The Paper Procession

At five, I believed the world was soft and small, bounded by the gravel road and the pine woods that swallowed the horizon. We lived in a rented farmhouse on the edge of a town that had more churches than stores, and my bed was tucked against a window that overlooked the chicken coop and the field beyond. Ruby and Jasper, our two mutts, slept in a pen beside the coop, and their barking was the alarm clock of our rural mornings.

That particular dawn, the barking was different. It was frantic, high-pitched, the sound of dogs who have cornered something they don’t understand. I woke to it, the gray light of early morning just bleeding through the curtains. I remember the cold of the glass against my cheek as I pressed my face to the window, rubbing sleep from my eyes.

What I saw made my breath catch. In the yard, between the coop and the fence, stood a procession of little figures. They were maybe two feet tall, all of them identical, with pale, featureless faces and wings folded tight against their backs. They wore robes of a washed-out blue, like the sky after a rain, and each one cradled a small book bound in white. There were rows of them, four deep, like a congregation waiting for a sermon. They were perfectly still, but their lips moved, forming words I couldn’t hear. I could see the chicken coop through their bodies, and the dogs behind them, hackles raised, barking and snarling, but the figures paid them no mind.

Ruby and Jasper were going insane. They lunged at the figures, but their jaws snapped through air, and the figures never flinched. I remember the way the dogs’ barks seemed to distort, as if the creatures were swallowing the sound. The smell of hay and dust wafted through the cracked window, but there was something else underneath—a sweet, cloying odor, like overripe flowers.

I wanted to call for my mother, but my voice was frozen. I just stared, my heart hammering, as one of the figures turned its head—slowly, mechanically—and looked directly at me. Its face was a blank oval, but I felt its gaze like a weight. It raised a hand, small and pale, and beckoned. That was when I dove under the covers, pulling them over my head, and I didn’t come out until I heard my mother’s footsteps in the hall.

I never told her what I saw. Even now, I wonder if it was a dream, a child’s fancy. But the dogs were still barking when I hid, and they didn’t stop until the sun was fully up. When I finally crept to the window again, the yard was empty. But on the ground, where the figures had stood, there were dozens of small, white petals—like from a flower I didn’t recognize—and they were arranged in a perfect circle.

Years later, I asked my mother if anything strange ever happened in that farmhouse. She laughed and said the previous owner, an old woman named Mrs. Gable, had been a recluse who collected porcelain figurines. The town whispered she’d gone mad after her daughter died, and she’d buried something in the field. I never went back, but sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I hear those dogs barking, and I see those pale faces, and I wonder what it was they wanted me to join.