The Darkest Corners Read Online Free

smile.
    That’s my girl. Open your eyes now. Open your…
    My mum gave a groan. Ameena reached for me, but I pulled away. I stared at the speaker, and I stared, and I stared.
    Wh-where am I? My mum’s voice, shaky and weak.
    Look at me, Fiona. Look at me.
    On the tape, my mum gave a gasp. ‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t.’
    As if echoing me, she cried out, and I could hear all the fear and the panic in her voice. I raised my hands, stabbing them towards the speaker. N-no. Please, no, don—
    â€˜Kyle, no!’ Billy cried.
    â€˜Do it,’ Ameena urged. ‘Shut it up.’
    BANG!
    The speaker exploded before the gunshot had a chance to ring. Before he had a chance to kill her again. The sparks buzzed across my head, then receded again, leaving only the charred remains of the speaker behind.
    â€˜What did you do?’ Billy groaned. ‘What have you done?’
    â€˜Leave it, Billy,’ Ameena said, and this time I let her press her hand against my shoulder.
    A sudden fluttering up by the rafters made us all jump. A small black shape flapped around at the ceiling. We followed its flight until it landed on one of Christ’s outstretched arms. A beady black eye gazed blankly down at us.
    Billy let out a nervous laugh. ‘God, that nearly gave me a heart attack,’ he breathed. ‘Just a bird.’
    â€˜Not just a bird,’ I said, trying to keep my voice low and controlled. Ameena and I both stepped back, our eyes never leaving those of the bird. ‘It’s a crow.’
    Billy shrugged. ‘So? What’s so bad about crows?’
    â€˜Obviously you’ve never met the ones we’ve met,’ Ameena told him.
    And he hadn’t. He hadn’t been there at Marion’s house when the Crowmaster attacked. He hadn’t seen Marion’s skeletal remains, the skin, muscle and sinew torn off by a murder of flesh-eating crows.
    But I had seen it. And it was something I’d never be able to forget.
    â€˜He’s dead, isn’t he?’ Ameena whispered.
    â€˜No,’ I said. ‘He died here in the real world. That means he was reborn over there.’
    â€˜Oh, now that’s just cheating,’ she protested.
    â€˜No argument there,’ I said. The bird wasn’t moving, just watching us in silence. ‘I couldn’t agree more.’
    â€˜What’s the problem?’ Billy asked. ‘However mean and scary you say it is, it’s just one bird.’
    The cries of the screechers were louder than ever. The table and pews groaned against the floor as they were pushed back.
    â€˜No,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s never just one bird.’
    And then, in a heaving torrent of squawking black, the space inside the church was torn in two.

W e ran for cover as the crows came. 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.
    â€˜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. ‘You thought that your nightmares was over, but, boy,