Wings In Darkness

by Gregory Kay

  Still, he watched. Something, some sense inside him, made him uneasy. Lowering his head, he nibbled at a tuft of grass, then jerked his head up abruptly, to see if anything moved. It hadn’t.

  Tossing his head and stabbing the air with the single tines of his antlers, he blew out a puff of breath in challenge, then stepped forward, gingerly setting his black pointed hooves down, feeling the soft ground beneath them.

  There was a faint rippling in the water near the pond’s shore that had nothing to do with the wind, but he didn’t notice. Reaching the edge, he swiveled head and ears for one last look around, and lowered his head to drink.

  Even with his lightening reflexes, the young buck had no time to recognize the danger, or register the tentacles that shot from the water in a glistening spray, let alone to react. Black-on-black against the night and the black water, they whipped around his head and face, around his antlers, and jerked him into the water.

  The surface roiled for almost a minute before the struggle beneath it ceased.

  High in the shattered, explosion-scorched remnants of a large maple tree just outside the fence, the pair of garudas stirred. With their large, night-sensitive eyes, they had watched the struggle in silence, hoping that the deer might escape wounded, and thus be an easier prey for them. Their patience was rewarded with disappointment, but even if the deer had died there on the bank, they knew better than to approach within reach of the water. Its denizen may not be an Old One, but it was still a predator of the void, just like they were, only far, far stronger.

  The larger of the mated pair squeaked softly to the other, and, as one, they shifted their weight, spread their wings, and took to the night sky.

  There were still weaknesses in the walls here, places where things could come and go when the time and stars were right, but, although they stayed close to these by instinct, they had no more desire to leave this world than did the black cat whose squall they had heard earlier, or the chupacabra whose musky scent was carried to them on the breeze. This was a good place, rich in prey, and where predators were few.

  Now there was hunting to be done; the garuda female was pregnant and needed nourishment.

  ~ END

  AUTHOR'S NOTES

  I'm sure, after reading WINGS IN DARKNESS, some of you are wondering about what's real and what's not, so here we go.

  The people are entirely fictional, although, to retain the local flavor, the last names are common to the area, usually being lifted from local tombstones and having first names more or less randomly attached.

  The TNT Area (or just “the TNT” as it's known locally) is very real, along with all its underbrush, World War II-era ruins, igloos, and toxic waste; I drove through it just yesterday.

  The closed off area and those secret underground bunkers? They're real too, and so is the story about the trucks going into them. That last bit of information was given to me by a first-hand witness, along with the tale of his actual confrontation with the elite Air Force personnel, pretty much as described by the fictional character, Sam Gordon on these pages. As to what they're doing out there, damned if I know!

  And what of Indrid Cold? Although a work of fiction and folklore in this book, the late Woodrow Darrenberger certainly thought he was real; he claimed to have maintained a friendship with the alien for years, and chronicled it in his non-fiction book mentioned in the text, VISITORS FROM LANULOS.

  Now for the creatures; the big black cats have occasionally been spotted here for generations; I've even seen one myself. Chupacabras have not (Thank goodness!), although a wave of animal disappearances and identically-mutilated cattle did hit here in the 1960s just before the Silver Bridge collapse, accompanied by a plethora of UFO sightings and visits by the ubiquitous “men in black,” which brings us to Mothman.

  Is the Mothman real? Good question; I can only tell you he was very real to the people who saw him, and I know some of those people personally. He's real to other cultures too; from India to Japan, from war-time Vietnam to rural Yorkshire, England, there are versions of this winged hominid burned into legend. Even today in Mason County, West Virginia, there is the occasional claim of a new sighting.

  As for the town itself, Point Pleasant is as real as New York City; I know, because I grew up there, and currently live about twenty minutes away. The town, its businesses and museums, it's history, it's atmosphere: all real. And the big steel statue of Mothman on Main Street? Yep, that's real too. Why don't you stop by and visit for a spell, and see for yourself.

  Then ask for directions to the TNT; there's no telling what you might see out there!

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