The Return of the Pied Piper
By CJ Knight
The music played once more. Sweet as a lullaby. It drifted through phone speakers, car stereos, televisions, supermarket intercoms, and even seemed to carry on the breeze. It crept through vents and beneath the gap of closed doors. It played for little children, because only the young could hear it.
Evelyn noticed her son, Toby, acting strange. It began on a Thursday. He stopped speaking at dinner, his fork held mid-air, head cocked as if straining to hear.
“What is it?” Evelyn asked.
He blinked slowly, then whispered, “Music.”
Evelyn heard nothing. “What music, honey?”
Toby’s expression was blank. “The song. He’s coming.”
That night, Toby never slept. He stood at his window until sunrise.
When Evelyn took Toby to kindergarten that morning, other parents shared stories of their children acting peculiar. Some trying to leave the house in the middle of the night, others humming a tune of song never heard, none of them sleeping. The scariest account was about a young girl maned Maddie. Her parents caught her trying to climb out of a second storey window. She screamed when they stopped her. “I have to join the others.”
That afternoon on the drive home. Toby hummed a tune in the backseat. It was a tune foreign to Evelyn. It seemed out of key, off beat, wrong. “Where’d you hear that?” she asked.
Toby giggled. “It’s playing on the radio.” Evelyn’s eyes drifted from the silent radio to the rearview mirror, to see Toby humming and bopping along to music that didn’t exist to her ears.
At 5pm every television screen flickered, every phone rang, every stereo turned on. For a moment, Evelyn’s eyes caught something in the television static. A slender man in a long coat and matching hat. In his hands, he held a flute. Toby giggled at the sight. “That’s him,” he said. “The man playing the tune.”Evelyn grabbed the remote. Shut the television off. Confusion covered Toby’s face. “What’s wrong mommy? Don’t you like the song he plays for us?”
That night, Evelyn slept in Toby’s room on a chair. When exhaustion finally took hold, Evelyn dreamed. Of rats. Thousands of them, pouring through the town’s alleys, choking the gutters, flooding basements. The town in the dream seemed old. Of time long ago. A voice spoke. “He’s come before. Many times. He is coming again.” Evelyn was a young girl again. The voice spoke once more. Only a single word. “Jonah.” The name woke something in Evelyn’s mind. Something long forgotten. She had a brother once. His name was Jonah. How could she have forgotten her own brother? A tune played. Both familiar to her now, and from long ago. It was the tune Toby hummed in the car. But Evelyn had heard it before, only now was she remembering. Long ago, when she had a brother, the tune had played. It played until the day Jonah vanished.
The next day, after dropping Toby at kindergarten, Evelyn searched the internet. For what exactly, she wasn’t sure? Did she truly have a brother named Jonah who vanished? Or was it a nightmare? First, she searched old photo albums for a picture or any clue that she wasn’t an only child. Evelyn found nothing. Only photographs of her and her parents. She decided against asking her parents. They’d think she was going insane. Maybe she was? On the internet, she started searching for Jonah and found nothing. Next, she searched for stories about a tune only young children could hear. This was more fruitful. She found online forums about the Piper’s Debt Cycle. The forums spoke of a tune only young children could hear. Of children disappearing without a trace. Not all the children. Just the children that the Piper chooses. The town forgets. Even the parents of missing children. The Piper makes them forget. People asked how to stop the Piper. The answer, you can’t. You pray he hasn’t chosen your child. There were sketches of the Piper posted in the forum. Evelyn’s blood turned to ice. All the sketches were the same. A slender man in a dark coat and hat, carrying a flute. Someone asked the obvious question. How can this story be real if the Piper makes everyone forget? The answer. If the Piper uses his magic on the same person, it grows weaker. There are a handful of people who remember.
That night, Evelyn found Toby in the garage. He had his eyes closed, swaying to music that wasn’t there. Evelyn grabbed Toby’s shoulders. “Wake up!” A radio that hadn’t worked in years sat on a shelf. It sudden crackled to life. The Piper’s tune played through crackling static. The tune from her dream. The tune Toby hummed in the car. Evelyn could hear it. She picked up the radio from the shelf. It wasn’t plugged in. Evelyn slammed it on the ground. It exploded into pieces, and the music ceased. Toby opened his eyes. A smile formed on his face. “He picked me.”
Evelyn kept Toby home the next. She once again sat vigil at his bedside, waiting. That night, storm clouds rolled across the sky. Dark and evil. As the first drops of rain fell, the Piper came. Evelyn heard the tune carrying over the rain.
Toby sat up. Eyes glassy. He lifted the covers and jumped out of bed. Evelyn stood in the door, blocking his way. “He said you’d try,” Toby whispered. “He remembers you. He took Jonah.” That broke something in Evelyn. She grabbed Toby, held him tight, and screamed. “You can’t take him!”
The air shifted. Everything stopped. Frozen mid-motion. Toby’s foot in the air. Evelyn’s scream held. The rain drops suspended outside the bedroom window. Evelyn was aware, but she couldn’t move. The only thing not frozen was the Piper’s song. It crept closer. Evelyn heard the front door open. Heard the soft steps. Then he appeared. Dark coat, dark hat, playing his flute. He pulled the flute away from his mouth. The wide brim of his hat hid his face in shadow. When he spoke, his voice was a hiss of wind and static. “You remember, don’t you Evelyn? When I took Jonah.”
Evelyn’s body trembled. She willed herself to move. She managed nothing but a few words. Enough for a final desperate attempt. “Take me. Let Toby go.”
The Piper turned to Toby. Evelyn could hear the smile in his voice. “I’ve already chosen. This one is mine.” Evelyn watched in frozen horror as the Piper brought his flute back to his mouth and played once more. Toby wiggled free of her grasp and followed the Piper out the door.
The rest of the town forgot. About the tune, the strange behaviour of their children. But not Evelyn. This time, she remembered. She remembered Jonah, Toby, all the other children, and the Piper.
Her pleas didn’t just fall on deaf ears. At first, people felt sorry for Evelyn. This poor woman who went crazy. Talking about a brother and a son that never existed. That sorrow turned to scorn. Eventually, doctors declared Evelyn mentally unwell. They committed her to a psychiatric facility, where she still tells the doctors about Jonah and Toby.
Prefer to listen? The audio version is available now on YouTube.