A Murder of Crows

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast Premonitions of Strange disappearance and the Strange Story of a Doll. My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story. A murder of crows. My sister's dog had run into the neighbor's front yard again, and I tried calling it through the fence so she would come back. I grabbed the empty bag of chips I had on the cup holder of the folded chair and made noise with it, looking for the dumb little thing under the car that was on the driveway. The neighbors had this enormous dog, and even though all he did most days was sleep, it still scared me. The one time I heard him bark, it was so deep and loud. I don't know how Rizzy, my sister's dog, was so into going to play with him, knowing full well that all it took was one yawn and it would swallow her whole. I saw its ears turning toward me, running straight for the gap of the fence. But it was then when the other dog woke up. I had gotten carried away with the crinkling sounds of the bag, and it was coming at us fast. Rizzy turned around wagging her tail nervously. I don't know if it was the shadow of the golden sky at that time, but the thing look mean. I tapped on my knees to get Rizzy to look back at me and run again. She turned around and ran at full speed before stopping. Both animals stopped and perked up their ears, and I could hear them too. I looked up at the sky to see about twenty crows flying disorganized, unlike all the other birds who tend to see around here, making the strangest sounds no other animals ever make. The neighbor's dog followed the crows with his eyes, and Rizzie was still frozen in place. There was something about those birds that really got me, not from the many scary stories that I've read, but even after I got older, I kept thinking about the crows, the murder of crows as it called it, and what happened to me back then. They all gathered at some tree around the corner, though maybe it was like five streets down, barely visible from the other houses in the area. As if out of a trance, I opened my eyes wide again, feeling Rizzy scratching at my knees, trying to get me to carry her. The neighbor's dog had already lazily gone back to where he had been sleeping just around the house, through the side gates, just as quietly as he arrived. Have you ever seen the sky turn from blue to orange and yellow? It doesn't happen every day around here, and I thought the neighbors were making a big deal about it. Though they had all gathered in front of Gilbert's house, a neighbor that we all had known ever since we moved in. It didn't dawn on me then that they were looking at the sky rather at the house. More and more cars arrived, and than an ambulance, then two other unmarked cars. I was too entrance by the whole thing to go inside to call my dad and tell him that something was going on at Gilbert's house. But he noticed. Mom noticed too. We had all gathered in the front yard along with the other neighbors, all wondering the same thing. What happened. The neighbor next door to the house, with a big dog next to us, was coming toward our front yard, and she asked us if we knew what was happening. Dad spoke for all of us, but was interrupted when she said that Gilbert had been found dead less than half an hour ago a heart attack. They thought it was the first time I knew someone who had died. And even though we talked bad about our neighbors sometimes, or about anybody, really, I've always been good at reminding myself that everyone has their own lives, with their own friends and their parents that celebrated them when they were born. We had gotten to know Gilbert, though, enough to say good morning to each other, or to have him help us catch the weird old couple who stole our Amazon packages at one time. Still, the rest of that evening was blur. I woke up confused the next morning. Mom didn't make the pancakes she saved for Sundays, but I didn't ask her about anything, and yet everyone seemed so calm. Rizzy woke up with their usual toy dangling in front of her, eager to go outside. I didn't want to go for her walk, but it was one of those things that you were supposed to do no matter what, according to my sister. So I got my shoes and the leash ready, then stepped outside. I looked over to Gilbert's house remembering those cars around it, wondering what the family must have been going through. Then I made a mental note to stay on my side of the street just for that time. But as I was walking in front of his house, I noticed something. A man was coming from the sight of it, pulling on the trash cans, fixing them in place. As he opened the gate to the side entrance, I saw him. It was Gilbert, Good morning, he said with a huge smile. I froze in place, though I could see his expression change as he approached me. I felt shivers coming down my back as his worried face got closer and closer. My goodness, you all right, I can hear in the distance. I forced myself to take a deep breath. When I saw him right in front of me. He smiled, his eyes scanning my face to make sure that I was really okay. Rizzi was waiting for me at my feet, looking up at me, panting and waiting to continue her walk around the block. I don't remember how I explained myself out of that one, but I tug at the leash and got Rizzy to walk with me. The walk itself was a blur. The whole thing was a blur. I got back home and saw Mom mopping the kitchen through the window. I knew that I wouldn't be able to step in there, so I sat outside, afraid to look toward Gilbert's house. Dad stepped out from the backyard. The garden hose was in his hand when he asked if I was excited to see my cousin later that afternoon. I smiled and told him that my aunt wouldn't bring her that day because it was Sunday. In the event at church took all day. He looked at me and smiled, reminding me that it was Saturday, not Sunday. I thought to myself, yesterday was Saturday, but refused to say it out loud. At first I thought I had skipped the whole day, but then I realized no, had I lived the ne extra one. I asked Dad about Gilbert and if anything had happened yesterday, and he just smiled and said nothing much was going on the usual, and then looked as if he was going to start questioning me, so I grabbed Rizzi and stepped inside the house before he could say anything. I went straight to Mom and asked her the same thing, and she said, it's a typical Friday night. The neighbors were a little loud, but that's about it, and dismissing the conversation altogether. It took me a couple of hours to really pro's the whole thing, well, the thing that didn't happen. About a month later, I ran inside to get my camera to get a picture of the beautiful sky around sunset, but I had left the door open, and Rizzy bolted out and ran straight into the neighbor's house as I was looking through the lens, and then, almost by instinct, I reached over to the fold up chair and I grabbed the empty bag of chips sitting in the cup holder and stood there looking up at the sky. Four days I was telling the other guys from my hall about my roommate, feeling kind of guilty about making fun of him. The guy, just like the roommate of another friend, was one of those weird people, do you know, the kind the ones that haven't done anything wrong, but have their own ways and are into their own strange things without bothering anybody. Yet you end up feeling extremely uncomfortable with him. He was up early one morning asking me if the light from the computer had bothered me too much. That his dad was going to be bringing over a divider thing so that it wouldn't be a problem anymore. Yes, that blue light and the typing in the middle of the night was extremely annoying, but I faked a smile and told him that it was all right, that he shouldn't worry about it too much. He explained that he was working on a project that he was almost done with it. He tried explaining some more, but honestly, it was so early in the morning, and I'm not very familiar with techi things, so I just stared blankly at my dresser until he stopped talking. He noticed, obviously, so he awkwardly ended the conversation and grabbed his backpack. He then went outside into the hallway. I looked over at the computer monitor and plopped right back into bed. It was about halfway through the semester, and my roommate had been staying up late on the computer, typing away screenfuls of white letters and adjusting his glasses almost nervously almost every single night, until one time when the typing stopped. I looked over to him and saw him smile at the screen. The reflection of his glasses didn't show the screenful of letters anymore, but a white screen with a blinking cursor. With that, he got up from the chair and moved to his bed and fell asleep, almost robotically. The next morning I heard him on the computer again. Obviously frustrated, I rolled out of bed and decided to get ready right there and then to head out to the breakfast tall. He hadn't said a word, sitting there, grabbing the front part of his hair above his glasses and staring blankly at the screen. Is everything all right, I asked, genuinely curious at this time. It's not supposed to say this, he said, worried a glance at the screen to see the two words on there. Four days they were on the top left side of the screen. I sighed and asked him what he was talking about, and after a long explanation of him sounding like he was talking to himself, I understood that he had been working on a program sort of like a chat room, as a test project for an Internet forum he used to visit. When he said a test project, though I thought he meant a project for himself, like a practice thing, I was dead wrong. I think the project itself was a test. He was a nice guy, seriously, and I feel bad for all the talk behind his back about how weird he was. He was just too smart for his own good. Just four days from our conversation, he was gone. His things had gotten picked up while I was in class, and the ra at the college just came in to tell me that I would be getting a new roommate in the coming weeks, but I ended up having the whole room to myself for the whole semester. My friend said that he had likely been recruited because his friend from elementary school had gone missing once they were in high school, after completing an internet project similar to the one that my roommate explained. We joked around that he had communicated with aliens, but really, the more I looked into it, the more I discovered about dark government scouts looking for the exceptional people who can accomplish things that few of us can do. I don't know what four days meant, and the best I can come up with was that he completed the project and got his next assignment. Joey, the story of a Strange Doll is coming up right after this. It's hard for me to tell this story because it upsets my mother in a way that no other thing ever seems to do. She gets real quiet, though just a couple of months ago we were finally able to talk about it. You see, Mom had strange habits. Her friends were all the kind that you see people make fun of today, and skits and YouTube videos all over the place. But I remember one woman, specifically Becca, who had long gray hair and always walked like the wind, with a dress flowing and her deep wrinkles moving every time she blinked. She took off her sandals when she stepped into the house and then would walk to every corner of it, closing her eyes and grasping her necklace. You have to get out of here, Francis, was one of her phrases. They would go out to the yard and talk about things, all while lighting candles and chanting. Mom would cry sometimes too, and I remember this as a kid. But there was also a time when things weren't so bad. Mom always liked to talk about something, the thing, she used to call it, that lived in the house, and she would blame a lot of our misfortune on it. She would say that the thing was there only for a little while. Some of my earliest memories involved Mom and Dad together walking back from the park from around the corner to the house, but I also remembered the arguments. There is something to be said about the voices in the house during this time. My sister would hear them more than I would, but would tell me of something creepier that my young mind couldn't quite understand at the time. She would describe a thing something that looked like my mother but wasn't. I never saw this thing around the house, though one specific situation makes me think twice about it. I very, very vaguely remember opening up a big box on my birthday when I turned five years old. My aunt was there and Dad was there too. The present had been a big doll with the name Joey on the front of the box, and now would spends so much time with it, take it everywhere. It had blue pants and a white shirt, long arms, and a huge smile stitched on its face. Everyone said that they could hear me speak to it at night, and that I would blame so many things on it, enough to anger mom. Grandpa said that he heard it talk back to him when he asked me to put it away. The laughter that came out of that thing was described as deep and unfitting for a doll of its kind. He went to Mom to ask if it was some interactive toy with a recording device inside, and Mom seemed unbothered by it. She had bought this thing from who knows where. Anyway, this made Grandpa uneasy, and he dropped the subject. But this is a part that I remember. It was late at night, maybe not so late to today's standards, but for me, as a kid of about six years old by that point, I definitely should have been asleep, But instead I was playing with the doll, hiding it under the blankets and then pretending to look for it. Then I would find it and hide it somewhere else, and then begin looking for it again. But at one point I couldn't find it. I turned on the light to the room and searched around everywhere and nothing. In a bit of a panic, I opened up the closet door, just in case it had rolled in there. There was a light switch that I couldn't reach, but still I could tell it wasn't there. I walked over to the bed, pulling the blankets down to the floor. For realizing that I'd have to look under the bed itself. Once I got to it, all I saw was a carpet and the other side of the bed from under it. My door was always cracked a little, even at night. The light that came out from my room had little part of the hallway by this point, so I froze in place. When I heard Mom let out a deep scream, I knew I was about to get in trouble. Climbed into bed, grabbing the blanket on my way there and putting it over my head, leaving just enough room to look over to the door. And that's when Mom came in with Joey grasped tightly on her left hand. She walked over to the bed slowly and stood over me by the nightstand. Joey doesn't like that, she said, leaning in closer and pulling away my blanket. I was frozen in fear. The sight of her smile will never leave me. Mom to this day claims she never did that, but my mind, especially at that age, couldn't have made that up, not to that specific level. And the doll from that day on just sat there on top of one of the boxes in the closet. So it was finally moved to the attic where I'm assuming it still sits. The box where we put it was the only thing up there, and somewhere in the move to a new place, we forgot it was there and left it. Things change in the new place. Mom seemed more like herself, and her strange friends stopped coming by. The whole thing turned into just a memory. I don't know what Mom had gotten into back then, but I know she's sorry. Still, every time I hear something move up in the attic of my new house, briefly, maybe for a split second, I get those memories back. And just recently I started wondering if the family that moved into that house has ever had problems with Joey. He's been trapped in the attic, and Joey doesn't like that. Up next, we shure to check out True Scary Story to listen to true experiences from people just like you, but don't listen alone. If you want to get in touch or DM me a true story of yours for me to read. I'll leave my contact information in the description of this episode. And if you've never left a review for the show, you can help me by tapping up to five stars. Thanks and thank you very much for listening, See you sooner.