We actually hadn’t done that, but John said, “Yeah, the cops are swarming that whole area, but they haven’t turned up anything. Not a lot of places to hide somebody, there’s those few cabins and stuff but nobody lives around there.”
“Nobody wants to. People think the devil lives down in that mine. Of course, that’s just people tellin’ stories. I always tell ’em, you want to see where the devil lives, you look in your own heart. He couldn’t have put ’em inside the mine itself?”
I said, “Oh, no, there’s tons and tons of rock sealing it off. Just making a path through it would be a major earth-moving project. Guy would need a backhoe or something. You didn’t see anything unusual? I don’t even mean that night, I mean anything at all leading up to it, even if it was months ago. Mikey never said anything strange to you, or had weird dreams?”
“No.”
“Teachers at school never reported any odd behavior?”
“I homeschool. Don’t need the government programming my boy to be a drone.”
That fact seemed significant to John, judging by his face. Before I could ask why, Chastity said, “But of course, there is the Batmantis.”
Amy said, “The what?”
“The flying monster that’s been stalking this place for the last few months? You of all people should’ve heard of that one.”
John said, “I probably have an e-mail buried in my inbox somewhere.”
Chastity asked, “You wanna see it?”
I let out an exhausted sigh and said, “Sure, why not.”
* * *
It turned out Chastity was just offering to show us a video of the monster, she didn’t have the creature tied up in her closet or anything. She took us into her bedroom and pulled out a laptop that was at least four years old but didn’t have so much as a fingerprint on it—she stored it in its original box when not in use, and it looked like she thoroughly cleaned it after each session.
She navigated to a YouTube video with only 165 views. It got off to a very slow start—it was a guy using his phone to record an attempt to train his Pomeranian to catch a Frisbee. After three attempts resulted in the plastic disc bouncing off the confused dog’s face, suddenly someone in the background screamed and the cameraman panned up to the sky.
The creature that was flapping its wings up there was just low enough to make it abundantly clear that it was not a bird. From its silhouette, it appeared to be a pair of leathery bat wings connected by a body that looked something like a praying mantis that had been in a terrible accident.
A moment after it was spotted, it swept back its wings and dive-bombed the cameraman, the moron continuing to film as the winged horror swooped down. There was a blur and a yelp and now the creature was flying back up, the cameraman’s little dog curled up in its hooked front legs. The title of the video:
BATMANTIS???
Chastity clicked back and paused the video near the middle, so we could get the clearest look at the thing as it skimmed the ground to snatch its prey. It was pure white. The wings didn’t match the body. One of its hooked front legs was much smaller than the other. The midsection was wider than the rest, as if it had a beer belly. It had a pair of big, dark eyes but the shape of its brow gave it an expression like it was confused by the world it had been born into.
“Ever see one of them before?”
John said nothing, Amy looked pale. I said, “It’s, uh, not in our database.”
“Hold on, there’s more here.”
She hit play and the video cut away, picking up in another location—the scrapyard south of town. It was nighttime, a flashlight beam bouncing between the rows of rusting abandoned vehicles. The cameraman was no longer alone; he was flanked by two men with hunting rifles.
In a harsh whisper, the cameraman said, “There! Up there!”
The BATMANTIS??? was crouched atop a stack of six flattened cars—the top vehicle was an old convertible the monster was using as a nest. Muzzle flash and thunder filled the air, the men firing at the winged beast. It flinched and flew away, in seconds becoming a pale speck in the sky.
The men approached the “nest” and the cameraman climbed up the stacked cars to peer in, presumably holding out some faint hope that he’d find his dog alive in there. He shined his flashlight into the open interior …
The beam illuminated a bowl-shaped structure, like a huge bird’s nest, filling the space where the front seats had once been. The “nest” was made of small bones, many still pink with blood and specks of remaining meat. Winding through the bones were colorful bits of rope and leather straps, speckled with shiny bits of metal here and there.
Dog collars and leashes. Dozens of them.
The cameraman screamed and the video ended. The only YouTube comment was simply:
FAKE
I heard rapid footsteps behind me and turned to see Amy was gone. From down the hallway in the direction of what was hopefully a bathroom, I could hear her retching.
Chastity said, “I guess I should have warned you guys about the content. I didn’t react too well the first time I watched it, neither.”
John said, “I know it’s weird to say this, but for some reason it’s worse when it’s a dog.”
“Not weird to say at all. A person, they can be good or bad depending on the day. A good dog, well, it just wants to make you happy, all the time. Is the little girl talking? Did she get a look at what took her?”
John started to answer, but I quickly jumped in. “She didn’t see much, but she didn’t describe getting swept up into the sky by a giant white mantis bat, either. That seems like the kind of detail even a child wouldn’t leave out.”
She said, “So, am I to understand that this here monster’s appearance and Mikey’s disappearance were totally unrelated?”
John said, “In this town? Very, very possible.” He looked at me. “We’ll need to give it a name.”
“It has a name. As far as Mikey, we’re not ruling anything out. The fact that we found Maggie safe and sound should give us optimism, if nothing else.”
Amy returned and she and Chastity started simultaneously apologizing over one another, the way women do.
Chastity said, “You didn’t tell me how much you charge.”
Amy said, “Oh, we don’t.”
“Well, you do now. Either you’re taking this job or you’re not—I don’t want some halfway bullshit where you act like you’re doin’ me a favor and congratulating yourselves for making half an effort. This is work I need done, if you take it on, I want you to treat it like work.”
I thought for a moment and said, “Our fee is two hundred and seventy-five dollars. Payable if we find him.”
Amy and John both looked at me, wondering how in the hell I’d come up with that exact number.
John said, “How much does Mikey weigh?”
“About sixty-five pounds.”
He nodded. “Yeah, two seventy five.”
Amy said, “Payable after we bring him back.”
We all stood, told Chastity we’d be in touch and, once more, we were driving through the rain.
I asked Amy if she was feeling okay. She lied yes.
We drove in silence for a bit.
Then, out of the blue, Amy looked right at me and said, “We can fix all this. I know we can. We can beat Nymph and find this other kid and we’ll be heroes. The cops will apologize and Ted will see he was wrong and everything will be okay.” She nodded, as if agreeing with the words she just heard come out of her mouth. “Yes. Everything will be okay.”
I said, “Amy, for all we know, there are already more kids missing as we speak. And just because you found Maggie in time … you know, this kind of situation doesn’t usually play out like that. Usually by the time they get to where the bad guy is holed up they just find, well, a big pile of collars.”
Amy stared out of the rain-streaked passenger window in the backseat, and then burst into tears.