Fiction Fantastic 2025 Winning Story: “Birdsong” by Emmett Coughlan

The story below is a winner from our Fiction Fantastic Young Writers Contest, open to all youth in Lane County. For more information on this contest, including how to enter, visit here. Support this program with a donation.

You can purchase this story in the 2025 Winners Anthology, Echoes of the Future.

“Birdsong” by Emmett Coughlan, South Eugene High School

Honorable Mention, High School Level, 2025

Birdsong

Emmett Coughlan

South Eugene High School

Editors’ Note: This story includes portrayal of gun violence.

The man with the brown hat steps off his boat to the sound of songbirds. It is an odd time after a snowmelt, he decides. When the pines weep tears and the first robins take flight. The slushy water rushes up, haltered only by his new rubber gaiters, and recedes leaving stains of mud to let you know it was there. It’s the time of year when the water starts to kiss instead of bite. His buckskin jacket rises and falls as he sighs.

A raven circles high above the snow tips of the tangled, sagging forest.

Beth looks up from her washboard. It has been a long time since anyone has come around the farm. From the strange man’s pinstriped shirt to his polished leather short-cut shoes, you can tell he isn’t from here. She averts her eyes when she catches a glimpse of another man, similarly dressed but carrying a fearsome looking Winchester. I ought to tell Pop, she thinks.

The raven hops down from a fence to look at some spilled seed and is puzzled by the girl running towards her farmhouse. The raven takes flight.

The wind rushes past his salt-struck hair as the man with the brown hat strides up into the hills. It is awfully quiet. He starts following the stream to where his friend said they would meet. The soft red clay runs silently through his cracked fingers as he dips his hand into the stream. He hears a loud bang, then the birds stop chirping. He cocks his weapon and continues warily.

The raven croaks somewhere deep in the forest, having found something new. It tears its beak into the still-warm treasure.

Beth takes a shaky gasp. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since the men took her father into the woods when she hears what sounds like a peal of thunder. They had asked about the Sluice gang, a ruthless band of outlaws that used to frequent these parts. Pop told her to go inside as he led them up the slope and into the forest. She knows full well what that gunshot means.

The raven looks up, disinterested in anything other than the fresh, succulent, prize it has found. But its beady eyes fall on something shiny and round.

The man in the brown hat stoops to look at the cracked ground. A dusting of cigarette embers slowly burns through a leaf. Someone is out here with him.

The raven starts to hop towards the glittering coin steeped in red. It sees itself in the coin’s warm yellow sheen and begins to cackle.

Beth grabs her father’s breech-loader and saddles Cassidy, the mare, and they head for the hills. Her heart beats wildly as the wind rushes through the pines and her hair. She stops and her mount whinnies. Cassidy must be jumping at shadows, Beth thinks.

The raven croaks. It shimmers in the steam of the forest as a fog rolls in for a glimmer of a second. Then it is engulfed in the silver mist, and then it is no longer the raven.

His hat-clad scalp tingles as he sees the fog roll in. The man tries to convince himself that this sort of weather is normal in spring, but some irrational part of his brain screams out in dread. He cannot remember being this afraid, even when he first held up that station.

The thing that was the raven elongates and sheds feather after black feather to the blood-splattered soil.

Beth hears another gunshot and Cassidy snorts twice, rears up, and bolts for home. Beth barely has time to grab her pack and the rifle inside before she tumbles to the ground. She picks herself up, brushing pine needles off her yellow dress and continues on foot.

The miasma shrouds the thing as it becomes not quite visible. Its beady, dark eyes look around in the fog. It cranes its neck and stands to full height, somehow taller and thinner than a man could ever be.

The man in the brown hat steels his unruly nerves and trudges on. He remains on a hair’s trigger and so, when he sees the corpse, his heart thunders like a train through his ribcage. He stills, and dust and rain and mud drift down through the air. The body is fresh, but he can tell that a bird has been at it already. He kneels down at the corpse of his former friend.

The raven-thing shuffles, plodding through the forest, away from the snack and the man with the fire-stick and towards the men with the shiny coins.

Beth gallantly trudges through the amalgamation of muck, needles, and slush that litters the forest floor. Unholstering her father’s gun, silently drawing from the leather saddlebag. She hasn’t fired yet: two barrels, two shots. More than enough to send this man to hell. She levels her rifle at the sight of a figure just behind the bushes and pines. The shot is clear, but she wavers. The man looks saddened, solemn. She hears a soft sound. Is he . . . weeping? No. He can’t be. He killed my father, she thinks. Racked with guilt, she lowers the gun and continues through the tangle toward the shadow.

The creature, now more of a thing than raven, watches with wary eyes as the men with the striped shirts set down the box and look inside.

The man sits pensive, bound by a mixture of guilt and betrayal he hadn’t felt since before he had joined up with that Sluice gang. His intense prayer for his departed companion dulls his senses, so he remains unaware of the young lady behind him until a loud bird call startles him from his thoughts. He whirls, his lithe hand reaching down for his sidearm.

“Don’t try for it, murderer,” Beth states through clenched teeth.

The man pauses.

“No, you wouldn’t remember me. I’m guessing your father kept his word.” He slides his hands skyward, tears fresh on his cheeks. “My name is Lewis Stockworth. I was an associate of your father’s.”

“I don’t recall him mentioning you. How did you meet him?”

“We were involved in some terrible things back then. Times were hard.” The man, Lewis, shifts his weight, stares off into the wood, and swallows. “Your father, the Laram boys, and I, we formed the Sluice gang.”

“My father might have kept a lot of things from me, but nothing this outlandish. I don’t believe he could kill a man.”

“He didn’t. He was always the timid one, always held back. He was the lookout.” Then, almost to himself, “I knew I shouldn’t have sent that telegram.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Two weeks ago, I sent your father a telegram. It told him I was coming here. Whoever killed him must have intercepted the message.”

“Some city fellows took him into the woods not more than an hour ago, then I heard the gunshot. I thought you were one of them at first.” Beth holsters her gun.

“We better deal with the body. We don’t want birds getting to it, or worse. How did you even get out here anyway? Your father’s place must be a good ways.”

“My horse bolted when the fogbank blew this way. It’s funny, I used to think we didn’t have those out here. Not in my years.”

Lewis grabs some brush and piles it atop the corpse. After staring for what seems like minutes and letting her tears mingle with those of the heavens, Beth joins, dragging fallen branches into a pile that would cause a casual observer some trouble. The two figures discuss, and decide to follow the now-disappearing footprints.

The thing of fog and sinew hunches and grasps at the ground. It makes a sound not dissimilar to laughter as it draws near the men.

A sickly ray of sun breaks through the mist, illuminating Beth. She blinks and wonders.

“What are they still out here for? They killed Pop already.”

“I’m still out here.”

“But why did you send that telegram? And why did you come here?”

A loud boom rocks the forest, interrupting the companions’ rapport.

“It will be dark soon and, unless I am mistaken, there is more going on here than a rival gang.”

“You didn’t answer me.”

He quickens his pace.

“I don’t plan to.”

The creature steadies itself, exhaling one more croaking breath. It leaps, one moment out of the men’s sight and the next grabbing on to a limb. The man goes down, his red flesh filling the creature’s mouth. Those remaining barely have time to get out their weapons before the creature vanishes again, dragging an unfortunate through the underbrush. Just as it feels safe, far enough to take a nibble from the gurgling mess, it hears a bang and its chest bursts ablaze. Black ichor spills.

Lewis stoops suddenly, his keen eyes alighting on another cigarette, trampled by the men they are following. He takes time to snuff it out with a boot heel. He grimaces.

“I held up a fuel pump in Garrisville. I needed a place to lie low for a few days, and your father had a dry barn. So I sent a telegram.” He winces slightly before continuing. “Those men, they aren’t a rival gang. They’re federal.”

Beth stops in her tracks, her face a tempest.

“I see why you didn’t tell me. You’re just as much a dog-faced murderer as them. Presuming upon my father’s hospitality, leading the marshals here to get him killed.”

Beth opens her pack and withdraws an old four-shot pistol.

“I might just kill you here.” She raises it to the man’s head, her hands steady. She draws back the hammer with a deafening click in the otherwise still air.

“Maybe I deserve to die.” The man smiles a tight smile as tears fall down his stumbled cheeks. The same tears he was crying over her Pop’s body. Tears a man like him had no business crying. Beth’s lip quivers and she puts the pistol away, sliding it into her belt.

Someone whispers, “I’m sorry,” but the other doesn’t hear.

The thing’s pores stand up, feathers gone. A pool of black exudes into the steaming snow. It grows weak and cold, and the corpse-snack lies forgotten. The lead burns in its chest as it drags itself into the brush, stumbling and wriggling.

The two continue, more determined than ever. The man draws his pistols and the lady clutches her rifle, both keeping a sure footing in the terrain. They come to a gully.

A man crouches ahead, his back to them. Beth spots him. She doesn’t hesitate.

Bang.

One man barely has a second to turn before, bang, his bowler hat tumbles off his head. Lewis rolls behind a tree and his companion dives behind an outcrop as the third agent returns fire.

Bang, bang, bang.

Beth pokes her head above the rock and discharges a short volley. Bang. The third man falls to the ground.

The raven takes a little puff of air, its chest shuddering. Then it moves no more.

Beth returns to the farmhouse, Cassidy waiting faithfully outside. She turns to bid the man farewell, but he has already left. She cries and sits down, thankful for the warm sun.

A bird sings.