Even as a Grinnell girl who only visited once a month, I could tell as soon as I stepped off of the shuttle. I knew that Des Moines was not the quiet Midwestern city it once was. As much as I hate to use the term “female intuition,” no better explanation comes to mind. I just sensed that something sinister inhabited the metropolis that emerged from the wombs of cows and corn kernels in the humble year of 1834. And, as a biology student with ambitions in medical research, I am not prone to melodrama.

 I was there, I witnessed it, not once or twice but three times---which means it must have happened. I’m a reliable source. My mother always accused me of being a stubbornly practical and local girl. My eyes tell no lie; I rely on them everyday for observation, for inspecting Petri dishes and fish swimming around in tanks and vegetables growing in Styrofoam cups and rows of dead creatures. Yes, dead creatures. No longer living. 

I stood in an office building, two stories higher than the building where the magician performed his evil tricks. I was working late, afterhours as usual, filing papers for a non-profit clinic for the very first time. But my mind was not completely invested in the forms and folders before me. It kept wandering. None of the thoughts were especially productive so I kept staring out the window. The clouds were black and strange.

As I said before, I came to the city once a month. Des Moines was about an hour drive from my school, Grinnell College, a tiny liberal arts school in Grinnell, Iowa. I do not believe Columbidae were slaughtered there. But I rarely believe things I myself have not seen. I almost did not believe what I saw that first time in Des Moines.

One by one, the magician severed the pigeons’ wings and placed the now flightless animals on the roof of the building. They, the bleach beaked birds, made no sound. Their pain transcended any physical reaction. If they reacted at all, perhaps they did so spiritually, somewhere in their little pigeon souls. But, as I said before, I’m a biology student. I subscribe to the cannons of science, not religion. Whether pigeons have souls is immaterial. I cannot quantify souls, therefore souls have no place in experiments---and something that has no place in experiments might as well not exist. 

After the magician had mutilated twelve of the birds, he pushed them all off the edge of the building and watched them plummet to the sidewalk below. With each pigeon came an almost silent whimper, a sudden crash, and then a frenzy of brown and gray feathers clouding the immediate cityscape. Brown and gray, brown and gray. It was the only comforting pattern from the whole episode. But it would have been much more comforting if the feathers did not burst into flame the moment they hit the sidewalk. 

The brown and gray erupted into red, orange, and blue at the very center, at the stem, or ‘rachis,’ of the feathers. Yet instead of folding into ash, the feathers flashed into bits of glitter, shot straight up in the air, and dissolved. I repeat, they dissolved. They did not hit ground or get swept away by the wind. They dissolved---but in the instant before that happened, I noticed something else and shuddered.

The outlines of a diaphanous face flittered from the cloud of glitter. The face was young, rather young, with large eyes and full cheeks. It was a face I had not seen for a decade but distinctly remembered nonetheless, especially that dimpled chin. That sweet dimpled chin. 

His name was Samuel, not Sam or Sammy but Samuel. He had been very insistent about that. We went to elementary school together back in Maryland and had the same teachers every year, much to our delight. We played together during recess and after classes, darting up trees and chasing after balls or squirrels or chipmunks. At mass, in the days when I still went to church, we held hands in the pews. We whispered and giggled, even at the priest’s mention of the depths of Hell. Samuel was my childhood sweetheart. In sixth grade, he asked me to marry him. 

But Samuel and I didn’t marry. We didn’t even date through middle or high school. It wasn’t because we drifted or our feelings changed, as often happens with such young couples. He died in a fire at a hotel in France on a family vacation the summer before seventh grade. My mother received the news in the PTA newsletter, which she then handed to me to read. She said nothing and I never spoke about Samuel again.

When Samuel’s face dissolved, the crouching man repeated the process all over again and I returned to my filing. I was too tired; perhaps I had imagined the sight. And yet when I peered out the window again, Sam’s face twinkled another time. I dropped the folders in my hand and immediately ran to the office kitchen to pour myself a glass of water. I gulped the clear liquid, ice cubes and all, in no time. I was breathing too hard, panting, and needed to relax. I almost collapsed.

After I gained some degree of calm, my next instinct was to call the police. This magician was, after all, torturing and murdering innocent pigeons. He wasn’t humanely killing them for food. I grabbed the receiver and pressed it tightly against my ear. I fervently dialed 911 only to discover that the phone was dead. No dial tone, no noise whatsoever. I checked that it was plugged in and it was. I know what you’re thinking---but this was before the age of cell phones and the Internet. I flicked my wrist to see my watch. It was 9:30 p.m. None of the businesses around me would be open. Besides, I had to return to campus before my shuttle stopped running.

I gathered my coat, gloves, hat, scarf, and bag. Quickly, I bundled up and ran downstairs. The stairs spiraled longer than I had remembered but I continued running nonetheless. Once I reached the lobby, I sprinted outside and to the bus stop. Maybe the bus driver would be able to contact the police for me, I thought during my mad dash. 

At the bus stop, I anxiously jogged in place for a couple of minutes until the white shuttle arrived. As soon as the doors opened, I bolted in and my words sped out before I could even form them in my head.

“Sir, please listen. I need your help. I have to report something to the police. You see, I saw a man---a magician or a wizard or somebody---killing, no, torturing and then killing birds, pigeons, and---”

The bus driver closed the shuttle door and began driving before I could complete my jumbled story. My body jolted around until I decided to take a seat. I sat as close to the bus driver as possible and rambled on again, “He was torturing and killing these birds! Dozens of them! Really brutally! And someone has to stop him! Maybe the police can---”

“Miss,” the driver interrupted, “the police have a lot more on their hands this week, okay? They ain’t gonna worry ‘bout some rats with wings. Them things infest the city as it is. Far as I can tell, this magician or whoever is doin’ Des Moines a service.”

“But---”

“Besides, I don’t have a phone in here. Now where you wanna go?”

“The airport, please. But ‘bout those birds---”

“You tryin’ to catch a taxi?”

This man just wouldn’t listen. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen Samuel’s face, I would not have felt so passionate about the situation. Regardless of how I felt, however, I needed to focus on getting home. “Yes, sir.”

“Where you tryin’ to go?”

“Grinnell College.”

“Ah. Heard that’s a good school. Real expensive, though. Ya one of them rich kids?”

“I, um, well, I’m there on a scholarship, sir.”

“I see. Well, anyway, I know the taxis are still running but it might be hard to find one willing to go all the way out there at this hour.”

“As long as I’m at the airport before 10 p.m., it shouldn’t be a problem.”

After that, the bus driver and I no longer exchanged any words. He drove along in silence while I fidgeted. I kept trying to convince myself that I hadn’t seen Samuel’s face but I eventually gave up on that. The fact of the matter was that I had. I only wish I understood why. The question persisted to pound at my mind even when I lay myself in bed that evening, having safely returned to campus. I never called the police but instead pondered for a small while longer and then fell asleep. 

A month the later, the question had nearly faded from my head. I might’ve dismissed it altogether if my next session volunteering at the clinic hadn’t unearthed it from the back of my brain again. 

Nearly an identical episode occurred. I was up late, sorting papers and relabeling old folders. It was such a tedious task that I couldn’t help but gaze out the window every now and then. Around 8:30 p.m., when darkness started to fall, I noticed a tall, lean figure lurking about the rooftop of the building across from mine. I turned off the light in my room so as not to be spotted. It was the magician, no mistake. 

He sported the same long cloak and the same long, shaggy hair. In his left hand, he carried a big, bulging sack. I shuddered when I imagined what was inside. When he dumped the contents of the sack only seconds later, my suspicions were confirmed. Dozens of limp pigeons fell into a pile. Then the severing began, then the pushing of the creatures off the edge of the building, the flames, the glitter, and this time a new face.

I caught the shadows of a face I knew well but not quite as poignantly as I knew Samuel’s. It was my current boyfriend’s---the only boyfriend I’d ever had at that point, despite the fact that I was already twenty-one. Carl’s funny eyebrows and dark lashed eyes appeared before me with ghostly realism. I could even make out the green flecks dancing around his pupils. I had first noticed those flecks while he and I were studying bread mold in our freshman biology class. Ten years from now I still expected to be working alongside Carl everyday, wearing a white lab coat. Our relationship lacked the kind of romantic flair that characterizes most young partnerships but we shared a mutual understanding. If I could articulate what it was we both understood, I would but I couldn’t then nor can I any better now. Sometimes I joked that our mutual understanding was only our comprehension of scientific theories. But the relationship certainly felt convenient and I thought I was happy. Not as happy as Samuel had made me but Samuel was dead. 

My initial questions started flooding back. Who was this magician who had known both Samuel and Carl? Who was this magician who knew me? How did he know my connections to these two boys? Naturally, I had to find out. I was beyond curious and, besides, scientists must satisfy themselves with results.

Still hiding in the dark office, I felt around like a blind woman for my outerwear. I wasn’t about to head outside without a coat. It was hanging on a splintery coat hanger. Once dressed, I crept out. If I weren’t discreet, the magician would run away before I could discover who he was. Thus stealth would be my greatest asset. 

The icy wind blew into my face as soon as I exited the office. I had never known Des Moines to be anything but cold. Recovering from the initial shock of the sub-zero weather, I rounded the corner of my building and tiptoed through the damp alley. When I got to a fire escape, rusty and rickety as it was, I climbed up it as quietly as I could manage. My legs moved so slowly in the cold but eventually I reached the top of the magician’s brick building.

As I approached the magician, I realized that he was not wearing a cloak at all but rather a hooded sweatshirt with DES MOINES in white letters printed on the back. Instead of the dramatic pants and shoes I was expecting, he had on faded gray jeans and beaten up sneakers. The magician was still kneeling down, so engaged in his gruesome task, that he did not pay any attention to me. But now I could hear the pigeons.

They shrieked the same way a mouse caught in a trap faintly shrills. It was a soft and pitiable sound. I could quantify their little yells in decibels but I could never quantify the way my heart shook just then, like a series of miniscule earthquakes. I stared at the magician, the pigeons, and the frosty brick upon which we stood. 

“Who are you?” I finally piped up after perhaps a couple of minutes had passed. At that point, I was so entranced that it impaired my judgment.

The magician whipped around but I never saw his face because as soon as he turned around, his threw up a handful of pigeons. They were, obviously, all dead. The pigeons combusted and glittered and this unfamiliar, handsome face appeared as translucently as a phantom. His light eyes smiled at me before the entire face and the magician dissolved into a swirl of nothingness. Where they went, I do not know but I wondered about the handsome face and when I would meet him in life.

All that remained on the rooftop was the pile of dead pigeons and, of course, me. Then the wintry Iowa wind blew across the barren scene and sequestered the pigeons. Then I stood alone on top of the building, stunned. An instant later, I sighted my bus pull into its stop and leave without me yet somehow I did not feel abandoned. Oddly, the handsome face had put me at ease.

That night, instead of returning to campus, I slept on top of the magician’s building. I curled up in a corner and folded my scarf into a pillow. When I awoke the next morning, pigeons---real, live pigeons---greeted me with their gentle coos.

I never volunteered at the clinic again.