The Black Crow

In a dreariness sufficient to overwhelm any man unaccustomed to the interior weather of decay, there stood what might first be mistaken for a black crow perched low among the running trees, though it was in truth a local runaway youth named Chase Pawn, his countenance at once eerie and defunct, preserved in a glazy, overmaintained animation that trafficked in absolutely rotten, repetitive jokes and an unwholesome devotion to public acts of affected insanity—each performed with such...