Scared Crow - Chapter 1

‘Come with me’

It was late autumn. Thick, clammy mist hung low over the country and made the forest trees look as if they were floating in empty space. In the middle of the field, a large puppet stood on a stick. The loose rags barely covering it were idly moving in the wind alternately rushing or fanning over it.
The wind was cold and sharp. The girl stood watching as the crows flew around or sat on the puppet and wondered why it was supposed to scare them. It didn’t work after all, did it?
On her way back to the city it started to snow.
She shivered and wrapped her jacket tighter around herself. Branwen always was cold, but today – and not only because it was snowing – she felt much colder. Her fingers were stiffer, her breath was harder to take and her skin felt dried out. She assumed it was because of the harsh weather changes they were experiencing.
One day it was hot like summer and you could walk around in a shirt and the next it was raining or even sleeting.
In no time at all, she was covered in snow.
There was hardly a soul out on the streets and those who were kept running into her. She was used to this, as she was very small and undistinguished. Nobody could guess from her outside what Branwen was, what she did at night, when everything changed into something unexpected and sometimes unknown.
With her unsatisfying, underpaid job at AURORA Inc. she had no choice but to live a double life as an outcast.
Well, she considered, her wretched job was not the only reason for that change in her dismal life. The other – she could not decipher from her mind whether it was the more crucial – was, of course, Jason.
He was her unrequited love. One of the biggest arseholes you could think of, and Branwen was not in love with him anymore. But that did not change the fact that he still was partly responsible for her failure.
Thinking of him made her feel furious inside and she thought that her insides started boiling. It certainly seemed so, because the snow started melting on her, making her soaked through and cold.
A sound from a dark corner made her stop. She turned to look around. The sound had been a soft, but miserable, heart wrenching miaow. She crouched and saw the little black cat sitting between two dustbins shivering harder than she did.
‘Hell,’ Branwen said softly. ‘My poor little dear...’
She got down on her knees and stretched out her cold, half-frozen fingers to greet the cat. The tomcat came towards her, licking her fingers. Its tongue was warm, blissful.
Branwen felt her mind getting fuzzy and before she realised what was happening, the cat had turned into a man. She fainted...

Well, she hadn’t actually fainted. She just retreated into her mind. But her mind wasn’t the place where she could hide from that assaulter. She knew she had left, but the man was still standing in front of her.
‘Branwen,’ the man said in a distant voice.
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t have done if she wanted to. She felt as if her tongue had seized up.
‘Come with me,’ he continued. He didn’t actually sound mean or threateningly. Rather more like friendly, but sad.
Branwen gulped, cleared her throat, and said in a terrible hoarse voice: ‘Whereto, Mr ...?’
‘I’m Gabriel.’
‘That’s what I thought ...’ she remarked sarcastically, impressed by her own daring.
The archangel Gabriel. Who would have thought that people were so goddamn crazy...? On the other hand, if she wasn’t imagining things: Gabriel had been a cat and had transformed into the man who was standing in front of her now.
‘Come with me,’ he repeated more urgently stretching out his hand without trying to touch her.
She reflected that she had done the same thing earlier and he had reacted by licking her fingers. Was she supposed to do it, too? she thought amused. But she kept that one to herself.
‘Why?’ she said instead, not pressing him to get an answer for her first question.
‘Why do you still roam the streets you should have left yesterday? Nobody came to fetch you. He had grown quite impatient, so He sent me for you... Branwen.’
She felt like crying. She knew what he meant, but she didn’t want to believe.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you not know that you have died?’
Branwen fell to her knees again. ‘Impossible!’

Before her mind’s eye someone, probably Gabriel, brought the image of a small, pallid body. The dead girl was wearing nothing but a white nightdress and her skin was the same colour as the snow. Blood was oozing from out of the back of her head. She was lying in the dark courtyard beneath an open window on the eighth floor.
She had been dead for a while now. The cold had conserved her body and it hadn’t been discovered yet.
Branwen touched her own ashen, dead face. It was cold and dry.
Behind her she could hear Gabriel’s footsteps. She stood up and turned around, hot, angry tears pouring down her face. The angel silently held out his hand again.
‘I have been murdered,’ she stated.
He shook his head. ‘I would call it an accident.’
‘Who has thrown me out of my window?’
‘You must have fallen.’
‘No. That is not true.’
‘Come, Branwen...’
Branwen looked down at her body. Her eyes were wide open and glassy. But the expression on her face was fear. And not fear of the impact. She had been dead before she hit the ground.
‘I don’t remember...’ she said slowly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t remember what happened. I didn’t know I was dead. You were confused yourself,’ she turned around. ‘Something isn’t right...’
‘Branwen...’
‘I need to find out.’
‘Branwen...’
She took several steps away from him but he did not follow. He looked pleadingly; he couldn’t force her.
‘I will return.’
She turned around and ran away.
Gabriel looked after her, shaking his head. He unfolded his wings, which had been hidden beneath his jacket until now, and soared up into the air. He would not be pleased, but maybe He could understand it more than he himself did.