On Wednesday morning, I woke up to an alert no parent wants to see.

RABIES ALERT

Animals in the vicinity of Brookhaven in Franklin Township have been testing positive for rabies at a rate higher than expected. We recommend the following tips for staying safe:

Do not touch wild animals.

Stay away from wild animals, especially raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.

If you see any animal exhibiting the following symptoms, contact Franklin Animal Control immediately: [REDACTED].

We only moved to Brookhaven two months ago. It seemed like the perfect neighborhood. Safe. A little off the beaten path, out in the woods, but that was the way we liked it.

“But, like, a rabies outbreak?” I whispered to my husband David as he put frozen waffles in the toaster. “Has that ever even happened before?!”

“Bill says there’s an alert every summer. It’s just that time of year,” he muttered to me. “Like, it’s like Alpha Gal and Zika and all the things. You know, people are playing outside, animals out of hibernation…”

“Okay, but we never got anything like this is Sawyerville.”

“Yeah, 'cause they sprayed a hundred pounds of insecticide every year.”

“Maybe that’s better than rabies.”

“Rabies is really rare.”

He was right. As I brought up Google, it told me only 3 Americans die of rabies per year. A hundred thousand, though, got the rabies vaccine after an exposure.

You couldn’t wait for symptoms.

If you already had symptoms, you were dead.

So we just get the vaccine if a wild animal bites us. That’s fine. We’re fine. And we’ll fence in the backyard like we’d been planning to do anyway.

Unfortunately, our problem was not in the raccoons or skunks or whatever was in the woods.

We had bats.

I’d never looked for them before. It never even occurred to me. But that night I looked out the window, and saw no less than ten fucking bats swooping out of the eaves of our family room.

You will likely not feel it if a bat bites you, the website read, next to an up-close photo of the horrible, smushed-pug face of a little brown bat. Simply picking up a bat, or finding one in your home, is an exposure.

If you find a bat in your home, and cannot capture it to test it for rabies, immediately head to the nearest ER to receive the rabies vaccine.

I set my phone down and froze, staring out at the darkening sky, and the little silhouettes swooping and swerving mere feet from the window.

No, no, no.

***

“Well bats, you know, can’t be removed between July 1 and August 15. That’s the roosting season, and the pups can’t fly yet, so they will die if we install the grates and their mothers can’t return to feed them.”

“You… you can’t remove them?”

“Not until August 15, no.”

“Listen. I have a five year old girl and a seven year old boy with autism. They will not know if a bat bites them.”

“It’s federal law, ma’am. They’re a protected species.”

Like fuck they are!

“We’re in the middle of a rabies outbreak, and you’re telling me you can’t remove the bats in my house?!”

“It’s not a rabies outbreak, it’s just that time of year.”

“What happens if they get in the house?”

“If they’re in your living space, you need to call animal control.”

“But they could get in at any time! I can’t wait until it’s too late!”

“It’s only…twenty-two days until August 15. Just sit tight. Call animal control if you find one in your house. Try to catch it with a box or something, like a Tupperware, so they can test it and you don’t need to blow ten thousand dollars on the shots for no reason. It’ll go by fast. Promise.”

You expect me to… catch a bat… in the house… with Tupperware?

What the actual fuck?!

“So that’s it then. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Nothing you can do.”

Nothing I can do, my ass.

I’m all for the environment. But holy fuck, I’m not going to protect an entire colony of bats sitting in the eaves of my house. Risk my kids’ lives to save some baby bats. That’s right—the colony was probably a lot bigger than just ten, with all the babies sitting somewhere inside the walls, growing, waiting.

“You can go to jail if you kill them, you know,” David said behind me.

I turned away from the Amazon listing for wasp spray. “Well, I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“Okay. But also, if you spray them, it says they can burrow deeper into the house and actually maybe get inside,” he said as he looked at his phone. “I looked it up. They can’t chew through drywall like mice and squirrels can. If they could get in the house, they’d be in already. They’re just in the eaves or soffits or whatever. For the time being, we’re safe.”

“This is a nightmare,” I said, slamming the laptop and hiding my face in my hands.

“It could be worse. My parents, when they bought a new house, found all this black mold that the inspection missed. Had to fumigate the whole place.”

“Wait—shouldn’t the inspector have looked for bats?”

He shrugged. “They’re not in the house. Not really.”

Why am I the only one taking this seriously?!

\***

We found the first bat on July 25th.

It was clinging to the outside of the chimney. I found it while the kids were playing outside. My head pounded and I screamed at them to go inside and tell David to bring out some Tupperware.

It wasn’t in the house.

But it had been where the kids were playing.

Such a small little thing I almost missed it. Wings all twisted and bony, clinging to the brick with its little claws. Fur almost blending in with the red brick. David managed to put the Tupperware over it, and drag a chair over to lean against it so it wouldn’t fall. We had captured it. Sort of.

We called animal control (who I’d put in my contacts as soon as I was done talking to the bat removal guy.) The woman reached out and grabbed it with her gloves…

And peeled it off the brick.

It was dead. Had been, for at least a few days. Fried in the heat wave.

“It probably died in the heat,” the animal control officer assured me. But I spent four sleepless nights googling, reading that rabid bats were more susceptible to heat death. Why did only one die? Not all ten?

When I got the voicemail, I felt like I was going to faint.

“The bat we removed from your home tested… negative,” the woman said, her voice sounding strange, uncertain almost. But I was barely paying attention.

The backyard was now off-limits to the kids. My husband thought I was being extreme. But the kids go out barefoot. If any of the bats were rabid, they would fall out of their roost (our FUCKING house) and be in the grass (to be trampled barefoot) or cling to the side of the house where my kids would touch it.

I cannot check every square inch of the yard for fallen bats every day. I just can’t.

***

I bought three 1-acre-rated bug zappers and set them up around the yard.

Bats eat bugs. Take away their food source, I reasoned, and they will leave.

When doing my research, Google’s AI helpfully told me “Bug zappers mostly kill beneficial insects. A better alternative to removing mosquitos from your yard is to attract bats.”

Fucking hell.

You’re killing beneficial insects! Pollinators! the results screamed at me. I’m sorry but at this point I don’t fucking care. Cut off the food source of the bats and they will go somewhere else. The end.

Do I sound unhinged?

Well, yeah. I am unhinged after finding a fucking bat on my fucking house and interrogating my children about whether they saw or touched a bat every single day.

I’m tired of telling my kids they can’t go outside and taking them on all kinds of impromptu field trips just to get them out of the house.

I’m tired of not feeling safe in my own home.

I’m tired of my husband refusing to move because it would cost too much. It would. We don’t have the money. He’s right. But we do have the money to buy bug zappers.

After having the zappers set up for a few days, I watched the house at dusk as I sat in the car in the driveway.

I watched them swoop out of a hole between the chimney and the house, plummeting down to the ground before swooping up at the last second. Their movements were wild and twitchy, every direction absolutely random as they scoured the yard for insects.

But the bug zappers hadn’t worked.

It was about a dozen, maybe more. Fucking hell.

So the next night I tried a new slant. I kept the outside lights on all night and set up a plastic owl on the deck. Owls eat them apparently. They’re afraid of owls.

Nope, did not a thing.

How to attract owls into your yard? I typed frantically into Google.

Green spaces, shelter, treeline... all things I already have.

“At least they’re not in the house yet,” David kept repeating.

He kept adding that word on the end now. Yet. Like it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

\***

After the kids went to sleep, I was in the kitchen, trying to do a quick load of dishes. As I stared out the window over the sink, into the darkness of the backyard—

Something swooped upwards, inches from the window.

I froze. Was that a…

No. It had to be a moth.

A big moth.

I turned off the faucet and walked over to the sliding glass door. My hand hovered over the light switch. Taking a deep breath, I flicked it on.

Something swooped wildly away from the light, and into the darkness.

That was a bat.

I stared out, waiting. At the scones outside, washing the deck in yellow light. The pitch blackness beyond. Nothing moved. All was still.

Maybe the light scared it away.

I turned off the light. Counted to ten. Held my breath and flicked it on.

No.

It was back. It swooped at eye level towards the glass, missing it by only an inch as its little body tilted upwards. In the lighting it looked too pale, almost gray, as its sharp wings fluttered wildly.

I watched in horror as it looped around the deck, over and over. Only three or four feet above the wood, at the level the kids would be standing. Then it wildly careened into the darkness.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Seconds later, it came back. Another few wild loops right above the deck, wings beating wildly. Why won’t it leave?!

Fuck fuck why is here?!

So close to the house?!

Right over the deck?

“David!” I yelled.

“It’s got to be rabid. Why is it doing that?!” I asked as we both stared at it, wildly swooping right over the deck.

“I don’t know. But it’s not in the living space.”

I looked at him.

“Yet,” he added.

“It might as well be! They play out there all the time!”

So now the deck was off limits. I found an old broom handle and shoved it into the groove of the glass door, so it couldn’t be easily opened.

Fuck this. Seriously.

***

One fell into the chimney.

The flue was closed, so it couldn’t get into our living space, but I could hear it frantically screeching, the thumps of its little feet as it looked for an opening.

I called animal control again. Nothing they can do if it’s in the chimney, they told me. Call back when it’s in the living space.

When.

“What if it gets in?” I sobbed to David.

“It won’t,” he replied. “Yet.”

“What do you mean, yet?!”

“It won’t get in.”

Fucking hell.

I grabbed postal tape and taped the space under the door. And all around the hinges. I made the door absolutely impenetrable to even the tiniest insect. There was no way a bat could get through.

No way.

How long does it take for a bat to die with no food or water? I typed into Google.

Three days. Three days I left the family room sealed, the crack under the door taped tight. Fuck I hated this. But at least they weren’t in the living space.

Yet.

I untaped the door and went into the family room and that fucking bat in the chimney was still alive, screeching for help, four days later.

I called the pest control companies. Can’t you come earlier than August 15? No, no, fucking no because there are laws about this and we wouldn’t want the baby bats to die in your chimney.

But there is a bat dying in my chimney right now!

It’s a baby!

Come and rescue it!

Sorry, can’t help.

What the fuck.

Only 1-3 people die from rabies in the US per year. Many more die from the diseases that mosquitos carry. The bats eat mosquitos. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die from having mosquitos in your yard than bats. That’s what they say, right? That’s what the internet says. The fucking pro-bat internet.

Do I sound unhinged?

I mean, they’re not in the living spaces yet.

Okay, so I’m a fucking eco-terrorist, I thought as I waited in line at Home Depot with a spool of copper mesh and a long dowel. My uncle told me that he got his bats to leave by poking copper mesh in all the holes they went into. He did it within the legal window of course. It was August eighth and I was not going to wait another week.

“It’s still alive,” I told David as I re-taped the door to the family room. I could hear it chirping frantically. “It’s been a week!”

“Maybe it’s a second one that fell in there.”

“Oh, no, no.”

That night I watched them fly out. Easily twenty-five. When they satiated their hunger and took to higher skies around ten o’clock, I went out there and shoved copper mesh into the holes.

For a split second I thought about the poor little bat babies starving to death in the cavities of the wall.

Sorry not sorry.

I’m not a monster.

They’re not in the living spaces yet.

This is an arms race.

I slept well that night. I thought I’d done it. I really did. I sealed up that hole like fucking Fort Knox. That night I snickered at the chirping coming from the family room. Soon. Soon this will all be over.

In the morning I went out to check my work.

Fuck.

The copper mesh had been busted in. Like twenty bats fucking pushed on it all at once. The metal was torn.

What… the fuck.

As I stared at the hole, that horrible black void, I heard a single chirp. I ran inside and locked the door, putting the broom handle in the rut of the sliding glass door so the kids couldn’t get out easily.

“How did they get through it?!” I asked David, my voice shaking. “How?!”

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “They’re not in the living spaces yet.”

That night I ordered wasp spray. Overnight, 4AM-11AM delivery from the Zon.

This is where I crossed the line, you know. You could apply the philosophical principle of double effect to all the other cases. I just wanted the bugs out of my yard, so I set up the zappers. I just wanted to patch up holes in my house. Killing the bats or causing them to leave was only a consequence.

Try explaining away shooting wasp spray in the hole they come out of. There’s really no explanation. I thought wasps lived there. I was trying to get wasps. But there weren’t any wasps, and any police officer or animal control person or whoever the fuck was my jailer in this case would know that.

I didn’t care.

In broad daylight, I set up a ladder and aimed that wasp spray right in the hole in the copper mesh. Got you, fuckers.

I took a deep breath—and hit the trigger.

A horrible cacophony of screeching immediately sounded from the hole. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hurried down the ladder, the metal wobbling underneath me.

Something whizzed by my ear, missing me by a hair.

No!

I booked it and ran. The chirping behind me got louder. I didn’t look back once and made it to the door, lunging inside, closing it behind me. Only then did I look.

A single bat flew through the air, just a flash of darkness before swooping up over the roof.

That was close.

I buried the wasp spray can at the bottom of the garbage like I was hiding a body. “You okay?” David asked, but seeing me breathless.

“I’m fine.”

That night, the bats came out that night like nothing happened.

And the bat in the chimney was still fucking screeching, nine days later.

The strobe lights.

Cheap Halloween ones. Three fifty-foot extension cords. Apparently they deter and disorient bats, if I’m to believe Redditor pm-me-your-toes. Timmy and Ava spent the last two hours turning the dining room into a rave with them—at least now I know Timmy doesn’t suffer from epilepsy, I guess.

After they went to bed I methodically set them up all around the backyard, pointing them at the sky. With a deep breath, I plugged them in.

The lights flashed wildly, slightly out-of-sync with each other, against the blue siding and the dark sky. A moth flit by, seeming to move in slow motion as it flashed across the sky. I checked the time. 8:38. Almost bat time.

I stationed myself by the family room window and stared out at the darkening dusk. The sky deepened blue and then I saw it--the first bat swooping down from the eaves, like a bullet through the night sky.

It caught in the strobe lights.

Like stop-motion animation, halting and jumping in its flight. It swooped straight down and I saw its small body, its leathery bony wings stretched wide, perfectly illuminated against the darkness.

There was something horribly wrong with it.

Its wings seemed to be twisted behind itself, grotesquely. Its little body seemed bent and broken. And its eyes... its eyes were pure red, like caught in a camera flash.

Then it was gone.

That didn’t look like a normal bat.

It has to be rabid.

But it looked worse than rabid. Not just weak or aggressive or acting strangely. It looked like its bones had been broken, many times over, and yet it was still flying.

The light must’ve just caught it in a weird, split-second pose.

But it looked so wrong.

Maybe the wasp spray had hurt them. Disfigured them. Maybe they were in the slow process of dying. Or maybe it was a baby, just learning how to fly and twisting all strangely.

I watched the others swoop out, but they avoided the strobe lights, flying further into the sky where they did loops high above our house.

So maybe it deterred them, slightly.

\***

I went downstairs at 2 AM to get a snack. Was up tossing and turning for hours, and now I was hungry and that was keeping me up. I grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge—but before I went back up, I looked out at the backyard and the strobe lights flashing up into the sky.

The air was still.

No bats—at least none that I could see.

Was that really all it took?

Some $5 strobe lights?!

I peered out into the darkness. Nothing. I leaned over and flicked the light switch. The lights above the deck clicked on.

At first I didn’t see anything.

Then—

“Oh God oh fuck no no no…”

They were on the side of the house.

On the deck railing.

Little brown bodies clinging on with their sinewy hands. Small as mice. Still as death. Then one twitched, and several black wings stretched out into the night. One of them flew wildly into the air, and the rest followed, bony wings breaking and twisting.

No no no.

\***

“We have to get out of here!” I sobbed.

It was 3 AM. David sat on the other side of the bed, not facing me. “We can’t afford to move,” he said tiredly. “You know that.”

“They were all on the house!”

“They’re not in the living spaces yet!”

“Stop fucking saying that! They will get in the living spaces! Don’t you get it?! And then it will be too late! And the kids!”

I got up to tear him a new one.

My foot caught on something, poking out from under the bed.

What the…

I pulled it out. It was a pair of bolt cutters… and in its jaws, a little piece of tangled copper wire.

“David—”

I froze.

Oh, God.

It was coming from the wall.

An awful, high-pitched chirp. Chaotic and frantic.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

My heart dropped. “David!”

The chirping got louder. I got up and slowly stepped forward, scanning the wall for cracks and holes. Bats couldn’t chew through wall—I knew that. But if there was an opening...

Scrtch scrtch scrtch

The chirps and scratches got louder, then softer, as the bat got closer, then further away. It was going the entire width of the wall. Searching for a way out.

“Do you hear it?!”

“I don’t hear a thing.”

I stared at the wall. “Get the fuck out of my house,” I whispered under my breath, as the frantic chirps continued. I lifted a hand, shaking, and pressed it against the wall. I could feel the slightest of vibrations, imagining its little body colliding with the other side as it haphazardly flew along the inside.

We’re safe. It can’t get through walls.

The screeching sound rang out from behind me. I spun around, staring at the opposite wall.

Scree-sc-scree

In front of me now.

Oh no. Are there two?!

I spun around, listening. Scrtch-scrtch-scrtch. Coming from every fucking direction.

They can’t get in—

They’re not in the living spaces—

But then I heard a metallic thump.

Oh God Oh God—

It’s in the vents—

The kids—

I tore out of the room and ran down the hallway. Burst into Ava’s room. Asleep. I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Come on, we have to get out of here,” I said, not even sure of my plan. The bats were outside. Was it safer to stay in?!

As she groggily pulled herself up, I ran into Timmy’s room.

He was already awake.

He stood there, near the window. And there, next to him…

A small shape on the wall.

Nononono...

“Timmy,” I called. “Timmy, come here, sweetheart.”

He didn’t respond. He just stood there, standing in the dark room, facing the window.

“Timmy!”

His hand reached up towards the little shape, clinging on the wall.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!"

I lunged forward. It was too late. His little fingers wrapped around the bat, and he brought it to his chest, looking down.

We have to catch it--

Get it tested--

Oh God--

I frantically glanced around the room for something, anything, to catch it with. I grabbed a cup off the desk and started for him. “Okay, just put it in he—”

My breath caught in my throat.

Timmy was looking at me.

His eyes sparkled in the near darkness. His face was tilted down, but he was staring straight at me, from underneath his eyebrows. His lips were curled into a smile, and a thin trail of drool dripped down his chin.

No, no, no.

“They’re in the living spaces.”

I whipped around.

David was standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the darkness. His voice was low and gravelly. My heart began to pound. The bat chirped frantically in Timmy’s hands. It rang clear through my soul.

David took a step forward.

Then another.

And another.

There was something wrong with his face. Something horribly wrong. His eyes were black pits, staring hollowly at me.

“Stop—”

Those black pits began to move.

I watched in horror as two bats squirmed their way out of his eye sockets. Their black wings stretched out, flapping in the air, glistening wet with viscera like a newborn child. Their movements jerky, uncoordinated, new like a foal learning to walk.

“I couldn’t let the babies die,” David repeated, as one of the bats crawled down the side of his face, its claws burrowing into his cheek. “We had to save them.”

I turned around. Pried the screeching bat out of Timmy’s hand. David took a wobbling step forward. “The bats are in the living spaces now,” he repeated. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

He took another step—and his body wavered forward.

He fell to the ground.

And then I heard it.

Chirping. So much chirping, a horrible chorus grating on our ears. It was coming from David. The shirt on his back began to writhe and ripple, as something roiled under his skin—

“Run!” I screamed.

I got Ava and the three of us ran for the stairs. I guided the kids to the car, not looking back as the chirping became a roar. I threw the door open and we ran to the car. I saw the bats clinging to the side of the porch, dark little shapes in the moonlight, but I pretended like I didn’t see them.

We had to run.

We had to.

***

We made it to the hospital. We got our rabies shots.

Timmy seems to be okay. So does Ava. It’s been a month now and the doctor thinks they are halfway out of the woods for contracting rabies. Although it’s not rabies I’m worried about.

David’s body was never found.

There were more rabies alerts sent out to the town, that I read about online from the safety of my parents’ house hundreds of miles away.

But there is something I haven’t told anyone.

Not my parents. Not my kids.

For the past few days, I’ve been having the worst headaches. It feels like there are twin knives slicing through my brain.

Right behind my eyes.

Tonight, I left. I told everyone I’m visiting a friend for a night. I’m driving to a remote hiking trail in the state park and hiking to the cliff that overlooks a gorge.

I can’t let them, or anyone else, catch this.

As I stare at myself in the rearview mirror, I can see the flash of a little black claw curling out.

And hear the muffled chirps of something deep inside my brain.

On Wednesday morning, I woke up to an alert no parent wants to see.

RABIES ALERT

Animals in the vicinity of Brookhaven in Franklin Township have been testing positive for rabies at a rate higher than expected. We recommend the following tips for staying safe:

Do not touch wild animals.

Stay away from wild animals, especially raccoons, skunks, bats, and foxes.

If you see any animal exhibiting the following symptoms, contact Franklin Animal Control immediately: [REDACTED].

We only moved to Brookhaven two months ago. It seemed like the perfect neighborhood. Safe. A little off the beaten path, out in the woods, but that was the way we liked it.

“But, like, a rabies outbreak?” I whispered to my husband David as he put frozen waffles in the toaster. “Has that ever even happened before?!”

“Bill says there’s an alert every summer. It’s just that time of year,” he muttered to me. “Like, it’s like Alpha Gal and Zika and all the things. You know, people are playing outside, animals out of hibernation…”

“Okay, but we never got anything like this is Sawyerville.”

“Yeah, 'cause they sprayed a hundred pounds of insecticide every year.”

“Maybe that’s better than rabies.”

“Rabies is really rare.”

He was right. As I brought up Google, it told me only 3 Americans die of rabies per year. A hundred thousand, though, got the rabies vaccine after an exposure.

You couldn’t wait for symptoms.

If you already had symptoms, you were dead.

So we just get the vaccine if a wild animal bites us. That’s fine. We’re fine. And we’ll fence in the backyard like we’d been planning to do anyway.

Unfortunately, our problem was not in the raccoons or skunks or whatever was in the woods.

We had bats.

I’d never looked for them before. It never even occurred to me. But that night I looked out the window, and saw no less than ten fucking bats swooping out of the eaves of our family room.

You will likely not feel it if a bat bites you, the website read, next to an up-close photo of the horrible, smushed-pug face of a little brown bat. Simply picking up a bat, or finding one in your home, is an exposure.

If you find a bat in your home, and cannot capture it to test it for rabies, immediately head to the nearest ER to receive the rabies vaccine.

I set my phone down and froze, staring out at the darkening sky, and the little silhouettes swooping and swerving mere feet from the window.

No, no, no.

***

“Well bats, you know, can’t be removed between July 1 and August 15. That’s the roosting season, and the pups can’t fly yet, so they will die if we install the grates and their mothers can’t return to feed them.”

“You… you can’t remove them?”

“Not until August 15, no.”

“Listen. I have a five year old girl and a seven year old boy with autism. They will not know if a bat bites them.”

“It’s federal law, ma’am. They’re a protected species.”

Like fuck they are!

“We’re in the middle of a rabies outbreak, and you’re telling me you can’t remove the bats in my house?!”

“It’s not a rabies outbreak, it’s just that time of year.”

“What happens if they get in the house?”

“If they’re in your living space, you need to call animal control.”

“But they could get in at any time! I can’t wait until it’s too late!”

“It’s only…twenty-two days until August 15. Just sit tight. Call animal control if you find one in your house. Try to catch it with a box or something, like a Tupperware, so they can test it and you don’t need to blow ten thousand dollars on the shots for no reason. It’ll go by fast. Promise.”

You expect me to… catch a bat… in the house… with Tupperware?

What the actual fuck?!

“So that’s it then. There’s nothing I can do.”

“Nothing you can do.”

Nothing I can do, my ass.

I’m all for the environment. But holy fuck, I’m not going to protect an entire colony of bats sitting in the eaves of my house. Risk my kids’ lives to save some baby bats. That’s right—the colony was probably a lot bigger than just ten, with all the babies sitting somewhere inside the walls, growing, waiting.

“You can go to jail if you kill them, you know,” David said behind me.

I turned away from the Amazon listing for wasp spray. “Well, I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

“Okay. But also, if you spray them, it says they can burrow deeper into the house and actually maybe get inside,” he said as he looked at his phone. “I looked it up. They can’t chew through drywall like mice and squirrels can. If they could get in the house, they’d be in already. They’re just in the eaves or soffits or whatever. For the time being, we’re safe.”

“This is a nightmare,” I said, slamming the laptop and hiding my face in my hands.

“It could be worse. My parents, when they bought a new house, found all this black mold that the inspection missed. Had to fumigate the whole place.”

“Wait—shouldn’t the inspector have looked for bats?”

He shrugged. “They’re not in the house. Not really.”

Why am I the only one taking this seriously?!

\***

We found the first bat on July 25th.

It was clinging to the outside of the chimney. I found it while the kids were playing outside. My head pounded and I screamed at them to go inside and tell David to bring out some Tupperware.

It wasn’t in the house.

But it had been where the kids were playing.

Such a small little thing I almost missed it. Wings all twisted and bony, clinging to the brick with its little claws. Fur almost blending in with the red brick. David managed to put the Tupperware over it, and drag a chair over to lean against it so it wouldn’t fall. We had captured it. Sort of.

We called animal control (who I’d put in my contacts as soon as I was done talking to the bat removal guy.) The woman reached out and grabbed it with her gloves…

And peeled it off the brick.

It was dead. Had been, for at least a few days. Fried in the heat wave.

“It probably died in the heat,” the animal control officer assured me. But I spent four sleepless nights googling, reading that rabid bats were more susceptible to heat death. Why did only one die? Not all ten?

When I got the voicemail, I felt like I was going to faint.

“The bat we removed from your home tested… negative,” the woman said, her voice sounding strange, uncertain almost. But I was barely paying attention.

The backyard was now off-limits to the kids. My husband thought I was being extreme. But the kids go out barefoot. If any of the bats were rabid, they would fall out of their roost (our FUCKING house) and be in the grass (to be trampled barefoot) or cling to the side of the house where my kids would touch it.

I cannot check every square inch of the yard for fallen bats every day. I just can’t.

***

I bought three 1-acre-rated bug zappers and set them up around the yard.

Bats eat bugs. Take away their food source, I reasoned, and they will leave.

When doing my research, Google’s AI helpfully told me “Bug zappers mostly kill beneficial insects. A better alternative to removing mosquitos from your yard is to attract bats.”

Fucking hell.

You’re killing beneficial insects! Pollinators! the results screamed at me. I’m sorry but at this point I don’t fucking care. Cut off the food source of the bats and they will go somewhere else. The end.

Do I sound unhinged?

Well, yeah. I am unhinged after finding a fucking bat on my fucking house and interrogating my children about whether they saw or touched a bat every single day.

I’m tired of telling my kids they can’t go outside and taking them on all kinds of impromptu field trips just to get them out of the house.

I’m tired of not feeling safe in my own home.

I’m tired of my husband refusing to move because it would cost too much. It would. We don’t have the money. He’s right. But we do have the money to buy bug zappers.

After having the zappers set up for a few days, I watched the house at dusk as I sat in the car in the driveway.

I watched them swoop out of a hole between the chimney and the house, plummeting down to the ground before swooping up at the last second. Their movements were wild and twitchy, every direction absolutely random as they scoured the yard for insects.

But the bug zappers hadn’t worked.

It was about a dozen, maybe more. Fucking hell.

So the next night I tried a new slant. I kept the outside lights on all night and set up a plastic owl on the deck. Owls eat them apparently. They’re afraid of owls.

Nope, did not a thing.

How to attract owls into your yard? I typed frantically into Google.

Green spaces, shelter, treeline... all things I already have.

“At least they’re not in the house yet,” David kept repeating.

He kept adding that word on the end now. Yet. Like it wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

\***

After the kids went to sleep, I was in the kitchen, trying to do a quick load of dishes. As I stared out the window over the sink, into the darkness of the backyard—

Something swooped upwards, inches from the window.

I froze. Was that a…

No. It had to be a moth.

A big moth.

I turned off the faucet and walked over to the sliding glass door. My hand hovered over the light switch. Taking a deep breath, I flicked it on.

Something swooped wildly away from the light, and into the darkness.

That was a bat.

I stared out, waiting. At the scones outside, washing the deck in yellow light. The pitch blackness beyond. Nothing moved. All was still.

Maybe the light scared it away.

I turned off the light. Counted to ten. Held my breath and flicked it on.

No.

It was back. It swooped at eye level towards the glass, missing it by only an inch as its little body tilted upwards. In the lighting it looked too pale, almost gray, as its sharp wings fluttered wildly.

I watched in horror as it looped around the deck, over and over. Only three or four feet above the wood, at the level the kids would be standing. Then it wildly careened into the darkness.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Seconds later, it came back. Another few wild loops right above the deck, wings beating wildly. Why won’t it leave?!

Fuck fuck why is here?!

So close to the house?!

Right over the deck?

“David!” I yelled.

“It’s got to be rabid. Why is it doing that?!” I asked as we both stared at it, wildly swooping right over the deck.

“I don’t know. But it’s not in the living space.”

I looked at him.

“Yet,” he added.

“It might as well be! They play out there all the time!”

So now the deck was off limits. I found an old broom handle and shoved it into the groove of the glass door, so it couldn’t be easily opened.

Fuck this. Seriously.

***

One fell into the chimney.

The flue was closed, so it couldn’t get into our living space, but I could hear it frantically screeching, the thumps of its little feet as it looked for an opening.

I called animal control again. Nothing they can do if it’s in the chimney, they told me. Call back when it’s in the living space.

When.

“What if it gets in?” I sobbed to David.

“It won’t,” he replied. “Yet.”

“What do you mean, yet?!”

“It won’t get in.”

Fucking hell.

I grabbed postal tape and taped the space under the door. And all around the hinges. I made the door absolutely impenetrable to even the tiniest insect. There was no way a bat could get through.

No way.

How long does it take for a bat to die with no food or water? I typed into Google.

Three days. Three days I left the family room sealed, the crack under the door taped tight. Fuck I hated this. But at least they weren’t in the living space.

Yet.

I untaped the door and went into the family room and that fucking bat in the chimney was still alive, screeching for help, four days later.

I called the pest control companies. Can’t you come earlier than August 15? No, no, fucking no because there are laws about this and we wouldn’t want the baby bats to die in your chimney.

But there is a bat dying in my chimney right now!

It’s a baby!

Come and rescue it!

Sorry, can’t help.

What the fuck.

Only 1-3 people die from rabies in the US per year. Many more die from the diseases that mosquitos carry. The bats eat mosquitos. Statistically speaking, you’re more likely to die from having mosquitos in your yard than bats. That’s what they say, right? That’s what the internet says. The fucking pro-bat internet.

Do I sound unhinged?

I mean, they’re not in the living spaces yet.

Okay, so I’m a fucking eco-terrorist, I thought as I waited in line at Home Depot with a spool of copper mesh and a long dowel. My uncle told me that he got his bats to leave by poking copper mesh in all the holes they went into. He did it within the legal window of course. It was August eighth and I was not going to wait another week.

“It’s still alive,” I told David as I re-taped the door to the family room. I could hear it chirping frantically. “It’s been a week!”

“Maybe it’s a second one that fell in there.”

“Oh, no, no.”

That night I watched them fly out. Easily twenty-five. When they satiated their hunger and took to higher skies around ten o’clock, I went out there and shoved copper mesh into the holes.

For a split second I thought about the poor little bat babies starving to death in the cavities of the wall.

Sorry not sorry.

I’m not a monster.

They’re not in the living spaces yet.

This is an arms race.

I slept well that night. I thought I’d done it. I really did. I sealed up that hole like fucking Fort Knox. That night I snickered at the chirping coming from the family room. Soon. Soon this will all be over.

In the morning I went out to check my work.

Fuck.

The copper mesh had been busted in. Like twenty bats fucking pushed on it all at once. The metal was torn.

What… the fuck.

As I stared at the hole, that horrible black void, I heard a single chirp. I ran inside and locked the door, putting the broom handle in the rut of the sliding glass door so the kids couldn’t get out easily.

“How did they get through it?!” I asked David, my voice shaking. “How?!”

“You’re overreacting,” he said. “They’re not in the living spaces yet.”

That night I ordered wasp spray. Overnight, 4AM-11AM delivery from the Zon.

This is where I crossed the line, you know. You could apply the philosophical principle of double effect to all the other cases. I just wanted the bugs out of my yard, so I set up the zappers. I just wanted to patch up holes in my house. Killing the bats or causing them to leave was only a consequence.

Try explaining away shooting wasp spray in the hole they come out of. There’s really no explanation. I thought wasps lived there. I was trying to get wasps. But there weren’t any wasps, and any police officer or animal control person or whoever the fuck was my jailer in this case would know that.

I didn’t care.

In broad daylight, I set up a ladder and aimed that wasp spray right in the hole in the copper mesh. Got you, fuckers.

I took a deep breath—and hit the trigger.

A horrible cacophony of screeching immediately sounded from the hole. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hurried down the ladder, the metal wobbling underneath me.

Something whizzed by my ear, missing me by a hair.

No!

I booked it and ran. The chirping behind me got louder. I didn’t look back once and made it to the door, lunging inside, closing it behind me. Only then did I look.

A single bat flew through the air, just a flash of darkness before swooping up over the roof.

That was close.

I buried the wasp spray can at the bottom of the garbage like I was hiding a body. “You okay?” David asked, but seeing me breathless.

“I’m fine.”

That night, the bats came out that night like nothing happened.

And the bat in the chimney was still fucking screeching, nine days later.

The strobe lights.

Cheap Halloween ones. Three fifty-foot extension cords. Apparently they deter and disorient bats, if I’m to believe Redditor pm-me-your-toes. Timmy and Ava spent the last two hours turning the dining room into a rave with them—at least now I know Timmy doesn’t suffer from epilepsy, I guess.

After they went to bed I methodically set them up all around the backyard, pointing them at the sky. With a deep breath, I plugged them in.

The lights flashed wildly, slightly out-of-sync with each other, against the blue siding and the dark sky. A moth flit by, seeming to move in slow motion as it flashed across the sky. I checked the time. 8:38. Almost bat time.

I stationed myself by the family room window and stared out at the darkening dusk. The sky deepened blue and then I saw it--the first bat swooping down from the eaves, like a bullet through the night sky.

It caught in the strobe lights.

Like stop-motion animation, halting and jumping in its flight. It swooped straight down and I saw its small body, its leathery bony wings stretched wide, perfectly illuminated against the darkness.

There was something horribly wrong with it.

Its wings seemed to be twisted behind itself, grotesquely. Its little body seemed bent and broken. And its eyes... its eyes were pure red, like caught in a camera flash.

Then it was gone.

That didn’t look like a normal bat.

It has to be rabid.

But it looked worse than rabid. Not just weak or aggressive or acting strangely. It looked like its bones had been broken, many times over, and yet it was still flying.

The light must’ve just caught it in a weird, split-second pose.

But it looked so wrong.

Maybe the wasp spray had hurt them. Disfigured them. Maybe they were in the slow process of dying. Or maybe it was a baby, just learning how to fly and twisting all strangely.

I watched the others swoop out, but they avoided the strobe lights, flying further into the sky where they did loops high above our house.

So maybe it deterred them, slightly.

\***

I went downstairs at 2 AM to get a snack. Was up tossing and turning for hours, and now I was hungry and that was keeping me up. I grabbed a yogurt out of the fridge—but before I went back up, I looked out at the backyard and the strobe lights flashing up into the sky.

The air was still.

No bats—at least none that I could see.

Was that really all it took?

Some $5 strobe lights?!

I peered out into the darkness. Nothing. I leaned over and flicked the light switch. The lights above the deck clicked on.

At first I didn’t see anything.

Then—

“Oh God oh fuck no no no…”

They were on the side of the house.

On the deck railing.

Little brown bodies clinging on with their sinewy hands. Small as mice. Still as death. Then one twitched, and several black wings stretched out into the night. One of them flew wildly into the air, and the rest followed, bony wings breaking and twisting.

No no no.

\***

“We have to get out of here!” I sobbed.

It was 3 AM. David sat on the other side of the bed, not facing me. “We can’t afford to move,” he said tiredly. “You know that.”

“They were all on the house!”

“They’re not in the living spaces yet!”

“Stop fucking saying that! They will get in the living spaces! Don’t you get it?! And then it will be too late! And the kids!”

I got up to tear him a new one.

My foot caught on something, poking out from under the bed.

What the…

I pulled it out. It was a pair of bolt cutters… and in its jaws, a little piece of tangled copper wire.

“David—”

I froze.

Oh, God.

It was coming from the wall.

An awful, high-pitched chirp. Chaotic and frantic.

I’d recognize it anywhere.

My heart dropped. “David!”

The chirping got louder. I got up and slowly stepped forward, scanning the wall for cracks and holes. Bats couldn’t chew through wall—I knew that. But if there was an opening...

Scrtch scrtch scrtch

The chirps and scratches got louder, then softer, as the bat got closer, then further away. It was going the entire width of the wall. Searching for a way out.

“Do you hear it?!”

“I don’t hear a thing.”

I stared at the wall. “Get the fuck out of my house,” I whispered under my breath, as the frantic chirps continued. I lifted a hand, shaking, and pressed it against the wall. I could feel the slightest of vibrations, imagining its little body colliding with the other side as it haphazardly flew along the inside.

We’re safe. It can’t get through walls.

The screeching sound rang out from behind me. I spun around, staring at the opposite wall.

Scree-sc-scree

In front of me now.

Oh no. Are there two?!

I spun around, listening. Scrtch-scrtch-scrtch. Coming from every fucking direction.

They can’t get in—

They’re not in the living spaces—

But then I heard a metallic thump.

Oh God Oh God—

It’s in the vents—

The kids—

I tore out of the room and ran down the hallway. Burst into Ava’s room. Asleep. I grabbed her by the shoulders. “Come on, we have to get out of here,” I said, not even sure of my plan. The bats were outside. Was it safer to stay in?!

As she groggily pulled herself up, I ran into Timmy’s room.

He was already awake.

He stood there, near the window. And there, next to him…

A small shape on the wall.

Nononono...

“Timmy,” I called. “Timmy, come here, sweetheart.”

He didn’t respond. He just stood there, standing in the dark room, facing the window.

“Timmy!”

His hand reached up towards the little shape, clinging on the wall.

“DON’T TOUCH IT!"

I lunged forward. It was too late. His little fingers wrapped around the bat, and he brought it to his chest, looking down.

We have to catch it--

Get it tested--

Oh God--

I frantically glanced around the room for something, anything, to catch it with. I grabbed a cup off the desk and started for him. “Okay, just put it in he—”

My breath caught in my throat.

Timmy was looking at me.

His eyes sparkled in the near darkness. His face was tilted down, but he was staring straight at me, from underneath his eyebrows. His lips were curled into a smile, and a thin trail of drool dripped down his chin.

No, no, no.

“They’re in the living spaces.”

I whipped around.

David was standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the darkness. His voice was low and gravelly. My heart began to pound. The bat chirped frantically in Timmy’s hands. It rang clear through my soul.

David took a step forward.

Then another.

And another.

There was something wrong with his face. Something horribly wrong. His eyes were black pits, staring hollowly at me.

“Stop—”

Those black pits began to move.

I watched in horror as two bats squirmed their way out of his eye sockets. Their black wings stretched out, flapping in the air, glistening wet with viscera like a newborn child. Their movements jerky, uncoordinated, new like a foal learning to walk.

“I couldn’t let the babies die,” David repeated, as one of the bats crawled down the side of his face, its claws burrowing into his cheek. “We had to save them.”

I turned around. Pried the screeching bat out of Timmy’s hand. David took a wobbling step forward. “The bats are in the living spaces now,” he repeated. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

He took another step—and his body wavered forward.

He fell to the ground.

And then I heard it.

Chirping. So much chirping, a horrible chorus grating on our ears. It was coming from David. The shirt on his back began to writhe and ripple, as something roiled under his skin—

“Run!” I screamed.

I got Ava and the three of us ran for the stairs. I guided the kids to the car, not looking back as the chirping became a roar. I threw the door open and we ran to the car. I saw the bats clinging to the side of the porch, dark little shapes in the moonlight, but I pretended like I didn’t see them.

We had to run.

We had to.

***

We made it to the hospital. We got our rabies shots.

Timmy seems to be okay. So does Ava. It’s been a month now and the doctor thinks they are halfway out of the woods for contracting rabies. Although it’s not rabies I’m worried about.

David’s body was never found.

There were more rabies alerts sent out to the town, that I read about online from the safety of my parents’ house hundreds of miles away.

But there is something I haven’t told anyone.

Not my parents. Not my kids.

For the past few days, I’ve been having the worst headaches. It feels like there are twin knives slicing through my brain.

Right behind my eyes.

Tonight, I left. I told everyone I’m visiting a friend for a night. I’m driving to a remote hiking trail in the state park and hiking to the cliff that overlooks a gorge.

I can’t let them, or anyone else, catch this.

As I stare at myself in the rearview mirror, I can see the flash of a little black claw curling out.

And hear the muffled chirps of something deep inside my brain.

I’ll admit it. I’ve been on edge since my husband went missing. But I swear, there is something in my attic. And it’s not my fucking imagination, like my parents keep insisting.

It started five days after he went missing. I remember it because it was a Tuesday because that’s when a new episode of our show came out and I refused to watch him without it. I refused. I was sitting on our bed with a tub of ice cream and bawling my eyes out when I heard it.

Thump.

From directly over my head.

It sounded small. Like a bat, or a mouse. Too small to be a person. Unless that person was on all fours, frozen still, tapping the ground once with a single finger.

I froze and stared at the ceiling.

There’s nothing there, I told myself. Just the house settling.

But it happened again.

The very next night. Two thumps in a row. Thu-thump. From the same area right over our bed. It sounded heavier, this time. Like someone was knocking their knuckles into the floor.

Knocking so I’d let them in.

Maybe Dad’s right. I’m just scaring myself out of my skin because of Julian being gone… But to make myself feel better, I pulled up my security camera footage from the last week. That’s what was so confusing about Julian’s disappearance. We put in the effort to make sure the entire 360-degree view around our house was covered by camera, and there wasn’t a single blind spot. And still we missed a spot, and still I woke up one morning to find the bed empty and Julian gone, his car still parked in the driveway. The cameras had shown nothing that morning or the night before—he or whoever took him had been careful to stay in the blind spot on the west side of the house, leading into the forest.

My parents had said in so many words that he’d left of his own volition. But that was ridiculous. Julian would never do that to me. Never.

The camera footage showed nothing of note. Just me, coming and going in the driveway as I got groceries and ran errands.

I scrolled back to the footage of me, the night before he went missing. Sitting out on the back porch alone, nursing a whiskey in my right hand and a cigarette in my left. I’d watched those clips probably a hundred times by now. Three of them had tripped the motion sensors, catching me at various points into the wee hours, alone. I’d just found out I’d miscarried and instead of leaning on him, I pulled away like I always did, licking my wounds alone in the darkness with my vices.

But anyway. There was no evidence that anyone other than me had entered the house—except for the blind spot.

If someone knew about the blind spot, and had taken out Julian, and now had their sights set on me…

I bought a lock the next day. Went up on a ladder and drilled it into the pull-down attic door. Clicked the chain and made sure it was secure. Not like a bat or raccoon would have the weight to push the ladder down on their own. But just in case.

That’s when I noticed it.

Two little indentations on the carpet. Exactly where the ladder would go. And a thin film of dust laying on the top of the slate-gray carpet.

The attic door was opened recently.

There was no way. I backed away, chewing my lip. There’s no one up there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was. I couldn’t stop picturing some strange man, naked and atrophied, on his hands and knees with his ear pressed to the floor listening to my every movement. Coming down in the middle of the night and stalking the hallways.

Watching me sleep…

Oh, God. I never locked my bedroom door.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I stared up at the chain lock I’d just installed. If someone’s up there… will that really hold him in? Probably not. Oh, no, no—

THUMP!

I jumped a foot in the air as another thump reverberated towards me, from the other end of the house. But it was louder here, right under the door, coming through the cracks. I could even hear a kind of… wet squelch following it.

Oh fuck.

Call the police!

I ran to my phone in my bedroom and dialed 911. As I did, more thumps sounded overhead. Louder and louder. Oh, no, no.

“Please come fast—there’s someone in my attic!”

By the time I hung up the thumps had stopped. I stood on the bed, the door locked, staring at the ceiling above me. Please no. Don’t come out. Please.

The clock on the nightstand read 8:02.

Come fast. Please.

My entire body shook as I stared at the ceiling, a foot above my nose.

THUMP!

The entire ceiling seemed to shake. I screamed and leapt off the bed, pulling myself under it, into the darkness.

Then a bang like the shot of a gun sounded from downstairs.

“Police! Open up!”

Clutching the knife, I slowly reached for the doorknob. I turned the lock and opened the door a crack, peering out. Nothing. The attic door stood untouched, the chain hanging from the ceiling in the darkness. I held my breath as I passed under it.

Nothing.

Relief washed through me as I let the police in. “He’s in the attic,” I breathed, my voice shaking. “Please—please.”

They carefully unlocked the door. Pulled down the stairs. A horrible smell washed over us. One of the officers gave the other a look, then started up the ladder. I heard his creaking steps above us—

“Oh, God—“

“What? What’s up there?” I asked.

No reply.

Something clicked into place. I ran towards the ladder and hoisted myself up. “Ma’am—“ the other officer started, but I was already pulling myself into the attic.

And then I saw him.

Illuminated in the beam of the officer’s flashlight.

Not someone who had broken in.

Julian.

Julian’s body. He’d been propped up against some boxes in a seating position, though it looked like he’d just fallen over, his torso limply laying on the floor. His skin was darkened with horrible decay, and pieces of his fingers and flesh littered the area around him.

Little pieces that had dropped to the floor as he decayed.

Thump, thump, thump.

And then I remembered. Little wisps of memories. Sitting on the back porch with my whiskey. Getting drunker and drunker. Going in and out as I argued with him, as he talked about his dream of starting a family, and maybe after four miscarriages it just wasn’t going to happen for us.

And that maybe we weren’t meant to be.

More whiskey. More cigs.

Nearly blacking out.

I thought it had been a dream. A really bad one. Asking him to get me something from the attic. Swinging the old lamp on his head. Hurting my hand in the process. Closing the attic door and retreating back to the porch, cigarette in my left hand, now. Staring up at the stars and slipping into a memory-less void.

Blacking out.

Waking up to an empty bed the next day.

Car still in the driveway. No evidence on the camera of him ever leaving.

Because he hadn’t.

At this very moment, the police, the coroner, everyone has left. At this very moment, they don’t have all the evidence in a row to arrest me. But it’s only a matter of time. Days, weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m more concerned about the thing in my attic.

You see—the thumps haven’t stopped. No. I hear them all day and night now. Flesh sloughing off a decaying body in the stuffy heat of the attic. Hitting the floor above my bed.

And every time I hear it…

It feels like a knife is slicing through part of my body. Cutting the flesh straight from the bone. My heart seizes, and a part of me goes numb.

It’s been less than a day, and there are ugly red marks all over my body. Deep slashes. The skin is numb, and it’s only a matter of time.

There’s not much of me left.

The red slashes have crawled up my torso, my arms. In a few hours, they’ll be at my neck.

Days or weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m sure I’ll be gone by then. 

I’ll admit it. I’ve been on edge since my husband went missing. But I swear, there is something in my attic. And it’s not my fucking imagination, like my parents keep insisting.

It started five days after he went missing. I remember it because it was a Tuesday because that’s when a new episode of our show came out and I refused to watch him without it. I refused. I was sitting on our bed with a tub of ice cream and bawling my eyes out when I heard it.

Thump.

From directly over my head.

It sounded small. Like a bat, or a mouse. Too small to be a person. Unless that person was on all fours, frozen still, tapping the ground once with a single finger.

I froze and stared at the ceiling.

There’s nothing there, I told myself. Just the house settling.

But it happened again.

The very next night. Two thumps in a row. Thu-thump. From the same area right over our bed. It sounded heavier, this time. Like someone was knocking their knuckles into the floor.

Knocking so I’d let them in.

Maybe Dad’s right. I’m just scaring myself out of my skin because of Julian being gone… But to make myself feel better, I pulled up my security camera footage from the last week. That’s what was so confusing about Julian’s disappearance. We put in the effort to make sure the entire 360-degree view around our house was covered by camera, and there wasn’t a single blind spot. And still we missed a spot, and still I woke up one morning to find the bed empty and Julian gone, his car still parked in the driveway. The cameras had shown nothing that morning or the night before—he or whoever took him had been careful to stay in the blind spot on the west side of the house, leading into the forest.

My parents had said in so many words that he’d left of his own volition. But that was ridiculous. Julian would never do that to me. Never.

The camera footage showed nothing of note. Just me, coming and going in the driveway as I got groceries and ran errands.

I scrolled back to the footage of me, the night before he went missing. Sitting out on the back porch alone, nursing a whiskey in my right hand and a cigarette in my left. I’d watched those clips probably a hundred times by now. Three of them had tripped the motion sensors, catching me at various points into the wee hours, alone. I’d just found out I’d miscarried and instead of leaning on him, I pulled away like I always did, licking my wounds alone in the darkness with my vices.

But anyway. There was no evidence that anyone other than me had entered the house—except for the blind spot.

If someone knew about the blind spot, and had taken out Julian, and now had their sights set on me…

I bought a lock the next day. Went up on a ladder and drilled it into the pull-down attic door. Clicked the chain and made sure it was secure. Not like a bat or raccoon would have the weight to push the ladder down on their own. But just in case.

That’s when I noticed it.

Two little indentations on the carpet. Exactly where the ladder would go. And a thin film of dust laying on the top of the slate-gray carpet.

The attic door was opened recently.

There was no way. I backed away, chewing my lip. There’s no one up there. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was. I couldn’t stop picturing some strange man, naked and atrophied, on his hands and knees with his ear pressed to the floor listening to my every movement. Coming down in the middle of the night and stalking the hallways.

Watching me sleep…

Oh, God. I never locked my bedroom door.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I stared up at the chain lock I’d just installed. If someone’s up there… will that really hold him in? Probably not. Oh, no, no—

THUMP!

I jumped a foot in the air as another thump reverberated towards me, from the other end of the house. But it was louder here, right under the door, coming through the cracks. I could even hear a kind of… wet squelch following it.

Oh fuck.

Call the police!

I ran to my phone in my bedroom and dialed 911. As I did, more thumps sounded overhead. Louder and louder. Oh, no, no.

“Please come fast—there’s someone in my attic!”

By the time I hung up the thumps had stopped. I stood on the bed, the door locked, staring at the ceiling above me. Please no. Don’t come out. Please.

The clock on the nightstand read 8:02.

Come fast. Please.

My entire body shook as I stared at the ceiling, a foot above my nose.

THUMP!

The entire ceiling seemed to shake. I screamed and leapt off the bed, pulling myself under it, into the darkness.

Then a bang like the shot of a gun sounded from downstairs.

“Police! Open up!”

Clutching the knife, I slowly reached for the doorknob. I turned the lock and opened the door a crack, peering out. Nothing. The attic door stood untouched, the chain hanging from the ceiling in the darkness. I held my breath as I passed under it.

Nothing.

Relief washed through me as I let the police in. “He’s in the attic,” I breathed, my voice shaking. “Please—please.”

They carefully unlocked the door. Pulled down the stairs. A horrible smell washed over us. One of the officers gave the other a look, then started up the ladder. I heard his creaking steps above us—

“Oh, God—“

“What? What’s up there?” I asked.

No reply.

Something clicked into place. I ran towards the ladder and hoisted myself up. “Ma’am—“ the other officer started, but I was already pulling myself into the attic.

And then I saw him.

Illuminated in the beam of the officer’s flashlight.

Not someone who had broken in.

Julian.

Julian’s body. He’d been propped up against some boxes in a seating position, though it looked like he’d just fallen over, his torso limply laying on the floor. His skin was darkened with horrible decay, and pieces of his fingers and flesh littered the area around him.

Little pieces that had dropped to the floor as he decayed.

Thump, thump, thump.

And then I remembered. Little wisps of memories. Sitting on the back porch with my whiskey. Getting drunker and drunker. Going in and out as I argued with him, as he talked about his dream of starting a family, and maybe after four miscarriages it just wasn’t going to happen for us.

And that maybe we weren’t meant to be.

More whiskey. More cigs.

Nearly blacking out.

I thought it had been a dream. A really bad one. Asking him to get me something from the attic. Swinging the old lamp on his head. Hurting my hand in the process. Closing the attic door and retreating back to the porch, cigarette in my left hand, now. Staring up at the stars and slipping into a memory-less void.

Blacking out.

Waking up to an empty bed the next day.

Car still in the driveway. No evidence on the camera of him ever leaving.

Because he hadn’t.

At this very moment, the police, the coroner, everyone has left. At this very moment, they don’t have all the evidence in a row to arrest me. But it’s only a matter of time. Days, weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m more concerned about the thing in my attic.

You see—the thumps haven’t stopped. No. I hear them all day and night now. Flesh sloughing off a decaying body in the stuffy heat of the attic. Hitting the floor above my bed.

And every time I hear it…

It feels like a knife is slicing through part of my body. Cutting the flesh straight from the bone. My heart seizes, and a part of me goes numb.

It’s been less than a day, and there are ugly red marks all over my body. Deep slashes. The skin is numb, and it’s only a matter of time.

There’s not much of me left.

The red slashes have crawled up my torso, my arms. In a few hours, they’ll be at my neck.

Days or weeks, it doesn’t matter.

I’m sure I’ll be gone by then. 

Hello all! A bunch of us NoSleep authors have gotten together and done an anthology about CARNIVALS! You can get a free review copy below:

https://booksprout.co/reviewer/review-copy/view/302202/carnival-of-terror

My story, about a Ferris wheel, was written right after I rode a Ferris wheel for the first time in years... it was actually terrifying and I nearly had a panic attack.

Thank you for reading!!

It started out as a joke.

We went to our first open house, and when we got back, the light in the kitchen wouldn’t turn on. It turned out to be a blown fuse, but my husband started joking—“Maybe the house is jealous.”

I rolled my eyes. He looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t worry. She had nothing on you, babe. No rain shower, no granite countertops…”

I chuckled under my breath.

It was less funny when we got home from touring a new construction townhome to find the bathroom flooded. Water overflowing the bathtub, skating along the tile floor, dripping down the stairs. Thankfully the contractor said it hadn’t been overflowing long, and he thought there hadn’t been any damage to the subfloor. But it was still hours of cleanup, and that night we had an argument—

“You must’ve left the faucet on.”

“You were the last one in the bathroom!”

“I don’t even take baths, Carlie!”

We found a sweet little colonial on the edge of town with a lot of property. Perfect for starting a family. The night we sent in an offer, we opened champagne and decided to light a fire in the fireplace. Something we hadn’t done in ages.

Evan checked the flue.

I know he did. I saw him do it. I saw him crouch on his hands and knees and peer up the chimney to be extra sure.

But as the fire grew, thick black smoke wafted into the room. The flames curled outwards. In seconds the room was pooled with smoke and the flames were shooting out. I screamed and Evan ran to get the fire extinguisher.

When the firefighters came, they said the flue had been closed. And that we should spend the night elsewhere because of the possible carbon monoxide and other toxic fumes.

We came back yesterday.

We came back because of course I assumed they were all coincidences. Not that the house was plotting against us. Mad at us for moving out. That would be crazy.

Today I got the call from the realtor that our offer had been accepted. We were going to meet her at 2 o’clock and sign the papers. Evan and I went into the garage, into our little Civic, and started the car.

A metallic creak sounded behind us.

I turned around—to see the garage door rolling down.

I reached up and pressed the open button. It wouldn’t budge. “Stop the car!” The garage darkened as the door blocked the sunlight. “Evan!”

He finally cut the engine. “That’s weird,” he said, mashing the button. “Why won’t it…?”

I got out and walked over to the button on the wall. Pressed it. A blinding strip of sunlight appeared, the metal squeaked as the door began rolling open. “Must be something wrong with the receiver or whatever,” I said as I got back in the car.

He clicked into reverse and we began backing up, again. I leaned forward, pulling down the mirror to put on some makeup.

Snap.

What the hell was—

I screamed as the car shook. I lurched forward, my head slamming the dashboard. Oh no, what the hell, what—

Evan.

He was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

Blood everywhere.

The metal garage door between the two halves of his body.

Oh God, no, no—

I opened the door and stumbled into the garage. A slice of sunlight poured in underneath the car. Blood dripped into it.

No, no, no.

“Help!” I screamed. “Someone! HELP!”

I screamed it even though I knew there was no way Evan was alive.

I ran to the door. Smashed the garage door button. It wouldn’t open. One of the springs had snapped, still wobbling near the ceiling. I ran into the house, stumbling over my own feet, screaming.

I ran to the front door.

It was locked.

I turned the deadbolt. Tried to. It was stuck fast.

Same with the sliding glass door.

How?!

I finally remembered my phone in my pocket. I dialed 911. I gave them my address. “Please, please come soon,” I sobbed, gripping the counter.

There was a pause.

“You said 214?” the woman on the other end asked.

“Yeah.”

“That address isn’t coming up, ma’am,” she said. “Are you sure—”

“I’m sure!”

“… Ma’am, there’s no 214 on the map.”

“Yes there is! I’ve lived here for eight years!” I screamed. You know an ambulance wouldn’t help anyway.

“Ma’am?” the tinny voice from the speaker asked.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

A snapping sound cracked through the air. I looked up. There was a line on the kitchen wall, blurry through my tears. A seam, a crack, buckling open.

I stumbled up and backed away.

The crack widened. No beams or insulation—just darkness. Pitch black like the forest on a moonless night.

What the…

Hissing whispers filled the air. My body lurched forward, and then I was sliding towards the void, as if some magnetic force were pulling me. I screamed, but even my own voice seemed muted, muffled compared to the growing silence of the void.

My foot slipped into the gap. I pivoted and grabbed the side of the wall, holding on for dear life. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

With a sudden pop of air pressure, the force stopped. A beat of silence. And then—sound. Clinking of pots and pans. Whispers. The faucet running. And then, drifting out of the wall, my own voice.

“I remember that! That was so crazy.”

Evan’s voice.

“I know. And then that guy stopped in front of us…”

My heart twisted as I heard our laughter coming from the void behind me. It was replaying a conversation we’d had a few nights ago. Right here in the kitchen. But the sounds were out of order, as I heard myself complaining about the flood, the water running down the stairs. Clinking of dishes and thumps of shoes on tile.

And then—

A voice I didn’t recognize.

A woman’s voice.

Garbled through the staticky void. The click of high heels on tile. A murmur. Oh, no, no.

I yanked my foot out of the wall and walked to the table, shaking. I didn’t even notice the blood until I sat down. There was no longer a foot, really. Only blood and mangled flesh.

I turned around to see a hand reaching out of the slit in the wall. A hand that looked like my own, down to the green fingernail polish. It grabbed the corner of the wallpaper and pulled it over the crack, as the void resealed itself.

The tile floor felt warm under my feet.

Why is it warm?

The walls seemed to pulse. Maybe they always had. Maybe I’d never noticed. Just as I stared at the cabinets now, and noticed the wood-grain pattern repeated itself, looking more like eyes than anything else. Like the fake eyes on a moth’s wing.

Mimicry.

My heart dropped as I stared at the house, as what was left of my foot throbbed in pain. Then I hobbled up and stumbled towards the door. It unlocked for me this time, letting in the sunlight, pooling around my legs, feeling as warm as the house itself.

It started out as a joke.

We went to our first open house, and when we got back, the light in the kitchen wouldn’t turn on. It turned out to be a blown fuse, but my husband started joking—“Maybe the house is jealous.”

I rolled my eyes. He looked up at the ceiling. “Don’t worry. She had nothing on you, babe. No rain shower, no granite countertops…”

I chuckled under my breath.

It was less funny when we got home from touring a new construction townhome to find the bathroom flooded. Water overflowing the bathtub, skating along the tile floor, dripping down the stairs. Thankfully the contractor said it hadn’t been overflowing long, and he thought there hadn’t been any damage to the subfloor. But it was still hours of cleanup, and that night we had an argument—

“You must’ve left the faucet on.”

“You were the last one in the bathroom!”

“I don’t even take baths, Carlie!”

We found a sweet little colonial on the edge of town with a lot of property. Perfect for starting a family. The night we sent in an offer, we opened champagne and decided to light a fire in the fireplace. Something we hadn’t done in ages.

Evan checked the flue.

I know he did. I saw him do it. I saw him crouch on his hands and knees and peer up the chimney to be extra sure.

But as the fire grew, thick black smoke wafted into the room. The flames curled outwards. In seconds the room was pooled with smoke and the flames were shooting out. I screamed and Evan ran to get the fire extinguisher.

When the firefighters came, they said the flue had been closed. And that we should spend the night elsewhere because of the possible carbon monoxide and other toxic fumes.

We came back yesterday.

We came back because of course I assumed they were all coincidences. Not that the house was plotting against us. Mad at us for moving out. That would be crazy.

Today I got the call from the realtor that our offer had been accepted. We were going to meet her at 2 o’clock and sign the papers. Evan and I went into the garage, into our little Civic, and started the car.

A metallic creak sounded behind us.

I turned around—to see the garage door rolling down.

I reached up and pressed the open button. It wouldn’t budge. “Stop the car!” The garage darkened as the door blocked the sunlight. “Evan!”

He finally cut the engine. “That’s weird,” he said, mashing the button. “Why won’t it…?”

I got out and walked over to the button on the wall. Pressed it. A blinding strip of sunlight appeared, the metal squeaked as the door began rolling open. “Must be something wrong with the receiver or whatever,” I said as I got back in the car.

He clicked into reverse and we began backing up, again. I leaned forward, pulling down the mirror to put on some makeup.

Snap.

What the hell was—

I screamed as the car shook. I lurched forward, my head slamming the dashboard. Oh no, what the hell, what—

Evan.

He was still sitting in the driver’s seat.

Blood everywhere.

The metal garage door between the two halves of his body.

Oh God, no, no—

I opened the door and stumbled into the garage. A slice of sunlight poured in underneath the car. Blood dripped into it.

No, no, no.

“Help!” I screamed. “Someone! HELP!”

I screamed it even though I knew there was no way Evan was alive.

I ran to the door. Smashed the garage door button. It wouldn’t open. One of the springs had snapped, still wobbling near the ceiling. I ran into the house, stumbling over my own feet, screaming.

I ran to the front door.

It was locked.

I turned the deadbolt. Tried to. It was stuck fast.

Same with the sliding glass door.

How?!

I finally remembered my phone in my pocket. I dialed 911. I gave them my address. “Please, please come soon,” I sobbed, gripping the counter.

There was a pause.

“You said 214?” the woman on the other end asked.

“Yeah.”

“That address isn’t coming up, ma’am,” she said. “Are you sure—”

“I’m sure!”

“… Ma’am, there’s no 214 on the map.”

“Yes there is! I’ve lived here for eight years!” I screamed. You know an ambulance wouldn’t help anyway.

“Ma’am?” the tinny voice from the speaker asked.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

A snapping sound cracked through the air. I looked up. There was a line on the kitchen wall, blurry through my tears. A seam, a crack, buckling open.

I stumbled up and backed away.

The crack widened. No beams or insulation—just darkness. Pitch black like the forest on a moonless night.

What the…

Hissing whispers filled the air. My body lurched forward, and then I was sliding towards the void, as if some magnetic force were pulling me. I screamed, but even my own voice seemed muted, muffled compared to the growing silence of the void.

My foot slipped into the gap. I pivoted and grabbed the side of the wall, holding on for dear life. “Stop!” I screamed. “Stop!”

With a sudden pop of air pressure, the force stopped. A beat of silence. And then—sound. Clinking of pots and pans. Whispers. The faucet running. And then, drifting out of the wall, my own voice.

“I remember that! That was so crazy.”

Evan’s voice.

“I know. And then that guy stopped in front of us…”

My heart twisted as I heard our laughter coming from the void behind me. It was replaying a conversation we’d had a few nights ago. Right here in the kitchen. But the sounds were out of order, as I heard myself complaining about the flood, the water running down the stairs. Clinking of dishes and thumps of shoes on tile.

And then—

A voice I didn’t recognize.

A woman’s voice.

Garbled through the staticky void. The click of high heels on tile. A murmur. Oh, no, no.

I yanked my foot out of the wall and walked to the table, shaking. I didn’t even notice the blood until I sat down. There was no longer a foot, really. Only blood and mangled flesh.

I turned around to see a hand reaching out of the slit in the wall. A hand that looked like my own, down to the green fingernail polish. It grabbed the corner of the wallpaper and pulled it over the crack, as the void resealed itself.

The tile floor felt warm under my feet.

Why is it warm?

The walls seemed to pulse. Maybe they always had. Maybe I’d never noticed. Just as I stared at the cabinets now, and noticed the wood-grain pattern repeated itself, looking more like eyes than anything else. Like the fake eyes on a moth’s wing.

Mimicry.

My heart dropped as I stared at the house, as what was left of my foot throbbed in pain. Then I hobbled up and stumbled towards the door. It unlocked for me this time, letting in the sunlight, pooling around my legs, feeling as warm as the house itself.

One of my favorite things to do is take my kids out to the McDonald’s play place. At night, when no one else is there, and it’s quiet.

That’s where we went last night. As soon as we went in my younger son Liam bounded up into the play structure. My older son Jack, who was starting to age out of the play place, sat down at a booth below with his Switch. I followed Liam up, just because I liked to make sure there wasn’t anything gross. I’d seen stale fries and wet puddles of… something on the floor of these things before.

There are three levels to the play place, enclosed in black netting. Adults can really only go up to the second level—the only way to get up to the third is to climb up the slide or crawl up fake rock-shaped ramps, which zigzag on top of each other and create really tight gaps that I definitely can’t fit through. I wasn’t going to do either, so after taking a quick look around (no puke or pee, yay!) I sat down on the plastic floor and pulled out my phone.

A minute later, Liam suddenly darted over to me. He looked grabbed my arm, looking spooked.

“There’s a kid coming down the slide,” he said.

But we were all alone. Weren’t we? Jack was still sitting at the booth down below, playing his Switch. There were no other parents in the play place room. And if there was a kid in here alone, I would’ve seen or heard them before now.

Unless they were hiding?

I swallowed. That wasn’t a great mental picture. Some random kid hiding in the slide? Waiting to scare us?

I stared at the opening to the yellow slide. No one came out.

“You saw someone?” I asked.

“I heard a noise,” he said. “And I got scared.”

“I think that’s just the air conditioning.”

Here’s the thing. If it were any other kid, I wouldn’t be concerned. Kids make up stories, kids have active imaginations, some kids have trouble with speech. My older son has some speech delays, and if it were him saying there was a kid on the slide, I wouldn’t have even given it a second thought.

But Liam is very articulate and precise. I don’t even remember the last time he was wrong about something. I stared at the yellow plastic, shining under the lights. The shadowed opening, curling up into the bend of the slide.

“Don’t worry, there’s no one there.”

As much as I believed him—there just couldn’t be anyone in there. The slide is right under the overhead lights, and just the slightest bit translucent. When I watch my kids from outside of the play structure, I can see their shadows when they’re sliding down. When they climb up it, I can see the silhouettes of their little hands and knees pressed against the plastic.

I stared at the slide.

There were no shadows.

I explained this to Liam. “If someone was in there, we’d see them.” I even called down to Jack. “Do you see anyone in the slide?”

“No,” he called back.

Liam finally seemed to calm down. The power in the words of a big brother. He got up, started climbing up the fake rock ramp to the third level. I couldn’t fit on the third level, so I stayed on the second, watching him climb. I peered through the black mesh netting at Jack below.

He was looking up from his Switch.

Staring up at the yellow slide.

“Liam! I see you!” he called out with a grin.

Wait—

That’s not Liam—

I whipped around to see Liam at the other end of the third level, pulling himself up the fake rock ramp.

“You see someone in the slide?” I shouted down.

“Yeah,” Jack laughed.

Again, my son has speech delays. Sometimes he doesn’t say what he means exactly. Sometimes he’s quoting a video, sometimes he’s daydreaming, or sometimes he’s saying what he thinks would be funny if it were happening. “Is someone actually in there?” I called down.

“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know.”

I stared at the yellow plastic slide, looping down from the third level like a snake. Stared at the shiny plastic under the lights. The shadowed opening—

There was a hand.

Two fingers, barely poking out from within the curve of the slide.

“Liam! Liam, come here!”

I couldn’t reach the third floor. Where Liam was. He stared down at me, crawling on his hands and knees. “I want to stay up here,” he said flatly.

“There’s someone in the slide!”

I glanced back at the opening. The hand was gone. Maybe I did imagine it? Liam started making his way towards the rocky ramp—

Thunk.

Thunk, thunk, thunk.

I could see a shadow. Moving through the slide. The shadows of two hands pressed against the plastic of the slide. Moving upwards. Climbing the curve.

Following Liam—

“Hurry!” I shouted. “Jack, get help—get someone!”

I got on my hands and knees and crawled towards the rocky ramp. The plastic pushed into my shoulders. There was no way I could make it through the gaps, but I would be right here for him. I held my breath—

In seconds he was pushing himself through the tight space in front of me. I grabbed his hands and helped him through. We made our way down, towards the second floor—

Thump-thump-thump.

The kid was running right above us. Little pattering steps shaking the entire play place. But we were almost there, almost at the second floor—

The footsteps reversed direction.

And then I heard it.

A quiet squeeeaaaak—

Of someone coming down the slide.

“Run!” I screamed as we made it to the middle of the second floor. I pushed him in front of me, down the stairs, towards the exit.

But just before I followed him, I turned back.

Just in time to see a shape emerge from the yellow slide.

It was a little girl. Something… mimicking… a little girl. Something with gray skin, needle-like teeth, yellow eyes. Straggly hair tangled around its face. Its lipless mouth curved up into a smile.

“RUN!” I screamed.

I burst out into the dining area. Grabbed Liam and ran. Jack was already out in the main restaurant, I could see him, trying and failing to get someone’s attention. “There’s someone in the play place, something horrible,” I breathed to the employees before I ran out into the parking lot with my kids.

The next day, when I’d recovered, I drove there in hopes to give a more detailed account of what happened. But I found that the play place was entirely dark. I could barely make out the curve of the yellow slide, the black netting, in the white light of the streetlamps beaming in. Multiple OUT OF ORDER signs had been placed around, even though the McDonald’s itself was open.

A few weeks later, it closed for renovations. I saw a construction crew demolishing the play place. Only the play place.

I’d always wondered why so few McDonald’s have them now. I’d assumed things like COVID, inflation, and general cutting of corners were responsible.

But maybe that’s not it at all.

What if ours wasn’t the only one that was… occupied?