A Brotherhood of Crows.

Edinburgh is a city built upon itself like a house of cards.

Buildings grew taller, sprouting turrets and storeys like shoots fighting to reach the sun. The Castle, once one of the highest points in the city, which had commanded a clear view in all directions, now huddled like a toddler between jagged towers which had risen up to fill the panorama. The Dome of Old College had swollen to the size of a city block, its shiny reflection rebounding the moon and sun alike. The old Balmoral hotel, long abandoned by its upmarket clientele for the steely towers far south in London, pierced the cloud and was lost. And right at the bottom, and the lowest point of a towering city, was Cowgate.

Cowgate splits Edinburgh from East to West, a little path carved neatly between rising buildings. The people of Edinburgh barely came down this far - a few clubs and pubs still eked out business at the far West end, near the old Grassmarket. No one came as far as we had in awhile. It had been raining for an hour now, and specks of water which had navigated the great twisted maze of Edinburgh’s upper levels fell sharply, like a gash, across my flat cap, and ran down the back of my coat, pooling on the ground, next to the person who lay slumped a half pace ahead of me. At least, what was left of them.

“That is some fucked up shit,” said Tobias, to my left. He pulled his desert scarf a bit higher up his nose, till his glass peeked out above it like an extra pair of owlish eyes.

“Yep,” I said. My nose wrinkled beneath my own scarf. Covering our faces was a precaution; the scarf and sturdy goggles concealed my face, but didn’t prevent the smell.

Propped up against the wall, against rusted shutters in an old doorway, was a body. It had been posed, that much I could tell - legs crossed, leant back as if meditating, and arms crossed in the space between its knees. Whatever clothes it had been wearing before were gone - the body had been dressed in an almost tastefully tatty suit, the kind one might call “distressed,” if it had been bought from an expensive, high street store. The blood around the collar, that was now a deep, sickly purple from the rain on the shirt, was almost unnoticeable.

“No head?” Tobias asked. He was keeping a few steps back, clearly uncomfortable with the smell, and the spectacle.

“Not the original one,” I said. I knelt, and gingerly raised the chin on the corpse. I grimaced. “Definitely not the original.”

The head had been severed at the neck. Not neatly. It had been sawed, roughly. Whoever had done this had taken the original head and replaced it with something else.

I heard Tobias take a step forward. “Is that a -? Ok, Eli, I haven’t got a clue what that is.”

“I think,” I saw, raising the object that had been left in the place of a head, “That it is meant to be bird. Some kind of crow, maybe? It looks like it’s been...I dunno...inflated. Or stretched.”

“Inflated?” Tobias sound incredulous. “What kind of person stretches a crow’s head?”

I scowled at him: “Surely the bigger question is, who kills someone, dresses them in a tatty suit, chops off their head and replaces it with...this?”

“Nah, I’m still stuck on the inflated crow head thing.”

“Inflated might be the wrong word,” I twitched the oversized animal head tentatively from one side to another, “More like someone built a frame in the shape of a crow’s head and sewed skin and feathers onto it.”

“Yeah. Yuck. Why?”

“That would be what we’re here to find out.” I let the head slump back. It was balanced precariously on the stump of the neck and I had no desire for it to fall into the victim’s lap.

“Hmm,” Tobias tapped his foot thoughtfully, “The Inflated Crow Head Replacement Killer’s a bit shit as names go for serial killers,”

“You think we’re dealing with a serial killer here?” I straightened up, and fumbled in my coat pocket for my tobacco pouch. What little rain that made it down this far didn’t stop me from rolling a smoke.

From behind his glasses, I saw Tobias’s eyes roll. “Mate, I don’t think this is your standard bit of Friday night violence. I mean, I’m from Moss Side and the worst we do is kick someone in the canal if they’re being a bit of a nob. You don’t go round beheading someone and replacing their head with a massive...crow thing, for kicks.”

“Mmm.” I focussed on rolling my cigarette. Quite apart from anything, smoking would take away the stick that hung in the air.

“Are we dealing with a mad taxidermist here? Cos I saw a thing on Tumblr about that.” Tobias tapped as his wrist. Beneath his sleeve, I could see the screen of his arm-unit, a portable computer interfaced with a wristband, glow in a ghostly manner. “I’m sure I linked it to you.”

I patted my pockets for a lighter. “You know I don’t use Tumblr.”

“ ‘I don’t use Tumblr,’ pfft. Hipster.” Tobias snorted.

“I am not a hipster,”

“Yes you are.”

“Prove it.”

“Ok, well, you smoke hand rolled cigarettes -”

“Cheaper,” I interjected as I found my lighter.

“ - You wear that I’m-so-cool trench coat with your collar popped like a nob,”

“Helps to hide my face. We mask up on the job, remember?” I pulled down my desert scarf to my neck, and lit my cigarette.

“What, someone’s going to recognise you by the back of your neck? You do it because you think you look cool.”

“No I don’t,” I protested, inhaling deeply.

“I know you don’t,” said Tobias triumphantly, “You definitely don’t look cool. You are the opposite of cool. You’re the least cool person I know. If cool had been in a life-threatening accident, it wouldn’t accept a blood transfusion from you in case you lowered the tone of its circulatory system. You’re so not cool, you’re...like, not hot. I can’t think of the opposite of cool which isn’t hot and I’m buggered if I’m calling you hot,” he hesitated, “Ok, given my sexuality, that is a poor choice of words, but you get what I mean!”

There was a moment of silence. I exhaled smoke. “You’ve rehearsed that, haven’t you?”

“Maybe a bit.”

“Good delivery. Still doesn’t make me a hipster.”

“Your beard does.” Tobias snapped waspishly, as if delivering the killer blow of an argument.

I instinctively reached up and stroked my facial hair. “I like my beard.”

“When was the last time you shaved?” Tobias cut in.

“Christmas,” I said. I hesitated. “Three years ago.”

“Yeaah, cos shaving’s too mainstream.” Tobias rocked back on his feet, clearly considering the argument done.

I took another puff at my cigarette, looked down and the crow headed corpse in front of us, back at Tobias, and then around us. “I’m not sure how we got from that to this.”

“Simple,” Tobias rolled back his sleeve to reveal his arm unit, which he unlocked with a swipe. “What we have proved is that a) you’re a hipster, b) Tumblr is interesting, and c) there’s a fucked up possibly mad taxidermist on the loose. All of which seem to be relevant bits of info to me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna do a scan of the area, so we can find this fucker, pop a round in his arse and then go home and watch the Wire.”

With that, Tobias stepped forward. His right fingers flew across the touch screen on his wrist unit, selecting options and opening files. A thin beam of screen light sputtered out from the wrist of the device and swept up and down the corpse like a searchlight.

I shrugged and stepped back into the middle of the street to finish my smoke. Tobias was being a pain because he was scared. I’d been working with him long enough to know that. I smoked, he joked. Oddly, but joked nonetheless. It was nerves. I let him do his scan. The software he’d programmed in the wrist unit was searching for bodily fluids, fingerprints, skin particles, anything that might identify our victim. Or our killer, I thought.

While Tobias did his scan, muttering to himself as the data appeared on the holo-screen, I did one of my own. Mine was less techno-savvy that Tobias’. I finished my cigarette with a deep breath, let it fall from my fingertips to the sodden pavement, and then closed my eyes. And open them again in Elsewhere.

There’s some things you should bear in mind when you’re in Elsewhere. There is no colour here. Everything is monochrome, like old film. If there’s colour, there’s trouble. That’s the first thing I learned about Elsewhere. Secondly, things move slower here. The world seems to be wading through murky water. Here the Cowgate was darkened gray, the little light filtering down from above a narrow blaze of light, and Tobias was no longer there. Where Tobias stood, was a shadow, a shadow in the shape of a seventeen year old boy. Wispy, smoke-like tendrils tapped at a miasmic, shimmering wrist, and a jet black head was bent over the work at hand.

I looked around me. I saw now, other shadows, flickering and darting; an alley cat rummaging in bins a dozen yards from us. It hopped and skimmed in the air like a stone skipping on water. No other shadows. Everything that was living in Edinburgh, in the world I had closed my eyes on, was shadow in Elsewhere. I alone was solid; a grey, noir era copy of myself.

Our corpse was different. It too was solid in Elsewhere. All dead things were. Maybe death was like being stuck between the world, like I was. I had never worked it out. Slumped against the long-sealed shutters, our late friend lay still, still in all worlds.

I crouched next to the corpse and examined it closely. Nothing stood out - Elsewhere was silent on this one. Normally, I’d see something more, some trace of the violent death. Such things always lingered on in Elsewhere. I rubbed the line of my jaw.

“So,” I said to the body with grotesque crows head, “Who, or what killed you?”

The crow’s head rose from its precarious balance, and smiled a wicked smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

My eyes snapped closed and reopened in Edinburgh.

“Fuck!” I gasped.

“What? What?” Tobias jumped. He did a quick double take from where I’d been standing a second ago to where I was now crouched in front of the corpse. “What’s going on? Hey, when did you move?”

“Fuck - arrgh!” I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to stay upright. I felt very dizzy. “The fucking....that crow head it…”

It had spoken. The thing, made of wire and flesh and feathers by a sick, sick mind had looked up from the poor, dead bastard’s head and it had spoke to me.

Tobias broke off his scan and crouched next to me. He pulled down his scarf. His face was full of concern. “Mate...are you ok?”

“Yes, fine,” I snapped, still disorientated. A crow’s head had spoken to me.

Tobias frowned. “Elijah - you did that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you close your eyes and then go all still and then you...like...flicker. Like you’re a holo and your projectors buggered up.” Tobias was staring at me intensely now. “What happened?”

Tobias doesn’t know about Elsewhere. How could I tell him? I don’t even know what it is. I just see two worlds superimposed on each other with every blink of my eyes. How do you explain that without sounding completely insane? But he’s a smart kid. I think he knows something happens when I close my eyes. We’ve been working together for three years. How could he not have figured something out by now?

“Nothing,” I said with a sigh. “It’s just...I think there’s something more to this than...it’s hard to explain.” I paused, licked my lips, and then changed the subject, “What did you find?”

Tobias frowned again but let it go. “Not a huge amount. Our victim is female, I think - scan revealed multiple lacerations to the body - it looks like she was tortured by...whoever it was. Cause of death was massive trauma to the neck -”

I couldn’t help but recoil, “You mean the beheading?”

He nodded grimly. “It wasn’t quick. It was slow, and it was painful. Poor sod.”

“Nothing from the killer?”

“Nope. No DNA, no blood, nothing. The clothes are completely clean - they clearly aren’t the victim’s...someone’s very very careful.” He tapped at his wrist unit and it shut off with a blink. “So now what - anonymous tip to the law?”

“Will they be able to uncover anything we haven’t?” I asked. I straightened up. “We need to do this, and we need to do it tonight. Time of death?”

“Less than two hours ago. This is fresh.”

“Ok. You still have that hack into the Commonwealth’s Missing Persons’ Database?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Reckon you can dig something up for us?”

He smirked. It made him look so young, a kid playing with cool toys. “If the Pope shits on a bear in the woods, does that make it Catholic?”

I hesitated. “Not a clue but I’ll take that as a ‘yes’. Look for any missing women in the last 12 hours - major cities, stay in the UK for now, but broaden it out if you come up with nothing.”

“Rightio. What are you going to do?” Tobias began tapping at his wrist unit again.

“Me?” I started down the alley. “I’m going to talk to a potential witness.”

I strolled up the alley towards the bins I’d seen earlier. The cat was still rummaging through fetid piles of waste that had been dumped here God knows when and forgotten. It looked up at me as I approached it; its fur rippled and it gave me that wide eyed stare that spoke of stillness seconds from speed.

I closed my eyes, and opened them again in Elsewhere. This was a long shot but I didn’t have anything else going.

“’Sup.” I said to the shadow of the cat.

“Bugger off,” it responded, grumpily.

Of all the creatures I’d ever encountered in Elsewhere, only cats ever acknowledged me. Perhaps some unconscious part of a cat’s mind lives in Elsewhere, the part that always seems preoccupied with more than just the next meal or the next belly rub. There’s a reason cats are a bit distant, a bit aloof, a bit magical - they’re seeing so much more than you could ever dream to.

“I was wondering if I could ask you some questions,” I said politely.

The cat shadow, now fluctuating between an almost solid form of a cat and a wavering shadow, put its head and one side. “Will there be fish?”

“Nope.”

“Hmm...bacon?”

“I got none on me.”

“What about...chicken?”

“Nope, no can do.”

“Gizzards?”

“Damn, knew I’d forgotten something this morning.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“A warm fuzzy feeling inside from doing a nice thing,”

“Oh, well, definitely bugger off then.” The cat-shadow went backs to its rummaging.

I tried a different tactic. “Humans are crap aren’t they.”

“No shit,” came the muffled reply from the stormy, shadowy ghost of a bin bag.

“I mean, seriously - highest sentient species on the planet, and yet we’re a bit rubbish aren’t we?”

“It sounds,” the cat-shadow pulled its head out. It held in its mouth something too dark and vague to make out in Elsewhere, which was good because I imagine it was disgusting. “Like you’re having a rare and wonderful epiphany about the general arse-biscuity nature of humanity, so I’m going to leave you to it. I’ve got people to scandalise with my mange. Toodle-ooh.”

It began to leave. I cut to the chase. “Humans suck, in particular the one who beheaded an innocent woman over there. I want to find that human and kill them before they do it again. As a fellow human-disliker, want to help me out by telling me if you saw anything?”

The cat-shadow snorted. “Wun’t no human that did this.”

“Yes, metaphorically and spiritually, they’re a monster,” I was beginning to lose patience. It’s only when you’re getting lip from portioned off aspect of a cat’s psyche on a rainy January night that you realise how low you’ve sunk. “But seriously -”

“You’re right.” the cat-shadow cut me off.

I hesitated. “About what?”

The cat rolled its shadowy eyes at me. “It wun’t no human that did this. It was a monster.”

I bit my lip. “How do you mean?”

“Humans,” the cat declared, “Don’t saw people’s heads off with steel claws and run away.”

Well, that changed things. “You saw this?”

“Oh yeah.”

“When?”

“About two hours ago.”

“Where did he go?”

“You sure you haven’t even got a little bit of tuna or something -?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake -!”

“Alright, alright, alright!” The cat-shadow held up a paw defensively. “Look up.”

“Look up?” I scowled, “Look up? At what, at - oh.”

My eyes closed and opened again on Edinburgh. I kept looking up and began to feel ill.

“Yeah, so I’ve got at least eight missing women in Edinburgh,” I heard Tobias saying over his shoulder, further up the Cowgate. “I mean, Eli, mate, we both how shit this world is at caring about missing girls so we’re not going to -” He looked over his shoulder and started, “Hey, when did you go over there?”

I said nothing and beckoned him over. “Look up there,” I said.

He followed my outstretched finger. Far above us, was the edge of George IV Bridge. We could faintly hear the traffic and the noise as the ordinary people of Edinburgh went about their Friday night. A flag pole jutted out from the bridge into the void that dropped down into Cowgate. Perhaps when this part of town had seen happier days, some meaningful banner hung from there. Now there was something else on the edge of that pole, dangling in the wind, hanging from what looked, suspiciously, horribly like hair.

“I think we’ve found our missing head,” I said grimly.