Darkheart

The Past: Bed & Breakfast

The story was about a collector. A bug collector. Specifically, a moth collector. It was a story that affected Jeremiah more the longer he was away from it, so that it came to be a part of his psyche, eventually, and guided many of his life decisions, but when he first read it, lying on his bed late one chilly night in the winterized sunporch, the tale was nothing more than an entertainment. Something about it grabbed him, though, even then--the idea of a budding entomologist moving to the dark southern swamps to be closer to the winged creatures he sought, going out night after night to search for the dusty, feather-antennaed creatures. How this collector would bring home his specimens after a long, dark search and, pulling them from his nets and light traps, place them in killing jars with a little fabric dipped in ethyl acetate. Death did not come quickly, and he'd check for movement every so often, mostly to reassure himself that the creatures died slowly of the poison rather than in some quicker, violent way (he had to preserve the things, after all, couldn't have them missing legs or damaging their wings). At long last, after hours of waiting, the entomologist would remove his moths, spread their soft, fat bodies, and pin them into styrofoam right through their bellies, making sure to pull their wings gently outward to reveal their mysterious beauty.

The entomologist spent his nights collecting and his days arranging. He was alone, and he preferred it that way. But as the afternoons dulled into their misty gray, the sun for its own reasons hiding itself more often than not, the man began to sense at certain times, usually around the moment he poured himself an afternoon coffee, that he was not alone. And of course he knew that he wasn't, didn't he? He was surrounded by the little corpses of his dead conquests. Still, that wasn't what he sensed. What he felt was a sort of ominous miasma, a living presence, and it would always be accompanied by what he was certain was a sort of soft, insistent flapping against his bedroom window. Whenever he looked out, though, or exited the modest house to search for any company (otherworldly or otherwise), he'd find nothing out of the ordinary.

Things went on like this for days, the entomologist making as many surmises and excuses as possible for what he felt and heard but, ultimately, growing increasingly ill at ease.

At length, as he was preparing to go out and hunt for his beloved nocturnal lepidoptera, the familiar flapping at his bedroom window returned, and this time, when the entomologist looked, he saw an enormous snowy-white moth, glowing an ethereal hazy blue in the moonlight, batting its wings gently against the screen. It must've been the size of a cat! The man stood and stared, dumbfounded, until the insect backed away and lifted into the darkness.

Wasting no time, the entomologist grabbed his biggest net and dashed out of his house, taking off after the moth as it fluttered lazily toward the tangled trees and black earth of the forest. It hovered ever out of reach, always ahead of him, almost as if it were teasing him. The moth would rest, and the moment he approached, it would lift its wings seconds before being caught. Had the entomologist thought less about his quarry, he might have realized it was leading him deeper than he'd ever been, through twists and turns impenetrable by any outside light. And he might have noticed the other little glowing specks flickering behind and beside him. But he focused only on the prize so near to his grasp . . . it would make his collection . . .

It was months later when a search party located the entomologist. They'd known to look for him only because he'd missed a lecture he was supposed to give at the local university. Fifty or so men and women had come together to scour the swampy forests, and their search had lasted several days before they entered what had to have been the darkest, most unfathomable alcove, lit only by a little pool of water that somehow let off a very faint blue glow.

His arms were out, his legs splayed, each limb of his nude body spread and attached to nearby branches, and right in his belly, his soft middle, was a thick wooden splinter, pinning him to the trunk at his back.