now, doll. Next time - I promise.'

Days went on like this for weeks or months. Any capacity for reason and analysis faded, the evolutionary prefrontal factors slipping away like a severe coma patient into death. This did not stop spite and frustration from growing in place, burgeoning like inflating balloons that, when risen high enough, couldn't be brought back down.

'What are you talking about?' asked Mary many a time, splitting hairs. 'What crows?!' She'd be lying if pretended that occasionally hadn't heard them. 'Where do they hide - show me! Where are they?!'

'A murder of crows, a murder of crows!' the children repeated, little lobotomized fools, indulging imaginary games in the gallery. 'A MURDER OF CROWS! Murder crows! MURDERS, CROWS! Crowsys.'

With each chorus they would point out the window behind a divan Mary rested on, as they played make-believe. Only, she convinced herself that indeed had heard the birds. But when looking at the glass there wasn't anything. It hadn't taken long after arriving at inherited house and adopted kids to realize nothing moved nor changed past the panes. Outside was false like the smiles, an idle, lifeless portrait of time frozen without.

'Want to come bake with us?' she asked Dimitri in the kitchen while prepping, sensing the madness continually grew - every day their dual, mutual bandwidths became shorter.

'Please, Mary - not now.' He did not return even a glance, so that his cracked eyes might see hers, or notice the horde clambered upon as if she was a playground structure. Colonizing every single piece, fabric, stitch.

Except for one particular afternoon, in lieu he got in a fluster and solely addressed them in a fashion of defensible harassment:

'You vagrants, guttersnipes! Damned entrails! Why don't you go?! Leave her alone - get off of her, you bastards! She isn't a goddamn jungle gym!'

They simply carried on abusing her as deaf infant puppies their bicce mother's teats, outright ignoring Dimitri's bluster, smirks transfixed.

'A murder of crows - A MURDER OF CROWS!' was the only thing they said, all they ever did, laughing hysterically.

All and all, day after day Dimitri carried on sorting, correcting, appraising, a bureaucratic madman. Mary herself grew grim, macabre, fell catatonic, until a time when on the days that they chose to leave bed, necessarily had to say a password of sorts to get past the bedroom door.

'I am ready to work,' uttered Dimitri.

'I am ready to care,' would say Mary.

Their tormented reality was a subtlest form of torture, labour-intensive, repetitive, haplessly manufactured like products of industry.

'Fuck sakes,' growled Dimitri, every night in the bedchamber. 'I still haven't gotten my cellphone, I keep forgetting - I should go get it.'

He didn't. He climbed into bed, fell asleep. Mary remained awake, witnessing the fester of delusions. However, what she saw next knew was not hallucination. Blinds, curtains were up, the grey daylight like that greyness of their lives and selves projecting purgatory back in.

Bodies stood at top of the backyard hill, stiller than stone statues. Before them faced a man, his back to the water. To an extent he pleaded some command, though none moved nor spoke save for one lifting an arm, a finger extended, signaling lowly towards the lake. The man knew there was no choice - Mary realized it must be uncle, former proprietor of homestead. Soon he looked up, offering a cruel, masochistic smile. And then he was sliding, being pulled down the steep decline by an invisible force. He fought wildly against it, grappling with dirt and grass to dig himself back upward. The fellow then disappeared, falling into an unseen, holey chasm.

It made her angry - what had he doing intruding on THEIR property?

One morning they awoke, things feeling askew. Not either of them had attended duties the day prior. Like demented robots they had remained in bed, listless, sitting up or laying down, staring at the vacant ceiling, allowed sleep to take them whenever it offered. Something since had changed.

As they presented their verbal codes, the door creaked open and they stepped into the hall. The landing of the staircase had sealed itself, there was nothing except for an empty hallway, solitude. So Mary and Dimitri went back into the bedroom, resuming functional futility. It did not bother them that the operation was over, occupations stripped away.

The next morning the room was sculpted of glass, the ceiling, floor and walls having become windowpanes where nothing seen moved. At the threshold the door had closed in on itself too, locked, shutting them in. Eventually the walls returned to normal, floor and ceiling as well. No windows. Not even a closet. Only their luggage, beneath the bed.

'We shouldn't have been negligent,' whispered Dimitri, several days later.

Nothing else was ever said between them, save for:

'No we shouldn't have,' answered Mary, weeks gone by.

After some measure a meagre troop of silver trinkets spun on the floor, going around perpetually in a perfect circle, then sometimes concentric. Somedays they were like miniature figurines, other times could take the shape of coins, objects, medallions, et cetera. Mary liked to watch them on the days that they resembled tiny people, like militant nutcrackers champing about straight-legged, rifles poised over shoulders, a perfectly coordinated marching routine. Dimitri leered at a wall, eyes bloodshot lying aside, whilst years past beyond, by and by, as it were.

Dimitri started to rant to himself in psychosis, like some poor soul locked in a sanitarium cell of old. When Mary could no longer stomach, bottled feelings held of sufficient disgust, began searching crazedly for a way out of their incarceration. Condemnation forsaken for hope. She tried shaking him to garner his help, although this yielded zero result - eyes could only vaguely see an outline of Mary's face. With a kiss, assured him that their days of isolated hell were numbered - she'd find a way no matter what.

After a protracted moment pacing bedside, a foot scuffed something lightly underneath. What Mary found was the little black notebook, bestowed unto her by the deceased uncle she never met. The skeleton key fell from its pages as she opened it. This time, unlike when she'd received it, it was not void of writing, as every page was uniformly marked. In messily dredged ink a mere, singular sentence was transcribed:

Give them the key

Mary scrambled to the ground, a hostage in crisis. The metallic bits were shaped into ancient runic symbols. In a moment, they morphed into the tinker tots that she deeply wished for. Standing in front of her, they waited with the unbreakable patience of only programmed intelligence.

She gave them the key and they took it in the manner of a group of people portaging a canoe. The door parted, swung open, across the corridor they went, skeleton key lifted above. At the platform, where the staircase down should be, miniscule ledges emerged from the sealed wall like the columnar steps up a pyramid. Up they went, climbing, carrying, key held taut overhead, and ceasing at the center when there were no more stairs.

Together, they pressed the brass body of the skeleton key against the wall. Somehow, magically it took, melting away into the drywall as if it never existed, moulded in gizzard of the morbid house, those dutiful figures dissolving in thin air, shortly afterwards.

When waking it was morning, nature stirred outside the bedroom window, and Mary and Dimitri were as they had been. Hastily they gathered their things, proceeding out the door. It came open fine, slightly stiff, and at the end of the corridor was not a fourth wall though the original stair. What they found was a modern home, a little boring, minimalist. No one was there. Every sign of peculiar mysticism had been tucked to sleep.

She investigated the journal once more, prior to charging the gate - Dimitri waited on eggshells. Therein having appeared was a wad of cash, exactly twenty-grand worth in hundreds, and two further brief prompts:

Get out

Leave the book

Indeed, it would seem they had survived a most disturbing running of the gauntlet, whether supernatural or manmade - time now to flee.

As they finished loading the car and found themselves back in their chic sedan, they looked back at the house once last. It was no longer there, in any case. Dimitri discovered his phone in the glovebox, grabbed it and clicked the home button. Luckily it had battery remaining, still charged. He typed in the passcode, immediately checking the date in the calendar,

March 1st, 2021.