By Daniel Propst

Part I: A City of Rust and Wings

               The very first rule of predators and cowards: they never look up.

               I watched the streets from the rooftops above, felt the rain soak into my wings. It stung like needles. I let the water flow down the thick leathery folds as my eyes scanned the holiday crowd below. The neon glow of a beer sign flickered, advertising “Mack’s: Ice Cold Beer & Pool”, a bar shoved in between block buildings near the Kanawha River. I could barely make out the people inside, laughing, clinking glasses, swapping stories and preparing for the holidays.

               They didn’t realize they were in danger.

               I wondered, for a moment, how warm it must have felt inside that bar.

               I don’t drink or eat. I barely sleep. I wasn’t made to.

               Instead, I watch.

               My weight shifted from one leg to the other. Talons scraped along the roof’s rusted sheet metal, red eyes catching the neon reflections, scattered like shattered glass across the wet pavement below. They flickered like a car’s tail lights right before a crash.

               I saw his car, the one I waited for. It pulled into the alley below. Silently, I leapt into the air and waited for him to meet me on the rooftop.

               He climbed the rusted stairs of the fire escape and stepped onto the wet roof.

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               “Good evening, Mister Black,” I said, landing behind him.

               He jumped and turned to face me.

               “D-damn it, Mothman! Do you always have to do that? What’s with the whole, ‘Meet me on the rooftop’ thing?” he asked.

               His hand shook as he brought a cigarette to his lips and lit.

               “It’s what I do. You’d rather I come by your house?”

               He gave me a look.

               “Yeah, I’d love to try to explain that to my wife.” He blew smoke into the rain. “You get my message?”

               I nodded.  He’d left a letter in our usual drop spot – a hollowed-out sycamore in the TNT area, its insides eaten away, like the Pringle Brothers tree. His note was scrawled, like he’d been pressing the pen too hard against the paper as he wrote, asking me to meet him at Mack’s.

               “He’s back,” said Black, taking another drag on his cigarette. “The grinning man. Indrid Cold.”

               I turned my head, listening to the sounds of Point Pleasant, listening to my city. I can hear the Ohio River sloshing against the banks. A truck backfires on Main Street, its echoes muffled against the rain. A dog barked once in the distance and then didn’t again.

               “I need details,” I said.

               Black finished his cigarette and stamped it on.

               “A source in the police department says and old woman spotted him by the munitions plant. Said he was smiling the whole time. Never blinked. Not once.”

               I nodded.

               “Sounds like him. Exactly the kind of thing he’d do to scare people. Cold thrives on fear; it gives him power. The more people who are scared of him, the harder he’ll be to stop,” I said.

               “Christ, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

               In an instant I took to the skies. The reporter swallowed. I could hear his heart speed up, like a rabbit caught in headlights. He wouldn’t admit he was scared, but he should have been.

               Because I was.

               And I don’t scare easy.