Disclaimer: Don't own Star Trek. Also don't own The Raven. That's Poe's. Creepy man, Poe. But he writes a good poem.
Admiral Ael: Cute picture! And yeah, it's an awesome site.
Keridwen: So glad you think so.
Blynedda: [grin] Glad you're enjoying this. If you're reading this, you've obviously caught up. Congrats!
Emmy: Thank you for offering a suggestion. However, slash will not be happening, for a number of reasons. One, I don't read slash, or want to. Two, I would have a HARD time getting them to react naturally to slash. Three, this has a G-rating. Glad you like the story though.
Hanakin: The very last thing he needs. : )
Emp: Heehee…I enjoyed that line. Hope things are looking up regarding the dinner and all.
Meredith: Rock band…hmm. Glad to know you haven't dropped off the Earth or something. (Although if you were on Vulcan, you'd have to tell me how you got there.)
Rihannsu: Quiet fits can be so fun…
Whew, that's everyone. I LOVE the reviews, by the way, how many times have I said that now?
As you no doubt know, it's Halloween! (Well, unless you're in NZ and it's already Nov 1st.) For Halloween, we have a special chapter. Not especially creepy, but in that direction. And, just for fun, we're actually doing some reacting! (Remember when we used to do that?) This is based on Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven. If you haven't read, I recommend. In brief, it's dark and spooky. The Narrator is sitting in his room late at night, mourning over the lost Lenore, when a raven enters. An evil raven. It's spooky.
So, enjoy, and have a delightful Halloween!
Chapter Twenty-Five:
The Raven
It was upon a midnight dark and dreary. Of course, in terms of the weather outside, it was a pretty dark and dreary noontime too. It's always dark in deep space. But no one goes outside anyway, for obvious reasons.
In any case, it was midnight, it was dark, and Jones was awake, reading an old volume of forgotten lore. Whatever that means. The silence was broken by a rapping, a gentle tapping, at the door. This was a little odd, as all the doors on the Enterprise had doorbells. Jones firmly told himself that there was no reason to be nervous simply because someone chose to knock at the door. Even if it was midnight. It was just some late visitor wanting entrance. Only this and nothing more.
"Come in!" Jones called.
No answer.
Jones frowned. This was a little odder. And odd things made Jones uneasy. Lots of things made Jones uneasy though. He tried to shrug it off, and opened the door.
No one there.
Darkened corridors, nothing more.
And then there was a noise. Not a tapping, or a rapping, but a flapping. And a big, black, feathered form materialized out of the shadows and flew unhesitatingly into the room. Jones numbly shut the door behind it.
"A bird? A bird?!" Jones was more than a little surprised. "Where did a bird come from?"
The bird had perched itself on the lintel above the door. It was sitting, wings folded, staring unblinkingly at Jones. It was actually a bit creepy the way it regarded him, out of small red eyes, staring, staring, watching Jones, so somber and solemn.
Jones was spooked. "There is something creepy about you," he said as lightly as he could. "Seems to me I read something about a raven just like you once…don't remember where. Guess you can't tell me."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
Jones' eyes bugged. NOW he knew where he'd read about a raven. He was familiar with Edgar Allan Poe, you see. Why exactly he read Poe is a mystery. All it did was scare him. He hadn't slept for a week after reading "The Fall of the House of Usher." But whatever the reason, he did read it. So he knew about the raven. He backed away from the door and the raven above it. "Go away. Go AWAY."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"NO! No, go, be gone! Leave me alone! I don't even know any Lenores! And I don't want to either! You can keep her! Just go back to wherever you came from!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"AUUGH!" Jones shrieked, and dived under the bed.
Jones was found by his roommate in the morning, who had spent the night on Gamma shift. The roommate entered, to find an apparently empty room. Only on closer inspection did one note the foot sticking out from under the corner of the bed.
"Uh, Jones?" he asked. "Are you under the bed again?" Jones, as you may know, made a habit of hiding under his bed during periods of stress.
"YES! And I'm NOT coming out!"
His roommate was puzzled. "Well…I could be wrong, but I thought today was Friday the first, not Friday the thirteenth."
Jones' head emerged briefly to stare at him incredulously. "Friday the thirteenth? Friday the thirteenth? Is that what you think this is about?! It's worse! Far worse!" Jones ducked back out of sight.
The roommate sighed. "All right. What is it this time?"
"The raven. There's a raven. And it's evil."
"What raven?"
Jones' head came out again. "Right there over the doo…" The lintel was vacant. Jones crawled out and stood to take a better look. "It's gone!"
"Yeah…"
Jones sat on the edge of the bed, and buried his face in his hands. "What does the bird kingdom have against me?! First a goose and now a raven! I'll go mad, I tell you! Mad!"
The look he was being given suggested it might not be a long trip.
* * *
If permitted, we will backtrack a few hours and several decks, and peer into the Captain's room upon that dark and dreary midnight. Kirk too was awake, and reading on his computer screen. He was not, however, on The Captain Kirk Page. He'd managed to get himself out of Sickbay and back into his friends good graces within an hour or so earlier, but not without swearing up, down, backwards, sideways, and diagonally that he would never—even if Romulans were torturing him—go back onto that site. And he suspected that, regardless of what the BBK might say, if they ever caught him on that site again, he'd be dead long before he encountered any bridges.
In any case, it was late, and he was reading an old story. There was a real run on forgotten lore that night. Perhaps it was somehow related to the weather.
The silence and the stillness was broken by a rapping, a gentle tapping at the door. Kirk's quarters, of course, had a doorbell as well, so knocking was unusual. Kirk found this odd, but not especially disturbing. It took more than knocking to creep out Captain Kirk.
"Enter," he called.
No answer.
Kirk frowned, shrugged, and went to open the door.
At first, nothing. Familiar corridors made faintly eerie by the dimmed lighting for Gamma Shift. Silence, dark and deep. And then, a faint noise.
"Hello? Anybody out here?"
There was a flapping, and a big, black, stately raven flew into the room. The door shut behind it, and the raven perched on the lintel above the doorframe. It stared, unblinking, at Kirk. Kirk stared back, speechless for a moment or two.
"If I hear," he said finally, "that you're a sacred raven, there will be trouble." He meant it too.
The raven did not seem impressed. It continued staring, in a way that was curiously uncanny. Kirk tried to shake the feeling off and think of a plausible reason for a bird to be loose on his ship. He came up with nil. He stood in the center of the room, and studied it.
The bird continued its unblinking gazing. Kirk started to feel uncomfortable. It wasn't easy to spook Kirk, but this bird was somehow doing it. There was nothing really very strange about it. It just had an odd aura of the supernatural, the deep denizens of the subconscious.
"You know, there's nothing strange about ravens," Kirk said, to himself or the bird it's hard to say. "They're just birds. Dumb animals. Maybe in, say, the 1800s or so, people thought they were evil. But this is the twenty-third century."
The bird was beginning to look creepily intelligent to him. Obeying impulse, Kirk reached for a tricorder and did a scan. The tricorder registered a perfectly normal, perfectly harmless bird. Definitely not intelligent, not abnormal, not anything. Just a bird. Kirk felt unaccountably relieved, and annoyed with himself for feeling that way.
"Well. Just a dumb bird."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." The eeriness quadrupled.
Kirk's jaw dropped. "You know, this looks like a really good time to find some nice, normal, humans. I think I'll, uh, go to the Mess Hall."
He left, telling himself all the way to the Mess Hall that maybe McCoy was right, he was working too hard, and now he was hallucinating.
He returned to his quarters an hour later. He'd spent a pleasant hour with Scotty, who'd been up late fiddling with the transistalator in the—well, never mind what it was, he was fiddling with it. Kirk was in a considerably better frame of mind as he approached the doors to his quarters.
His mood dropped as the doors opened. Inside, it was dark. Even though he was sure he'd left the lights on. He shoved down an ominous feeling, and entered. The doors shut behind him, sending the room into almost complete blackness.
There was a noise. A flapping. And Kirk had the distinct impression of a black form with glowing red eyes flying straight at him. He reacted instinctively, ducking out of the way, then took three steps to his desk, grabbed the phaser he knew was there, and fired.
There was a thud.
"Computer, lights."
The room brightened, and the form of the raven was visible, crumpled on the floor.
"Oh well," Kirk said lightly.
Quoth the raven nevermore.
* * *
Backtracking again, by a couple corridors and a couple hours, we arrive in McCoy's quarters. McCoy was also wakeful, as was Surak the cat. Who heard the rapping first is difficult to say, but either way there was a rapping, a gentle tapping, at the door.
"Who would be knocking at midnight? If this isn't an emergency, they've got no consideration…" McCoy grumbled to himself.
"Meow," Surak commented.
McCoy shrugged. "Come in," he called.
No answer.
"Inconsiderate and deaf," McCoy muttered, and went to open the door.
Empty corridors. Darkness there and nothing more. McCoy frowned, puzzled. Pranks didn't seem likely aboard the Enterprise. He was about to return to his quarters and close the door, when there was, not a tapping but a flapping. And in flew a bird. McCoy entered after it.
His first reaction had been to think, 'oh no, not another goose,' but on closer examination it was pretty obvious this wasn't a goose. For one thing it was black. Also it was a grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird. McCoy frowned at it.
"Jim is not gonna like this."
"Mrr," Surak said, perhaps on agreement but more likely in regard to the bird. Surak was crouched, tail twitching, staring at the raven.
"Not again," McCoy told him. "You got lucky last time, but if you keep attacking birds bigger than you, you're going to be in trouble. And then how often will you be stalking any birds?"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore." Probably in a bid for attention, objecting to being upstaged to a cat. It worked.
McCoy and Surak turned to look at the raven simultaneously, with mirror expressions of surprise.
"Do ravens talk?" McCoy asked. Where he expected an answer, I don't know. "You are just a raven right? Just a bird? We didn't get a feathered crewmember that no one told me about?"
The raven stared, unblinking, from its perch above the door. It was definitely just a raven.
"Well…maybe I imagined it," McCoy muttered.
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"Or not," McCoy amended, trying to figure out, first, why the raven was talking, and second, what about it was so unnerving.
He never did figure it all out precisely. He was distracted by Surak, who, whether because he sensed something eerie or just out of cat-instinct, leaped for the raven. The raven squawked a normal bird-type sound, and flew away from the door. It circled, with Surak in pursuit from the ground. McCoy judged it wise to get out of the way of both of them. Surak chose his moment, and leaped again, connected, and bore the raven towards the ground.
With one last "Nevermore" the raven abruptly vanished. Into thin air. Surak landed, on four feet as cats are apt to do, but without any sign of the bird he'd been attacking. It was, quite simply, not there. It was very, very strange. McCoy and Surak stared at the spot it had been.
McCoy swallowed. "You know…I think I should go check on the night nurses, in Sickbay. That seems wise."
"Mrrr…" Surak said.
"You can come. Let's get out of here."
They left.
* * *
Backtracking just once more, we come, not to another quarters, but to the brig, with its sole occupant: Harry Mudd. There was also a guard, Smith to be precise. Both were awake, Smith on duty, Harry puzzling over ways to escape. Forgotten lore held no particular lure for him, unless he could sell it to someone.
There was no tapping, there being no door, but there was a flapping. And into sight flew a raven, a stately black raven. Smith and Harry stared at it.
"What's a raven doing here?" Smith asked, faintly nervous.
"Well I wouldn't know," Harry pointed out.
The raven perched on the wall across from the cell and stared, unblinking, at the two of them.
"Maybe I'll…call someone. And see," Smith decided. He tried the nearest comm unit. It didn't seem to be working. He frowned. "Well, there's another one in the corridor. Don't go anywhere." He exited.
Harry studied the raven. Unlike all before him, he didn't find it spooky. No doubt there was a deep-seated psychological reason for this, probably related to his worshipping of profit rather than anything spiritual, but no need to get into that. Whatever the reason, he found the raven not spooky, but amusing.
"So tell me, o bird," he said mockingly, "how shall I get out of my cage?"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
Harry's jaw dropped. First he was surprised. Then, he had a thought. "Saaay. I could make a fortune with you!"
The raven seemed mildly perturbed. Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"I can see it now! Harry Mudd's Amazing Talking Raven! I'll wow 'em in the little colonies, they haven't got any decent entertainment. Can you say anything else?"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."
"That's okay, with the right publicity one word is enough," Harry decided. "Stick with me, bird, and as soon as I get out of here, we'll be going places."
The raven ruffled its wings, looking definitely concerned. "Nevermore."
"Our faces will be known from here to the Klingon Empire! 'Harry and the Bird!'"
With a very definitive "Nevermore!" the raven took flight, flew down the length of the room, out the door, and out of sight.
"Hey, wait, come back!" Harry sighed. "I have no luck." But he brightened quickly. "But on the other hand, who needs one dumb bird that says 'nevermore?' With a hidden microphone I could fake a much better act…"
* * *
As for the raven, it seemed to decide that it had had quite enough of the Enterprise. Far from sitting, never flitting, it was seen…nevermore.
Ah, that was fun. Next chapter soon. Leave a review please, I gotta go carve pumpkins.