CHAPTER EIGHT
Lisa Canton breathed deeply of the crisp morning air as she rounded the corner of the Reflecting Pool and jogged into the courtyard of the World War Two Memorial.
Her great grandfather had fought in World War Two, and growing up, her parents had taken her here every year to pay respects.
Now that she lived here, the place didn’t have the same aura as before, but she still made sure to say a brief prayer every time she ran through.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one praying for the memories of the fallen. A man in a military uniform knelt in front of the Atlantic Theater arch, hands clasped in front of him like the little kid from that bedtime prayer.
Lisa came to a stop. Normally, she would walk from here around the reflecting pool to slow her heart rate, but something about seeing a man in uniform praying for his fellow veterans touched her.
She didn’t want to disturb him, so she stood a respectful distance away and waited for him to finish his prayer.
And waited.
And waited.
After fifteen minutes, her heart rate had slowed, but she still felt a tightness in her chest. Something wasn’t right.
The man hadn’t moved. Not a muscle. Not a twitch, not a sniffle, not a shuffle.
No rise and fall of his chest. His uniform could be hiding his breathing, but Lisa was at least twenty years younger than the guy, and she couldn’t kneel like that for fifteen minutes without her ankles cursing her in three different languages.
She should go check on him. Make sure he was okay.
She stood still. In the deeper parts of her mind, the primal places where everyone remained afraid of the dark and wondered what lurked under their beds, she understood that checking on him could mean finding out something was wrong, and those same primal places clung to the superstitious belief that if she discovered evil, she would be dragged into it against her will.
In the end, she didn’t need to overcome her fear. A raven landed on the man’s clasped hands, perched carefully, and regarded him. Then it plucked out his left eye and swallowed it with a quick flick of its beak. The man didn’t move.
But Lisa did. A bystander called the police after the shrieking Lisa ran sobbing into a café across the street and shouted about a bird eating a dead man in the World War Two Memorial. That night, she would sleep with every light on and every interior door in her house open.