Toads in the road

Turning left from Old Road Bwlchgwyn at the Moors Inn onto the road that takes you over the Llandegla moors, a road which I travel everyday going to and from work, the sign I see every day shone brightly in my head lights. Toads in the Road, but this time there was, they were all over the road and something I wasn’t expecting either. Because the road adhered to the national speed limit of sixty miles an hour and because I am supposed to use this speed guidance as a ceiling not a target or even, as was this case, something I can excessively beat I put my foot down. Tonight like any other night the road was deserted, really everyone was either in their own homes or out at a Halloween party and this is where I was travelling back from. Being the designated driver and having two friends who seemed to want to drink to excess early in the afternoon we made our way back home what could be to some early.

23.33 flicked over on the back lit standard green display when the car started to slide. It was a dry night and the moon was surrounded by every star visible in the northern hemisphere twinkling like a sheet of cheap Christmas lights. I was confused trying to keep control of the car when it turned sideways and gained purchase on the tarmac before flipping violently on its side and slid. Every airbag in the car inflated with the bang of the small explosive charges, a sharp smell of fireworks and the smoke from the charges filled, the out of control, car and it hit tarmac again. When this second impact came, the windows on the road side of the car shattered into small square safety cubes. Sparks emitted from the scraping roof bars until they got caught in one of last winter’s pot holes and the car started to roll over and over. Every single bit of dust, piece of paper, chewing gum wrapper and all other things that are strewn around a car started to tumble around with the small glass cube and as the other side of the car smashed on the road so did the windows on that side. More small safety cubes of glass were added to the spin cycle and mixed with all the other rubbish as the car was spinning and tumbling down the road.

The car settled about one hundred yards down the road in the trees at the start of the forest. I am not sure how long I was knocked out for but I woke upside down being held safely in place by the seat belt and the now deflated airbag pouches all around me. I wasn’t actually feeling any pain, that was until I release the seat belt and gravity took a hold of me and I fell onto the ceiling of the car. Gathering myself up I reached to the dashboard to my phone where the satnav app was indicating I was off track and need to turn around. I found the button to turn on the flash light and the upturned inside of my card the shrouded in the green glow light it was throwing out. My green glow disoriented vision realised I was facing straight out of the windscreen of the car and I turned to see the back seat and check on my friends but they weren’t there.

I pulled my way out falling in a pile on to the pine needle covered soil and used the tree that had broken the momentum of the tumbling car to pull myself to my feet and searched around the car but they were nowhere to be seen. I looked around from a stationary position and saw the wreckage all down the road, the moon highlighted the white lines and a small areas of the tarmac in a brilliant chromium white. Now I walked, following the wreckage back down the road, I was startled when I heard a solitary squawk coming from the edge of the forest. Sat to attention on a fence post just when the deciduous trees ended and an open but newly planted field of trees started.

Passed the crow I could see a fiery glow in the trees a couple of hundred yards up into the forest. I climbed the fence near where the crow was standing expecting it to see me as a threat to it but it never moved. Instead it let out a long screeching squawk followed by a small amount of little squawks. I didn’t really think much of that until there was what seemed like a distant reply, more squawks coming from the direction of the orange glow ahead of me. I stopped when I heard this reply and stayed there rooted until I was brought back to life by the flapping of the wings from the near distance behind me as the sentry crow took off a flew passed me very quickly and it was so close that it’s wings actually made contact with my head. This contact made me even more scared than I was prior to it happening and I dropped to the ground and shielded myself from anything else that may want to try and do the same.

From my crouched position I caught a glance of where the fiery glow was coming from and I could see that the glow was coming from a fire and it seems to be in a clearing in the trees and there was movement around the clearing. I stood up and ran as quietly as I could with high expectations to find my two intoxicated friends playing silly games around the camp fire in the post party and post car crash state.

I reached the edge of the clearing and I could feel the heat from a large camp fire hit my cheeks but I wasn’t greeted by two idiots dancing naked around a fire in the middle of a cold autumn night but there in the clearing there were more crows. I scanned the area before moving away and I could see on the far side of the fire was two solid trunks of wood standing bolt upright to about eight feet high. I moved further around and realise that there was rope draped over the top of each trunk and it was pulled taught. Tripping over my own feet I fell to the ground and got a view of one of my friends he was tied up in between the two up rights and from my position I could see that he was so close to the fire he was cooking.

My fall didn’t go un noticed and just a few feet away from me was yet another crow, it looked at me and then threw its head back and let out an ear piercing squawk and on hearing this from about 4 feet away another looked up and did exactly the same thing, threw its head back and squawk, this was then followed by every other crow around and after just a few seconds they all stopped and then simultaneously they all took off flying around in a big circle climbing higher and higher until they were well over the tree line and stayed in their formation.

Picking myself up I ran into the clearing and right up to the far side of the fire. Jasper was hanging naked tied by both hands and feet. Closer inspection showed that he wasn't so much tied as he had pipes through his lower arms and upper legs with harsh rope fed through the pipes and then tied straight through. The pipes through his arms must have been implanted through the gap between the radius and ulna using this to take the entire weight without being torn out from the soft fleshy skin and muscle surrounding the bones in the lower arm. The legs however seemed like they didn't need to be there as there was a single rope tied to the posts on either side and fed tightly through both rings.

The skin on Jaspers back was bubbling and being burnt badly by the furious heat coming from the fire I stood on the other side of him and looked up to see his hanging head and it wasn't until now I became scared for my own life. In the outskirts of my vision, far above my head I could see the circling crows but could only hear the violent crackling of the fire. I looked directly up to the crows and thought how Jasper was strung up like this, the crows wouldn’t be able to do it and how long was I unconscious in the car. As I looked around the clearing and my glance darted passed Jaspers strung body his eyes were open and his head upright this caught me complete unawares and the shock and fear threw me back and I landed heavily on a fallen stump, "Go now" Jasper said, "Go now before he comes."

I fell back further until I was on my back and trying to hide as much of myself behind the log, "GO NOW, OR YOU WILL BE LIKE THIS" Jasper shouted with more urgency than someone who wasn't in the position he was, saliva and blood spat from his mouth as he shouted and his voice stopped but he still seemed to be shouting. He sharply turned his head upwards and the circling crows way out in the sky all came down and slammed hard into jasper, the poles and a large area around him. The initial impact created a shock wave that threw me and the log and everything that wasn't rooted ten feet or so I hit a tree with what I initially thought was a back breaking impact but I fell to the floor and moved only to be struck by the log as it too landed on my right leg as I was trying to get up and away. The searing pain I felt as I was lucky enough to pull it free before the log settled was joined by an unnatural cracking of bones as my leg folded sideways from just above the knee.

In the clearing more and more crows were plummeting to where Jasper was and the early arrivals were tearing scorched flesh and muscle away from my friend. More and more crows filled the space until the outsides burst into flames and the inferno took hold these devil birds. The fire spread quickly around and engulfed everything including what was left of Jaspers remains.

Just as suddenly as it had spread across all the crows all the flames were extinguished somehow and everything went dark and a noticeable silence took hold. The pain in my leg was shooting and as I caught my breathe it took hold and I broke the silence with a scream, a guttural scream of shear pain that rivalled that of the commotion and blood curdling noises of flesh and bones being torn hectically away from a human being by savage crows.

The embers or the fire took hold to whatever hadn't yet burned away and a small flame danced in the centre of the clearing. Through the tears streaming out of my eyes I could start to make out the shadows cast on the trees on the far side of the clearing and saw that there was no longer Jasper strung up, there weren’t even the two posts that he was strung up from. The whole area looked like in was a Sunday school camping trip but everyone was in the woods collecting more wood for the fire. The flames playfully took hold over more un-burnt wood in the fire and the flames grew and the flickering light cast out was going to be enough for me to painfully get away from there and back to the road.

I dragged myself back towards where I had come into the clearing only fifteen or twenty minutes earlier and as I entered the clearing by where jasper was I noticed a figure, a dark hooded figure sat next to the fire. Just sat there, sat there warming him or herself. I remembered thinking to myself it is at this point everyone in those cheap made for television movies thinks that salvation has arrived and they are there to help. I however thought that the vision of someone in a hooded cloak out in the middle of the woods sat next to a fire after what I had just witnessed was far too sinister so I tried my best to crawl away as quietly as I could but the pain I was feeling from my limp and dragging leg was so bad I thought that even the deaf would have been able to hear me.

I stopped sharply as I heard a relatively quiet, "Squawk" from the other side of the fire. My breathing rate increased and I could feel the temperature drop. I looked slowly over to the fire and the hooded thing was still sat there motionless, again a quiet squawk was in the air. Pulling myself as hard as I possibly could I look back to the fire and the hooded figure was no longer there. The fear grew within me and this spurred me back to getting out of there. Reaching the edge of the clearing I pulled myself to stand on my good leg. The wall plus a good hop will mean I can get the one hundred or so yards back to the road quite quickly.

Squawk, louder and more definite this time, I couldn't make out where it was coming from. I glanced back to the fire and it was clear. Picking up the pace as much as I could I pulled myself along and hopped as best I could along that wall back to the road. In my haste I felt a pain that any one person should never be subjected to as I caught the top part of my injury on a dislodged stone in the wall. My dangling leg kicked my other leg and I fell to the floor and the pain shot right through my body, I reached down to the main area of the pain and I felt sharp bone and the dampness of blood oozing out of the open wound.

From above me I could hear the loud flapping, round and round until a quiet rushing of a large falling object and then an impact of two feet on stone, wood and mulching mud. A large hand grabbed me on one of my shoulders and picked me up roughly. I was man handled up to the head height and looking as the shadowy figure I saw what looked like a hood, the silent figure from the fire, back in the clearing. I was shaking up and down and then stopped but the hood wasn't a hood at all and the cloak wasn't a cloak either. From behind the figure opened two large black feathery wings that it gently flapped as if it was either getting ready to take off or fanning the flames of hell until from the field the other side of the stone wall was a I heard the shouts of quite a few people I looked over and saw what could only be described as a small army or a large village. The thing that held me turned its head to look over to them and for the first time I saw the silhouette of a black beak and the bleak feature of a man crow, crow man, a damn big crow. 

The thing dropped me to the floor and I fell on top of the dry stone wall. The garrison cracking of many guns echoed throughout the hills and across the moors. There was no large falling of a massive crow like thing to the ground but instead the disassembling of a forest full of crows flying up into the free sky and the gun fire continued and the thud thud thud of the dead bodies of normal hell raising crows fell in the fields, trees and even on the road.

A head appeared over the wall and I looked up to see my other best friend the other member of our exciting party night out and the other survivor of the horror that this Halloween has turned into. But it turns out that this wasn't the first time this has happened. I was transported back to the pub up the road on the corner and it's original name was The Moors Watcher and it was built to keep an eye out over the moors for the Crow Master who comes out once a year to feast on whatever and whoever it can.