Alex heard it in the night, its beak knocking against the bedroom window.  Feathers rustled as it spread its wings wide, a creature of mist and shadow.  How had it found him?  Had it followed him through the woods, leaving its broken body behind?  Or had it departed and returned, a message from an angry God?  Maybe it was a dark spirit of vengeance?

He shivered, pulled the blankets tight around him and crammed a pillow down over his head.  He tried to think about other things—school, girls, football.  But the sounds wheedled their way into his brain, making him twitch and turn in remorse.  The tapping and the flapping.  The clawed feet scraping against the glass.  The soft hiss of words no real bird could form.

Murderer.  Killer.

On and on through the night, until Alex stared, red-eyed and restless, into pale grey-blue skies.

***

Rubbing raw, bloodshot eyes, Alex stumbled back through the woods towards where it had begun.  Every few minutes he tripped and almost fell, steadying himself against one of the knotted trunks.  Bark scraped his hands and dirt clung in the scratches.  A steel trowel bounced against his thigh, bruising his flesh with every step.  He barely felt the pain, his senses deadened by three long nights without sleep. 

As the woods opened up he paused, leaning against a willow, and peered across the weed-strewn expanse of Miller's Pond.  To his left, in front of the ruin of the old mill, lay his improvised cannon—a length of pipe stolen from a building site, closed off at one end with a paving slab.  Loaded with a mixture of sugar and fertilizer it had fired a rock the size of his fist straight across the pond.

He pictured the moment once more.  The heat of the match.  The low thump of the explosion.  The smell of smoke and singed plastic.  And then a cloud of soft black and white feathers, a harbinger of what would come.

He emerged from his thoughts at the sound of barking.  He had kept walking, skirting the edge of the brown waters.  Now a dog blocked his path, staring hungrily at him through an unkempt mass of grey fur.  It snarled, exposing jagged yellow teeth in defense of its supper—the ragged, fly-covered corpse of a magpie.

Alex reached down towards the path, seeking a stone to hurl at the filthy stray.  But an image crossed his mind of a ghost dog, pawing and scrabbling at his window, growling for revenge.  So instead he took a deep breath and, flinging his arms wide, charged forward with a bellowing roar.  The mongrel's face fell and it turned tail, scampering into the undergrowth.  Even the flies scattered at Alex's thunderous approach.

He staggered to a halt by the remnants of the magpie.  Its body had been badly mangled by the stone.  The bones were twisted and broken, but somehow it had remained in one piece.  Alex pulled the trowel from his jeans and dug a hole in the moist, leafy dirt, then placed the body carefully in the small grave.  The feel of cold, dead flesh made his skin crawl, and his stomach churned at the rancid smell. 

A wave of relief ran through him as he finished packing the dirt tightly down over the corpse.  Perhaps now the magpie could find some peace.  He slumped exhausted against the base of a willow, weariness finally overwhelming him.

***

As he awoke, the first thing Alex noticed was the cold, an unseasonable iciness plucking goose bumps from his skin.  Then came the voice, a soft rasping hiss.

Murderer.  Villain.  You have driven the heat from me, but now I shall have yours.

His eyes flew wide open and there in front of him, shrouded in night's deep darkness, perched the spirit.

It glared up at him, its eyes menacing blood-red slits.  One clawed foot crunched onto a pile of fallen leaves and frost spread from it, creeping across the earth towards Alex.  He leapt to his feet, ice crystals already forming upon his trainers, and ran stumbling through the dark.  Behind him the magpie croaked a litany of hate.

Butcher!  Slayer!  Cutthroat!  Ripper!

There was a splash and Alex felt pond water covering his feet, smelt its stagnant reek.  Too afraid to turn around he half-waded half-swam through thick strands of rotting weed, the crack and pop of fast-forming ice pursuing him.  As he stepped dripping onto the far bank the water hardened around his foot, holding it tight in the shallows.  With a desperate heave he wrenched himself free and staggered into the woods, leaving a trainer protruding from the frozen mire.

***

Alex limped into the village, his bare foot bruised and aching.  Up ahead, a light shone from Mr. Keegan's butchers' shop.  An unmarked white van was pulling away and Mr. Keegan stood outside the shop door, peering at a stack of blue plastic crates.  Alex hobbled towards the fat figure in his white apron, and as he grew near called out, "Mr. Keegan!"

The butcher span around, a meat hook raised above his head, face wobbling with tension.  Then he recognised Alex.

"You didn't half give me a fright," he said, putting the glinting steel hook down on the crates.  "What are you doing out and about at this time?"

Keegan stared in bemusement as Alex tried to explain it all—the magpie, the frost, the voice that chased him through the woods, threatening death and worse.

"You're rambling, lad," the butcher said, "and you look a right state.  Come into the warm—it's getting so you'll catch your death of cold out here."

Alex, seeing his breath frost into little white clouds, gladly followed Mr. Keegan into the warm shop.

"Funny weather we're having," the butcher said as he fetched a chair.  "Blazing sunshine this morning, freezing cold tonight.  I blame global warming.  Now, you sit there while I fetch those boxes in."

He stepped out into the night, but returned a moment later, backing into the room with a crate in his hands.

"What were you saying about a magpie?" he asked over his shoulder, his voice tense.

As Alex watched, crystals of ice formed around the doorframe and the spirit fluttered into the room.  He could see through it to the wall beyond, and yet its edges glinted with a sharp, bright light.

"Another killer," it hissed, staring at the meat piled beneath the counter.  "Heat-stealing humans.  Life-robbers.  Assassins."

Now the cold flooded the shop too, biting at Alex through his damp t-shirt and jeans.  There was a patter of wet slapping sounds and Keegan dropped his box with a start.  Slabs of meat skidded across the floor, then began to wriggle, rising and falling like bloated red worms, slapping themselves against the tiles in time with the magpie's curses.

Keegan stood for a moment bewildered as his produce beat out a sinister rhythm.  Then he grabbed a cleaver from the wall and swung it at the magpie.  The blade swept through the spirit's neck and its head tumbled to the ground, screeching as it slid into a corner. 

The butcher leapt after it, arm rising and falling as he struck again and again at the feathered orb.  But instead of ceasing the bird's voice fractured, splintering into a chorus of smaller, higher cries that made the windows rattle in their frames. 

Suddenly, a slab of beef rose from the side and hurtled across the room, slamming into Keegan's back.  Another hurled itself at him, and another, and another, until the shop was filled with flying meat, each piece screaming as it battered itself against the butcher.

Alex darted through the open doorway and out into the darkness.

***

Further down the road light spilled across the vicarage garden.  Reverend Braithwaite stood silhouetted in his porch, the front door ajar behind him.  The red tip of a cigarette dangled in front of his shadowed face, a trickle of smoke rising past his bushy grey moustache.  As Alex approached he saw a curtain twitch, Mrs. Braithwaite glaring out at her husband and his filthy habits.

"Help!" Alex called out.  "Reverend Braithwaite, help, there's an evil spirit after me!"

"You stop your cheek right now young man, or else."  Braithwaite stopped, mouth hanging open as he stared past Alex and up the street.  Mist was rolling towards them in churning waves, frost forming as it touched the road.  Through it flew a small, feathered body.  Even without a head it made itself heard, a litany of hate billowing out of the fog.

Killer.  Ripper.  Slayer.  Murderer.

The reverend crushed his cigarette underfoot and grabbed Alex by the arm.

"This way, boy," he exclaimed, dragging him round the corner and through the graveyard.

"Philip!" came a shrill voice from behind them.  "Philip, where are you going with that young man?"

Braithwaite ignored his wife and swung the weathered church doors open, flicking the lights on as he passed.

"Take this," he said, plucking a battered bible from a pew and throwing it to Alex.  A small gold cross was embossed into the cover.  "I always knew this day would arrive, and I am ready, unlike some.  Modern church is it? Casting aside faded superstitions, are we? Well now who's going to look foolish?"

Leaning down behind the altar, Braithwaite pulled out a brass hand-bell, a large off-white candle and a glass bottle with a crucifix on the front.

"When the beast enters, hold the book up before it," he declared sternly.  "I'll do the rest."

The doors creaked wide and Alex turned to see the magpie step forward, undaunted by holy ground.  A new head was emerging from the stump of its neck, a sharp beak wriggling into the light.  Alex held the book at arms length, thrusting it at the glowing spirit.  It stopped a few meters from him, ice forming around its feet.  Its voice echoed back from the ancient rafters, a shrill, menacing hiss.

The Reverend Braithwaite strode forwards and around the spirit, pouring holy water from his bottle.  Then he set the candle down and lit it.  A musty smell like old, faded spices drifted across the nave as Braithwaite slowly rang his bell.  He began to chant, his deep, rich voice intoning words Alex couldn't understand.  The magpie paused in its accusations and stared at the vicar, its head tilted on one side.

"Trying to kill me with words and spells?" it cawed.

With a flap of wings it darted across the dark, wet ring, heading straight for Braithwaite.  Both man and beast shrieked as it struck at his face, gouging a long red line down his cheek.  The vicar clutched at the wound, blood trickling between his fingers to land in frozen drops on the worn stone floor.  The magpie flapped away, landing on the end of a pew, a strip of flesh dangling from its beak.  It stared at Braithwaite, who staggered back against the wall, his injured cheek disappearing beneath a spreading layer of ice.

The magpie spread its wings once more, gliding past the smoldering candle to land on the empty bottle of holy water.  Glowing eyes bored into Alex as it opened its beaked and hissed.

You killed me.

Alex slumped to the ground, tears running down his face.  His body heaved with deep sobs of fear, his breath hanging frosted in the air before him.

"Please don't hurt me," he whispered.  "I didn't mean it."

You killed me.

"I'm sorry."

The magpie fell silent, it's head again tilted thoughtfully to one side.

"I'm so sorry," Alex repeated.

The magpie bowed its head.  Alex could feel the cold retreating, warmth struggling back into his shivering limbs.

"I never meant to hurt anyone," he said, watching in wonder as the magpie began to fade, its outline blurring into the surrounding air.  "I swear, I'll never do it again."

The magpie looked up at him with eyes now of pale yellow-brown.  "You had best not,' it croaked, 'else I shall be back."

And with that it faded at last into mist, blown away by the summer breeze that rushed through the church doors, warming Alex and the mutilated reverend.