lilt to his words. Each word down to the very letter sounds exactly the same. Even in Oregon there’s a specific cadence to the speech. This voice sounds like it comes from nowhere.
Rosie grins cheerfully. “Came to say hello to my friend!” she says, her voice booming. For an old broad, she’s got some balls, that’s for sure. “Why am I not surprised to see you boys again. Say, I didn’t catch your names earlier.”
“We didn’t give them,” the darker man says, his voice just as strange. “What happened there?” He points to the ceiling with the scratch marks.
I glance up just for a moment, pretending to study what he’s showing me. “Don’t rightly know,” I finally say, slowly. “Can’t say I spend much time looking at the ceiling.”
Rosie frowns as she looks up. “Probably the electrician,” she says. “These old buildings are wired like you wouldn’t believe. Looks like tool marks to me.”
I shrugged. “Could be right.”
“Big Eddie,” the older one says, and I squeeze my hand into a fist. “That’s the name out there on the sign. Big Eddie.”
“Sorry, gentlemen. If you want to speak to my father, you’ll have to communicate with the dead. He’s bones in the ground.”
They glance at each other, and for a moment, I swear I see their eyes twitch back and forth rapidly. I blink, but it’s over and I can’t be positive it happened. They both turn back to me.
“You’re Benjamin Green,” the older man says. “Benji.”
I raise my hands. “You got me there. How’d you know that?” Sweat trickles down the back of my neck into my shirt.
“We’re looking for a… man,” he says, ignoring my question. I hear the hesitation on the last word and know they’re flat-out lying. They know what he is. They know who he is. “Goes by the name Calliel. Big. Red hair. Beard is red. Like fire. Like so much fire. Has he been here?”
I shake my head. “Guy like that’d stick out around here. Can’t say I’ve seen him. And a name like Calliel? Sounds Hispanic… or Greek.”
“It’s not Hispanic,” the dark man says.
“It’s not Greek,” the light man says.
I cock my head. “Could have fooled me.”
The dark man jerks his head again, and it almost looks like he’s seizing, the cords in his neck tightening. “Feathers,” he says as his head stops moving. “Have you seen any… feathers?”
Carefully, I push my backpack farther under the counter with my foot. “Like bird feathers?”
“There’s all kinds of feathers around here,” Rosie snaps, though even she sounds somewhat confused. “We live in a forest. Birds live in trees. There’s bound to be feathers all over the ground.”
The light man shakes his head once, from side to side. It’s not fluid, but staccato, as if the joints in his neck are partially frozen. “This is not… a bird feather. It’s big. It’s bigger. It’s—”
“Blue,” his counterpart finishes. “Everything about it is blue.”
“No blue feathers, no green feathers, no feathers the size of a house,” I say. “Fellas, I haven’t seen your man, and if you aren’t going to tell me your names and if you aren’t going to buy something, I suggest you say sayonara and walk through the door.”
They narrow their black eyes at the same time. I meet their gazes coolly, even though I’ve curled my hands into fists behind the counter and I’m digging my nails into my palms hard enough to draw blood. They glance at each other again, and this time I’m sure I see the strange eye twitch, and I wonder if they’re communicating. I wonder if they’re from On High. I wonder if they’re angels.
But they’re making my skin crawl, and all I want is for them to leave. I clear my throat and their eyes stop twitching. They look at me again. “I hope,” the dark man says, “that you are telling us the truth, Benjamin Green. About Calliel. About feathers.” He curls his lip, the closest thing to a human expression I’d seen since they’d walked in. It’s a monstrous thing. “And scratches.”
They turn as one and walk out of the station and continue out of sight down Poplar Street.
Rosie lets out a breath she’s been holding. She turns to look at me. “Benji, what the hell is going on?”
“These are some strange days,” I mutter, unsure of what else to say.
The Strange Men (which is how they were referred to throughout the town, like
you could hear the capitalization of each word) apparently stopped intruding on people