Rayburn's Folly.

For years Clarence Rayburn had heard stories about them that originated on the road of crows, but he had never put much stock in the legends that people shared about the inhabitants of Crows Crossing. his whole life he’d lived in Cantorville, completely alone , a sullen, withdrawn , angry man who seemed to hate life itself, and would often lash out at people who had absolutely nothing to do with his misery. The dreams hadn’t started their haunting of him until he’d lashed out at a eleven year old neighbor boy whom he’d caught throwing bread crumbs on his lawn to try to attract the Crows to Rayburn’s property. He came running from his front porch screaming and yelling like a madman at the boy who was merely in his young mind trying to bring the angry old man some peace and understanding, that only the crows could bring to his miserable life, instead he was met with hostility, profanity and threats of physical violence.



He’d ran from Rayburn’s property crying uncontrollably and scared out of his mind, while Clarence Rayburn stood triumphantly on his front porch smiling from ear to ear at his latest achievement. That night as he lay in bed his eyes closed tightly, as he drifted towards sleep the first vision of Dusk the Crow came for him, with human like eyes it chased him through a grove of trees, as he ran from the large bird. The next night Dusk had sat on the sill outside of his bedroom window, yelling taunts at him about repentance, and when in his sleep he rose to pull back the curtains he saw there the blood red eyes of the crow, and it swooped into the window and was upon him, the sounds of his own screams awoke him, in a cold sweat, he fell to his knees on the floor, and when his panicked eyes searched the room, he’d found himself still alone. But the dreams.. For six months would not relent.

Into madness.




He could have taken them as a sign, he could have taken them as a message, or a warning, but instead, Clarence Rayburn allowed the dreams of the crows, to drive him closer to the edge of madness than he had ever been before. Every waking hour he saw at least one that he thought to be the taunting Crow he’d come to know as Dusk, he saw him everywhere, he could feel his eyes watching, calculating his every move. At times he could be seen on the street yelling at them to leave him be, it wasn’t long before Clarence Rayburn by everyone around him was thought to be losing his grip on reality, until one morning it all came into focus for him, he was going to take his gun and go to Crows Crossing to find the bird and kill it, it would be his only solution for peace. He arrived at what he thought to be the perfect spot at Three Thirty pm on Saturday February 16th. And he loaded the weapon and proceeded into the woods along turn 28 on highway ten.


He could hear it pulling him further into the deepest part of the woods, where he reached the point that he was almost running to the direction of the voice that he was hearing, he hadn’t even seen the tree stump that he tripped over, causing the weapon to discharge a bullet strait into his heart killing him almost instantly. The hikers that found his body two days later had called the sheriffs department, to report what they had found, while they thought it sad, they told the sheriff that they had come to Crows Crossing for a little bird watching, and the Black Crow that they had been following had all but led them to the body. The ambulance doors close, and it slowly pulls away, leaving in its wake yet another restless spirit to find its peace here on Crows Crossing Road.

Scratch. A.B.T. Copyright© 2007