hwango

A bit darker than my usual this time.

It continues to astonish me just how quickly we were forced to surrender the night. Oh, fools such as I still try to steal a few more hours for each day, but how much longer will we dare? Or even if we continue with such madness, how much longer before none of us remain?

But for now, yes, I am reckless enough to write this by candlelight as the encroaching night forces the sun beneath the horizon. My own tiny rebellion, I suppose. Clinging to the illusion that men are still masters of the world, and to the idea that we need not fear the dark.

But of course it not truly the darkness that we fear. After all, those who welcome the night, who fight it with neither lamp nor candle – those, so far, are spared. So the dark is not our enemy, but perhaps our guardian against that which we truly fear.

And what is it? Some terrible bat of unimaginable size? A dragon out of legend? No man has been able to look upon it and retain both his sanity and his life. We know only that it comes from above, the sound of ponderously flapping wings as our only warning.

I bitterly recollect the first night that it appeared, when we raised more light in the hope that we would see that which bedeviled us. How much more of the town might still stand, and how many fewer graves might we have dug, had we simply fled for our homes? But no, it was our first instinct to stand and to fight, and for that we thought we must know our foe.

Well, we know this – that our lights sent it into a rage. That it swooped down into the streets again and again, striking down any man unfortunate enough to be holding torch or lantern. I shudder to think what might have befallen us had any of the resulting fires escaped our control. Would the beast have leveled the town in an attempt to extinguish the blaze? Or might we all have escaped the creature's wrath only to burn alive in our homes? We can with a bitter laugh call ourselves 'fortunate' that we did not suffer either fate.

The next day brought mourning and an assessing of the damage. I doubt that any man thought ahead to the coming night. No one dared think that it might return. But return it did.

From the wounds inflicted on those who fell, we knew our tormentor to be some sort of beast. We thought to find its lair by the light of day and put an end to it as it slept. But no trace of the creature could be found. In our desperation we turned to an idea that, in reflection, seems the pinnacle of madness – we waited in the darkness with our guns, and we lured it to the town square with a bonfire.

We thought the visitations of the first nights were the stuff of nightmares. The night of the bonfire showed us the depths of our ignorance and our folly. No one will suggest such a scheme again, of that I am certain. If there can be any hope for us, salvation will clearly not come from bullets. Did all of our shots fall wide of their mark, or were they simply unable to pierce the beast's flesh? Either way, we failed to purchase any of the creature's blood with all of the lives we spent in the attempt.

So now at day's end we simply cower in the dark. Sundown brings an end to activity of any kind. We huddle together in the night and –

The flapping of wings! I must snuff my candle!