Footprints

                                             By Jeff Baker

            “Shoes. All over the place,” said Kendall, idly kicking at a loafer lying in the street, a street filled with shoes of varying shapes, sizes and makes. “Where did they all come from?”

            “They fell from the sky,” Hoyt said. “We have witnesses. We have video.”

            “Shoes don’t just fall from the sky,” Kendall said. “They must have been dropped from some plane.”

            “There was no plane,” Hoyt said. “I told you we had witnesses. The shoes just fell.”

            “Like the rain of frogs,” Kendall said. “You hear about these things, but…”

            “We have a working theory,” Hoyt said. “Hundreds of people disappear every year without a trace. So, this is the trace.”

            “Shoes?” Kendall said incredulously.

            “Usually not on this scale,” Hoyt said. “Usually it’s one or two. Never a matched set. In America, the shoes sometimes wind up caught in power lines. I remember reading after they found the wreck of the Titanic there was a moment when they found a lone shoe at the bottom of the ocean. They realized there had been someone in it when it fell there.”

            “So, the shoes are shoes of dead people?” Kendall asked.

            “We don’t know,” Hoyt said. “But I’ll tell you this; some of the shoes are contemporary. Some of them are fashions going back a century or more. And some of them are styles no one has seen before.”

            “Do you, do you think this is some sort of message?” Kendall asked.

            “Maybe,” Hoyt said, staring out at the horizon, “maybe it’s a warning.”

                                                   —end—