Beers With Mothman

New Short Fiction for 2026

“Have you ever written any stories about monsters?” That was a question that I’ve had a time or two from a subscriber, and I freely admitted that monster fiction was not at all my genre or my thing. I dutifully launched Cryptid Quest as a paid feature back in March to try and learn about the topic a little bit, but I have never actually produced any short fiction about it. Originally, I was thinking that this would be a good second entry for Cryptid Quest— maybe this time featuring a look at either the book or the movie of The Mothman Prophecies, but instead, I figured… what the hell and just uncorked a story instead.

I don’t normally write in the first person because I think I end up sounding like myself way too much and not like the character I’m trying to write, so that’s something of a departure from my usual preferences here. (The opening ‘graph does reflect my irritation at Grammarly thinking I sounded too much like an AI, so that part is all me!) I did do a basic dive into the history of Mothman and what appearances were reported and associated with— the bridge collapse cited in this story, in passing, actually happened. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it, and I’m thrilled to present Beers With Mothman.

~~~

You know what I really resent? Trying to put this damn story into words only to have this stupid grammar checker highlight my opening paragraph and tell me ‘THIS SECTION RESEMBLES AI TEXT’ yeah, well, bite me, asshole. I am no clanker. I am a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood human being, and I am trying to put this shit into words before I forget it all, and even then, I’m not entirely sure anyone is going to believe me, because I’m not sure if I believe me. I’m not sure what I even saw.

My story begins in the fall… far from the madding crowds thronging the campus of the University of West Virginia, in what could charitably be described as a shithole bar on the banks of the Monongahela River. It was my kind of bar: quiet, dingy, with decor more suited to the 1970s than the present day. Over the years, it had attracted a decent amount of sportswriters who reported or wanted to wind down after filing their stories, or in the case of some of them, frantically bang away on their laptops, crashing their deadlines.

That night, I was firmly in the former camp. The West Virginia Mountaineers had triumphed over a ranked and now no longer unbeaten Pitt team, and another edition of the Backyard Brawl was in the books. The faint miasma of merrily burning upholstery hung in the air. I was halfway through my usual: a bourbon on the rocks, when my phone began to buzz obnoxiously in my pocket. I pulled it out of my pocket with a grimace as I saw who it was.

“Harold, I filed already.”

“I know, I know,” my boss was one of those people who sounded permanently annoyed. “I got another assignment for you.”

“What possible assignment?”

“Gonna send you to Point Pleasant, West Virginia.”

I, like so many people who aren’t from West Virginia, asked the obvious question: “Where the hell is Point Pleasant, West Virginia?”

“You’re covering the Marshall game next weekend.”

“I am?”

“You are now, and it’s on the way. Perfect stop you can make. Add a little local color to our coverage, and who knows, maybe there’s an actual story there.”

“About what?”

“I’ll send you the details,” Harold replied. “Usual expenses apply. Try not to bankrupt us.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Thanks.” And as usual, without so much as a goodbye, he disconnected the call. I rolled my eyes and took another pull from my bourbon. So I was going to Marshall next weekend. I honestly had no idea who they were, even playing, so I’d have to figure that out as well. As if it heard me, my phone buzzed on the bartop, and I picked it up.

Harold was efficient as usual: press access for the game– the Thundering Herd were taking on the Dukes of James Madison, it appeared. The hotel was the usual, generic chain– comfortable, but not fancy, with a free continental breakfast. And then, I kept scrolling and saw the embed for the local news story. I clicked on it.

I read it once.

I read it twice.

I looked up the source and confirmed it was a real website. I also searched on my phone and found that the Point Pleasant Gazette is the paper of record for Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Then, I put my phone down and drained the rest of my bourbon, savoring the burning sensation as it drained down the back of my throat and trying not to choke and cough and send bourbon pouring out through my nose.

Then, I put the glass down on the bar and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

~

Four days later, I rolled into Point Pleasant still not entirely convinced that my editor wasn’t playing some kind of elaborate prank on me. I had actually taken the time to print out the story from the Point Pleasant Gazette because this was West Virginia after all, and in the nooks and crannies and hollers of Appalachia, one couldn’t expect reliable cell service half the time, never mind access to the internet.

‘BEERS WITH MOTHMAN’ the headline proclaimed. That was crazy enough, but the rest of the article, believe it or not, got even wilder: “The secret of Mothman has finally been revealed, and the man behind the mask will tell you all about himself, and all you have to do is buy him a beer. John Cheverson, the real-life Mothman, will be at the Legion Bar in downtown all week, ready to tell all…”

The town depressed me, but then again, so much of West Virginia depressed me. The people defied every stereotype that the rest of the country had about them. The place was stunningly beautiful. It had so many towns hidden in valleys and tucked alongside rivers. It should have been drenched in tourism dollars and swimming in jobs, money, and prosperity, and instead it just… wasn’t.

A burger joint appeared ahead of me, so I swung into the parking lot to orient myself. Point Pleasant wasn’t exactly big. There was a motel on the south side of town that would serve as my lodging for the night, and tomorrow, all that lay ahead of me, and my next assignment was an hour of winding down the highway along the Ohio River and into Huntington.

But for now, it was time for lunch. I turned the car off and extricated myself from the front seat and out into the brilliant white light of the early afternoon with a groan. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I was getting older. I couldn’t do these mad road trips to college all over the country the way I used to. Too many hours in the car, and I would hobble around like a 92-year-old man until my hip clicked back in, or worse, my sciatica stopped hurting quite so much. I was on the wrong side of 45 to be talking about sciatica. I shouldn’t even know what my sciatica was.

“So, I’m going to make healthy choices and go eat a burger and wash it down with some fries and a Coke.” The irony was not lost on me. I knew the lifestyle was catching up to me. Two ex-wives and a kid were proof of that. A lot of therapy and being forced to quit nicotine had made me confront a lot of my faults and take accountability and make amends to all three of them. I loved my kid dearly. I could tolerate one of my ex-wives, and the other one actually checked in on me from time to time, though she claimed that was more for the kiddo’s benefit. I’ve got a vested interest, she would always tell me. Our daughter needs to have a father who sees her graduate from high school, college, and who walks her down the aisle

I would roll my eyes and blow her off like I always did, but then on these roadtrips, I’d pull into parking lots just like this one, getting out of the car and just be in pain for what seemed like forever until I could walk upright again. Oh, my doctor had recommended stretches, which helped a little bit, but in the end- “God damn, that hurts,” I muttered as I tried getting my hip loosened up a little bit. I cursed a few more times and tried to stretch my leg this way and then, before gingerly taking a few laps in my rental car. Finally, when I was only walking with what I thought was a slight limp and not looking like Verbal Kint from The Usual Suspects, I started to make my way toward the entrance to the burger joint.

A bell tinkled as I opened the door and made my way inside. A bored-looking young man, his face awash with a veritable plague of teenage acne, greeted me. “Welcome to Bill Burger, may I take your order?”

I glanced up at the menu board. “I’ll take the… uh, number… four. The bacon cheeseburger.”

“You want the meal or just the sandwich?”

“I’ll take the meal,” I replied.

“Regular fries, curly fries, or onion rings?”

I thought about onion rings for half a second, but I have a long-standing personal rule that if curly fries were on the menu, I would get curly fries. There is no better form of fried potato out there, and I was always curious to see how non-chain restaurants handled them.

“Curly fries.”

“And to drink?”

“I’ll take a Diet Coke,” I replied.

The bored-looking young man’s eyes narrowed. “You ain’t from around here, are you?”

“Nope, just passing through,” I replied.

“You’re here to talk to him, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I’m just here to get some lunch,” I replied with a grin that I hoped masked my frustration at not getting my order completed.

“Oh, right,” the bored-looking young man pressed a button on the cash register. “That’ll be fourteen twenty-five.”

“Thanks,” I pulled my wallet out of my pocket and waited for a moment until the screen indicated I could tap, and I did so, selecting the option for a paper receipt. The bored-looking young man handed me a number to put on the table and then a cup to go along with my receipt.

“Out of curiosity,” I asked. “Who do you think I’m here to see?”

“Him,” the bored-looking young man shrugged. “That one dude that’s been camping out at the Legion Bar and telling everyone he’s Mothman.”

“You had a lot of people come through looking to talk to him?”

“A few,” the bored-looking young man replied. “Mainly local news types from up in Charleston.”

“Do you think he’s Mothman?”

“No,” and for the first time, the bored-looking young man didn’t look bored; he looked scornful. “He’s a grifter, everybody knows it.”

“How do you know he’s a grifter?”

The young man rolled his eyes. “Because Mothman is real. Obviously.”

“Oh, well, obviously,” I replied with a grin. I picked up my number and made my way back into the seating area, looking for a table. I found a nice one, close to the window, and set my number down on the table before making my way to the soda fountain to get my Diet Coke. Once that was secured, I slipped back into my booth and pulled out my phone. Bored-Looking Young Man had convinced me of one thing, though: despite being sent here to add a little local color to our coverage of college football, I realized that I knew precisely nothing about Mothman.

So, while I waited for my food, I started to dig through the internet to find out what exactly I was looking for.

What I found was absolutely wild; there was no other word for it. There was a book. There was a movie. There were reports of a young couple being chased from the old Army base back into town. Appearances were tied to the bridge collapse back in the 60s, but then appearances faded out. There were rumors, of course, unexplained noises and sightings that were so common across Appalachia. I wasn’t from the region, but I had travelled enough and spoken enough to people in the region to understand that if you lived in the woods or on the edge of town and heard a strange noise at night, you stayed the hell inside.

My food appeared, and I nodded my thanks to the bored-looking young man and kept right on reading. Every documented appearance. Every legend. Every sighting. There were blogs. There were professional associations. Cryptobiological research papers were speculating about its origins, its biology, and how it could fly, or even if it could fly at all. Then there was the merchandise: so much merchandise. T-shirts, coffee mugs, kitchenware, beer, whiskey, moonshine, toys, hell, even sex toys.

(Yes, sex toys. No, I don’t understand the appeal of it. And no, I’m not going to describe how the wings worked on a Mothman sex toy. Use your imagination, you sick freak.)

Eventually, I reached the bottom of the internet barrel when I found myself falling into a warren of Mothman fanfiction. That was definitely enough research for the day, so I switched gears, finishing up my burger and then starting on my curly fries to see what I could find out about John Cheverson.

Turns out there was way more than I expected. The Cheverson family had been in these parts since the town was granted its official charter all the way back in 1794. John’s Great Great Grandfather, Milton, had served as Mayor for three terms. John’s Grandad had served in World War II. His Dad had gone a different direction and became an accomplished carpenter and furniture maker, but John had followed in his Grandad’s footsteps and served in the military. Grenada, Panama, the First Gulf War, before returning to his hometown and becoming a science teacher at the local high school.

One marriage, which produced one kid and ended in… “Cancer? Oh, that’s sad,” I muttered. Kiddo seemed to have moved on or was no longer local, and Cheverson retired from teaching late the year before and now…

“Now, he’s Mothman.”

I turned it over in my head, musing over my curly fries. The curly fries were excellent, by the way– I highly recommend this burger joint if you ever find yourself in Point Pleasant. I took my time with them because I wanted to savor them. Let curly fries get too cool, and then they can get soggy and more than a little greasy, but there wasn’t exactly a surplus of customers in the place that afternoon, so the bored-looking young man had brought me curly fries fresh out of the fryer.

And do you know how good really fresh curly fries are? They’re incredible.

But, back to the matter at hand: I was cynical. I had been a reporter for way too long, and worse still, I was a sportswriter who wrote about college football. And man, if there’s a sport that’s beautiful and chaotic and corrupt and just a glorious mess on a good weekend, it’s college football. It’s very easy to be cynical about the whole enterprise, and my cynical brain was looking at this story and coming to conclusions I didn’t particularly like.

Cheverson had been a pillar of the community for decades. He had served his country. He had done what the US Government absolutely loves after serving: he became a teacher. He checked every box: steady job, pillar of the community, married, had a kid, had a house, had a yard, never been in trouble with the law, generally seen as an upstanding citizen, but–

Then his wife died. Cancer. His kid grew up, and like so many kids from West Virginia and Appalachia in general, saw an opportunity to get out and took it. He got older. Never remarried. Isolated. Maybe struggled with things and started drinking. Maybe got a little crazy– who knows, but the point was that I could paint a picture about John Cheverson without ever having even laid eyes on the man. It wasn’t a unique story. Old Man, wife dies, kid moves away, and gets a little eccentric in his old age. Maybe even a little crazy. The old cheese starts slipping off the cracker, and maybe people think it’s dementia or Alzheimer’s or any one of a dozen damn things that old people get.

The Mothman angle was unique, but the overall story wasn’t.

I slipped the last curly fry into my mouth and suddenly realized how annoyed I was. This wasn’t local color. This was comic relief. A way to slip some pre-Halloween ‘har-de-har, look at these yokels believing in Mothman.’ If Marshall wins, it’s down to the power of Mothman. If Marshall loses, it’s the curse of Mothman. This was the kind of shit the Saturday morning pregame shows loved. It made for… well, I don’t know if I could call it ‘great’ television, but it worked for television. It tended to make for crappy writing, though.

I wanted to call Harold and bitch him out for wasting my time. But as soon as I realized that, I shook my head. “Damn, he’s a crafty old bastard, isn’t he?”

Harold knew I wasn’t an idiot. He knew how I worked. He knew that I would pull the thread of this story and realize where a lazier writer would take it. And he also knew I would be annoyed by it.

I slipped out of my booth, took my tray to the nearby garbage can, and dumped my trash inside it. I placed the tray on top and then grabbed my drink. I refilled it and headed back out into the brilliant white sunshine of a West Virginia afternoon. Time to find my hotel, check in, and then I would go and track down John Cheverson and see what this Mothman story was really about.

~

By the time I found my hotel, checked in, and made my way back to downtown Point Pleasant, I was mildly annoyed. For a start, the hotel was across the river in Ohio, which meant that I had to cross not one, but two bridges to get there (over the Kanahwa and the Ohio, respectively), and then I had to cross two bridges to get back, but as I made my way down Main Street, I was actually kind of impressed.

Sure, Main Streets were a dying concept all over the country, but Point Pleasant’s actually had a little bit of a heartbeat. They were trying. There was some charm here, but the further I drifted away from the downtown core, the more it began to fade. The Legion Bar, when I found it, was at the far end of Main Street, in a shabby-looking brick building that looked like it had seen better days. It wasn’t, as I had thought, an American Legion Post. I slid my car into a space across the street and got out, taking a long look at the place.

You could barely tell it was a bar. There was a pole that jutted out over the sidewalk and a faded sign that creaked in the soft breeze. The name was emblazoned in elegant gold cursive on a shield. I slipped my phone out of my pocket and took a picture of the sign, and then, with a confidence I honestly didn’t feel– because, frankly, the place looked more than a little sketchy- I pulled open the door and slipped inside.

Instantly, I fell in love with the place. It was dark. The color scheme was dark polished wood and various shades of maroon, olive green, and burnt umber that were commonly associated with the 1970s. The jukebox was playing… I cocked my head… was that… Tom Waits? I inhaled deeply, and the smell of decades of cigarette smoke filled my nostrils.

In the before times, before I got married and had a kid and responsibilities and liked not hacking up a lung constantly, I loved cigarettes. American Spirits, to be precise. In a bar, in a car, on the back stoop of that shitty apartment I had rented with a couple of buddies of mine back in college. There were moments, usually quiet ones at the end of the day, when I longed for a cigarette. Zyns weren’t enough. It wasn’t the nicotine; it was the feel of a cigarette in my hand, the mechanics of it that I missed. But… you know… the world turned, times changed, and smoking was bad now. I mean, it was bad before, but now people get really prickly about it.

“Can I help you?” The bartender sounded like he gargled bourbon for breakfast, but was honestly personable enough.

“Yes, I’m looking for John-”

The bartender sighed and pointed down the bar. “He’s in the back.”

“Thank you,” I replied.

“You want a drink?”

I grinned. “Unfortunately, it’s a little early for me.”

“Sun’s past the yardarm somewhere,” the bartender replied. “But suit yourself. Just be warned… he likes to talk.”

“That’s what I’m hoping,” I replied and made my way down the bar and into the shadows at the far end of the place. There, at the last booth, was John Cheverson.

“Mr. Cheverson?”

He looked up. “Ah, you’re a reporter.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gestured to the place opposite. “Well, take a seat, friend, and ask me the questions you want to ask.”

I slipped into the booth and took stock of the man. He was a big man– but maybe not as physically imposing as he used to be. Shoulders hunched with age, the weariness and exhaustion of moving through the world etched on his face, he seemed more tired than anything. But there was something about him, some flash of intelligence in his blue eyes that made me pause.

“I guess you know why I’m here.”

“I might have a hankering,” he drawled. “It honestly depends on the reporter, though. Some of them just think I’m crazy.”

“Are you crazy?”

“What do you think?”

I considered that. “I’ve read up on you a little bit. I don’t think you’re crazy, but then again, we just met in person about thirty seconds ago. It usually takes me a good hour or two to figure out if someone’s crazy.”

Cheverson threw back his head and laughed at that. “Damn, I like you. I think we’re going to get along just fine. So, let’s get to it.”

“Direct,” I noted, taking out my phone and placing it on the table between us. “I like that.” I nodded towards the phone. “You mind if I record?”

“Not at all,” Cheverson replied.

I pulled up the voice recorder and started a new file. I hit record, “Interview with John Cheverson at the Legion Bar in Point Pleasant.” I paused. “So, I guess we should probably start with the obvious question: you’re Mothman?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“How long have you been Mothman?”

“Well,” Cheverson mused. “The big reveal, I suppose I should lead with, is that this is a family thing longer than I realized. See, my grandpappy died about ten years back, and when we were cleaning out his house, that’s when I found get up and the note he wrote.”

“So you’re saying your Grandpappy was Mothman too?”

“And his Daddy, before that, going all the way back to the Civil War, near as I could tell,” Cheverson said. “As long as we’ve been in these parts, we’ve taken up the mantle of Mothman.”

“To protect people?”

“No, no…” Cheverson shook his head. “Nothing like that. Mothman ain’t that kind of thing… Mothman is a warning. Beware. Trouble’s coming. Danger is ahead.”

“I read something like that when I researched this,” I replied. “They say his appearances were tied to the bridge collapse back in the 60s?”

“That’s right,” Cheverson said. “My Pappy was one of the engineers on the project. I don’t know–” he stopped. “You thirsty?”

“Um, sure?”

Cheverson leaned out of the booth. “Hey, Michaels?”

“What?” The bartender called back.

“Bring us a pitcher and two glasses, will you?”

There was a sigh. “You could come get it yourself, you know.”

“I’m being interviewed, work with me here.”

Another sigh. “Fine, I’ll add it to your tab.”

Cheverson grinned. “Good man, Michaels. Now, where were we?”

“Your Pappy?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Anyway, I was clearing out his house after he died, and I found something.” He reached down into the seat next to him and pulled out something large and black from under the table. He passed it over to me. “Here, see for yourself.”

I unfolded it and saw that it was a mask in the shape of a moth’s head. Two large antennae stuck up out of the head, and the eyes were bulbous and bug-like. It was clearly meant to be Mothman.

“You found a mask,” I handed it back to Cheverson.

“Not just any mask,” Cheverson replied. He took it back from me and slipped it on his head. He reached up and touched the side of the mask, and suddenly the eyes lit up with an unearthly red glow. I shivered because suddenly Cheverson’s story of being Mothman seemed all too plausible.

“A mask doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” I said.

“That’s what I thought too, but then I found the diaries,” Cheverson said. “Turns out my Pappy didn’t like the quality of the steel that we got for the bridge back in the 60s. Something about it didn’t seem quite right to him, and he tried conventional ways. He tried reports. He tried checking himself, but he could prove nothing definitive enough for them to do anything about. My Grandpappy let him in on the family secret, and he tried warning people in… shall we say, unconventional ways.”

“The bridge collapsed anyway.”

“Just because we, as Mothman, attempt to warn people, doesn’t mean they actually listen,” Cheverson said. “In fact-”

He was interrupted by the arrival of two pitchers of beer and two glasses being carried by the bartender. “Thank you, Michaels.”

“You’re welcome,” Michaels sighed. “Two pitchers of Hamm’s Original, as ordered.”

“Hamm’s?” I asked in surprise.”Really?”

“You heard of it?” Cheverson seemed pleased. “Not many people around here have. It’s Mothman’s favorite beer.” He poured a generous measure into each glass.

“It was my old man’s favorite beer,” I said. “I haven’t had it in years. It was honestly probably the first beer I ever snuck out of the fridge in the garage was a Hamm’s.”

“That’s why I come to the Legion Bar,” Cheverson said. “It’s the only place that serves this stuff.”

“That and my tolerance for the tabs you run up,” Michaels replied before ambling back down towards the bar.

I took a sip of the beer. “Man,” I chuckled. “It still tastes as I remember it.”

“I don’t even think they sell it in cans anymore. Not around here,” Cheverson said.

“So,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back to the original point. “You say your Pappy and Grandpappy took up the… mask to warn people of various dangers that they thought were being ignored.”

“Yeah,” Cheverson said. “From what I could tell, my Grandpappy was concerned about the old Army ammo development site and the chemicals that were being dumped into the river and the drinking water. My Pappy was the bridge.”

“And what about you?” I asked. “Why now?”

“It makes sense,” Cheverson shrugged. “Why not now? If not now, when?”

“An abstract answer,” I noted. I took a sip from my beer. “But still doesn’t tell me why.”

“This place ain’t what it used to be,” Cheverson said. “The mines are dying. Coal is dying. They’re tearing the tops off the mountains to try and get every last nugget of it out of the ground. The days of Blair Mountain, where the people could fight the man and shed blood for themselves, are long past.”

He sighed heavily and took a long draw from his beer. “Maybe that’s just West Virginia. Stubborn, proud, always getting the shit kicked out of us by the man. Maybe we don’t know how to function without a bootheel on our necks. But the thing that kept me up at night, the thing I couldn’t get over, is that it’s not just us anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“America is being looted. More and more people are starting to see it, so there’s some hope. But the technocrats and the billionaires have purchased the government outright and maybe-” Cheverson held up a hand to forestall my objection. “Maybe it’s always been that way. But not with AI. And all these damn cameras they’re putting up in the name of ‘safety’. And crypto. And corruption, people need to get ready for what’s coming, and so, Mothman can do what he’s always done. Serve as-”

“A warning,” I finished.

~

What seemed like hours later, I half-stumbled out of the bar and into the night. I wasn’t entirely sure if I believed Cheverson, but that mask had seemed real enough, and the only question that I couldn’t shake in my mind was an old, familiar one: How the hell was I going to turn this into a story?

I sighed. The problem was two-fold: there was a story here, it’s just that it wasn’t going to be one that Harold liked or would fit in nicely with our coverage of the Marshall game. Maybe I could freelance it out as a feature? See if I could get a longer word count to work with? Harold might have some ideas about that, but for now…

“For now, you have to try and make it back to your hotel, dumbass.”

I was good to drive. I stepped off the curb, got tangled in my own feet for a second, and nearly wiped out completely in the middle of the road. I saved it somehow and managed to stay on my feet, but I took a good five-second pause to consider my actions. “No, no,” I said to myself. “I’m still good to drive.” A tiny little voice in the back of my head doubted that for a second as I mentally counted up the number of beers that I had drunk, and somehow, I wound up at four. Four beers and I had taken a piss after the third one, but– “Stop by the gas station just before the freeway and get some water?” I nodded and started across the street to the car. Yeah, that would work. I’d be parched anyway, and if I needed to chill out for a bit in the gas station parking lot, I could always see if I could figure out a good lede for the story.

I unlocked the car with the fob as I got close, and as I pulled the front door open, I turned just before I got in and stopped. To this day, I couldn’t tell you why I stopped. I don’t know if I heard something subconsciously. I don’t know if it was some instinct or just plain dumb luck, but what I do know is what happened next.

One by one, the street lights went out, and then I saw it.

Two red eyes in the darkness and the shape… it was tall and round and– then, the wings unfurled, and I saw the wings, unearthly, glowing green patterns in the dark, bioluminescent, a small part of me noted in wonder. Then, it screeched.

I have never heard a sound like that before or since. It’s impossible to describe; I can only recall two things about it. One, is that every hair on my body tried to stand up at the same time, and two, is that suddenly I was more sober than I had ever been in my life.

The bored-looking kid in the burger joint had been right all along. Cheverson couldn’t be Mothman. It was impossible. I had walked out of the bar maybe less than thirty seconds before, there was no way he could have put on a costume and gotten that far down the street and-

Another screech, and my mouth fell open as the wings began to flap and somehow, ludicrously, Mothman took to the sky. Higher and higher it flew until finally, it swooped down towards me and, instinctively, I ducked. I felt it go by me. I heard the wings and then… it was gone.

I realized that I was crouched down with my hands over my head and my eyes squeezed shut tightly, and I cautiously opened them and glanced around. The street lights were back on. I slowly stood up, still cautious, still using the open door of my car as a shield, from what exactly I wasn’t sure. I stood all the way up, a little more confident now, and carefully and thoroughly looked down the street, scanned every rooftop I could see, and slowly rotated, just to be sure, just to be absolutely sure that Mothman was well and truly gone.

I finished my rotation staring across the roof of my car, and that’s when I froze again, for sitting on top of the car, as if it had always been there this whole time, was a six-pack of beer. It was Hamm’s Original. I stared at it for a very long time.

“Fuck this,” I muttered. I grabbed the six-pack off the top of the car and got in. I locked my car doors, placed the beer on the seat next to me, and started the engine. I drove back to my hotel, going the posted speed limit and not one mile per hour higher. Got back to my room, locked the door, shoved a chair under my door for good measure, and did my level best to try and sleep.

I wasn’t all that successful.

The next day, I got the hell out of Point Pleasant as fast as I could. I wrote the story when I arrived in Huntington. I omitted the more unbelievable parts, and just as I thought, it was used as some light local color for Marshall’s Halloween game.

I tried to convince myself that it had all been a dream somehow, but try as I might, I just couldn’t.

A month after that, my alma mater, the University of St. Thomas, posted a job opening online for a Sports Information Director. I applied for it, not thinking for one second that I’d actually get the job, but I did. I tendered my resignation to Harold and got out of the journalism business for good.

I’ve never been back to West Virginia since, because what is there to go for? Mothman is real. Once upon a time, he left me a six-pack of beer on top of my rental car.

~