Night Flight

Not all dark and dangerous mysteries reside in the deep dark Woods of the American West. For some terrifying events occur right in the urban centers of America. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of a city such as Chicago, there lurks things far more dangerous than a prejudiced cop or a desperate mugger. There are demonic creatures and fiends of all kinds that dwell in our flats, among the tall buildings, and down in the depths of the sewers and subways. As always, most days do begin and end like most other days, but it is on some days wherein the aberrant, the abnormal, and the downright abhorrent rear their grotesquely monstrous heads. We might consider these to be strange days. We examine the strange days of a windowed father, Brett Wildes, and his son Bennett, who reside on the Northside of Chicago.

Brett Wildes had just received another call from the elementary school where his son attended. It was a small and highly rated Catholic school, on the Northside of Chicago near Wrigley Field, that his son, Bennett, was at risk of being expelled from due to behavioral issues. The call Brett had just received was one of many, wherein the principal explained to Brett that Bennett was: stealing from other students and teachers, not doing his classwork, being disrespectful and rude to his teachers and his peers, frightening other students and even some teachers with disturbing drawings he continued to make. Bennett’s behavior was getting out of hand. In this most recent phone call, the principal explained that Bennett had somehow captured a squirrel during recess, killed it, and was showing the carcass to the other students. Bennett was to be suspended for a week from school and this was the last straw. The next infarction would mean expulsion for Bennett.

Brett was disappointed in his son. Bennett had been a quiet, well mannered boy before his mother, Melinda, passed away last year from a sudden and tragic brain aneurysm. This occurred right before Bennett started fifth grade, and his behavior had spiraled out of control over the course of the year. A child psychologist had informed Brett that oftentimes children begin to act out after a parent dies, especially if the death is unexpected. If Bennett was to get expelled from his school, it would mean he would no longer be able to complete a Catholic education as Melinda had wanted for him. Brett was no longer a practicing Catholic like Melinda was, but he wanted to honor her wishes.

Bennett, head hung low, was sitting in the office when Brett arrived at around 1:00 pm to pick him up. Luckily, Brett worked from home as a copy editor for a few magazines and was himself an author of a moderately successful and slightly original young adult mystery series called, “The Hutchinson Brothers,” wherein twin brothers go around solving crimes. Many elementary and middle schools across the country had purchased the book series for their libraries. Brett had a brief chat with the principal while Bennett continued to wait in the office near the secretary. The principal, eluding to Bennett not being able to attend an elite Catholic College such as Notre Dame, gave Brett the drawings Bennett had made, and re-enforced the severity of the position Bennett was in. Brett nodded along and apologized for Bennett’s behavior, stating that his wife’s death had been hard on Bennett especially and they would continue to work on it. Unfortunately, the principal remained unimpressed. The car ride home was silent.

When they got home, Brett told Bennett to go to his room for the rest of the evening until dinner, and that they would talk about it tomorrow. Brett sat at the kitchen table and looked at Bennett’s drawings. There were dozens of them, all similar in kind. They contained a dark, tall, looming figure with wings and red eyes. In some of the drawings the creature had a large maw with long, pointed teeth. In others, it was flying over the city. One of the drawings captured Brett’s attention more than the others. It was a drawing of Brett, Melinda, and Bennett, but Bennett had drawn this dark figure hovering over Melinda. Written on the bottom, in rough dark letters, as if Bennett had traced over each letter hundreds of times, was written, “I AM HERE.” There were a few others drawings where those words were written hundreds of times across the entire page in pencil, black, and red ink. Brett was too confused and frustrated to try and cook dinner, so he ordered a deep dish pizza. Brett and Bennett ate in silence, neither of them even attempted to speak to one another. After dinner, Bennett returned to his bedroom. Brett looked to pour himself a glass of bourbon, but instead had a glass of a dry red that Melinda hadn’t had the chance to finish. Brett fell asleep to the TV that evening.

The dark figure floated down from the ceiling and rested over Brett as he sat asleep in an armchair. It was still dark outside, and the TV silently flashed behind the two of them. The floating figure opened a pair of large red eyes and unfurled two terrible wings like those of a bat. It slowly opened its mouth, revealing long black teeth, and whispered, “I am here.” Brett shot awake in a cold sweat. It was light outside and the clock read 10:34. Bennett was standing in front of him staring.

“I’m sorry Dad.” Bennett said as his eyes began to well up. Brett rose from the chair, the glass of wine unfinished, and embraced his son. Choking back his own tears, Brett asked,

“What’s going on pal? What happened at recess?”

Bennett, sobbing, babbled out a few words about being lonely and scared, but it was difficult for his father to make out any specifics. Brett let Bennett blubber on for a bit until he was able to gather his composure. Brett embraced his son again and asked if he wanted some breakfast. As they ate, Brett pressured Bennett for more details about what has been happening with him. Brett felt hopeless. The therapist Bennett had been seeing didn’t seem to be making the progress necessary to keep Ben enrolled in school.

“So what ended up happening at recess today bud?”

“He told me to do it. I did it for mom.”

“What do you mean? Who is he?”

“He’s my friend. He says he is friends with Mom.”

“Is this him?” Brett said as he slide some of Ben’s drawings across the kitchen table. Bennett looked at them then nodded his head. Brett continued, “What does he tell you?”

“He says that if I do what he says, he can bring Mom back. He’s my only friend!”

“Oh, buddy…. Ben, having imaginary friends is fine…”

Bennett cut off his Dad as he raised his voice, “He’s not imaginary! He’s real! I’ve seen him. In the bathroom, and in my bedroom at night. He’s even been here in the living room. Last night he was in the living room. I saw him there, Dad.”

“You saw him in the living room last night?” Brett was worried about his dream and began to sweat. He decided not to press the subject anymore. “Well, I guess you have no school for this week. I know you are remorseful.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means you’re sorry.”

“Yes, I am sorry Dad. I’m sad and sorry.” Bennett’s eyes began to well up again. “I just miss mom. I wish she was still here.”

“Me too, pal. Me too…” Brett trailed off then asked, “Should we go see a movie? Maybe get some ice-cream?” Bennett nodded his head and smiled, which made Brett feel better; however, Brett figured he should probably be punishing his son, but he just didn’t know how to or what to do. Feeling bad for his son often masked his own grief for Melinda. They spent the rest of the morning and afternoon at a movie theater, an ice-cream shop, and they got some cheeseburgers at McDonald’s. The two of them watched a bit TV and then it was time for Bennett to get ready for bed.

Brett, watching the game in the living room, heard Bennett scream upstairs and ran to his son. Brett grabbed the doorknob to the bathroom, but it was searing hot to the touch. Brett recoiled, his skin nearly burned to the doorknob. Brett shouted and pounded on the door. Ashy noxious mist began to rise out from under the door. He could hear Bennett calling for his help. Eventually, after what seemed like minutes but was only moments, Brett kicked open the bathroom door. Bennett was sitting on the floor in front of the shower. The curtain was closed and there was a silhouette of a tall dark figure behind it, pressing a hand with long, thin fingers against the shower curtain. When Brett entered the room, the ashy mist cleared along with the silhouette. What was left was a soot hand print on the shower curtain, and once the mist cleared Brett saw the rest of the bathroom. There were drawings similar to Bennett’s of soot all over the walls. There were drawings of tall, looming men, disembodied eyes all staring towards the middle of the room where Bennett was still sitting. Brett leaned down and grasped his son. Bennett was weeping, “I don’t think he wants to be friends with anymore.” They continued sitting there. Bennett, after much convincing, went to bed in his own room, while Brett cleaned the walls of the bathroom and threw out the shower curtain.

Much to their dismay, over the next three days, the situation did not improve. In fact, it got worse. Bennett refused to go anywhere without Brett by his side. The drawings continued to spill out of the bathroom and onto the walls of Bennett’s room and eventually down the stairs to the first floor. Brett gave up on trying to clean the walls. The drawings would always reappear hours later. The house was filled with a faint yet ever present miasma. Furniture went crashing and banging around in the middle of the night as it drug itself across the floor and would be in different locations throughout the house at night. Multiple times the silverware ended up spread across the kitchen floor, or even stuck in the walls. Brett sent Bennett to his Aunt’s house in Downers Grove and against Brett’s better judgment, he went to get his first drink since after Melinda’s funeral. His grief counselor advised that he not drink to cope with his grief and he had taken that to heart. He wasn’t drinking to quell his grief, but rather his impending thoughts of doom from what could only be described as a haunting.

As Bennett spent the next three days with his Aunt Linda, Brett bellied up at a bar just outside of Wrigleyville. He needed a quite dive, not some booming sports bar filled with yuppies. He sat and drank alone for the first day. Old Style and Jameson, until the Jameson ran out and he switched to Bushmills. Brett squeezed out a joke about Catholic whiskey being superior to Protestant whiskey. The bartender gave a sardonic smirk. It wasn’t until the third day of Brett’s bender and a restocking of Jameson, that Brett began telling an unwilling bartender his story. Coincidentally, it was on this day that a Norman Boroughs was also drinking his problems away, and sauntered over.

“I couldn’t help but overhear your tale good sir. My name is Norman. Norman Boroughs, cyptozoologist and paranormal expert at your service.” Norman had a thin face and a long protruding proboscis. Norman was an odd frail man in his late 50’s with thin framed glasses which hung off the edge of his elongated nose. Perhaps it was the alcohol, but Brett was elated at this encounter.

“This is the first time in my life that drinking has offered me a solution,” slurred Brett. The bartender rolled his eyes, but didn’t mind since the two men had started to buy each other rounds and were tipping well. The cyptozoologist narrowed his gaze down the length of his nose as Brett elaborated on the details. His eyes here like two bulbous marbles magnified through his thick lens dancing with every gesture Brett made and engrossed in every detail.

“You say it is a black figure, with wings? In your living room!? This clearly sounds like a case of possession, by none other than what the urban legends refer to as ‘Mothman.’” Brett’s face turned from a drunken glee to a scornful sour.

“Listen, if you just came over here to jerk me around, fine, but leave me be.”

“No, no, no, not at all! That’s not the case at all. I believe you! It is my job to believe you. I want to offer my services to you of no charge. Pro Bono! I have been searching for the legendary Mothman for my entire adult career. To be honest, Mothman is simply for lack of a better or more proper name. This demon, dare I say it, has been harassing American citizen since 1966 in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. A darked, winged, humanoid figured was spotted flying around the Silver Bridge before its collapse, leading many residents to believe something supernatural cause the bridge to collapse that killed forty-six people. Some claim that the people used the supernatural as an explanation for the event because it was so horrid and sudden and that Mothman, as he came to be called, was a figment of the collective imagination. But I’ve been following the case of Mothman for the past thirty years. There has been hundreds, nearly a thousand, sightings of Mothman since 1966, many of which are right here in Chicago. Among my other projects, Mothman has always been my white whale. I must show you my notes, and I have more catholic whiskey at my house.”

The two of the paid and went to Norman’s house. It began to rain and was cold for this time of year. Brett didn’t admit it out-loud, but he began to feel like one of the Hutchinson Brothers from his young adult mystery novels. They took an Lyft to Norman’s apartment on the northside of Wrigleyville. He too admitted when he drinks he likes to avoid the drunken, throbbing mob that are the Cubs fans.

Norman lived in a garden-level, two-bedroom apartment. The clutter was outstanding. It was a dimly lit, long, rectangular apartment like many in Chicago. Every table, chair, and counter was covered in piles of papers. Most of the walls were lined with bookshelves ranging from esoteric philosophy and cabalist literature to biological textbooks and paranormal studies. They walked further into the hoarder’s dungeon, down the hall, and into the back bedroom, which Norman had turned into a study. Even more texts lined the walls of this room. The smell was that of an ancient musty library. Norman’s small laptop was surrounded by piles of paper. Behind his computer desk, was a large map of the Chicago area posted up against the wall. Small red pins indicated where Mothman had been sighted. There were hundreds all over the city. There was a old black and white picture of a man with a large mustache over the map.

“Who’s that?” Brett called into the kitchen. Norman was pouring two substantial glasses of Jameson neat.

“You must be referring to Charles Fort. He was one of the first and considered the grandfather of anomaliests. He started his work back around the turn of the century. He wrote, ‘The Book of the Damned.’ Here I should have a first edition copy in the living room. Unfortunately, it is quite a bit dated, but whenever I run into a wall I resort back to the great originals in the field. You know when Fort was writing, people actually considered cyptrozoology to just be zoology! Now people think I’m crazy! But this is real! And now I have a witness!” Norman finished the whiskey in his glass and poured more as he brought the bottle and Brett’s glass into his study. Out from the clutter, Norman produced a small stool and gestured for Brett to seat. Norman began gathering particular piles of notes with an agency that suggested there was a method to his madness.

Brett soon realized the extent of Norman’s madness, but in this realization he too began to question his own sanity. Had any of this actual happened to him? How long had he been drunk? They talked into the morning hours until Brett suddenly awoke on a sagging couch to his phone vibrating on his chest.

“Shit. My head. Ah, shit.” It was Bennett. Brett was supposed to have picked him up an hour ago. Norman must have been asleep in his bedroom. Brett, embarrassed, left quietly without leaving a note. Brett took a Lyft all the way to Downers Grove.

“You stink of whiskey Brett.”

“I know, that’s why I took the lyft. Bennett won’t know the difference.”

“Something is wrong Brett. Bennett stinks, no matter how many showers I gave him! The boy stinks. My whole house stinks. Bennett didn’t say a word to me the whole time, Brett. He just sat there and drew in his notebook. Weird stuff. I’m worried, Brett. Brett? What’s going on Brett? What’s wrong?” Linda shouted after Brett and Bennett as Brett walked his son to the Lyft, who was waiting for the father and son.

“I can’t stay Lin! We got to go.” Brett put Bennett in the back seat and sat himself in the front.

“I’m your sister Brett, you can tell me!” Linda shouted after the small, red, Honda with a purple

‘Lyft’ sign glowing in the rear window. Linda sat on her front step and began to cry. She felt hopeless and miserable. An overwhelming feeling of guilt subsumed her.

Brett and Bennett had decided it was best to spend as little time in the house as possible. But Linda was right, Bennett did smell like sulfur no matter where they went. They went to the movies and watched three of them. Brett must have nodded off during one of them. He awoke suddenly to the smell of sulphur around him. He didn’t notice where Bennett was. His attention was focused on the growing screen in front of him. The actors on the screen were distorted. Their arms grew long and there faces grew sharp. The theater began to fill with ashy mist, and floating eyes circled him in the mist. He tried to move to the exit, but couldn’t. The images on the screen became distorted and reformed into a large face with no eyes, extending forth. Brett was paralyzed. A gigantic maw opened up, revealing long, thin, stark white teeth dripping with a sooty liquid. The liquid dripped onto his face and legs as the face slowly and softly repeated the phrase, “I am here… I am here… I am here….” Until suddenly and forcefully echoing throughout the theater, “I AM HERE!” And with that Brett shook awake. Which one were they even watching, he wondered. It didn’t really matter. He wasn’t safe anywhere. Bennett,with a blank expression on his face, was sitting next to Brett watching various jovial animated characters dance across the screen. They looked like toys from Brett’s childhood. Brett barely recognized his own son.

They went to get ice cream and sat in the park for a while. Brett had received a few phones calls throughout the day he hadn’t answered until the fourth time while they were sitting in the park. Bennett was playing on the jungle gym by himself. All the other children gave him a wide berth. Bennett was just sort of mumbling to himself, pacing around the various play sets. Brett looked up at Bennett. Just behind a grouping of oak trees near the edge of the park he swore he could see a dark figure, with red eyes and a gaping maw stare back at him. That terrible face grew closer and closer until Brett’s phone buzzed again, he blinked and the creature was gone. He answered this time.

“Hell…Hell….Hello?”

“Brett! Hey, I’ve been trying to call you. Sorry my number is blocked. Can’t be too careful. When can we meet up? I’ve been dying to meet your son. Where are you now? I cleared my schedule. I can come find you now, or whenever. No biggie. Ummm…how are you?”

“Who is this?”

“Brett! It’s Norman! Remember me? Norman?”

“Sorry, but how’d you get my number?”

“You gave it to me. Said you wanted to meet up. Then you left in the morning before we could discuss a time. It’s been two days and that night you made it sound urgent. I gave a friend of mine a call: Father James Coyle. You know science and religion have far more in common than most people think. Father Coyle is an expert in the paranormal and one of the few Catholic priests that still conduct exorcisms. So, umm, when can we meet up?”

“Well, I just don’t know. We had had a lot to drink and….” Norman cut Brett off.

“Brett, I won’t take no for an answer. Call me selfish, but I have never been so close to laying my own eyes on Mothman. I simply must meet up with you. I can help you Brett. Father Coyle and I can help you. We might be the only ones who can.” Norman was trying to amp up any and all feelings of desperation in Brett that he could muster.

“Fine. Tomorrow evening at seven. Will that work?”

“See you then.” There was a sharp click and the call was over. Brett and Bennett stayed in the park until dusk and a local security officer told them that they had to leave.

Bennett was becoming less and less attentive. As if he was a husk. The smell was getting worse. Bennett carried a stinking cloud around his person. They sat in the public library in a corner where no one went. Bennett didn’t complain about being bored or anything. He merely sat in the corner muttering to himself staring at the same book. Brett was at a total lose. He was glad he had met Norman and that he was going to help them tonight, but he had no idea what to expect. He wasn’t nervous. He was numb. He drank from a flask.

It is raining when there was a knock at the door. A soaking wet Norman and Father Coyle were standing at the door when Brett came to meet them.

“Norman. And you must be Father Coyle. I’ve heard so much about you. Let me just say how grateful I am that you came to help us.

“It is my pleasure. Possession and exorcism has been my life’s work, despite certain church fathers trying to shut me down. Through lawsuits and countless investigations, I have persisted.” Coyle spoke in a cool and calculated tone that was underscored by a slight wheeze. “Let’s have a look at your boy shall we?”

“Yes, right this way.” Brett lead the two men into the house and explained how the soot and ash drawings on the walls keep replacing themselves at faster and faster rates. It was essentially impossible to keep the walls clean. “Bennett is upstairs in his room. He spends most of his time up there. He won’t eat. He doesn’t sleep. I hear him talking to himself at all hours of the night.”

“How many days has this been going on?”

“Well, it started about a year ago when his mother died suddenly, but it’s really been the past week or so that the situation, let’s call it, has gotten out of hand. The ashen drawings even follow us when we leave the house.” The three men made their way upstairs and to Bennett’s room where the boy was sitting in the corner. Looking up and talking quietly with what appeared to be a shadow in the corner, Bennett did not respond to Brett’s query, “Hey B, how are you?” Brett’s voice shook as he elongated his pronunciation of ‘B’ in an attempt at affection. The light blue walls were covered in the soot drawings and the room was fragrant with sulfur. The miasma stung the nostrils of the men even before they entered the room.

Father Coyle was the last to enter and before he could even address Bennett, the boy had turn his head around and stood up. Bennett outstretched a small contorted hand pointed at Coyle and black soot and mist poured out of Bennett’s gaping toothless mouth and his eyes were shrouded over in blackness. An eerily low and constant tone accompanied Bennett’s outstretched hand. As mist filled the room, a tall, looming figure began to assemble itself behind the three men in the doorway. The figure grew and grew, in the longest seconds of their lives, the figure coated the ceiling and the door abruptly slammed behind them. Coyle reached for his bible and cross, but before he could grasp his holy totems, he was thrown across the room into an armoire. The shadow funneled itself into Bennett and emitted out again as a black miasma cascading out of his mouth, slithering through the air toward a motionless Norman, who fell to his knees as the sooty mist penetrated his eyes. Norman rolled off his knees to being completely prostate and paralyzed; his mouth was left twisted in horror. Coyle, lying on the floor, saw his cross and bible on the ground in front of him. A sharp pain rippled across his back, but he reached for his totems despite the pain. Bennett, now floating a few inches off the ground, turned his attention from Norman to Father Coyle. The armoire slowly tipped over onto Father Coyle followed by a terrible squelch and muffled yelp. Coyle lay dead, his crimson blood sprayed across the room.

Bennett and his father made eye contact as Bennett’s face changed from a calm boredom to complete terror.

“Dad! What’s happening?! Help me, Dad! Please!” Bennett pleaded. A giant shadow being with a large maw, red eyes, and alien wings emerged from the child’s back, and resided over the father and son.

“We are here,” the shadow whispered as it enveloped both father and son and the three of them vanished.

A few weeks later, the bustle of Chicago continued. Baseball season was coming to a close and much of the news took a backseat to another playoff run by the northside club. A homeless man drinking from a flask sat near the stadium asking for change and haphazardly selling the few bags of peanuts. He listened to the radio,

“Well Jim, I have to change gears here for a second, and update the public on a tragic story that has been unfolding over the past week. At a grisly scene on the northside of the city, police found two bodies: a Father James Coyle, and a Norman Boroughs in the flat of Brett Wildes, who lived there with his son Bennett. Brett and Bennett are both missing, and police have labeled Brett as a POI in the murders of the two aforementioned men. Strangely enough, Mr. Wildes’ sister, Linda Jones and her husband Frank, were both found dead about a week ago. At first, police ruled the case as a murder-suicide: drunk jealous husband kills cheating wife type of thing; however, now police are not ruling out that Brett Wildes had something to do with his sister and brother-in-law’s death. Moreover information has come to light concerning the tumultuous history of both Coyle and Boroughs. Apparently both men have been implicated with child pornography, and even child sex trafficking in the past, yet were found not guilty.” The other announcer chimed in,

“I suppose we can only speculate all the possibilities involving a guilt-ridden, drunk father, his innocent son, and two potential pedophiles. Maybe the sister knew something, Tom. Well, that is truly a shame to hear, but what a story! I bet HBO could make a show about it. Back to baseball…” The radio blared on as fans filled the stadium.