Free The Autumn Castle by Kim Wilkins

hallucinations.
    “Okay then, I’ll come.”
    “Then hurry. I’m catching the ten o’clock bus from Zoo.”
    The sky was dark and heavy outside and Jude muttered about forgetting his umbrella. The bus dropped them off on a busy suburban
     street lined with bakeries and parks. Christine looked around for remembered landmarks.
    “That church was there,” she said. “My street is behind it.”
    “It’s pretty here,” Jude said, following her.
    “Yeah, it always was.” She took him down a narrow side street. The road was cobbled and the gutters filled with leaves. “We
     were only here for just over a year. From ’77 to ’78.” She smiled at him. “David Bowie came over once. I sat on his lap.”
    “Was he a friend of your parents?”
    “Um . . . yeah. They kind of knew everyone.” She paused on the corner. A dark blue Mercedes swept past. “This is the street.”
    “Come on then. What are we waiting for?”
    “Good question.” What was she afraid of? The whole point of coming here was to sort out the memory of the crow once and for
     all. “Jude, do you believe that some things are so disturbing that you can bury them under deep layers and forget them?”
    “Of course. Psychiatrists make their living out of stuff like that. Why, is there something really disturbing on this street?”
    She shook her head. “Not really. I mean . . . I was six . . . seven. Some things get into your imagination and run wild.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Come on,” she said, grabbing his hand and leading him across the road. “I’ll show you.”
    Christine recognized all the houses. Their high-peaked roofs and painted shutters had barely changed in twenty-five years.
     There were more trees than she remembered, more traffic noise in the distance, and lots of cars parked in the street. “That
     one was my house,” she said, pointing out a painted white house with a cobbled path and tidy gardens. “That one was the Friths’.”
     This house was the worse for wear, with an overgrown garden and peeling shutters. “And that window up there . . .” She pointed
     to the window directly under the gable, and found she couldn’t finish the sentence.
    “What is it?” Jude asked. A drizzle had started to descend.
    “That’s where it happened.”
    “What happened?”
    Christine found it hard to begin. Now she had remembered everything, she was experiencing all the childish fear and sadness
     again. “May and I had declared each other blood sisters the day before. My thumb was still hurting when I turned up at her
     place early the next morning. I crashed in as I always did and Mrs. Frith said that May wasn’t awake yet, but that I could
     go up and wake her. It was a Saturday. I raced up the stairs, I had a new book to show her I think . . . or a record to play
     her. My parents were always bringing home records, strange experimental music, but May and I didn’t care what it sounded like.
     We just loved new records, poring over the covers and the inside sleeves and . . . Sorry, I’m rambling.”
    “It’s okay, babe.”
    “So, I knocked gently on her bedroom door and called out to her, then went into her room. She had a fabulous room. She was
     really spoiled and her mother had spent so much time painting her bedroom all these wild colors and with scenes from faery
     tales on the ceiling and . . . anyway, I went in and approached May’s bed. But May wasn’t in the bed. There was something
     else underneath the covers.”
    “What was it?”
    “I called out for May, and I stepped closer to the bed, peering at it. A lump under the blankets moved, too small to be May.
     I must have held my breath a full minute, staring at it, wondering if I’d imagined it moving. Then it stirred again. I reached
     out and flicked back the covers, and a huge, black crow was sitting there looking at me. I shrieked and stumbled back. The
     crow spread its wings and cawed, that awful noise they make . . . I swear it pierced my eardrums.