“I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.” ― Bram Stoker, Dracula
The children forgot about the chicks in the garage. They ate dinner and played Jenga afterwards until Nathan’s father herded them to their rooms. They prepared for bedtime. The excitement of the sleepover delayed their rest. Whitney had travelled down with her family for the weekend. Her visit had been planned, but Kyle was a late addition. He protested at being left out, so his uncle obliged and encouraged Nathan to pull out the trundle bed for Kyle to sleep in while the parents spoke on the phone.
Nathan and Kyle jeered their cousin from Nathan’s room as Whitney laid in the bed in the guest room. She was annoyed by the boys’ bullying even though she was enchanted by their attention. She did not know whether to cry hysterically from the ageless insults to her gender or giggle from the affectionate attention from the novice clowns. Eventually the chatter subsided. Whitney read from Alice in Wonderland. Her uncle had gifted her the book to celebrate to recognize her tenth birthday. Only months older than her two cousins, who found pleasure in their Minecraft worlds, Whitney preferred the company of this treasured book. Her eyes grew heavy as she read,
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
The house was suddenly silent as sleep overtook each child. Their dreams took hold.
A long time later, deep into the evening, Whitney instinctively sprang up attempting to determine the sound that had interrupted her sleep. She had not heard the footsteps race down the carpeted stairs, but she did hear the screen door creek open on to the deck underneath the room that she slept in. Immediately she went to the doorway of Nathan’s room. Kyle’s makeshift bed was empty. Whitney went to the side of Nathan’s bed and momentarily observed his peaceful pale face. She shook his shoulder until her cousin was awake.
“Kyle just went downstairs,” Whitney said in a loud whisper. In a moment of disorientation Nathan considered the possible motivation for Kyle’s impulsively furtive rise from his bed. Nathan understood from surveying the room by the limited light that omitted from the skylight that the time was somewhere close to when night grows bold prior to its retreat before the brink of dawn. The boys had a complicated bond forged by love and mistrust. They already practiced the code that boys are govern by. A friend has a friend’s back, especially cousins. They knew each others vulnerability and while they privately exploited each other, in the company of others they were fiercely devoted to each others secrets.
Nathan went over to his cousin’s bedding, attempting to conceal from Whitney that he was patting his hand over the sheets. He observed that they were dry, “He didn’t have an accident,” Nathan whispered to himself.
“I said that he went downstairs, let’s go find him,” Whitney explained not comprehending Nathan’s investigation. She spotted a small flashlight on Nathan’s bookcase next to the door. Whitney placed the flashlight in the tiny front pocket of her pajama bottoms. She had already slipped into her wool-lined slippers. The two children quietly went by the father’s room and gingerly descended the stairway making certain not to place their weight on the railing. They went to the kitchen where the light above the sink gave away the details of the kitchen. The doorway to the deck was slightly ajar. Nathan and Whitney approached the door. Nathan slipped on his sandals that were next to the door. The cool evening air greeted Whitney’s bare shoulders. She returned to the kitchen and grabbed her red cardigan that had been draped over the chair where she had eaten her dinner. She put the cardigan on as she made her way through the doorway onto the deck.
The children stood facing the edge of the trees in the backyard as they listened to the rhythmical stretching of the springs in the darkness. Kyle had been so excited throughout the day by Nathan’s new trampoline. The apparatus was much bigger than his own and being new, Kyle had staked his claim over it by recklessly jumping and tumbling on the black canvas that received him and then launched him higher and higher into the air. Excitement and his preoccupation with the trampoline overcame his sleep. The image of enjoying the solitary freedom that the trampoline provided him rose higher than the evening shadows. Kyle was boundless by nature. He could not resist the lure of the late-night adventure.
Whitney prepared to scold him from the railing of the deck as she observed his acrobatic merriment. Instead, she and Nathan were distracted by a rapidly approaching ominous cloud in the moonlight. Before either child could react, the cloud accelerated and swooped down over Kyle. The darkened cloud clutched Kyle as he leapt into the air propelled by the trampoline, instantly lifting him. Whitney showed the beam of the small flashlight on the object. Nathan and Whitney were shocked by the unmistaken image. The cloud was a multitude of moving winged creatures of enormous dimension, and in the center of their shanghai was their apparent leader, dwarfing his troop in size. The children were further astonished as the moonlight revealed a glistening golden pendant attached to a chain worn around the neck of the leader
Zeborg, the dark-shaped commander of the calamity of bats, extended his claws and bared his fine sharpened teeth at the direction of the light. His crimson mouth was prominent even in the surrounding darkness. In a flash Kyle was lifted above the trees like some eerie winged beast of the night. He yelled once. His screech mimicking the cry of a nocturnal animal who had been stocked by an unsuspected predator. As he struggled to kick and fight his captives, Kyle realized the height to which he was carried to. He ceased his resistance when he was overcome by a paralyzing sting from the bite of Zeborg.
The moment of Kyle’s astonishing abduction pressed the children into conflict. They watched in horror from the deck. As Kyle ascended into the night sky carried off by the lurid colony of bats, Nathan descended one step of the deck and hastily leapt the final three where he fell on the cool ground. His momentum carried him forward. Springing to his feet he raced to the edge of the woods. His impulsive decision denied Whitney her sensible internal voice. She followed Nathan loyally if not reluctantly. When he reached the trampoline Nathan hesitated momentarily, looking back. He was relieved to see that Whitney had followed him. The children paused only to exchange an equally desperate and terrified confirmation before Nathan led Whitney into the darkened woods
The moonlight provided a spotlight to follow the path of the frenzied cloud and its limp captive. The stream from Whitney’s flashlight wildly bounced around as she navigated the uneven terrain. Still the light provided the children with an indication where obstacles existed. The image of Kyle’s still body was being lifted further and further away. The flight of the cloud of bats was deliberate yet sporadic as they climbed and dipped and climbed and plunged again from the wait of their captive. The figure in the sky appeared like a marionette in a coma dangling up and down just beyond the height of the trees. The children desperately raced to keep pace with the helter-skelter cloud. They were whipped by the springing bows of the firs and scratched by the low branches of the trees. Whitney caught a recoiling branch in her face producing tears that fell onto her cheeks joining the tears released from her bested spirit.
The woods were familiar to Nathan. He had often traveled them with his dad and Sadie, the family dog, into the solitude of its adventurous lure. During these trips Nathan’s father produced contrived stories of the forest. The father’s generous imagination, in the secret of the surrounding trees, would often betray his responsibility. He would indulge Nathan with entertaining, yet frightful tales of children who braved the woods only to be chased by hungry wolves, angry witches, and a headless child. Now, as he pursued his cousin floating in the evening sky, Nathan noted as he and Whitney passed Sadie’s Trail and clamored up Bullet Hill that his ordeal was more terrifying than his father’s tales. At that point the bats angled deeper into the forest. The children ran by the dark waters of Witch’s Pond and turned upon Rabbit Hill. Nathan stopped instantly in his tracks as the bats suddenly disappeared into the side of the hill. The maddening chase abruptly halted by this familiar destination. The bats descended into the rocky heights of Indian Ridge. The ridge was dissected by a trail that climbed upward along a narrow hill that, on one side, was bordered by a gang of erect fir trees.
Nathan was swept by a winter’s memory as he reluctantly surveyed the other side of the spine of the hill where trees were replaced by dark jagged rocks of granite. “I don’t like the looks of that side of the hill Dad,”pointing to the array of rocks. He clung to his father’s hand, who returned a knowing nervous smile. Nathan observed the soil tracks of a large animal in the depth of the snow. “Dad, what animal would make those tracks?”
“Out here you likely will find a fox or a pack of coyotes, but those tracks appear bigger.”
“Is it a bear?”
“No, I do not believe that black bears live in this area and their prints would be deeper and wider as well.”
“Are these the wolves that you told me about in the story about Chucky?” Before his father could reply Sadie came running from the ridge, the hair on her neck was raised and her tail dipped close behind her hind legs. She anxiously ran to Nathan’s father, her eyes mirrored fear.
“What’s wrong old girl?” the father inquired searching the dog’s body for an injury while casting a concerned glance toward the cave that the dog had returned from.
“Is she okay?”
“Yes, she probably caught her paw in the rocks or stepped on a jagged edge. Come on little buddy, we better get home now.” Nathan’s father’s reply failed to conceal his concern. He squeezed his son’s hand and returned down the ridge throwing more than one look toward the opening on the side of the ridge. Nathan hurried struggling to keep pace with his father’s long strides. Nathan recalled that his father never spoke of the splattering of crimson in the snow at the mouth of the cave where Sadie had retreated from.
Now Nathan and Whitney had arrived at the edge of the phantom path without his father’s guidance. Nathan knew precisely where in the chiseled side of the bank of rocks the calamity of bats and their captive had retreated to as the memory of his father’s concern lingered in his mind. The children stood at the same spot in the ridge that Sadie had run from. Nathan considered sending Whitney home for help when the sound of his own rapid breathing was interrupted by chilling whimper from inside the cave. The children listened in silence to their cousin’s agonized cry. “He’s alive,” Whitney whispered.
Nathan was relieved,“Of course, he is alive. Be quiet!”
“What are we going to do, we can’t just crawl in there among all those bats and rescue him? They’ll get us too!”
“Whitney, he’s all alone.”
“He shouldn’t have gone out on the trampoline at night,” she protested. Nathan looked into her dark eyes. Her irises were magnified by the darkness. Running back to get his father was unreasonable Nathan concluded as Kyle was in imminent danger. Nathan looked at Whitney again desperate for a remedy to this miserable development. Whitney’s face was soiled from the frantic journey. Nathan reasoned that he had to enter the bat’s lair if Kyle was to be rescued. His attention returned to Whitney. “Why do you keep looking at me?” she whispered. Nathan hastily covered his face along with his clothing with the cool damp soil from the mouth of the cave. “What are you doing?” Whitney inquired.
“You are going to wait out here while I crawl on the floor of the cave to get Kyle, they won’t see me with my body covered with this mud.” Whitney comprehended Nathan’s terror. She admired her cousin’s attempt to subdue his fear. She regarded him for aa long moment and then she began covering herself in the same mud-bath. “I told you to wait out here Nathan exclaimed.”
Whitney protested, “Well, I am older than you and I won’t stay out here by myself. We must move very slowly,” she boldly advanced to the cave’s entrance peering into the darkness. “We can’t make a sound,” she whispered. Fueled by the urgency of their task Whitney entered the darkness of the cave with Nathan obediently following.