And as the sun hung low over Eldritch, our story began.

It started with young Agnes and her shadow working their way down the cracked pavement. She could feel the soles of her sneakers wearing thin, but Agnes still kicked at loose gravel as she trudged along. The flyers in her hands were damp with sweat, making the ink run. When she finally stopped at a lamppost covered in gum, she slipped a sheet from the stack, then handed the rest over to her shadow.

"How many more do we have to do?" the shadow asked.

Agnes only rolled her eyes and ignored it. Every day the shadow asked the same question, and every day, Agnes wondered why it bothered showing up.

The shadow didn't have an answer for that question—but I suppose I should clear up this wasn't a real shadow. No, just a girl that started following Agnes one day while she was out on her flyer patrol. The shadow girl had spotted her from a nearby street corner, and something about Agnes had intrigued her. So without reason, she began following her around, ever curious why the red-headed girl did this every day. She had been disappointed by the eventual answer.

"As many as it takes," Agnes shot back, digging around in her satchel for a nail.

"That's not a real answer," the shadow girl responded. She blew tufts of thick, coiled hair from out of her eyes as she skipped around the pole, all the while watching Agnes. "You're never gonna find him, don't you know that?"

Agnes gritted her teeth. Oh, how the shadow girl annoyed her, yet there had been no new births all week, leaving no room for Agnes to end her life there and then. After just three days, the shadow girl was working her last nerve.

But she uttered not a word as she lined up the flyer against the wood post, then positioned her nail. She bit hard on her tongue as her fingers slipped around the hammer in her satchel. Gripping the handle, she resisted the urge to chuck it at the shadow girl's head and instead got to work hammering in the nail.

"Ooooohhh someone's comin'!" the shadow girl suddenly sang.

Agnes looked up, squinting through the thick glass of her bifocals. Though she showed no outward signs of fear, her pulse betrayed her and quickened in her veins. As mentioned before, no new babies were wailing from their bassinets that day, or even that week, meaning this stranger was relatively harmless. But there were fates worse than death in the town of Eldritch.

Agnes knew that better than anyone.

"He might get you, or me, or that bird in the tree!" the shadow girl hollered, laughing hysterically at her own eclectic joke. She swung her heavily bandaged arms wildly in the stagnant air.

"Shut up," Agnes muttered under her breath. From this distance, she couldn't tell just who was coming their way, but one thing could be certain—it was an adult. That alone was enough for Agnes to set her back a bit straighter, to plant her feet a bit firmer, and to hold her hammer just a bit tighter.

"Isn't it funny the way they walk?" the shadow girl giggled. "They really are quite stupid."

The walk to which she was referring resembled that of a duck, if a duck had consumed a very large—and very fiberless— diet. As the stranger approached, his bulbous eyes protruding from his skull, he walked with no purpose other than to move forward. To go about his day. To follow his routine in the town of Eldritch.

"Many mornings to you!" the shadow girl called, raising onto the toes of her mustard yellow high tops. She was adopting the mumblings of an adult she'd heard days before. Secretly, she wondered if she could trick this buffoon.

The stranger, now only feet away, stumbled back, affronted. Immediately, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Based on that reaction, it was safe to say the shadow girl had not been successful.

Agnes purposefully ignored the both of them and zeroed in on her hammer. The constant thwack of metal against metal, metal against wood, created a melody that settled any nerves. In her mind, there was only the hammer. The hammer and Bogart.

His beedy blue eyes stared back at her from the picture smack dab in the middle of the flyer. Unlike the stringy mess of red hair on Agnes's head, her brother's was perfectly coiffed in the photo she'd made copies of weeks ago. Fighting off thoughts of where he could be, Agnes continued her work.

All the while, the shadow girl kept up her charade, unaware that it was failing brilliantly. "And so I say, you look ready to hop on the farside of the moon!"

The stranger went stoic, his mouth agape at the filth spewing out of the young child's mouth. In a fury, he shuffled up to the shadow girl, who stared back with a look of mild amusement.

"Now yer' listen here," the stranger warbled. "Ifin' yer' don't say the nice words right, I'll make the day a night's eye, and nothin' yer' can do about it then!"

Laughing with glee, the shadow girl turned back to Agnes. "Listen to the nonsense that comes out his mouth! Do you think we'll really talk like this someday, too?"

Agnes just kept on hammering.

Shaking her head, the shadow girl brought her attention to the stranger once more and evaluated him under closer scrutiny. Though his eyes were terrifying enough, it was his stature that made him quite unfavorable to look at. Standing nearly at a ladder's height, he towered over young Agnes and the shadow girl. But neither of the children were bothered at all. The former still refused to acknowledge him; the latter still believed her ruse was working.

"And if I said the birds would be mighty displeased at your pleasure, do you think me a lucky muffin?" the shadow girl needled, practically giddy. She was having very much fun indeed. How glad she was to have followed Agnes that day.

But it seemed the stranger was anything but glad. On the contrary—his graying skin flushed a heated red, while the corners of his mouth drooped ever lower down his face. His gnarled fingers tightened into fists at his sides, and his knees knocked in rage.

"Say I the birds will ne'er listen to the likes of children!" the man shrieked, spittle flying from his lips. "For ne'er a day shall they see less than the eyes of men! Yer' rue the day these blasphemous words ever left the putrid mouth of a youth! The birds have eyes, don't you see?"

On and on the stranger lamented while the shadow girl just laughed and Agnes just hammered. Once content with her work, Agnes stepped back and appraised the flyer. It never got easier to read the words scribbled across the top in her crude, block handwriting:

Boy Missing

Returning the hammer to her satchel, Agnes stared a minute longer, then approached the shadow girl still taunting the adult. Without a word, she snatched the stack of flyers from the other girl's hand, then trekked farther down the sidewalk toward the next lamp post. She didn't check if the shadow girl was behind her.

The girl was not. She and the stranger still occupied the same square of sidewalk next to the pole covered in gum. But the shadow girl was quickly growing tired of her plaything, and the sun was lowering faster by the second. Glancing around, she noticed Agnes had gone on without her. Pouting out her lip, the shadow girl kicked the stranger hard in the shin, sending him stumbling to the ground.

"Now look what you've gone and done! I've been left behind because of you," she yelled at him, ignoring his groans of pain. As she stepped over his decrepit body, a flyer on the pole caught her curious eye. No, not the one of the missing boy Bogart, but another that contained a peculiar symbol.

Ripping the strange poster from the wood, she left the stranger in a crumpled heap and dashed after Agnes.

"Look at this weird thing," the shadow girl insisted once she caught up to her.

Agnes, hunched over to retie her laces, didn't look up. "No."

"C'mon c'mon, it's so cool I promise!"

Switching to her other foot, Agnes gave a noncommittal grunt.

The shadow girl slipped the strange flyer over Agness' shoe impatiently. "See, it's the coolest thing ever, I told you so!"

With a long sigh, Agnes reluctantly glanced at the symbol. Off first appearances, it seemed to be nothing more than a blob of black ink. Nothing more than a mistake. The words underneath shed little clarity on the intended message: We see you. Can you see us?

"It's nothing but adult nonsense. Didn't you get enough of that talking to him?" Agnes asked shortly, gesturing back towards the man still sprawled out on the sidewalk.

"Yes, but this looks like special nonsense, don't you think?"

Dusting the dirt off her corduroy skirt, Agnes stood and reached for another nail. "Nonsense is nonsense. It means nothing."

"Says who?"

"Says me."

"Well, that's silly. You're nobody," the shadow girl said bluntly, followed by a bark of laughter. "I know more than you anyway, so I say this is special nonsense."

"Well perhaps you can enjoy it somewhere away from me." Agnes once again grabbed a single flyer, then handed the shadow girl the rest. "Otherwise, hold these and shut up."

"It's a wonder you have no friends," the shadow girl said, watching Agnes roll up the sleeves of her argyle sweater before she fetched her hammer again. "That's no way to talk to people, you know."

Agnes ignored her. She was getting pretty good at it now.

The two stood in heavy silence, interrupted only by the occasional thwack. But of course, the shadow girl couldn't stay quiet forever. If she did, we wouldn't have a story.

"How do you think birds bear it?" she asked quietly, her gaze targeted toward the sky.

"Bear," thwack, "what?" Agnes asked breathlessly. Swiping the sweat from her forehead, she stopped to grab a hairpin to tuck back her bangs.

"Living in a conspiracy like that," the shadow girl explained. In the distance, the birds swooped low over the rooftops of Eldritch.

Agnes raised a brow, her own morbid curiosity winning out. "In a what?"

"A conspiracy, you idiot," the shadow girl repeated, but she never let her eyes leave the birds. "That's the name for a group of ravens."

"Those are crows," Agnes said blankly.

"Wrong!" the shadow girl blared. "They're ravens and they never leave each others' sides. It's a dreadful fate for any creature, but most of all a bird."

Sighing, Agnes began to walk past the empty storefronts of the street she had chosen today. She had no clue if she'd been here before, but none of last week's flyers were on the lamp posts, so she could only hope someone hadn't ripped them down previously.

"First of all, those are crows," Agnes repeated, pointing for emphasis. "Everyone in Eldritch knows that. Second, what are you going on about dumb birds for? I don't care to hear it."

The shadow girl snorted. "Only a dumb parent would call a bird dumb. I bet you have parents, too. Must also be why you have no friends."

"Have you always been this rude—"

"Birds have the freedom of flight!" the shadow girl announced, spreading her arms wide like wings. "Where can a bird not travel? Where can they not explore and find something new? Yet they are forever bound with a hundred other birds. Trapped within a paradox. Never really free."

"Careful, I think that guy might have rubbed off on you," Agnes said callously.

All the excitement drained from the shadow girl's youthful face, an array of scratches gracing her cheeks. Her expression twisted into a scowl. "I'm not crazy."

"I'm sure he thinks the same thing."

And with that, Agnes walked purposefully toward the next lamp post, pondering the conversation more than she'd like to admit. Not the birds, no, but the concept of travel, mostly in regards to Bogart. The more time that passed with no sign of her brother, the more she worried just where in Eldritch he could be. An afternoon away, well, that was nothing to throw a fuss about. And surely Agnes wouldn't have cared had Bogart taken a short weekend walk without a goodbye.

But the missing boy Bogart had been missing for two weeks now. And that was certainly cause for alarm—at least, Agnes believed so.

The shadow girl watched moodily as Agnes walked away, but eventually swallowed her disdain and followed. Still, she kept more distance between them than before, taking her time to kick an old beer can. The aluminum clanked against the grit of the sidewalk, pleasing the shadow girl greatly. Kick, kick, kick she went, until a final tap of her shoe sent the can scuttling into a nearby alley.

"They've found us!" a voice bellowed from the depths of the darkness.

The shadow girl stopped short. Nothing else stirred from within the alley, and the voice said nothing more. But it was too late; her curiosity was piqued. She took a step to inspect closer. "Anyone in here?!"

No answer.

Agnes looked over her shoulder. "Why are you yelling? You'll make more weirdos come bother us!"

"There's someone in this alley," the shadow girl called back.

"Sure it's not a bird?"

"Maybe it's your pig brother rolling around in the trash for food," the shadow girl mocked cruelly.

Now this, young Agnes did not disregard. Well, the insult, yes, but perhaps the shadow girl was on to something. It felt as if Agnes had combed through all of Eldritch, and she was running out of places to look. If the flyers weren't working, she couldn't ignore possible signs of her brother. A voice from an alley could be one of them.

"Alright," Agnes relented, walking back to where the shadow girl stood waiting. "But if it isn't, I'll hammer a nail into your tongue to keep you quiet. Just for wasting my time."

The shadow smiled sweetly. "How lovely. Either way, one of us ends up happy."

Rolling her eyes at the disturbing shadow girl, Agnes secured her satchel tighter around her shoulder, then followed her shadow into the rancid innards of Eldritch.