The Paper Girl and the Stilt-Walker

The Day of the Crows

The leaves were starting to change color. It was getting close to autumn already, and there were only a handful of people left in the city. Sure, there were a few stragglers who wanted to take their chances with the disease, but they were few and far between. A few police officers made up the majority of these people. Even now, they didn't think it was wise to leave the city in disrepair. Besides them, a few homeless people huddled in doorways of boarded-up shops, faces buried in handkerchiefs, too afraid to even look up.

     But since the disease started, a few strange things had happened. First, there was the fog. The city had been known to get foggy, of course, early in the morning and at night, but this was different. This was a thick, putrid haze, seemingly from nowhere. Not only that, but nothing cleared it. The police officers who stayed behind didn't like it at all. In all this thick fog, something was bound to happen. It just begged for vandals.

     Second, there were the people. Officer Amiot, who was still young and inexperienced as far as his occupation went, noticed these people more than his superiors. He first noticed when he was walking down Circée, and the haze was almost too thick to see through. On his way down the sidewalk, he ran into a boy with a broom in his hand. "Careful, kid," he said, alarmed.

     The boy looked up and blinked, as if surprised at being seen. "Sorry," he said, and continued walking.

     "Wait a moment," said Amiot, holding up a hand to stop the boy. He was looking up at the clock tower that dominated the city. "Did you hear the clock chime earlier today?"

     The boy hesitated, wondering if this was a trick question. "No, actually," he said. "Not that that says much. I might've just been paying no attention to it."

     "No, I didn't hear it either," said Amiot, creasing his eyebrows. He paused in thought. "There's a Jean Lye who lives up there with a girl, isn't there?"

     The boy hesitated again. It was strange, as if the kid wasn't used to talking to people. He definitely had a very suspicious look about him. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. He went on his way again without a word, and Amiot let him go. Maybe it was the murky lighting, but the kid's skin looked remarkably gray. He continued to stare up at the clock tower, this time with more suspicion than ever. Perhaps Lye had been killed off by the disease as well? If so, what of the girl? It definitely deserved looking into.

*

     Night fell, and everything was crisp and cool in the darkening autumn. Outside the clock tower, a shape was moving awkwardly, carrying a large object. He was struggling with it just outside the woods that separated the city from the moors, the woods that encircled the south side of the clock tower. His steps were hurried, but quiet.

     Jean Lye was the clock's caretaker, and as dirt poor as any of the people slumming off the streets. But with any luck, that was about to change. Not too long ago, he'd gotten stuck with his dead sister's daughter. Her father died unexpectedly, leaving no will, and all of his money was given to her. As the girl's legal guardian, he could have access to that money. Under the right circumstances, of course.

     Jean Lye had kept the girl locked up tight in that clock tower, refusing to let her see the outside of it. He told her horror stories about it out there...some rubbish about a faceless woman, about monsters and terrible ghosts that came from the disease. Now that kept her from going anywhere. She was sufficiently terrified, in no danger of running away or joining the others who'd left the city and the disease. Her father was dead, she had no other family to rely on. It was perfect. She had nowhere to hide now.

     And then there was the matter of getting to her money. She lived inside a clock, didn't she? And accidents happen in those kinds of places. Maybe a gear fell on top of her head, maybe she fell down the stairs, maybe she was hit by a pipe. Anything could happen. Jean himself was injured plenty of times, and he was a grown man. A clock was no place for a young girl. Accidents happen. People get hurt. Sometimes fatally so.