I had taught my crow to speak and now he rested with mended wing upon my shoulder.

Having left the dead body upon the trail, I felt sick in my soul. It wasn't exactly easy, despite my coldness in acting it out. I had murdered him and now I had an even greater responsibility. I had to find a way back to my own path.

"Which way do we turn?" I asked Cory, the crow upon my shoulder.

"How should I know, my Lord?" Cory looked back the way we had come.

"I want to turn myself in." I said, feeling nauseated at the fading adrenaline. I only wanted to escape the fear of Man's justice. I'd acted according to what I knew was right. At least, that is what I had thought I had done. It had never occurred to me that Khurl could do more inside my head than just cloud it. Had she compelled me to commit murder? I decided not. It was going to be my responsibility. Whether it was right or not could not solve the crisis, of feeling that I now owed a debt.

As I once stated in my own words: "These hath given me life, and for death, life is but the knowledge."

But such words did not comfort me. I opened the wallet with my sleeves and looked at his I.D. and memorized it before I stole the money. Then I simply discarded the empty husk onto the path where it would forewarn of his mortal coil as it cooled eternally. Unless his family decided to cremate him.

I found my way there and camped in a house marked by the Sheriff. It was a former meth lab and nobody dared. Well, except me, I am still somebody, even if I am to be known as a murderer. I meant to make that so: by watching over his family for now.

"Would he have loved them again, in time?" I asked Cory. I was looking at his family as the police delivered the news.

"Would Amityville love them again, in time?" Cory asked me back and clicked a reprisal into my ear before adding: "In time, all things do come to be. Death will always happen."

"Are you saying he might have killed them?" I wondered. This made me feel slightly better, somehow, about murdering John.

"You might have killed him. I asked you, 'will he die?' and you did." Cory recalled. He wasn't really happy about it either. It had changed our path.

I left to buy some food and discovered that the police wanted to talk to me already.

"I am Detective Winters. I heard you are new to the neighborhood. Do you travel around on foot, a lot?" Detective Winters never blinked or took his eyes off of me.

"Yes." I told him nervously. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"Do you live here?" He pointed to the boarded up meth lab with the Sheriff's signs marking it off limits. I just nodded. "And you want to be helpful, is that it?"

"I'd like to be helpful." I promised. I worried he would ask me about the murder I'd committed. Fear started to slowly rise as I anticipated this change in the conversation. He lit a cigarette with a zippo that was low on fuel and muttered about quitting soon.

"Got someone murdered. This guy is dead. Thing is, we can't figure out how he made his way down there or anything. Maybe you could help us figure out what he was doing down in the Rust Pond." Detective Winters blew smoke at me.

"You found him in the Rust Pond?" I asked, hearing the surprise and strangeness of my own voice.

"Like we should have found him somewhere else." Detective Winters nodded appreciatively. He thought for a moment and finished his smoke very quickly before he raised one foot and put it out on the bottom of it. He flicked the butt away and spat. Then he looked at me and stared like that for a long awkward moment.

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"So?" I asked, sweating.

"Nevermind that. I am interested in your help, for now." He gestured for me to follow him and I clicked and my crow hopped up along the path behind us. Cory said:

"This man is strange. He wants nothing from you and asks you for something." Cory got onto my lap as I sat in the back of his car. My groceries were next to me and I started eating in his car. I fed some bologna to Cory.

"That thing sounds like it is talking." Detective Winters lit a smoke with his car's lighter and then rolled down his window to blow out the smoke.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"I want to show you what I mean, and see what you think." Detective Winters told me. "Also I really like you. I think we should stay really close for now, like closer than friends. I will get you a hotel room and we can eat lunch together every day. How's that sound?"

"I'd rather not." I replied.

"I will pay for lunch. This is not negotiable, my friend who is closer than a friend." Detective Winters swore like and oath, in his voice, as he said those words looking at me in the rearview mirror.

"I guess I should value your friendship." I complained.

"I guess you should." Detective Winters agreed.

We went behind the police tape. The Rust Pond was miles from where they had found the body of the man I'd killed. Detective Winters said:

"We had to use ladders, ropes." He pointed to how they had gotten to the body. "He didn't fall. He was down there doing something."

"I will show you." I felt confident there was a trail. I left them and listened and felt Cory's guidance, purrs and clicks and soft nudges of his feet. He was very nervous for some reason.

"Must go now." Cory spoke as we went down the trail he had found. Detective Winters was following us along with another policeman.

"We must help them." I told Cory. We found the Rust Pond, emerging from behind some bushes from the polluted barrens beyond.

The body was still there, covered now. White ash was in patterns on the blacked carpet of rotting leaves where the water level had drawn lower. The slick and foul smelling wetness greeted us rather than the body. No flies had come here.

"He was casting a spell." I told Detective Winters and pointed at the white ash circle.

"Do you know how he died?" Detective Winters asked.

I did not and so I just stood there and said nothing. The other policeman wandered nearer to the body and looked at the strange white ash circle. We were alone down there. They were getting ready to remove the body, but we were alone with it, beneath the lights and ladders.

"His soul is trapped, my Lord. He has done a great evil. It was his way to silence it with magic, but instead he woke it up. It remains, lingering and hungering for revenge, indiscriminately." Cory told me as he hopped around on the ground anxiously. I held perfectly still.

My hand was aching and there was no mist. Something was very wrong here. I tried not to move any part of myself. Cory flitted to my shoulder and tried to remain as still as I.

Detective Winters walked around us and looked at us and around. It was particularly dark in that shaded place, thus the usage of the lights from above. There was no way out except the path through the bushes and barrens back to the top. That or the ladders.

Something besides us was breathing and its breath was an unnatural fog. I could feel it. Terror seized my heart as I knew the presence of some unnatural and bloodthirsty thing. Something dead he had woke up, Cory had said. Apparently the trapped soul had confessed everything to my bird.

"What is that? Hands up! Show me your hands!" The policeman was yelling at something lurking just out of sight, in the darkness. It lunged at him and he shrieked and fumbled with his firearm, dropping it. As he went to his knees, under its strength, I saw it and my blood froze. It was choking him between its bone fingers and its bare skull's grin held no mercy for the living. It dropped him lifelessly with his throat crushed and looked up at me with eyeless sockets.

"Officer down." Detective Winters drew his weapon and shot the skull apart and off with the thing's right arm. The torso flailed forward, coming now for Detective Winters.

"Agitate the circle of ash." Cory advised me. I stepped forward and used my foot to ruin the spell. Two more gunshots blew apart the remains of the skeletal horror and it collapsed into a heap near Detective Winters.

"That's what killed the victim. My crow says it was angry with him for murdering it and burying it here. He woke it up while trying to silence it, using magic." I told him after we had climbed the ladders back out.

"I've only got enough on me for McDonald's" Detective Winters took me to his car and left me there while he went and debriefed someone. I eyed the wreckage of my groceries I had snacked on while we drove here. Cory was hungry too. Our new friend came back after awhile.

"I like happy meals." I told him from the backseat.