Free A Girl of the Paper Sky by Randy Mixter Page B

around, I saw a black sediment on everything; the sidewalks, the grass, the streets. I rubbed a small circle of the window clean and looked inside. The overhead lights were off and the interior seemed too dark for such a sunny day, but otherwise the interior of the place looked the same.
    Overall, the town had the feel of abandonment, as if its occupants had left in a hurry. But if they had, they left no tracks, no footprints, and no trash on the ground. There was no evidence anywhere, at least in the town’s center, that anyone had ever lived there.
    I walked out of the commercial district and into the resident neighborhood. The houses in this part of town were large Victorians, all angles and of colors that should have matched the sky for variety had they not also been covered in soot.
    I had made my way to where Main Street crossed Elm. I turned right. My house was another five blocks up. The gritty residue covering everything seemed to get thicker as I traveled.
    “You should be wearin’ shoes, missy,” a voice said from nearby. “That stuff is near impossible to get off of skin.”
    An old man sat on a rocking chair on the porch of one of those sooty Victorians. He wore a red plaid shirt and washed out jeans held up by suspenders. He smoked a corncob pipe as he swayed back and forth, staring at me.
    “Come on up and rest a bit. I rarely get company around these parts anymore, at least not the human kind.”
    I stood my ground. “Where is everybody?” I asked.
    “I ain’t gonna shout at ya. You wanna talk, come closer.”
    I moved to the steps and as I looked down, I saw that the man was right. I was barefoot.
    “That’s brazen, hiking shoeless in that black powder. Might want to bathe real good once you get home.”
    I went up the steps slowly. They felt slippery, as if coated with ice.
    “Shoulda told ya to watch your step. The path to the porch gets slick sometimes.”
    “Who are you?” I asked him when I had reached the landing. He took a mighty drag from his pipe and blew out a massive cloud of smoke before he spoke.
    “Like my hat?” He took off his wide brimmed straw hat and held it in front of him, admiring it. “Took me a long time to take down that deer, but it was sure worth it.”
    “You killed the straw deer?” I asked in a low voice.
    The man laughed loudly before he stuck the hat firmly on his scalp.
    “Just joshin’ ya, missy. Just joshin’.” He nodded to the wooden chair beside him. “Sit down for a spell. Take a load off. You’re the first I’ve seen in, I don’t know, a year, maybe two. Nice to hear another voice ’sides my own.”
    “Are you the only one here?” I asked him.
    “Far as I know. Been that way for a while now.”
    “So there’s no other people here besides you?”
    “People? No. They’re long gone. Used to get visitors though; not many, but some.” The man took another drag off his pipe. The smoke he exhaled formed into three perfect rings, one following the other.
    “Nice trick,” I said.
    “Oh, I’ve got more than that. You ain’t seen nothing, yet.”
    The smoke rings mesmerized me so, I almost forgot where I was. “What happened to the people?”
    “Hell if I know. They were gone by the time I got here. My guess is something scared ’em off.”
    “Maybe it was the scarecrow that scared them away,” I said. “Maybe he frightened them into leaving.”
    “The scarecrow? Tell me about this scarecrow character.”
    I told him what I’d seen and what I knew from my mother and Charly.
    “Paper birds, huh,” the man said. “Did they look like this?”
    He put the pipe stem in his mouth and drew in. I watched his cheeks hollow as he did this. Then he exhaled a large cloud of smoke, a dark grey in color. The cloud hung heavy in the air above him. Something moved around inside it, as if trying to get out.
    When it finally did burst through, it startled me so much I nearly flipped backward in my chair. The white paper bird circled the porch