Tony Walker

He kept written records of them hidden away, an unusual language that he could never forget.

They resembled no other words he'd ever seen, yet every new moon he studied them, feeling a subtle transformation inside as he recited them occasionally.

As he did, he felt a sudden desire to look in the mirror.

whereby his face would contort slightly.

The first time he had screamed, his father raced in to determine the cause of his son's anxiety.

He refused to speak after that, a mute, for whom the doctors could find no reason for his affliction.

"'Since then, he wrote profusely, "'a work slowly forming that he knew would mean something to him someday, "'but for what purpose he did not know.

"'He had the vague sense that his friend was relaying information.'

a way to do something, but he knew not what.

He was sometimes woken in the morning by strange screaming, usually from a nightmare.

As he looked in the mirror, his face had contorted again before returning to normal.

Nobody knew what was happening to him save for his father, who had read his scribblings but was none the wiser, instead feeling that this was a phase he was going through.

To Matthew, the winged thing was real and he grew accustomed to its presence.

Over time, he felt the cloaked man was a separate creature, somehow linked to the other, but with more maniacal purposes that he could not guess.

over time some sense of this purpose began to form as nightmares now took on a different shape he saw the cloaked man and the winged thing as they strove in a painted scene movements slow but gradual he heard them talk the roaring of monsters and dark things in the night as the game they played was drawing to a close

Many years ago, a boy from a local family had attacked one of Matthew's friends quite viciously.

Matthew had come to his aid, leading to a physical altercation.

He had never forgotten the injury nor his emotion towards the boy, something which now returned to him in a dream.

Matthew had always feared death.

His mother had died in her sleep when he was younger in mysterious circumstances leading to visions of his own mortality, which were now played to him over continual nights as both the cloaked man and the boy consumed him and his mother.