Crackpot Palace by Jeffrey Ford Page B

house. I was just about to head for the front when I realized that had been the smartest man’s advice. What were the chances he was going to tell me the best way to go? I stepped onto the path and headed toward the back. There were stretches of perfect night where the pines blocked the moon completely.
    I walked fast for a ways, but soon I was out of breath and my Achilles tendon was aching, so I slowed down. Just then I noticed something like a lectern, on the side of the path. I stepped over to it. It was a chest-high stand with a plaque on top situated at an angle. There was something written on it. I took out the lighter, flicked it, and quickly read the plaque. It said: BEWARE OF OWLS! MULLIONS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGES OR DEATHS CAUSED BY OWLS.
    I flicked the lighter again, and this time noticed that beneath the writing there was an etching of a large owl in midflight, grasping in its talons the severed head of Jenny, the Mullions hostess. “Killer owls?” I said aloud. A stiff breeze blew the flame out and it felt more like autumn than spring. I noticed the path was strewn with fallen leaves. “That’s ridiculous,” I said, and started walking again. Two minutes later, I wrapped my hand around the neck of the beer bottle in my pocket and took it out to use as a club.
    â€œFuck those owls,” I told myself, “I have to get back to Lynn.” I put on as much steam as I could manage, and with almost every step, the tendon in my left heel got worse. “She’ll never let him touch her,” I said to myself. “If he tries, she’ll punch him in the face and break his glasses.” I hobbled a few more yards, and then thought, “Or will she?”
    That’s when I happened to look up and notice the pairs of yellow eyes trimming the trees like dull Christmas lights. They were everywhere. My knees went weak and my heart began to pound so hard I could hear it in my right ear. I desperately wanted to run but knew I wouldn’t get far. Instead, I crept forward, trembling, praying they hadn’t noticed me and wouldn’t. In whispers, like a novena, I recited the theme song to the afternoon television cartoon of my youth, “The Eighth Man.”
    I got only as far as, “The F.B.I. is helpless. It’s twenty stories tall,” when a shrill screech tore through the dark. An owl’s flight is silent, but I heard the beating of their wings in my mind as they swooped after me. The breeze picked up and I pushed against it, trying to run, waving the beer bottle over my head and ducking. It was like running through water. I felt their talons at my back and what hair I have. Feathers whipped my cheeks. I tried to scream, but it came forth a long, breathy fart.
    Just when I thought I was finished, I collided with another person on the path, and for some reason the owls miraculously retreated. I lit the lighter to see who it was, and only when I saw it was Mrs. Krull did I realize she’d been talking the whole time. There was a glassy, vacant stare to her froggy eyes. Her lips were moving and she was in the midst of the story of her one-legged aunt. I gathered my wits, walking alongside her, and said, “Mrs. Krull, what are you doing out here?” She moved steadily forward, staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. All the time the words spilled out of her.
    It came to me not as a thought but as a feeling that it was precisely her grim tale that kept the owls at bay. They were above us and to the sides everywhere, but they didn’t stir from their perches. Occasionally one would hoot in the distance, a feather would fall, but they wouldn’t attack. When she was finishing up the story of her aunt’s demise, for the first time in my life, I hoped she had another one ready.
    There was a mere half-a-breath pause before the next pathetic tale was born. She spoke about a couple she knew from her old neighborhood. Nice people. They had