Jonas

A little brown thing, completely intact.

No signs of trauma.

Just lying there with his feet curled in like it had been placed.

I checked around for any sign that someone had been there.

Everett's place was still shut tight.

Curtains drawn.

Porch light off.

I ended up bagging the boat in a grocery sack and tossing it in the bin out back.

Kicked the leaves away with my boot and chalked it up to some neighborhood kid being weird or maybe even Everett playing some kind of quiet prank, though that didn't fit what little I knew of him.

But the next morning, another circle showed up, smaller this time.

No bird, just a cluster of smooth stones and a torn book page, the paper bloated with moisture.

It looked like it had been ripped out of a dictionary or an encyclopedia.

Most of the print was smudge, but one word stuck out.

Memoration.

That word rattled around in my head all day, even though I couldn't have told you what it meant at the time.

It just felt pointed, like it was meant for me.

After that, I stopped cleaning the circles up.

I think some part of me wanted to see if they'd keep coming, like testing a pattern.

And they did.

Every day, just before sunrise.