Pigeon Island - Danse Macabre

Despite the expectations of the residents, the sun has set and then risen above Pigeon Island without anything strange happening during the night once again. It was after all the epicenter of everything abnormal going on in the Waypoint.

It's been a week since my parents and I moved to Pigeon Island. Even though the whole Waypoint has a medieval architecture and was unnerving, so far I haven't seen anything like what the people keep talking about. Nothing strange, nothing unnatural. And that's what they say they find even weirder and are so afraid about. When nothing's going on. The Waypoint is not a widely known place. It's a small country, not bigger than Liechtenstein, and it's located in Europe, but the whereabouts are very secret. It's not marked on any maps, and society doesn't seem to be aware of its existence. We stumbled upon it once by accident. For two years my parents have been talking about it and crying, saying they missed it and want to return. We only spent days here that summer. I remember the strange flashing lights in the night sky as they were drinking wine together. But that was it, nothing else. Having moved here finally, the people were pretty mysterious about the Waypoint, specifically shunning down the Pigeon Island. They never explained it, only muttered something about curses or weird creatures. "And time flows here differently" the old lady Wegna says. Having witnessed nothing of the strange sorts after spending a week here, I was starting to think that what I saw two years ago was just caused by sleep deprivation and all the residents suffer from mass hysteria.

It was already my junior year, and I was thankful that we moved at the end of March. The school here, just like in some Asian countries, starts in April, when everything blooms and comes to life. On the first day of school, I already got into trouble with popular kids. I was looking for a place to eat my lunch. I walked outside to the back of the school; before the football pitch, there was a designated sitting area with those wooden picnic tables. Obviously not knowing anyone yet, I asked this younger boy if I could sit next to him, to which he shyly agreed. It didn't take a long time for our calm conversation to be rudely interrupted by his bullies. By association, they threw my sandwiches to the ground as well, and I was not planning on letting them do whatever they wanted. Their leader, this sophomore blond, wavy-haired boy, smiled as he stomped on the sandwich he took from me moments ago; I punched him, not thinking much. The blood combusted from his broken nose; I punched him once more, splitting his lip. He tumbled over, surprised; I kicked him in the ribs; now I wanted to break them; teachers quickly ran over, God knows from where. I didn't see them anywhere near before, and they seemed to not see the bullying as well. Every country is the same. You're allowed to bully others if you're popular, but God forbid a victim fights back. They like to say that the violence is never the answer. But have you noticed they only say that once the victim becomes rightfully violent? No one acts; no one cares before that.

I was dragged by the P.E. teacher to the school infirmary; my breathing was heavy; he was convinced there was something wrong going on with my heart. The nurse agreed that it's not a normal panic attack. I thought them stupid. "It's just an adrenaline rush" I said. They called an ambulance for me, but as it showed up, something strange happened. The world turned gray, and everything stopped. Like if somebody paused a movie. I stood there confused; I could move with ease; that's why their still bodies seemed even more unsettling. Then abruptly, as if nothing happened, they started walking again; the ambulance started turning transparent and eventually completely disappeared. The color returned in my sight. No one seemed to witness it, and they didn't remember anything from the last 15 minutes. They went about their days as they weren't just interrupted by some strange sci-fi magic. I was utterly confused and stepped away as fast as possible. Then music started sounding, but not through the speakers; I heard it in my head. It was a playful tune, something I would associate with the elves or druids, the flute and fiddle becoming insistent, beckoning me to dance. But I found it too strange to indulge; I walked down the hallway, and the people I passed were dancing like there's no tomorrow. I started running; I wanted to get away as fast as possible. The music was growing louder; I started seeing strange beams of light, just in the corner of my peripheral vision, just out of reach. Whenever I turned my head to look at it I only found nothing there. "I'm going crazy" I said to myself out loud as if I only thought it, would be drowned out by the music.

"You're not, you're not dancing yet. That's why when you actually go crazy, it will be harder to take." The voice was familiar. The blond bully, with his broken nose, sat by the wall, hugging his legs tightly.

"What do you know of this?" I asked, pulling him up by his collar.

"Only that this shit happens every week. I mean, not this, but something weird." He replied with a hushed tone as if afraid something might hear him.

"So what is going on right now?" I kept pushing for an answer.

"I don't know anything you don't! Everybody's in some sort of a trance; they're dancing, and this music is getting louder by the minute. I can barely hear my thoughts." He also heard it, so I assumed that was the case with everyone here. The students were inviting us to prance with them, some pulling us by our arms, dragging us, but we stood our ground. They had this crazed look in their eyes, their pupils abnormally huge as if they were drugged; I could have sworn I saw them turning into spirals. I grabbed the blond bully's hand and pulled him to run. The people we passed were becoming more and more insistent on forcing us to join them; we fled the school. More and more residents of Pigeon Island were going completely insane. He led the way; we continued running until we reached some sort of a fort dug in the ground, a makeshift cave, if you will. Clearly made by children a long time ago.

"So, you're the expert on this town. What could this be?" I asked, hoping that flattery would make him think harder.

"I don't know, what does this music sound like to you?" he replied with his own question.

I thought for a moment before saying "Celtic"

"It might be the Fae. We haven't had Fair folk here yet, not that I know of."

"What?! And this is a weekly occurrence that you get bothered by supernatural beings?! Faeries? What's next? Vampires?" I mocked him; I believed that he might be right, and I'd rather think it's all just in my head.

"We had a vamp here for at least 5 years. We started finding people completely sucked dry of their blood, with two puncture wounds from its fangs on their necks."

"It can go into houses uninvited?" My knowledge of the vampire lore was not checking out.

"It can't. It's a charmer; people are easily convinced to let it inside. After all this time, it's getting harder for it to hunt this way; people learned from those who had stronger will, and now they never open the doors or windows for it. Garlic obviously also helps to weaken it's power."

"I find it strange that this is not a thing you tell all new residents from the start. You're letting us die this way"

"And who would believe us? When did you stumble upon Waypoint? You must've seen something back then as well."

"Two years ago, flashing lights. I still don't understand why you all still live here if this happens, what, like every week?"

"And why do you think your parents wanted to move here? This place calls for you; those with weak will always come flying like a moth to a flame. Pigeon Island feeds on souls; once you come here, you can never leave and live at peace. Many tried; you'll have nightmares, and you'll go insane until you kill someone or yourself. You can never leave Waypoint; if it's so hard for people who only came here by accident, what do you think happens to those who were born here? Just last week there was no way out of town; the tunnel disappeared; you could try to walk through the forest, but you would be just going in circles for hours until you passed out. We're cursed! Hell, three months ago I was stuck in backrooms while going to the cinema for a movie. Two years ago? UFO sightings, people disappearing for weeks, and only some of them ever returned. All of them with varying levels of amnesia. You could hear out-of-this-planet sounds every night, and before it was all over, air everywhere smelled of sanitizing products." The words flowed out of him along with his frustration.

I pretended I didn't see the figures beckoning me to come closer in the corners of my vision and asked him for more details of what happened in town in the previous years. I wanted him to talk as much as possible so I could focus on anything else than this forsaken music.

"Ten years ago, some beast appeared; people going into the forest after dusk were being found as a bloody, mangled mess near the woods the next day. It's happening 'till today, but no one dares to go near the trees anymore, so when the beast hungers, it leaves the forest searching for new victims among the people who are alone outside after dark. Last year, every full moon, people would go into a trance and walk into the lake and never come out, each month one more person. In December, 12 people drowned, and it stopped just as mysteriously as it began. I'm sick of this town, and I can never leave!"

"So what is happening now is caused by another paranormal being?"

"Obviously, we're going to dance until death, perhaps. Every week there's a little apocalypse happening, and every time we think it's the end of the world. But somehow we always survive with only a few casualties. We can only sit here and pray that this ends soon and not many die of exertion before dawn. We must not get caught in the trance. I don't know how long our bodies could bear this dance."

"I heard about something like this happening in the past. It was called the dancing plague; it happened in the 1500s somewhere in France. Do you think it's repeating?"

"Perhaps, maybe the faeries were the cause of that one too. The stronger your will, the harder it is to not give in," he huffed, already exhausted. The figures were becoming clearer, and I could tell we both see them. Two women, white-haired and fair-skinned with intricate symbols on their faces, dressed in white, flowy dresses, stopped dancing. They were staring at us from afar, unmoving. I could see in his eyes that he was not so sure of his own words that this would pass. Each time we moved our gaze and then returned it on them, they got closer, like a weeping angel. Now I actually felt like a panic attack was starting to rise inside me. Their faces gone, now just skulls with the same symbols but in blood were visible. I looked at the blond bully; he was mid-dance outside of the fort. "I'm alone" I said. "You'll never be alone again," an ethereal voice came out from the unmoving skulls inches away from my face, and I closed my eyes. Maybe the last time.