The Featherman

At the very end of Eerie Way lies an abandoned house.  It was like something straight out of some book or movie.  No words that I can think to write would do it proper justice.  And yet, the story surrounding the man that built it was even more unbelievable than the crumbling piece of gothic architecture.

The man was a collector of birds.  Over one hundred birds were supposedly caged inside and every one of them had not been bought, but caught.  It's said that birds had an affinity toward him and would fly right into his outstretched hand as if already familiar with the man always adorned with countless feathers.  A friend that could be trusted and for a time, he could.

Then one day, he snatched a bird that did not want to be caught.  It was a large bird that the man had always wanted to possess, but unlike the other birds had not trusted him, consistently evading him before eventually ending up in a trap.  Though he tried to calm the bird’s seemingly endless rage, it bit and pecked and scratched him.  As a consequence, he moved it into a cage much too small, often beating and shaking the enclosure violently.  But, all that accomplished was to amplify its desire for revenge.  A revenge that arrived one week later as the featherman returned home to find his cages smashed and empty, blood, bone and viscera smeared across every wall, ceiling and floor.  Only the large bird remained, perched high above on the chandelier waiting.  It took his eyes first, beak gnashing and tearing, before ripping open his chest with its sharp talons as if freeing his insides from the only remaining cage within the house.

I spent years wanting to know if any of it was true before I finally gathered enough courage to sneak inside, the old flooring creaking with every step.  Even with the moon peaking through the exposed roof, it was dark, light only occasionally catching off rusty pieces of metal that littered the floor.  At the sound of what I believed to be the rustling of feathers, I ran faster than I had ever ran before, curious no longer about the house at the end of Eerie Way.