The big idea, ostensibly, was that Jamie’s parents wanted a log cabin for the autumn because they wanted to experience seasons again. In fact, maybe they just wanted Jamie to experience seasons in general. Growing up in central Florida is hard. You get two: hurricane season and not hurricane season. Sure the temperature drops a little bit come November but it only goes as low as, say, high forties. And the trees don’t even change. Everything is just different shades of green. Bright green to dark green to dead green. They wanted Jamie to see orange.

The cabin they bought was on the side of a large mountain several miles outside of Helen, Georgia. The front door opened to a living room with a knit faux Native American carpet. There was a small fireplace. The kitchen hugged the walls. And the second floor had the bedrooms. The cabin sat small and slant on a hill surrounded by tall trees some naked some still green and lush and some on fire in the orange and red of the autumn.

The optics of Jamie and her family leaving Florida and spending two whole weeks in November seemed to everybody like an escape. Jamie’s grandfather, that’s her father’s father, had done something unspeakable. On a whim, it seems, the 87-year-old man rose from his bed, walked to the kitchen in their Tampa home, grabbed a serrated kitchen knife and plunged it into the old, parchment soft neck of his sleeping wife. That’d be Gertie Kensington, who’s the mother of David Kensington, who, in turn, is the father of Jamie. Kensington. The woman, old and frail in her age, barely let out a yelp as the blood quickly filled her mouth and sputtered and splatted onto her white night gown. Then the husband, that’s Donnie, with what appears to be a burst of animalistic energy, clutched her by her steel wool hair and left-to-right hacked her head off of her shoulders before turning to the knife onto himself. 

The event, as you could imagine, sent the entire Kensington diaspora into disarray. Cousins from each coast were calling, crying, flying down to Florida. Uncles, sons, aunts, family friends from Jersey, Nova Scotia, and Europe, were all panicking and sending letters and gifts for the bereaved. 

But here’s where it gets juicy. The homicide unit showed up. Detectives trawled the place. And they found a beat up moleskin notebook that belonged to Donnie Kensington. A small little rectangle with yellow pages and a broken spine. Something used frequently. What appeared first as a seemingly random selection of dates turned out to be something far more upsetting. Next to each date was scrawled a phrase – “She turned into a bat again.”

August 20, 2015 – She turned into a bat again. 

September 13, 2015 – Bat. 

January 9, 2017 – She turned into a bat again. Her friends came over too. 

March 15, 2017 – Her friends won’t stop pattering against the window. And how she is big.

After discovering hundreds of more notebooks hidden within the drywall, it was revealed that this had gone on for years. 

July 3, 1947 – Gertie turned into a bat again. I was hoping this would stop. 

September 18th, 1983 – Help us all. 

December 20, 2005 – Hopefully this is the last one for the holidays. 

November 1st, 2018 – I can’t stand it. Her friends won’t leave the window sill. They want her back. They want me gone. I can’t stand it anymore. She’s so big. 

And clearly, this threw some people off. 

Jamie was fifteen years old and now wanted a different relationship with her father. You see, David Kensington was, in fact, pretty good. Maybe he was a little quiet. Maybe on certain occasions he could have reached out and hugged her instead of just smiling thinly and walking away. But by comparison to his own father he was Mr. Rogers. Jamie was smart and precocious and understood the various ins and outs of masculinity. Her whole life he talked down to her in a very authoritarian way that fathers loved to take. Not as equals, but as someone who is ready to pass down lessons on a myriad of subjects.  And while Jamie understood that she was only fifteen years old, every now and then she wanted to talk to an adult as an equal. Share stories. What had Jamie learned? Anything worth digesting? But David was never interested. 

When the three of them walked into the log cabin there was a brief moment where Jamie hoped her father acted new. Like a character stepping from the wings into a fresh and exciting spotlight. With new lines and different outlook on family and his loved ones. But that didn’t happen. Instead, he set his bags on the ground and looked out. 

“Dustier than I remembered,” he growled. 

“Well, we’ll be here long enough. We can clean it up,” her mom said. Her name was Sarah and she was trying her best. Sandy blonde hair that ended just past her ears. Compassion in red hues on her cheeks. 

When the news came in about the tragedy in Tampa David imploded. Got even more quiet. Tears coming down but without expression. And Sarah was there for him behind closed doors, when Jamie could hear the wailing of her father bounce and crash through the house. The night was so quiet until it wasn’t.

And sometimes she’d stay up and just listen and think about how things would never be the same. Sarah’s parents were already passed. Jamie barely knew them. Two small quiet funerals in Ocala in the same year. She was young and it was raining and since then they were all just waiting for the Kensington’s to go. And oh how they went. Not like a candle in the wind or the dying breath of charcoal, they went like an explosion. Like a steam engine kicked and bucked and choked on its own combustion blowing out a fireball of metal and steam and smoke, killing everyone on the train. That’s how they went. 

Jamie’s room in the cabin was small but cute. A full sized bed sat under a square window. It was large and sat about a foot off the ground. There was a little wooden vanity. Across the room, facing the bed, was a closet. There were two light brown louvered doors that opened outwards. She opened the closet doors and tossed in her bags. She hung up a sweater and a jacket on skinny metal hangers.

* * *

That night after dinner David started a fire and poured himself a double of bourbon on the rocks. Jamie made a glance to her mother wondering if she’d make a face about the drink. But she didn’t. 

“I think I’ll make one too,” she whispered at Jamie with a wink.

“What’s the WiFi here?” Jamie asked. 

“No WiFi,” her dad answered back not turning from the fire. 

“Does the TV work?” 

“I don’t wanna watch TV tonight,” dad replied. 

Jamie made a face to her mom that said give me a break here.

“Why don’t you go upstairs and read, I know you have to read for school.” 

“Yeah,” Jamie started with sarcasm, “I’ll just read for two weeks like a monk.” 

“Have a little patience,” mom whispered. And Jamie felt bad. Mom was right. Jamie moved from the kitchen table and kissed dad on the head before returning to her small room with the louvered closet. He smelled like moss.

And in the middle of the night she heard it. It sounded like flapping, or rather, like someone was hitting the door with a belt, or maybe – no, like flapping. Distinctly like flapping. And soon Jamie stirred awake and heard it clearer. Something was in the closet trying to get out. Something was arhythmically tossing its weight against the louvered doors. And Jamie could see a darkness, a denser shadow than others, shifting around and moving about through the slats of the closet. 

The type of fear that seized Jamie was the type that starts at the center of your chest and spreads. Spreads quickly across the shoulders and then into your stomach and makes all the food and bile lurch. And the flapping didn’t stop.

And quickly Jamie decided that whatever it was inside the closet, a possum or a bird or one of those big moths you sometimes see, should come out and fly out and be gone. So Jamie flipped on the bedroom light and moved to the window over the bed and opened it. The cold Georgia air came in fast and without invite. And Jamie grabbed the book she was reading (The Awakening by one Kate Chopin) and she held it as a weapon and approached the closet. The flapping and pattering and thudding against the doors didn’t lose energy and Jamie grabbed the closet door and swung it open. And out flew a bat. And it flew into the room and then to the ceiling and then out of the window disappearing into the night. It had come and gone like a shout.  

And for a few seconds Jamie was relieved that it had come and gone so quickly and that it didn’t decide to leap into her hair and bite the soft of her neck. And it wasn’t until her heart slowed down and she closed the window and got under the covers before she acknowledged the significance of it being what it was. 

The first thing she did was laugh. She laughed to herself and pulled the blankets in tighter. The second thing she decided was that she couldn’t tell her father about it. He’d think it was some cruel and twisted joke. A bat in the room? After Don Kensington sunk four inches of stainless steel into the old dusty neck of his wife? After claiming she had been turning into a bat for the entirety of their marriage? After hacking off her head and pulling it off her shoulders like it never belonged there in the first place? Yeah, Jamie would keep it to herself.

But in the morning when she woke up to her mother pacing around downstairs her good humored fear turned into something more rotten. A dead shade of green. Sarah was on the phone trying to get in touch with David who, as she put it, “Never came to bed.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I went to sleep and he stayed out here looking at the fire and he never came to bed,” mom replied. Again, it took about ten minutes or so before Jamie connected the dark story of her dead grandmother, the bat flitting about lost and confused in the closet, and her dad who “never came to bed.” And again, Jamie’s first instinct was to laugh. How absurd. How tragically Poe. How uh how … how come he never came to bed?

“Hey, I got us milk and eggs,” came David’s voice through the front door. 

“Where the hell have you been?” Sarah said leaping on him. “I’ve been calling you. You didn’t come to bed last night.” Her cheeks were red. Her eyes were narrow. 

“Yeah, I did. You were asleep. I woke up early and went for a jog. And look – I got breakfast.”

How hilariously Poe. How R.L. Stine Goosbumpian Jamie thought. And then she chuckled to herself at the phrase goosebumpian.

David was better that day. A little more talkative. He’d go outside and breathe the fresh fall air. The brown and orange leaves falling with each gust of wind like they were being tickled off their branches. Then he’d come in, hands and nose cold. But every now and then when he’d turn a corner or close a door it was as though Jamie could feel him sigh and deflate. Like all the energy in the cabin exhaled and then slumped into a corner. His performance of being happy or, rather, his performance of coping exhausted him. But, again, Jamie loved him and would kiss him on the head every time she passed him on the couch. And he smelled like moss and trees and a little like dirt.

In the evening Jamie’s mother went to bed and was fast asleep, but she decided to stay up. She read next to her father. And as the night grew deeper she noticed out of the corner of her eye that her father had stopped reading. Or rather, his focus was on something else. His eyes darted around the house. When it creaked or moaned he turned as if expecting to catch someone sneaking up behind him. He rubbed his neck and sat up and rearranged his back. He fidgeted and kept crossing and uncrossing his legs. 

“You alright?” Jamie asked. She let the book fall on her chest. 

“I’m good. Just tired.” 

“Go to sleep, then. Maybe mom wants you to.”

“She’ll be alright.” 

And then there was a pause. The fire crackled and the flames danced on the log. Bright and then here and then over there, transforming and shifting around, but never losing their violence. 

“I love your mother very much you know,” David said. And the sudden sincerity surprised Jamie. She put the book down again.

“She loves you too. All my friends are jealous that my parents are still together,” Jamie said half joking. 

David pulled on the humor. He laughed. It was a compliment he relished. 

“Your mother said you couldn’t sleep last night. Said you saw a bat in your room,” David said. He stood up from the couch and moved over to pour himself some more bourbon. Four Roses. 

“Mom said that? I never told her about that.” 

“You sure? Well either way,” David said but trailed off. He drank the two fingers of bourbon like water. Poured himself another. 

“… Either way what?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘Well either way’ - either way what?” 

“Oh. Either way if it happens again just kill it,” David said. 

“Oh,” Jamie raised her eyebrows at the prospect. “Kill it?”

“Yeah, kill it.” 

“I don’t think I can… I don’t think I have what it takes to kill it. It’s not like squishing a bug or something. I think the biggest thing I’ve killed is a roach and even still I almost yacked.” 

David laughed again. 

“I love you and your mother a great deal,” he said. He sat on the couch and leaned backwards until he was resting all his weight on Jamie. He did this all the time. He’d pretend to fall asleep or pass out or just not acknowledge her presence. It always got a laugh out of her but this time he did it differently. He rested on Jamie the way some guy in therapy rests on a chaise lounge. He balanced the bourbon on his stomach.

“I’ve begun to see things and understand things that are profound,” he said. The bourbon shook on his stomach and then settled. His breathing came deep and slow. “Big and profound. But I always come back to you and your mother. I want you to know that. I’d be nothing without you and sometimes I get the urge to cross the threshold and live in that profound overwhelming place. But I always come back I want you to know that.”

Jamie played with his graying hair, but then she stopped. She had no idea what he was talking about. She thought it was some abstract metaphor for his depression or being an adult. Something enigmatic that he’d chalk up as a lesson. Or maybe it was the bourbon. She didn’t know.  

“We love you too, pops,” she said. Then, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just tired is all.” 

In the night she heard it again. Her first thought wasn’t kill the bat kill the bat kill the bat. Instead, it was who’s breaking everything? Because that’s what it sounded like. A glass knocked off a counter. Forks and spoons being scattered around the metal sink, echoing and loud in the silent cabin. Jamie waited to hear foot steps. She knew the sound of her father’s weight. She knew the sound of her mother’s light pads. But no feet came. Just more clattering and commotion. And, finally, she got out of bed. 

The bat was in the main living area and it fluttered and flapped around and when it would clip into a corner of the cupboard or bounce off the cabin’s wall it would squeal and squeak. It was bigger than the night before and it didn’t seem aware of its size. With every movement it seemed to recoil like its brain was making decisions it doubled back on. Back and forth like a glitch.  Leather wings catching the light and showing the blood and veins and thin bones. 

“Mom!!” Jamie shouted. “Dad!!” 

But nobody came. 

“Guys!!” she shouted as the bat swooped down and around and up to the kitchen light and then back around the fire place. “Get the fuck out of here!!” And Jamie ran to the front door and opened it and the bat, as if it knew, flew out and, like before, disappeared into the night behind a bough like a blink. 

In the morning Jamie made breakfast and when she realized nobody had come downstairs yet she went upstairs to find her parents’ room empty. The bed was made like a soldier did it. Like it had never been touched. She tried calling her mom but she didn’t pick up. She went downstairs and opened the front of the cabin. A cold draft swept in and she hugged herself tight. She felt her own skin raise and hairs stand up. She walked out onto the porch. 

“I took your mother back home.” 

And Jamie nearly leapt out of her skin. She turned and David was there wearing a large fleece pull over. His jeans were dirty. He seemed exhausted.  

“What?”

“I took your mother back home. This morning.” 

“You drove mom back to Orlando? From here? That’s like an eight-hour drive. Sixteen total.” 

“Is it?” 

“Yeah. When did you leave? How did you… Why did you?”

“She wasn’t feeling good and I didn’t want to have her up here hating life and being sick.”

“Oh. Okay. She didn’t pick up when I called her.” 

David shrugged. And the truth is Jamie will never see her mom again. Somewhere she is out there crying and panicked and trying to make sense of something that happened. She looks at the sky and wonders if god was ever there or if all those hours in church and at her catholic school in Minnesota were of any use. Or if it was just shadow speak. Whispered and cajoling stories to placate you. Like prawns shuffling in mud. She was so sure nothing was behind her. She was so sure nothing was under the bed.  

“You guys didn’t hear me last night? When I was calling you? The bat was back.” 

“You should’ve killed it,” David said. But he didn’t look at her when he said that. He kept his hands in the pockets of his fleece. Fists clenched like he was holding on to something. Like he was keeping something from pouring out and spreading like fire or oil. 

“I don’t know how to kill a bat.” 

“You take a large heavy blanket and throw it over the bat to bring it down and then you stomp on it or hit it with a shovel until it’s dead.” 

“But I don’t want to kill it.” 

“Next time you see it fucking kill it.”

And then her dad stepped off the porch and walked down a small beaten trail. 

“I’m gonna get more fire wood,” he called back, not turning. And Jamie noticed how he walked funny down the path. A small limp. A movement of the hip. A frustrated gait determined to move with the function and execution it may have once had.

She woke up that night and the bat was on her chest and it was the size of a child. She felt its claws prodding and padding around. She could smell, just barely, the stench of dirt and moss. Its panicked breathing came in tiny inhales and exhales fast and soft like a ghost. When she opened her eyes she saw the dark outline of it first. The ears sloping down and then quickly back up into the points of wings, hawked back, chevrons to the night.

The thing looked at her but it didn’t seem aware of her. Its eyes bobbed and flicked everywhere. It moved like one big claw, joints forward and stiff like it was on tiny stilts, awkward and uncomfortable to be on land. Its nails and feet plucking at the blanket kneading for comfort.

Jamie laid there still like the dead. After a moment, she moved her right hand to the edge of the comforter and gripped it. 

“Easy…” she whispered. 

With one swift movement she threw the edge of the comforter up and over to the other edge to sandwich it. But, faster than her, the thing jerked backed and flapped and fell, confused, just beyond the foot of the bed. A loud thud betraying its escape. Jamie sat up and scrambled to the foot of the bed and peered over the edge expecting to find the thing writhing and flapping on the wood. 

But what she found was much worse. 

It was her dad. David, naked, gasping for air and clutching at his neck. Elbows banging onto the wood, feet and ankles clattering loud like he was walking on his side. Eyes bulged out, veins throbbing thick. 

Jamie jumped down off the bed and helped. Tried to calm him down. Did CPR. Screamed for anyone to hear. And soon David stopped flapping around on the ground and his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep. An eyes unmoving beyond his lids sleep like a corpse sleep. 

And Jamie kneeled there in the darkness of her room. The night creaking and moaning just beyond the square window. Trees like hands pining to get in. Critters and vermin skittering around through dead leaves and acorns and detritus. And she tried to calm her breathing and eventually did. 

* * *

It was her older cousin Tyler who told her about the moleskin notebooks that the detectives found. It was at the wake far in a corner by the door that lead to the parking lot. Tyler was about a decade older than her. He had a beer in his hand, and he guided Jamie by the elbow. He was wearing a cheap black blazer and smelled like cigarettes. They hadn’t ever been that close, but this wasn’t the first time Tyler was the one to break a family secret.  

“Grandpa was fucking crazy,” he concluded the story.

“That didn’t happen. You’re fucking with me,” Jamie replied. 

“Swear to God.”

Then –

“Want me to steal you some booze?”

“No, I’m okay,” Jamie said.

Tyler took a pull from his beer. 

“I always knew he was off,” he started again, “But being that crazy? For that long? How’d he hide it?” 

Jamie didn’t have an answer. But then she saw her dad and mother come out of the main area. Sarah was holding him. David was crying silently into a handkerchief. 

“I mean, how could you hide it for so long?” Tyler asked again more to himself. He took another pull from the beer.

* * *

Jamie slept on the couch downstairs and in the morning she waited for her dad to come down but he never did. After a while she walked up to her room and, like the morning before, saw that it was empty. Except that the square window was open. A draft blew in and cut through her pajamas. She walked to the window and saw nothing. Orange. Dead trees with spindly branches. A brown forest floor. 

“We should talk about what you saw last night,” his voice came from behind her. Her heart skipped a beat and she spun around. Her dad stood there in the doorway. He was back in his jeans and fleece. His eyes were sunken and with bags beneath them. They were blood shot and tired and on his face was a film of dirt. 

“I don’t know what I saw,” she said. 

“You saw a bat on your chest and then you saw me on the ground naked.” 

“Yeah.”

Jamie backed up against the bed. She had fear in her eyes and her dad saw it. He hated it. He hated the way she looked at him, afraid for her life. In danger. The way Sarah looked at him before she took off in the night screaming and pulling her hair. Before she took off into the forest running in such a panic. Before she disappeared without a trace.

“This is why I wanted you to kill it,” he said. 

“I – I – I don’t understand,” Jamie replied. 

“I knew it was going to start as soon as your grandma died.” 

“What?”

“It’s been happening my whole life. I’ve seen her turn. I’ve watched my dad struggle with it. With… wanting to kill her. With wanting to run. But he never did. He was a good father and a good husband.”  

David kept his hands in fleece pockets. 

“If you don’t kill me,” he said, “It’ll get worse. I’ll get bigger and more violent. Others will start showing up. I’ll start biting you and biting others and I’ll be mean and vicious and maybe venomous and rabid.” 

“Are you like…” but Jamie faltered at the question. “I want get out of here. I want go home.” 

“You can’t. Not until this is settled.” 

“What about mom? I want to be with mom.” 

And David didn’t say anything. He just looked at the ground and when he looked back up at her his face was ashen. 

“I tried to warn her. I tried to tell her what happened. But she got scared. She watched it happen and she left and she is not coming back.”

“What?”

“She’s gone, Jamie. Your mother is gone. She didn’t go home. She’s far away. It’s just me and you now.”

There was moment. It creaked by slow and with menace like a dullard in an attic. It just crawled by and eyed Jamie and she felt cold and light headed. Her breathing was irregular and her father stood there across the room and stared at her. The image of him naked and writhing in pain flashed across her eyes. The image of him stomping down the trail into the woods flashed too. Still, after all of this, he stood with the authoritarian stand fathers take. He was telling her a lesson. You need to kill the bat because of abc and xyz. 

“I was thinking about killing myself but then your mom left first. I didn’t want to just do it and leave you alone with questions. I don’t know. That seemed worse.” 

Jamie focused on her breathing. Don’t pass out, don’t pass out, don’t pass out. 

“It’s easier if you wait for me to turn. It seems less real that way. But I’ll be big. Real big.” 

“What about me?”

“What?”

“What about me? If you die… Do I turn too?”

“Not positive. It skipped my brother. Your grandmother had several sisters. It didn’t happen to them.” 

“Oh.”

And then David was tired of talking. He rested his forehead on the threshold. He was exhausted and already looked dead. Weak. He started to cry, tears welling up and then running down his cheeks carving small white paths along the subtle gray of dirt. Silently he wept. His jaw tight and his lips quivered.

“It’s a strange feeling, I’ll say that much. You only just remember it a little. It’s like a dream but it’s… it’s amazing. I think that’s why my dad let my mother do it for so long. She must have told him what it felt like.”

“W-what does it feel like?” Jamie asked. Her mouth was dry. Her mouth was so dry. 

“It feels like the most brilliant elation I’ve ever felt. Like there’s no pain in the world and I’m flying and I’m the thing to be feared in the night. And I feel strong. I feel scary and I feel like I’m part of what’s under this earth.” 

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain it. Sweetie. Where we’re standing right now. When we walk along our lives. It’s all hollow beneath us. Just a hollow cavern of smoldering light and energy. And when I turn I’m a piece of it. Like I’ve been around for eons and I’ll be around for eons more. I think that’s why my dad let her do it for so long.” 

Another pause.

“I’ve been to the inside. I’ve seen red caves that stretch for light years. I’ve seen the core, radiant and powerful. I’ve seen the dead and the masters of the dead and the masters of them shuffle around and step with heavy steps and massive feet. I’ve seen it all. But I love you so much and I can’t watch you suffer. And so I come back because I love you so dearly and I think you should kill me. Because one day I’ll come back and I’ll kill you. And that’s what I think and it’s what I’ve decided and I think you should kill me.” 

Then –  

“Okay,” he said and walked off. 

He disappeared for the rest of the day and Jamie sat in silence. First it was on the bed. She didn’t move. Her feet were cement and the backs of her knees didn’t bend. She felt this weight pull down on her shoulders and once her heart beat went back to normal it’s almost like it too fled in fear. Burrowed deep under blood and meat and behind the bones of her chest.

Then she moved through the house like it was a cage. Heavy wooden walls. A nameless and inescapable draft snaked through the house like she was in and out of freezers. Her skin was cold and with each foot step the house creaked and moaned some subtle death rattle. Like a casket closing after the occupant has returned from his night jaunt caked in mud and evil.

Soon, the sun reached the horizon. Bright blue skies turned orange and then purple then fell dark like a clap. And Jamie locked the doors. She locked the windows. And she stayed in the cabin alone fighting off sleep as long as she could.

She did not know where her dad was. But she knew in her heart where he would be. He was coming. Either to be killed or be rabid and vicious and sink into Jamie’s skin an unholy venom. Maybe he would come with friends. Flapping friends pattering against the window without control or recompense.

And soon it came. There was one against the door - it hit with a jolt. A high pitched squeal and then a loud thack! Jamie woke up on the couch. Then another came like a missile. A whistling wiz right to the kitchen window, the one above the sink. Thack! Thack! Thathathathathcik! The wings flapped and battered the window and the little claws scratched to get in. Jamie stood up and backed away. Eyes on the front door. Eyes on the window. Then she heard it.

It came fast and all at once in a swarm of fluttering and squealing bats. Hundreds of them barraging the widow like a storm. A booming roar against the walls and the roof and front door, winged monsters blocking out the moon. They were everywhere. Bats. Hundreds of them. And Jamie screamed and secured the locks and pulled down the blinds because she couldn’t stand to see their fury bodies mushed up against the glass – their tiny fangs and beady eyes swivel and gnawing to get in. 

And finally her dad came. Through the chimney he fell crashing on to the carpet covered in soot and ash. A pitch black monstrosity, now bigger than ever before. Wings that spread out like a tent, a head like a melon, squealing and gnashing at the carpet, trying to get up but struggling like its own weight was a malformation. A misevolution against god or whoever designed it. 

Jamie screamed loud and her face went white. She had to clutch her mouth to stop herself. This giant bat, legs kicking, wings knocking around like someone having a seizure. And finally it looked up at her.

It had human eyes.

Jamie screamed again. And the roar of the blitz increased and the bats surged louder.

The thing on the carpet eventually found its footing and it stood up. Height wise it was a dwarf but its wingspan nearly doubled it. Its small furry legs bowed like crescents and for a second it wobbled like a toddler before the weight of its massive wings secured it to place. 

Before she knew what she was doing she was coming back with a knife from the kitchen. A big silver blade that seemed to tremor in her hand not from her nerves but from the incessant shaking of the house. 

She came to her father and he swelled in the chest and tried to control his breaths small and contorted as his lungs were. He was different now. In size and aura, like he was stuck mid transformation. As though David knew if he were finalized he’d be a spawn of something otherworldly and would rip the meat off his daughter’s bones and drag her down to the cavern of the fell tree. And so he caught himself between two bodies and two purposes. A transfiguration halted in its tracks. 

“Kill me before I you,” the beast muttered. A human tongue lashing around over sharp fangs, cutting itself on the underside and sending dark blood over his own leather lips and chest. 

Jamie held the knife out. 

“The world I’ve seen,” it muttered again.

And Jamie stabbed the bat in his chest of fur and the blade stopped short at first but then dipped in far to the handle. And her father froze, mouth agape like a gargoyle. And before Jamie could take the blade out the front door exploded open in a frenzy of evil shades and flying shadows. Shrieking all in pain and in outrage for their family. And the nightmares collapsed onto the deformity and took it away with them. But Jamie stayed there pale and shaking and with her soul violated. 

* * *

It was months later before she felt it. She was laying in bed at Tyler’s apartment. She stayed with him now. Had a little cot in a room used as a study. She thought she heard something in the walls. Or some animal with nails skittering across the floor overhead. Then she felt the change happen. It caught her by surprise, snapping at her arms and her legs like a runner’s cramp. She gasped and her eyes widened. She felt copper on her lips and she could see something through her vision like a double exposure. Something brilliant and glowing and surrounded by screams of chaos. Something unholy but bigger than the universe itself. And it didn’t feel like elation. It felt like pain. Like searing, untethered pain.