Eye of the Crow by Shane Peacock Read Free Book Online Page A

the blood. Its dark head moves with a different motion. It is doing something with its beak …
digging!
    Sherlock crawls forward. His eyes are becoming more accustomed to the darkness. He can see the spot where the bird was digging just ahead. He reaches it … a rubble of bricks, probably dumped here by a tradesman.
    Something moves, right near his head. He sucks in his breath. It makes a scratching sound.
    A black bird is an arm’s length from his face. It spreads out its torn, evil-looking feathers for an instant, as if to fly. Then it stops and stares at him. He can see the intelligence in its dark eyes. It tips its head, regards him once more, and lifts off.
    It vanishes.
    Sherlock turns back to the rubble and at that instant the fog lifts slightly in the alleyway, the moon shines through, and he sees something. It glitters in the stones.
    Something shiny.
It is nearly buried. He moves a crumbling brick.
    Then he shudders and almost falls face-first into the rubble.
    It’s a body! And it’s buried under the bricks!
    An eye is staring up at him … a human eye.
    Steeling himself for the sight of a corpse, he takes a deep breath and works as fast as he can, moving more pieces. But the body’s head must be tilted sideways, because no matter how hard he digs, only one eye is evident.
    Then he realizes
exactly
what he has found. It isn’t a corpse. It is
just
an eye. A single human eye is buried in the rubble a half dozen steps from the spot where the woman was murdered.
    Then he realizes something else. It isn’t real. It is a glittering, glass eyeball. Sherlock stares at it. It stares back. Flecks of blood are splattered on the iris. He picks it up.
    Footsteps again!
    He is sure this time. Absolutely sure! And they are coming toward him. He closes his fingers over the eyeball, rises to his feet, and starts to run.
    “Boy!” he hears a gruff voice shout.
    Perched up above in the night, the crow lets out a scream.
    Sherlock runs in the darkness. He hears violins … from another Rossini opera he and his mother have heard many times. They are the galloping, charging, fleeing, escaping violins of
The William Tell Overture.
Sherlock puts his head back, pumps his fists and lets his long legs take him. The music powers him: out the alleyway, past a dark, ghostly man with a gas lamp reaching out to grab him. But Sherlock eludes him and is gone in an instant, around the corner, past a parked black coach on Whitechapel, thendown the street and on the double toward the ancient stone arches of London Bridge.
    “Boy!”
    The cry fades as he flees. He barely notices the night people this time. His mind is fixed on home. He holds the eye tightly in his hand as he sprints off the bridge, through Southwark, away from the street, and onto the lane that leads to the back stairs of the family flat. When he gets there, he goes up three steps at a time.
    Who was that? Who was standing in that alley where the woman was murdered?
    His shaking hands open the door gently. Their home is dead quiet. He calms his breathing, locks the door, slips off his clothes and gets into bed. He tucks the eyeball under his mattress. Despite his excitement he is asleep in minutes. Exhaustion overtakes him.

    Not long afterwards there is a thudding on the door.
    He awakes with a start. At first he turns away, wraps the pillow over his head and tries to convince himself that he is dreaming. No one can be pounding on their door at this hour of the night.
    But within seconds Wilber Holmes is on his feet and advancing toward the sound.
    “Who’s there?” he asks, his voice sounding shaky.
    Sherlock will never forget the response.
    “Police!” comes a thundering voice. “Open up!”
    His father’s answer is almost pleading.
    “What do you want with us?”
    “Open up or we will knock it down, sir!”
    Wilber lets them in.
    A plainclothes detective and two burly constables step heavily into the room. They have solemn looks on their faces, the policemen in