by P. T. Hylton
Frank stumbled backwards as the Unfeathered came near, and he crashed into what felt like a stone wall. He looked back and saw it was the police officer who had been standing behind him. The Unfeathered passed by Frank like he wasn’t there.
Frank glanced down at the necklace around his neck. Zed had said it would protect him from the Unfeathered. Looked like he hadn’t been lying. About that part, at least.
That was no reason to go unprotected, though. Frank reached for the gun holstered on the police officer’s side. He pulled on the holster’s strap and unbuckled it. As soon as he released it, it snapped back shut. He touched the officer’s face. It was hard as rock. His face, his hair, his hands, they were all part of the unmovable statue that was this man.
Frank eased himself out from between Zed’s outstretched finger and the officer behind him. He walked around the stage, touching things, trying to understand his new world. He found that he could pick up objects off the ground, like the microphone lying unused near the front of the stage, but as soon as he let them go, they snapped back to their original locations as if pulled by a strong magnet.
More than once he crossed paths with one of the wandering Unfeathered. They took no notice of him. Gaining a little more confidence, Frank inched close to one of them, stretched out his hand, and brushed his fingers against the creature’s wing. The Birdie shook itself as if a fly had landed on it, but it didn’t turn toward Frank.
A thick swarm of Unfeathered passing overhead. It was then he noticed something else: the creatures weren’t singing. Frank had rarely seen an Unfeathered that wasn’t singing its terrible song or feeding. But these creatures, even the countless cloud of them in the sky, were absolutely silent but for the flapping of their wings.
Frank walked up to Zed and spat in his face. It was less satisfying than he thought it would be; the moment the spit hit Zed, it disappeared. It seemed not even his saliva could affect the rest of the world here.
He slid off the stage and walked through the crowd. He held out his hands as he walked, letting the cold hard skin of the people brush against his palms. It was strange looking into their frozen faces. Some were somber. Some expressionless. But a disturbing amount of them looked gleeful, their faces frozen masks of delight as they watched the punishment being doled out up on the stage. Frank had known many of these people his whole life, but that didn’t stop them from getting their sadistic jollies watching him get the punishment they felt he had coming to him.
Suddenly the Unfeathered all froze as if listening. Then, as one, they took off into the air and flew away. Frank had a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The creatures had looked frightened. Whatever frightened the Unfeathered would probably not mean good news for Frank.
A low humming began. Then a higher note joined it. Then another.
It was a song, but not a song of the Unfeathered. This was something else. Frank remembered what Zed had told him. “When the Ones Who Sing come after you, you might wish you had swallowed your pride.”
Frank backed up until he was against the stage. He looked out into the crowd, waiting.
He saw a shadow moving through the crowd. Then another.
No, they weren’t shadows. They were dark shapes, vaguely like that of a man, though their edges seemed to shift and blur. They moved quickly, twisting their way through the crowd. Where moments ago there had been three of them there were now dozens. The shapes divided and merged, as if they were all part of some single, ever-changing mass.
The singing grew louder, so loud that Frank felt the urge to put his hands over his ears. He resisted it, afraid that any movement might draw their attention. He concentrated on staying perfectly still, his back pressed against the stage.
More voices joined the deafening chorus, and somehow the cacophony of notes began to form words. It was like no language Frank had ever heard, but it was also perfectly understandable, like a language he had always known somewhere deep inside. They were singing a single word.
“Frankkk.”
Frank’s breath caught in his throat. How did they know him? What did they want?
“Frankkk.”
Frank tried to pick one of the shapes out in the crowd and follow it with his eyes, but he found he couldn’t see the shape when he looked at it directly. It disappeared. It was only when he didn’t focus, when he took in the scene as a whole, that he could see them.
That poor woman on the stage had been right. They weren’t real. But they were.
“Frankkk. You are almost free.”
The shapes moved closer to him. He pressed himself harder against the stage. He wanted to run, but where? The shapes were all around him. The Ones Who Sing circled closer, their ever-changing song growing even louder.
One of the shapes brushed up against his leg and he heard a ripping sound. He looked down. His jeans were ripped and there was a long cut on his thigh.
“Frankk,” the song continued. “Come to us as a dog to its master, and we will feed you.”
One brushed past his head, and he felt a clump of his hair being ripped out.
“Get away!” he yelled.
“Come to us as a master to his dog, and we will give you three truths.”
Another brushed past his arm, and a new gash appeared in his skin.
“Come to us as a friend, and we will take your flesh.”
They were brushing against him two at a time, so quickly he lost track of his wounds.
“Come to us as an enemy, and we will take your life.”
Frank put his arms up to cover his face. He fell to his knees to cover as much of himself as he could.
“Come to us, Frankk. Come to us.”
The song stopped, and they were gone.
2.
Bad as the Ones Who Sing were, it didn’t take Frank long to realize that they might not be his biggest problem.
He stood in the produce section of Food City in front of a beautiful stack of Honey Crisp apples. Honey Crisps were his favorite. Will always said they were so good because they came from the North, but Will was an idiot.
Frank decided to try again.
He reached out and picked up the apple on the top of the stack. It was shiny and red, like an apple you’d see in a commercial. It looked delicious. Frank licked his lips and slowly brought the apple to his mouth, imagining how it would taste if only—if only!—he could eat it. He brought his teeth down gently this time. His mouth still hurt from the last attempt. But the result was the same. It was like trying to bite into stone.
He glanced down at his hand and saw he was dripping blood onto the apple. He hadn’t taken the time to count his cuts, but there had to be a dozen. Thankfully, none of them seemed too deep. Still, between the cuts and the blood smeared all over him, he probably looked like something from a Tarantino movie.
He had been up and down the aisles, and it was all the same. At first he had hoped it was only produce, so he had tried the meat. When that hadn’t worked, he had moved on to the more processed foods. But everything from the peanut butter to the Twinkies was inedible.
Frank dropped the apple, but it didn’t even have the decency to fall down. It snapped back to its rightful place on the top of the stack.
The food situation was worrisome, but he could go for a few weeks without food if he had to. Much more troubling was the lack of water. He could turn on a faucet, but no water came out. He had tried the fountain near City Hall downtown, but the water in the fountain was rock solid. The bottled water at the store was the same. He needed water if he was going to make it more than a couple of days, but he was out of ideas. Poor Earl Garrison had survived here for two months. How had he done it?
The words of The Ones Who Sing came back to Frank: “Come to us as a dog comes to its master, and we will feed you.”
As a dog comes to its master. Begging, thought Frank. They wanted him to beg. He wasn’t quite that desperate, not yet anyway. Then Frank thought of another part of the song: “Come to us as a fr
iend and we will take your flesh.” He thought of Earl’s hand with its missing fingers.
Frank sighed. He had only been there a couple of hours, by his estimation. The situation wasn’t dire yet, but he had to think ahead, to figure it out, if he wanted to survive. He made his way to the front of the store and looked out the glass door. He was relieved to see three Unfeathered standing in the parking lot. One stood near Sally Badwater of all people, idly pecking at her face. It was as if they ate something off the frozen people. If they survived off that, was it something that could also sustain Frank?
He sighed and opened the door. He wasn’t ready to start licking Sally Badwater yet, but give it a few hours.
Frank stopped a few feet in front of one of the Unfeathered. After spending the whole of last week fighting these creatures, it was odd to stand so close to one without either of them trying to kill each other.
Frank glanced down at the gold loop resting on his chest. Zed had told him this would protect him from the Unfeathered, but Zed said a lot of things. Maybe the necklace was what was keeping him trapped here in this place where time didn’t move.
Slowly, Frank lifted the necklace over his head and set it on the ground. He took a deep breath and let go of the chain.
No sooner had his fingers lost contact with the metal than the creature fifteen feet in front of him snapped his head toward Frank and looked right at him. It opened its stunted beak and let out a weak cry. It was a pathetic version of the song the Unfeathered usually sang, but it was recognizable nonetheless. The other Unfeathered scattered throughout the parking lot all turned toward Frank.
Frank glanced at Sally Badwater. Damn it. She remained frozen.
Frank grabbed the necklace off the pavement and put it over his head. The Unfeathered closed their beaks and went back to their lackadaisical business.
Frank made his way through town. He had no clear destination. He needed to think, and he knew that the best solutions often presented themselves when he let both his mind and body wander.
After a while, he found himself back at City Hall. He looked out over the makeshift stage. He didn’t much care to see that again, so he turned the other way and opened the door to City Hall.
He meandered through the hallways. He stopped in front of the sixth door on the left, the door that had held Zed’s box. He let the scenarios play in his mind for a moment. If only he hadn’t opened the box. If only Sean hadn’t ratted him out to Zed. If only Zed hadn’t returned. If only the people of his hometown had stood up for him. In the end, though, there were only two people he could blame for his current situation: himself and Zed.
One of those two people was already paying for his sins. If Frank survived this place, he vowed that Zed would pay, too.
As Frank stared at the door, he heard a low familiar hum, and his heart jumped with terror. Other voices joined the first more quickly this time as the song grew.
“Come to us. We will sustain you.”
Frank silently cursed himself for going into City Hall. If he had been outside, he would have seen the Unfeathered scatter. Inside, he had been caught unaware.
Though the voices were many, Frank saw a single dark shape at the end of the hallway. It flickered as it approached him, hovering motionless for a moment, and then traveling ten feet in less than a second.
“Come eat from our hand. Our price is small.”
“I’ve seen your damn price,” Frank muttered. “I’d like to keep all my fingers, thanks.”
He wasn’t going to wait this time while they/it carved him up like a Christmas ham. He turned and ran toward the exit. He rounded a corner, and there was the dark shape. Frank didn’t hesitate. He ducked around it and kept running. He felt his hand slice open as it brushed against the shape. He didn’t stop.
He crashed into the door and threw it open. As he ran outside, he risked a glance over his shoulder. The dark shape was following close behind him. But now that he was in open space, he sprinted. The stage was directly in front of him.
The shape glided past him, cutting his shoulder. It split in front of him, forming a dozen dark shapes.
“Come to us as a friend. We will take your flesh.”
They formed a semicircle around Frank, pinning him against the stage once again. Frank saw Zed up there, his face frozen in a grin. He would have done anything wipe that smile off Zed’s face. Then Frank saw something else on the stage.
He pulled himself up onto the waist-high structure. He struggled to his feet and ran to Trevor.
Trevor’s hand was still outstretched, and the knife was still resting in his hand. Trevor had wanted Frank to have the knife, but Frank had been a fraction of a second too slow. Or maybe not.
Frank grabbed the knife. He said a silent prayer and opened it, knowing it would snap shut as soon as he let go of the blade. But it didn’t. And it didn’t feel like everything else here did. It felt like metal, not stone.
A dark shape drifted toward him, and Frank swiped at it with the blade. He hit the thing in what he guessed was its shoulder. To Frank’s surprise, the blade sliced through the shape and a piece of it fell to the ground. As the blade struck, there was a momentary pause in the creature’s song like a record skipping.
Frank lunged at the shape’s head, but the shape was already retreating. The song faded, and the Ones Who Sing were gone.
3.
The next thing Frank did was try to stab Zed in the eye. He was disappointed but not surprised when the blade made no mark on the stone skin.
Next Frank set the knife on the stage and let go. It didn’t snap back to Trevor’s hand. The Tools didn’t seem to follow the same rules as the rest of the things in this place. Frank walked over to where Will lay on the stage. The lighter with the broken clock symbol lay on the ground next to him.
Frank picked up the lighter, opened it, and flicked the thumb wheel. It lit on the first try. Good. He had fire and a weapon. He was becoming pretty advanced by caveman standards. What else?
He suddenly thought of Zed’s pocket watch. Was there a chance Zed had it on him? Frank walked to Zed and immediately saw the pocket watch. Zed held it clutched in his left hand.
No matter how Frank tried, he couldn’t get the watch out of Zed’s stone-like hand. He tried cutting and prying with the knife blade, and he tried burning Zed’s hand with the lighter. Neither worked. He couldn’t get the watch away from Zed.
Well, at least he had fire. Now if only he had something to cook. His eyes drifted to the Unfeathered. No. Not yet. He wouldn’t eat that abomination unless he had no other choice.
Frank wandered over to the fountain with its motionless streams of water hanging in the air. He knew he couldn’t drink them, but they sure looked wet. His thirst was beginning to get the better of him. He stabbed the water with the knife. The blade bounced off. He lit the lighter and dropped it onto the water. It hit water’s solid surface with a thud.
He had to move on. This fountain was only making him thirstier.
Just as he was about to pick up the lighter, something occurred to him. He pressed the broken clock symbol on the lighter. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the water began to change. Moisture pooled up around the lighter and it slowly began to sink. The water was melting. Like ice.
The lighter had brought the dead Birdie back to life. It was doing the same for the water.
Frank forced himself to wait until there was a good size puddle around the lighter. It was submerged, but the flame didn’t go out. Frank reached into the water and grabbed the lighter. Then he sank his face into the pool and drank with long thirsty gulps. He couldn’t help but laugh as he felt the wetness dripping down his face. He had water. He had a weapon. He had fire.
He might be able to survive in this place.
4.
Frank took another bite of the meat and wiped his greasy fingers on the tattered remains of his pants. It wasn’t exactly delicious, but he wasn’t eating for pleasure. He had to keep his strength up.
; By his estimation, he had been there for a little more than two weeks. It was difficult to tell because there was no night. There was always the same amount of hazy light coming from the sky. He tried to use his body to judge the passing time. He slept until his bladder woke him up, and then he stayed awake until his body had told him to eat three times, and then he slept again. It wasn’t an exact science but it was all he had. He was starting to wonder how much sleep he was really getting, though. The last few days he had felt dead tired.
He had gotten over his squeamishness at eating the Unfeathered. Killing them was easy; they didn’t notice him until the moment he cut their throats. The real trick turned out to be cooking them. While he did have fire, he didn’t have anything that would burn. Wood, paper, fabric; they were all inflammable here. Luckily he remembered Will’s little on-stage demonstration with the head. The Unfeathered themselves were pretty flammable. So he lit the meat, waited until it was nicely charred, and put it out. It wasn’t tasty, but it worked.
He had learned to cook only small pieces of the meat at a time. As Will had demonstrated, the lighter seemed to temporarily bring things back to life. Frank had discovered with small enough pieces of meat it was difficult to tell whether it was alive.
He’d spent much of his time looking for the other Tools. He had the knife and the lighter, but the cane, the mirror, and the key were all still missing. He’d searched the shed at the cabin. He’d searched Will and Christine’s house. No luck. Will and Christine had hidden the other Tools somewhere new. He found the coin at Sean’s house, but he decided to leave that one where it lay.
He’d also spent time discovering the limitations of the Tools. The lighter unpaused liquids, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on solids. He could drink water, juice, and sodas as long as he could remove the lid long enough to apply a flame directly to paused liquid. Applying the flame to food items with high water content like applesauce produced a mixed result—the water eventually drained out, but the solid portion remained paused. The lighter had no effect on the humans or solid foods.
