But in truth … the truth about demons was primal, awful, chaotic darkness with a will and an evil smile and eyes that were everywhere, torn holes not pinpricks, that saw through her or saw into her and crushed her marrow and froze her brain and collapsed her spine and made her piss in her pants. Nothing kind or gentle or wise. Why should demons have to be, when they were used to having their way?

These thoughts came back to her as an adult, as she watched, hidden, as demons poured out of the abandoned factory, eager to infect the world. To conquer it. If they looked like people, who would know the difference? If they weren’t the same demons as before, did it matter?>>

– 3 –

They are taken too far out of you. They’re too distant now. All the things you could have done. There’s only where you are now. With the world closing in. Hunting you, and you become wraith, phantom, a mere notion and a smudge of night.

The next week, you visit the soup kitchen in town. But now it feels odd, like you don’t belong. Vision green-tinged for a time. A film you blame on the rain, and what might live in the rain. But you can’t be sure. Too many strangers. Too many factory workers who stare around them as if looking for something. You distrusted them already, for what they did. But now you distrust them for who they might be.

No one lives in the tunnel now except you. Where did they go? Where could they go? But you couldn’t follow, despite the danger. You couldn’t because of the salamander. Even with the pale men and the dark bird searching. The pale men have grown in number and then receded, as the dark bird kills them. Does it kill them because they failed or because they are sick?

You found the drone crumpled, spilling blood from a jagged gash, antennae still twitching. Nothing you could do for it, not even to risk killing it to kill its pain. Splayed out in a forest clearing like bait. No more drones will come, and that frightens you as once the drone frightened you. It means whatever the invasion is … it’s winning.

You hide the journal in a different place every day. Every night. Sneak glances at its pages as if it might give up its mysteries. But more that it might help you know what to do.

A dark, reptilian bird smudged like ash on one page. Dark and twisted. Hard to read. Sketches and a smattering of words you understand. A fable. Of a cruel father. Of a boy whose sanctuary had been turned into a hell.