Feathers

26. Darkness Before The Dawn

They drove back to Enid's house by the light of the almost full moon, in a sleepy two-car train. Michael drove Enid's hatchback, glancing periodically in his rear vision mirror to make sure he could still the headlights from Gretchen's Commodore behind him, while Kobie slept on his shoulder.

As tired as he felt, he was at least managing to keep his eyes open. The promise of being close to solving the puzzle of the Crow was like some sort of adrenaline running through his veins. Apparently not so much for Kobie. He didn't blame her. She'd been through everything that he, Spencer and Gretchen had. But nearly every part of it had been more personal for her.

The Crow had been following her since her birth. The people it killed were her father and her ex-lover. She'd just had buried memories of childhood abuse unearthed. Everything came back to Kobie. The rest of them were being swept up in a storm that had been swirling around her forever.

They pulled up outside Enid's house at 2 am to find every house in the street in darkness, except for a warm glow coming from Enid's bay windows. She must have been waiting up for them because the moment the two cars shuddered into stillness, her wiry frame appeared silhouetted in the window before hurrying to open the front door.

Gretchen and spencer emerged from the darkness looking both as tired and as adrenaline wired as Michael felt.

"Hurry up you lot," Enid whisper-shouted from the doorway, waving them in impatiently.

Michael nudged Kobie up off his shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. He walked around to her side of the car and opened the door, helping her out of the car as she grumbled to herself, only half awake. The four of them struggled up the garden path to meet Enid, who stood smiling down warmly at them, bathed in light like a vision of some elderly badass angel.

Enid led them into the lounge room and the four of them almost immediately collapsed into the couch, gratefully letting their bodies be enveloped by the old lady furniture. Kobie was awake now but still rested her head on Michael's shoulder, breathing deeply and struggling to keep her eyes open. Spencer and Gretchen sat close together in a kind of tangled huddle on the other end of the couch.

Enid sat opposite them in a faded floral print armchair. Between them, on a wood-trimmed glass coffee table lay a large dusty, leather-bound folder. It reminded Michael of his own grandparent's photo albums. But he could see without it even being opened that this wasn't just a photo album. As well as plastic sleeves, the edges of the thing were bursting with thick reams of paper.

Enid must have seen him staring at the folder. She smiled at him as she picked it up and sat it in her lap. She cleared her throat, and began to talk in a way that sounded like she had memorised the words.

"While I certainly went through phases in the last 22 years of denial. Of believing that perhaps I had imagined the horrors of Kobie's birth and her father's death. I also never forgot it. And I never stopped planning for what I knew we would eventually have to do. If my fears came true, and the memories of this demonic entity were in fact real, and not some daft vision that my warped imagination had dreamt up. Well... I knew I would have to be prepared."

Michael's head was swirling, they were straight back into discussions of the Crow. There was no acknowledgement of what just happened with Kobie. Perhaps there wasn't time. Perhaps there was nothing more that needed to be said right now. As she spoke, Enid drummed her fingers on the cover of the leatherbound folder, making a low, rhythmic thrumming sound that underlined her words.

"Prepared for what?" Gretchen asked.

Enid squinted across at her, her gaze steady,

"Prepared to send the demon back to where it came from."