A shredded coat flapped in the breeze, hung on a rusted pipe in the center of town. No one knew of its origins, only how it looked, how it sang in the wind.
It looked of a tattered remain of a beige trench coat, covered in soot and grime, some who looked close enough rumored it had splatters of blood. Once, when a button fell, a young boy with bright blue eyes and dark hair picked it up and gave it a golden smile as if he had won a trophy. (Even when he moves to a town three states over, he keeps the button to remember this tale of his hometown.)
In the wind it sang, sang songs of sorrow, yet ones of power. The city muffled its songs, but they were always heard. The religious residents claimed that if you heard its song you'd been blessed by an angel. It sung in the depths of the night, when the things that went bump in the night came out.
They whispered, in the back of the bars in the late hours of the night or in the grime filled streets that only lay illuminated by moon, about a man. With each story he changed, a brunette with saddened hazel eyes, or a man with whiskey eyes and a bitter frown, even a blonde with short hair and guilt filled green eyes - these murmurs told of burn scars riddling his arms in the shape of feathers. He was always there, at least once a month, and he sung with the ghost (because if there was any name to call it, it was simply a ghost). Sang the same songs of sorrow and pain, yet these songs never lasted long, a single verse before he could sing no longer.
Most residents knew: though he sang with this ghost, he was burdened with the power rather than blessed.
So they simply sang to the tattered tune and whispered in the dark.
