They surged in their hundreds through a hole in reality itself, filling the church with the thunder of their wings. Ameena pulled me down behind a pew as Billy took cover behind the one across the aisle. The crows were a dark tornado around us, squawking and cawing as they circled the inside of the church. A figure stepped through the cloud of birds, short and stocky, his face hidden beneath a rough brown sack. Back at Marion’s house the Crowmaster had been revealed as nothing more than a little man called Joe Crow, who liked to dress in a scarecrow costume. The costume was gone now, but Joe was doing everything he could to maintain the Crowmaster act. ‘I see you, boy,’ he said. His voice was still like fingernails down a blackboard. The tattered eyeholes in the sack turned in my direction. I raised my head to reply, but a crow swooped down at me, forcing me to duck again. ‘You thought you’d seen the last of the Crowmaster,’ he said, and then there was that laugh of his again, audible even over the screechers and the birds: SS-SS-SS-SS.
