Miserable mortals; shaped by their miserable sins and twisted into miserable things. The profanity of it all. Makes for good gossip, though. Sometimes that’s all a lady dares to ask for.

  She heard the thump of something striking her apartment door, but she didn’t investigate. She knew the contents, the crick in her neck and the sensation of her heart fragmenting told her all she needed. This is how The Boy Who Ran must have felt; trapped in a chair as things were done to his eyes. The depravity she had witnessed soiled her soul, rotted at what good was left in her mind. Her window was all she had left, now that Eustice had been run down by his inheritor.

  Rain was appropriate, really setting the mood for the funeral. Young Eustice loved the rain, he always wanted to dance in it- like a fawn.

  Anchored to her chair; she watched Wulf’s funeral home, waiting for changes that never came. It was a sad building, sagging in places and cordoned off by a black iron fence. Couldn’t be more relatable if it tried. She ran a wrinkled hand over her book, wrapped in brown paper like she was still a schoolgirl. That paper looked old these nights, ragged and ripped; the penciled title “Of Monsters” fading away. She regarded it, looking past the antler knife and a tea cup whose mold cap now rose over the lip. It would spill over soon, get all over this nice tray table. That was the good one, too; a cute purple piece from the thrift store. Did it rain that day? She couldn’t remember if her little brother had danced.

  Madeline hadn’t shifted in what felt an eternity, and she felt no need to now. She stared at the gray beneath the heavy clouds until her time was taken and the soothing darkness of her loss offered sublime relief.

  —

  This terrible sound woke her, like knives carving out words on glass.

  “Open it,” was carved on her interior window.

  “I don’t see the need,” she dryly replied. Her voice sounded like a distant croak.

  “Witch,” was the glass carving's reply, applied so rapidly that the edges of the word cracked.

  The rock salt at the seams is going gray, it’ll have to be replaced soon. Can’t let them get in, I’ve got no Knockers knocking anymore.

  Her posture remained rigid in the chair, she wished she could squirm. She never thought she would miss the damnable things; always clamouring and knocking and asking for sweets. The ripping of their flesh, their dissonant and unearthly screams filling the stairwells of the apartment complex when the knuckledraggers came, the sounds haunted her. Had that happened yet? Is it about to happen? It’s all so confusing.

  A fugue fog was gathering around her skull, heavy and cold. Her mind felt numb from the crushing weight of this prison within a prison within a prison. All of her curiosities were stripped from her, her brain dedicating more resources into keeping her aware than living. Her freedom was taken from her, sequestered away into this apartment made safe only by the Old Ways. Her future was stolen decades ago, manacled by the cursed boundaries of this terrible swath of land and its sulfur stench.

  Time felt both eternal and instant. The moments that she was aware were agonizingly long, the blips of shadowy relief so painfully short. Madeline was stuck, not just in this chair or Oakvane; a prisoner in her own vessel.

  I can still cry?

  She couldn’t feel the tears rolling down her cheek, of course, but she remembered the sensation’s phantom well enough.

  Did Mr. Whistler the Kingfisher see me already; or is that happening soon?

  “Ti Nepo,” the faint scratches on the outside of her window read when she saw the police car pull up on Wulf’s. Mr. Whistler was there, looking like a fawn abandoned in the rain. The sight of him made her heart rip up again. He looked in her direction, even up to the second floor where she watched.

  Madeline wanted to scream for him, tell him to go back and eat the slip stag. Eustice would have wanted that. If consuming that sacred flesh evicted Mr. Whistler from the narrative, her brother would have seen no blasphemy in it. The Old Ways were persnickety like that.

  And good god, if Mr. Whistler did not look like the spitting image of Eustice fifty years ago.

  The service was short, which was her brother’s preferred helping of religion. That trollop Claudia was guiding Mr. Whistler out soon enough, ushering him to her little black car and stuffing him in. That’s inconsistent. They used to not be able to walk in the day once they took Old Henry’s miracles. That would have to be documented in the book, Mr. Whistler would need to know that.

  “Open it,” the window read.

  There was knocking at the door, a different knock than when her Knockers knocked; it was off tempo and diabolical.

  “Oh Madeline,” that smokey serpent that Darnette called a voice drifted beneath her door, sullying the salt, “...I thought your brother’s passing would bring you out. Are you alright, darling girl?”

  “Kick rocks barefoot,” she wheezed out, unmoving. “Get gone, you nasty once-man.”

  “Did you know you have a package? Special delivery, courtesy of our esteemed sheriff.”

  “That pig can get stuck. I want nothing from him. Or you.”

  There was an uncoiling that came with Darnette’s next words, like some nasty copperhead readying a strike. “You’re running out of time, Miss Brand. No children, no family- just your empty apartment and your loneliness. Are you even alive? Perhaps a wellness check is in order from our friendly local authorities. You should open the door, my dear.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “You and yours can’t break my wards, you can’t cross my sacred salt. You’re all bark and no bite.”

  His well manicured nails drug across her door, she could hear flakes of her paint coming off. “Are you sure you’re alive, Madeline? Our God still has love to offer you, just open the door. Let’s talk civilly, like we used to.”

  “Open it. Ti nepo. Open it. Ti Nepo.” Her window scratched messages on both sides.

  “You’re just like him, you know? Deer stuck in headlights, too scared to move. He died cold, Madeline. Cold, alone, and without salvation. Unchanged and unfit to endure the Unravelling.”

  “Does it make your pecker twitch,” she challenged her old enemy, “...talking about the Unravelling? Does it do more for you than little littles boys in cages and strapped to chairs?”

  Darnette paused for three breaths before his reply, “That’s how I know you’re slipping, my old love; you’re desperate. Uncivilized. You tempted me once, and I succumbed to your jezebel wiles. Never again have I strayed from Our God’s path.”

  “Well shit, Adam, I wish you didn’t stray the first time. You grunted like a hog and flopped around like a dying fish.”

  Adam’s uncalloused hand struck her door with a startling impact, she could hear the wood crack and the salt sizzle away. Darnette scoffed on the other side of the barrier.

  “Your ways are faltering, Maddy- I’ll cross this threshold soon. The Boy Who Ran is all but in my grasp, the Unravelling is at hand; you and your apostate brother will be forgotten. Your ears may be everywhere; but they will do you as much good as your gossip and your once sharp wit. Go to sleep, you old hag. Rot in your hovel.”

  Madeline could feel his presence withdraw, calmly walking until he stormed down the stairs. Always dramatic, that one. Darkness began to encroach the borders of her vision, she clawed at a memory to fill her dream denied mind.

  She came short, but remembered what a smile felt like. I bet you forgot about his heart, you blowhard. Always obsessing over eyes and souls and flesh; I bet you forgot about the most important part. I…

  —

  “Some nights, that’s all we dare ask for. You’ll see.” Earl’s voice was distant and muddy over their connection.

  What is this old fool jabbering about? Why does he sound so far from the goddamn phone?

  “Earl?”

  “Don’t you worry, Maddy, the broad fella is going to get Kingfisher for you.”

  “It’s almost light, I think. What the hell are you still doing there? Where’s Clementine?”

  “We got your call, Mads, but she’s out doing the good work. Kingfisher was coming, you said. We gotta be here for him, like you said.”

  Madeline heard the door chime, that same croaking sound it made when she still had color in her hair.

  “Get the lad on the phone and get hidden before your fool ass burns up,” she said with a matron’s authority.

  “Good gods, he looks like Eustice if he had Aleston eyes,” there was a dangerous reverence in Earl’s voice. He’s flying too close to faith again.

  There was some clamoring and some clattering as the phone exchanged hands. God forbid that Earl just do something normal for once. A moose of a man he was, all gangly and ignorant.

  “Who is this?” The boy’s voice was a firebrand in her heart, it had that same worry as when pa got the belt. Eustice always sounded equally scared and stoic those nights.

  “I’m Madeline Brand, mister Whistler. I believe you recently attended my brother’s funeral and named his inheritor. I hear things have taken to calling you Kingfisher.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” there was honesty in that statement, “...but I never asked for this.”

  “I know you didn’t, little deer, but you’re here. You ain’t a Kingfisher tho; you’re a Whistler. Don’t go calling yourself anything else, no matter what your heart or head fills with. Whistler is your name. The story should call you that. You should call yourself that.”

  “S..story, what?” A ragged sigh slapped against his receiver. “All due respect, miss, I cannot handle riddles and puzzles right now. It’s been a night; so if you’re going to try to scare me or torture me or whatever; please just get to it so I can hang up this phone.”

  “Oh. I’ll do no such thing, Whistler; I’m going to help you. Earl leaves a pen and scratch pad next to the cash register. Fetch it.”

  The receiver clapped down on the counter, the sound echoing a dozen times. There was some rustling and huffing, but the lad was back on the phone just as the echoes died in her ear canals.

  ‘I hear you got it, Barnaby. Write this down: I quickly cross and quickly leave, I’ve got no tricks up my sleeve.”

  “What, why?” He questioned as his scribbles rasped against the counter.

  “So I know when you’re at my door, little deer. You saw my apartment, 207, when you pulled up to Wulf’s. Come see me; you and that darling couple are more than overdue for some answers. Eustice hid on his island, death itself ain’t taking me out of this apartment.”

  “Why in the hell would I come to you? Lady; I’ve been hauled around all of this damn place, forced to feel and see things I can never forget. Tell me what you want, but I’m done just getting dragged place to place by fucking strangers.”

  “You’ll come to me because I can help, not because you were told to. I’m not dragging you, lad, I’m offering an outstretched hand. I’m too old to sit here and read you a book that you can read your damned self. Come once the sun has fully woken, there’s less of these fucking monsters then. Take what I’ve got on this tray table and get back to the island. You need to rest before you deal with any more nonsense.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you soon,” his stubble dragged across the receiver, he was hanging up.

  “Wait,” she pushed all the urgency she could muster into her plea.

  “What?”

  “Have you met them? The red bear? The boy with dark eyes and a hollow heart?”

  “...I guess?”

  “Be careful with them, Whistler; because it’s all an ecosystem now and that is an invasive predator. Your needs may presently align; but once the prey runs out, they’re still going to hunt. Only the arrogant think they can control such beasts.”

  “I’m not trying to control anything, I’m just trying to get out,” he didn’t wait or bid goodbye before setting the phone back into the cradle.

  Something close to a withered sigh came from her lungs, mixing with a draft that teased the air. That chill almost felt like it hung on her bones. Madeline would have furrowed her brow, but could not recall how to do such things. Her vision drifted up from tan carpet; stained with little spots from a life long lived, frayed where steps were commonly made, infested with wormlike things that plunged through wood and concrete. She looked up at the window, cracked open just beyond an inch.

  “I quickly cross and quickly leave, I’ve got no tricks up my sleeve,” was raggedly carved in the glass.