Tony Walker

Its features were leathery, something hidden under giant wings as it remained motionless.

It regularly appeared each full moon his visitor, as he'd come to think of it.

Ever since the night of the Blood Moon, many autumns ago, when he was three, the winged thing had come.

No sound announced its presence.

No movement, save for its sudden appearance as he awoke from the nightmare he'd just experienced.

The nightmare was always the same.

Sometimes he'd flee the figure, other times the cloaked man would vanish and he'd startle awake, though always paralysed as he was now.

They occurred at the same frequency every full moon, and like clockwork they formed a regular pattern in his life.

Now, thirteen, no meaning was to be found as the two duelled between worlds.

Matthew was no longer afraid, not even of death, only curious, with a deep weight on his chest like someone pressing down.

He couldn't take his eyes off it, the shadow at the window which felt as familiar to him as a family member.

His father slept soundly in the next room, but he had only eyes for this thing.

every time he closed his eyes he saw the cloaked man from the nightmare outside his house its shadow casting a long form over the street where it stood its face was in shadow as it moved not only beckoning with its finger occasionally dreamland its home come to me my child it often said come with me

Let us fly and see the sky for ourselves.

Then join me in the land where you can be free.

At last.

He'd felt able to move whenever that happened, but a better sense of instinct told him to stay put, for his winged friend was not done.

He sensed a conflict between the two, as if he were a pawn in the larger game, as he remained fixed on its form.

It occasionally moved, a brief flutter of the wings before remaining motionless again.

he remained in bed simply staring at it another flutter would follow and his eyes would close of their own accord visions of strange words forming in the darkness