“Yes, of a sort. You look at me like I’m insane, my dear, and maybe I am, but I saw things. Awful things visited upon those who were not loyal to the family that had given them life and breath and allowed their children to grow strong and vital. I saw these things. However it could be, it was. That dark machinery up at the factory was still turning out figures of a sort and one by one, those in the town below became those figures or were replaced by them until there were no people left… just walking dolls.”
“Then there was the fire.”
Mrs. McGuiness looked pained by that. “Yes, they said it started in the town and burned its way right up to the factory and when it was done, Stokes was a gutted ruin of black trees and standing chimneys, cinders and wreckage blown by ash. But what was up in that factory, what had been Mother Crow, was still up there, something that fused itself with the machinery, something so powerful it remade the town in its own ideal image and now and again, it needed people. People like you. Because that’s the key to it, my dear. You and your friends, you don’t have to die or let them horrors run you ragged and suck the spirit out of you. Stop fighting. Settle in as I have. Accept things and be part of the Mother and her town and she will provide all that you will ever need or want.”
Ramona just sat there.
She had no voice to speak with. It was all bullshit. Not that she didn’t believe it was true, but the very idea behind it was mad bullshit. Did old Mother Crow really think she could suck people into this netherworld and they would be content to live in the graveyard of Stokes and accept what she offered and make homage to her, their bright and shining fairy queen who guaranteed a happy ending each and every time? Fucking madness. That’s what it was. Ramona was more intent than ever to get up to that factory and sort this out.
“I’m not about to accept this,” she said, “and neither would anyone else in their right mind. Mother Crow or whatever she now is has to be stopped. This insanity has gone far enough. Who the hell did she think she was? Who gave her the right to own those people?”
That darkness passed over Mrs. McGuiness’s face, but this time it stayed like shadows creeping in at twilight. It darkened the wrinkles and ruts of her face, casting gray pools under her eyes, which were no longer that striking perfect blue, but yellow and runny like the yolks of poached eggs.
The monster was nearly out.
“She did everything for them! While they slept, she toiled! While they prospered, she bled! They were her wheat and she treated them lovingly and with great care, scything the weeds that grew up around them! There was no sacrifice too great for Mother Crow! And she only asked for loyalty and… and obedience! And these were hers by birthright! By who she was and what she was and the name she carried and the family she was born into!”
Mrs. McGuiness was standing now and her sallow lips had pulled away from long graying teeth in a sour grin.
“They worked their shifts! Eight to four and four to midnight and midnight to eight, oh yes! But she worked them all until there was no separation from her and the factory and the town itself! All in one and she wanted them to understand that nothing is free! That everyone must sacrifice and everyone must suffer for the good of all and in the end, we are all owned! Do you hear me, you silly little twat? In the end, we are all owned!”
Ramona was on her feet now, too.
She let Mrs. McGuiness rant because there was no talking a zealot out of their beliefs. Mother Crow, while she lived, sounded like the dark lord of all micro-managers and control freaks. She probably drove people away with her obsession and misguided attention to small, meaningless details. They called it bossitis, Ramona knew. That was when a boss felt he or she had to work more hours than their employees to prove that they were sacrificing so much more and working so much harder. But as their employees soon learned, the more said boss worked, the less he or she got done and it was all just an excuse to hide their rampant OCD, which demanded that they oversee every meaningless detail that could have easily been taken care of by their employees. She had worked for a man like that once. Like most bosses of that stripe, he was suspicious and paranoid by nature, believing that his employees were trying to fuck him but there was really no need since he was fucking himself so damn hard.
“I’m leaving now,” Ramona told her.
“YOOOUUU ARE NOT GOING ANYWHERE!”
As Ramona stood there, Mrs. McGuiness got louder and louder, her voice scraping and screeching like a reed instrument being played with a sawtoothed file: “A WHORE like YOU cannot understand the responsibility of Mother Crow and what she did and what she must do to maintain this town! YOU do not know the suffering and torment and anguish of birthing this town whole again! YOU cannot see nor feel that the blood of Stokes is her blood! That it is her child that she brooded and nurtured and will never EVER let go of! YOU are nothing but a synthetic little whore like your entire generation! VIPERS! WHORES! COCK-WHORE! WITCH-WHORE! SLUT-WHORE! USER AND TAKER AND ABUSER! YOU DO NOT SEE THE PURITY OF MOTHER CROW’S VISION! YOU CANNOT SHARE IN THE BEAUTY OF WHAT SHE HAS MADE! LIKE ALL THE REST! VERMIN! YOU ARE—”
“Shut up!” Ramona shouted at her. “YOU… JUST… SHUT THE FUCK… UP!”
As she tried to pass, Mrs. McGuiness, who didn’t exist now and probably never had, gripped her by the arm and in that instant it felt like something exploded inside of Ramona. Her head was filled with glaring light and fireworks and hot steam. This was not Mrs. McGuinness just as she had suspected all along, it was Mother Crow, a projection of Mother Crow, who still brooded up in the ruined factory like a tick on a blood-filled artery, like a rat in a bone pile. This was her. And Mother Crow knew that she knew and the understanding that flashed between them was not mutually advantageous, but mutually destructive because they both saw the power and wrath of one another and shrank in fear and rose up in anger. Ramona felt like an expanding bag of hot blood that might burst at any moment. The realization that she was being touched by the parasitic horror that engineered this nightmare was almost enough to make her scream.
In fact, it did make her scream.
And as she screamed, she yanked her arm free, very aware of the fact that where Mother Crow/Mrs. McGuiness had gripped her was now cold and numb and that pretty much said all that needed saying about the leech herself.
As Mother Crow’s anger spiked, the house began to tremble and the wind, which had been nonexistent, began to whip outside, moaning at the windows as if it was in pain. For a moment or two, it almost seemed like the house was wavering slightly in and out of reality, shifting between solid and something far less substantial than a gas. The spell of Mother Crow was either weakening or she was tiring of putting forth the massive mental/psychic energy of making Stokes real.
“YOU’LL GO NOWHERE!” she shrieked at Ramona. “NO ONE LEAVES UNTIL THE MOTHER ALLOWS! NOT NOW AND NOT BEFORE, YOU CUNTING LITTLE WHORE! YOU FILTHY DIRTY LEG-SPREADING COCK-EATING LITTLE TRAMP! YOU HAVE NO SAY HERE! YOU HAVE NO—”
And it was at that moment, as Mother Crow made another grab for her, her eyes wild and her sneering mouth flecked with white saliva, that Ramona swung the flashlight at her face with pure rage. The Ray-O-Vac’s stainless steel shell, heavy with the added dead weight of D-cell batteries, split Mother Crow’s Mrs. McGuiness mask like dry pine. Ramona felt it sheer through the mask and then imbed itself into something soft and pliable just beneath.