Ripley's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Ripley had not slept in four nights, and the thing behind him was getting braver. He walked the wet streets of Nola with his key already in his fist, counting the sounds that were his and the ones that were not. His boots. The drip from the gutters. A soft leather flap that kept pace two steps behind, then paused when he paused. He was learning the city's shadow craft the hard way, one sleepless block at a time, because whatever followed him home each night had started scratching at his door before dawn. Tonight he would name it or he would not last another shift at the fish dock. He carried a folding knife in one pocket and a small camp mirror in the other. The mirror was the plan. He would turn a corner, crouch low against a planter, and angle the glass back the way he came. He would see it once. Then he would decide whether to run or swing. He took the corner near a shuttered laundromat and dropped to one knee. The mirror shook in his hand until he pinned his wrist to the brick. In the smeared glass he saw the street he had just walked, the puddles, the sagging power lines, and a shape clinging to the wall about six feet up. It was the size of a small dog. Wet fur, orange teeth, a rat's face, and folded wings like a bat's, ribbed and leathery. Its eyes caught the streetlight and threw it back red. It was watching the corner he had just turned, waiting for him to keep moving. Ripley's breath stopped. He had grown up hearing dock workers joke about swamp things with wings. He had never believed them. He closed the mirror slow and set it on the pavement. Then he stood, stepped back around the corner, and clapped his hands once, hard. The creature startled and dropped from the wall. It hit the street on all fours, hissed, and lifted into the air with two heavy beats of its wings. It did not fly away. It circled once above him, low enough that he felt the wind off it, and then landed on the fire escape across the street and stared. Not hungry. Not confused. Waiting. Someone had sent it. Ripley walked the last three blocks home with his knife open in his hand and the thing gliding roof to roof above him. At his door he turned and looked up. It was perched on the gutter, patient as a clerk. He went inside, locked the bolt, and sat on the floor with his back to the wood. He knew what was following him now. He did not know who owned it, or why it had chosen him, and until he did, sleep was still a thing other people got to have.