Making It Up As I Go Along #327

MONDAY...
— Quiet day thanks to the rain. Still, we do a baseball game. Rapidz lose 4-3 in 12 innings. It actually stops raining at game time and, after an hour and a half delay, we have a good night for baseball. It ends just before midnight.
— My money in the bank needs a looking at. The website says I have about $1300 more than what printed out at the bank machine.

TUESDAY...
— Canada Day. And I do nothing. Stay home, read on the balcony while getting some sun... do some cleaning up... take a nap... French toast for supper... and watch hockey stuff. Free agency is here and there’s a flurry of activity. Cujo back to Toronto is nice... Montreal losing Streit is too bad.... Vancouver offering $20 million over two years to Sundin is somewhat insane.

WEDNESDAY...
— Back to work. In from 12 to 8 today due to some training. Greek for supper with Melissa and some groceries on the way home.

THURSDAY...
— Physio is looking good. I’d say the hamstring is at about 90% back now. Just got to be careful with the thing. I was at this point ten days ago too, and had a setback.

FRIDAY...
— Up late. I sleep until 10:30. It’s all due to a late night last night. Went for a walk at 1:00. It lasted until 2:00 (I even jogged a few sections to test out the hamstring, and it went well). After that I was wired and up until just after 4:00.
— Supper is Thai food with Megan. Pretty good. I work alone tonight and it’s nice enough. After work I go to the gym in the HQ building and work out my legs (further hamstring work). It’s good... my right leg is a bit stronger than the left still, but hopefully a few more times going next week and I’ll be evened up and the hamstring issues will be over with.

SATURDAY...
— Woke early to the crows. Bloody crows screaming like teenage trouble makers. They were at it before 5:00 AM. I spend a half hour snoozing on the sofa and then head back to bed for a couple of hours when the screaming ends.
— Lazy day after that until going for supper with Karl at 8:00 tonight. Good food and a nice evening at the pub.


Screams From Hell
I’ve only noticed it a few times. Three times in five years. And it’s enough to drive one insane. The screams of a crow reverberate from the pits of hell.

Crows “caw”. We have all heard it and even though it’s not an overly pleasant sound, it’s one that you just pass off without much thought. But there are times when the “caw” is replaced by a literal scream.

The first time I heard it, I was less than a year in the place I currently live in. The neighbourhood was new and I woke at 5:00 in the morning to these horrid screams. My first reaction was to curse the teenagers who had a late night of beer and taken the festivities outside. I wondered if that noise was possibly a bird, but thought it couldn’t be. It sounded too forced to be from anything other than a drunken guy in need of a bat to the back of the head.

Four years have gone by since that early morning wake up. And this week, it happened again. Again I wake to the screams of the crow. This time I knew it to be a crow. I had recently talked with Melissa about the hell screams and she agreed... she’s also heard it. In fact, on our walk around the work complex, while discussing the screaming crows, it happened. And we could see the crow doing the screaming. It chills you to the bone. It’s not natural.

I’ve since thought of this phenomenon and can see how people in small communities could take such events and chalk them up to the supernatural. My father has told me of walking along the dark roads of Joe Batt’s Arm, returning home late at night with only the light of the moon to guide you. And of encounters with horses that are standing in the night, head down for some grass. In the darkness, this figure can seem to be a headless apparition... the vision of which stays with you for the rest of your life.

In cases like this, even though you understand that it was indeed a hungry horse, there’s a little part of you that can’t let go of the headless traveler. It haunts you.

These crow screams could easily be mistaken as unworldly. I could imagine being awakened by them in an outport town some sixty years ago. You would assume that it was a cousin who lives down the street a ways... being foolish with drink. The next day, you’d meet up with them and confront them on their childish ways. And with a confused look on their face, they’d stammer that they thought it was you doing it. Everyone would swear on their mother’s good name that they honestly didn’t go out early screaming into the predawn sky. And the thoughts of ghosts would slowly creep into each person’s consciousness.

Suggestions that the scream sort of sounded like a long past great uncle would come out. A great uncle who often stumbled home around 5:00 in the morning with too much alcohol in the system and a tendency for high pitched yelps in his drunkenness. People would agree that it did indeed sound like him... and the mind would race with the idea that a dead relative is walking the streets yet again, as he did in life.

Or stories of the boy who fell from a cliff two generations ago would resurface. Tales told by grandparents to children around the kitchen would take on unearthly life once again. One would claim that “if I remember right, the anniversary of that boy’s death was this very day, and my grandfather said that when he fell from the cliff, you could hear his scream all the way into town, even though it was a mile away.”

All the while, fear and excitement would fly through the community with reckless abandon while a simple crow sits on the eave of a nearby house, wondering what all the commotion is about.

So I’m left with thoughts today of the crows that have been tormenting me these five years. Could they be a sign of spirits? Perhaps that first one I heard, some five years earlier, wasn’t a crow at all but a disgruntled neighbour leaping from their fourth story balcony to end it all in the early morning hours. And all I could do was mutter obscenities and roll over in bed while they lay broken and dying on the cold morning ground. And the crow of this week is the return of that spirit... because now that I think about it, that first screaming I heard happened about this time of year... and at about the same time in the early morning.

The suburban haunting of Orleans! Where the spirit of the dead comes back to scream again every five years. Some say, if you go to your window to try to see, the spirit will take you and throw you down the four stories to your own death. So if you hear the screams in five years time, cross yourself and pull the covers over your head... you may just possibly make it through the early morning hours and live to see another day.

And all the while, the crows will be sitting on the eaves above us, looking down and wondering what all the commotion is about as we huddle together and discuss the screams that woke us in the cold morning air.