“As she neared her new plot of land, she passed a grimy and weathered old man on the road.  He was audibly mumbling and talking to himself, hands gesturing every couple of seconds.  Upon seeing her, he barked loudly about a cursed farmstead, insisting she turn around.  Independent and strong her entire life, she brushed off his ramblings and traveled the final mile to her new home.

 

She worked hard with her son, sowing seeds and tending to the livestock. When the time came to harvest, nearly half the crops were ruined with plague.  Beneath the rotting fruits and vegetables were pitch black feathers, hundreds of them in all, littering the fields and fluttering with the wind.  In the barn, several pigs were also dead, their bodies surrounded by the same jet black feathers.  Concerned but not broken, they used what they could and tried to persevere.

 

Weeks later while cooking breakfast, she heard her son begin to cough uncontrollably.  She rushed to his bedroom to find his mouth and throat full of feathers wet from his saliva and bile.  She frantically tried to pull them out but there was no end, as if in his stomach was an entire crow.  He fell to the ground after a final jerk, lifeless and still.  She wailed with misery and exasperation, collapsing onto him and clutching him tightly.  She may have stayed there for hours had she not smelled something burning in the kitchen.  It did not smell like food, however; the smell was much more like burning hair.  She stumbled to the oven and opened it in horror, finding not ham but only the same black feathers, charred and smoking in front of her.” -M.D.Walter