Lost Boys

When they come into town, you lock the door. Everyone closes the shutters and hides away, all the young ones want to go out. But we don't want our children stolen...they steal them. They're the pied piper, it's happened, they never come back. They get sick, the children, then get led off by these boys. They hide them away or kill them, probably, or worse...make them like them. Can't let them have them, we love them best, why would they leave the ones who love them? We love them, we do, we really do; we have to lock them up, keep them blindfolded, it's for their own good. We don't want the Lost Boys to get them, do God knows what to them, it's too horrible to think of.
We've seen a lot like these, a lot come and go...but they always came to be like us, be like our children. These ones, the real ones, those lost children from afar, came here to make us like them. They're viral. Old Bill saw them coming, he couldn't move, like a skinwalker scream, the light like the blue eyes in the night, they shine out...freeze you, blue, freeze you blue. Old Bill just had to watch them come and couldn't tell us until the morning. And this will be different, we aren't afraid now, we'll get them...we'll get them back for the ones they stole.
The wagon mesmerizes all who hear the sound, see the light. It drags their eyes along behind it, they stand and watch it pass. They feel the vibrations in the ground.and can't move and we can't move as it comes into town, even our eyes, though we strain and try so hard to look for our doors, to put blood above the frame, to save them. We can't, until it stops, and they get out, and everyone who heard it, saw it, goes. Like the click of a gun all the locks latch shut, and we sit against the doors and listen to them talk.
The blonde one came before and took this house, he lived with the gold-bricker, one of ours, and then took him out. The blonde one, Goodhouse is his name, stole the Spanish Rose first. And he was always talking with the sage up the road, and we drove by and saw them and the screen quit working then and we can't fix it, the dealership's too far away.
And before the rest came he got the boy, they call him Lightning, like the stallion, for his hind legged run, and the little girl, they call her Duckling; and they called the rose, Thistle. They give eachother names, names like that, like Duckling. We don't know what they do, how they trick
everyone, but it's sinister, it's an infection. Took a local boy then, and his name sounds like the waves, like the sea on the shore. They came in slow it seems, after the air cooled a little, the little one came, he leaves the cigarette butts on the pavement and says he wants to be a dead cat, and I see there's so much wrong with him. Then the girl, the one who was with them, Roozel, and she laughs into the night and talks loud and we can't sleep. She's the siren that draws us from bed to watch from our windows...which we shouldn't do. And the girl who looks like a boy came next, and it was a chorus all night. The siren's song with harmony. And the big one, Von, the warped sounds come out from the garage and we can't sleep again, and he talks with Goodhouse and the little one about things that spin our heads, even spin the heads of the other lost ones.
I know their names because I listen all the time and can't stand it, and can't stand it, they talk and talk and talk about everything, and nothing at all. They scream and the beating of the drum drives me to war and I call the blues and it doesn't matter. Everywhere they go in town, the blues follow, they just breed havoc and trouble, in thought and action. But we'll get them this time, this time they're ours, in the early hours, we'll get them. They bring in so many all the time, their co-conspirators, and threaten us loudly in the sun and drop bottles in our yards. And I see them dance through the windows. We watch them watching us watching them dance, and yell at them and they don't listen...it just keeps going. We don't know where they came from, but they won't leave us alone, there's not a moments peace. Theirs is not a moment of peace, it's all war like the drums that bang all night, but we'll get them. They've got us no more. They wander around the city in the rain, I've seen them, and they get tired when it's wet, but never get cold, but it's ok...we stay warm inside while they walk by and sing and shout, it doesn't matter...I know them now.

I hear them say they're in love, all of them, with eachother. I can't think of what they do in there, what they'll do with all of us. All of our children, they're not safe anymore, they're not safe now. I turn on the screen to drown it out but it doesn't help, it's there in my head, gnawing like a rat at the cables and I turn it off and take a pill and lay in bed, but I hear them still. But it's the children, it's our little babies, the ones like us I worry about, I don't want them to go and dissapear. I don't want them to get sick and run off...with them.

So I called everyone and they felt the same, and they were dancing in their frenzy again with rags on their heads and speaking in tongues, and I felt that it was the time, while they weren't looking. But it was too soon, everyone was too scared, so we all hid, one and all, we're the same. We just waited again. And as I peeked out of the window they had swords and were talking about war over a board, and I knew they were coming for me, for us. But I could do nothing, it's what it must be already, and they're ruining it. I did nothing, I couldn't do anything at all.
But I was lying, I did something...I have commited all their faces to memory, and I drew them for you to see, to avoid them forever. They wear rags and stripes and are foreign, they're not like me, but want what's mine and want to ruin it. So I learned their hearts through their mouths and eyes, their faces. I drew their faces on the wall, the worst ones, the bad seeds that ruin our crops. I drew them so you know...so you know what to do when they come around. To lock up your children when you see their grins, when you see their eyes. Keep the door locked, keep the shades drawn, keep the screen on, and you'll be fine. They can't get you in here. Nothing can get you in here...but I still hear them, every night. If I get turned to one of them, keep this and use it to get them...get them. They aren't natural. They need to be stopped. If we don't stop them, they'll ruin all we worked so hard to build. Everything will collapse.