<strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">The Roads Heading East toward Devil Bat Cave</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 11, 2010 (still night but very early AM)</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">As the women in the car continued to talk, Mark focused his attention on the road, and chimed in, “Uh, we can stop at the Huffy on the way back, get a tow for your car, but maybe we can get out to the caves now, before it’s too much later.” He slipped back into silence after this little comment, the noise of the women’s voices only accompanied by the suck-thump of the car’s windshield wipers and the softer sound of the rain that seemed to be lessening the closer they got to the coast.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">At the cliff leading down to Devil Bat Cave Mark was prepared to have to get out of the car and try to jimmy open the chain barring the access road down to the cave itself. Luckily, his car was small, and so he hoped the tires would grip the narrow dirt road made soggy by the downpour. There was, however, no chain barring the road—it was snapped, as if someone had driven through it.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">He started the descent down the winding road slowly, the headlights pointing out into blackness before the car made itself point completely downward. As the road curved around, slowly the small car approached the maw of Devil Bat Cave. The opening entrance was at least 50 feet in height and the water that rushed in and out from the ocean could be made out at the endmost reaches of the car’s headlights. The car idled at the opening of the cave. No one made a move to get out. It was black out here save for the car headlights and the somewhat distant sweep of the lighthouse’s bright beacon. There was no evidence of anyone standing around, no evidence of anyone having been out here, at least from their current vantage point in the car, and yet all of the car’s occupants had a distinct feeling that they were being watched, scrutinized. Everywhere they looked, however, was only blackness and darkness; they could make out no one in or around the cave who was staring at them.</span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Reggy’s House</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Cape Merrin</span></strong><br/><strong><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">November 11, 2010 (still night but very early AM)</span></strong><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">As Reggy struggled with the grief of losing some of his only mementos of his father, the rat he had removed from the satchel leapt to the floor and trotted from the room, a little ratty blood trail in its wake. A moment or two later, while Reggy was still providing the strange girl some privacy by turning his back, a shuffle step was heard in the hall, and the emaciated figure of Silas wrapped in a bath towel that was doubling as clothing and wound stauncher appeared in the doorway of Reggy’s room. Nickel-sized drops of blood pattered on the floor at his feet and soaked into the towel he had retrieved from the bathroom down the hall. He looked worse than earlier in the evening, if that were even possible. “Reg-Reggy, please. The book?” Silas turned and headed back down the hallway, either shy or unwilling to remain in the room with the girl. </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><br/><span class="bbc_font" style="font-family: Georgia;">Silas flipped on the bathroom light and on the mirror he drew a symbol on the mirror: two Isosceles triangles intersected by a circle. When Reggy followed him into the smaller room, he pointed to the mirror and said, “Look for that heading in the book.” His pallor was extreme, his skin taking on a waxy and sallow color. Something Reggy might only have associated with the greasy, unwashed fatness of his mother, but here, it was over Silas’s body as well. Unlike Deborah, though, Silas’s eyes looked sunken and badly bruised. He was clearly in pain and very much wounded. Coughing blood onto his gaunt chest, the ratty man added, “I’ll show you what to read after that. How to say it.”</span><br/>