He had just filled out all the new-hire paperwork required by the Mad Popes’ Human Resources Department and had been told to wait in the seats behind centerfield for the doctor he now worked for to find him.
It was an odd feeling for Foghorn sitting alone in the massive stadium – no buzz of the crowd, no cracks of the bat, and no smack of a ball hitting a glove. It nearly made him dizzy, like being stuck within the liminal space between his memories of past games he’d seen unfold on the field – their excitement and drama, the highs and the lows – and the vast loneliness and quiet of an empty, lifeless ballpark.
The little girl was a welcome sight at first. He almost imagined the rest of the crowd swirling around her, people walking to their seats or the bathrooms or to grab hot dogs from the concessions. He could almost see the current of the crowd weave and part from her path, her bouncing chestnut hair adding to the beauty of it all, the beauty of watching a game in person.
When she hopped down from the short wall separating the dirt and grass of the field from the cement and plastic of the stadium’s seats, he nearly jumped to inform the lone security guard he had seen deep within the poorly lit corridors beneath the stadium. But when he saw the small green leaves float from her upturned hands, he froze.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. Thousands and thousands of small leaves poured forth from her small hands. His nose filled with the deep earthy scent he remembered as a kid when he had hiked around the wetlands that had once been where the stadium and its surrounding parking lots now stood. The area had been so beautiful. Peaceful. He remembered feeling the place had held a magic he couldn’t place. Not real magic. But a magic only wild places in the world carried.
Then he saw the crows. They circled high above the stadium. He watched them through the duckweed leaves that were falling all around him. Then the crows dove hard and fast like a thrown spear towards the field, directly into the middle of centerfield. There was no explosion when they hit. No dirt flew into the air. There was no crater from the impact. The birds simply disappeared beneath the manicured grass and a feeling of that wild beauty he had felt as a kid swelled within him again, like the stadium had never been built..
When he looked back at the girl, she was staring at him. Expressionless. She lifted a small index finger to her lips, a gesture so innocent yet so commanding, a gesture to let him know without any pretense that he was not to not speak of what he had seen. Then she lifted her hands to the sky, and the crows re-emerged from the ground. The birds dispersed like nothing had happened, flying in all directions – calm, unhurried, natural.
Foghorn looked down and watched as the small leaves disintegrated all around him. A slight breeze scooped all that was left of them and carried them away.
He looked back to where the girl had been, but she was gone.
The stadium was empty again. Quiet.
It was quiet aside from the low, muffled screams from below centerfield.
He didn’t know why he waited in his seat beyond the centerfield wall until a woman from Human Resources came and told him to come back the following week. He didn’t know why he came back as instructed. And he didn’t know why he continued working for the Green-Eyed Woman even after the nightmares began, the nightmares that came every night with the crows, and the young girl, and him driving up a highway.
But as he drove north on the I-5 with a dead body in the trunk of his old Cutlass and a man he really didn’t know sitting next to him, Foghorn wanted to be as far away from anything related to the Sacramento Mad Popes baseball team and their cursed stadium. He wanted nothing to do with the Green-Eyed Woman or the young girl with the chestnut hair. And, at that moment, he wanted to be as far away as possible from the crows circling overhead.
His heart raced. Sweat poured from his body. He could barely make out Thom yelling at him to calm down, to stick to the plan. That there were no birds.
But Foghorn wanted out.
He slammed on the breaks and the jolt pushed both him and Thom hard against their seatbelts. The Cutlass screeched to a halt. Black skid marks snaked from the rear tires.
Foghorn ripped the keys from the ignition, jumped from the car, and ran. He bolted toward the barren, wind-swept hills of central California. He ran until the highway was far behind him, until his lungs felt as if they were going to burst, until his feet and legs could take no more. Somewhere along the way he dropped the keys to the Cutlass, and in a moment of courage, or desperation, he looked back over his shoulder to see if the crows had followed him.
They had not.
