“Lab.”
“Storage.”
“Faraday cage.”
“Crawler tunnel access.”
She paused after pointing out the tunnel access.
“Keep well away from this one. Like the library roof, it is especially off-limits.”
It wasn’t much of a job orientation.
His task for the night was straightforward enough. Watch the rag moth. Valentina’s reason for the assignment was similarly simple.
“Because I don’t know what may happen,” she said.
“Might something happen?”
“Always.”
“Uh, anything specific come to mind?”
“Yes and no. Rag moth corpses never last. They vanish. A fair number have been studied, perhaps a dozen, but you won’t find one preserved under glass or suspended in formaldehyde. No one knows what happens to them. Digital recording does not work. And, as far as I can tell from past accounts, this one is due to disappear at any moment. Thus, my reluctance to be away from the cabin.”
“Okay, do you have a theory about how it will vanish?”
“Many, but we have a specimen present, so observation eclipses hypothesis.”
“Is there anything, I don’t know, particular I’m watching for?”
“Just watch. Mr. Green, I have barely slept since I laid the specimen on that table. I need you to stay vigilant while I recover my energy. Forced to guess, I would say the corpse may spontaneously disintegrate. Perhaps some residual mechanism of the moth’s entropy defense will destroy the body. Again, your job is to leave aside prediction and focus on observation.”
“What’s stopping that residual mechanism from destroying me?”
“Past evidence. One rag moth corpse vanished from a workbench beside an aquarium housing fire-bellied newts. The newts were unharmed.”
“Comforting, I guess. What if these corpses are reawakening and just flying off? Maybe it wouldn’t be intimidated by newts. What if it just resurrects and mummifies me?”
“Very unlikely. That would have been evident in past disappearances.”
“Unlikely? Just unlikely?”
“I shan’t tell you it’s impossible.”
“So, what do I do if it wakes up?”
“You remember a fundamental truth of studying cryptids.”
“And what’s that?”
“These are animals. Same as you or me. They are not demons or monsters. They are not human-centric punishments or objects of elemental terror. They are nature. So? You tell me. What happens if the moth awakens? What should you do?”
Green felt a jolt of annoyance at her words. She wasn’t sitting in the car when the unearthly thing licked the blood from his face. She hadn’t spent the last few months being chased out of her life by an inexplicable acorn and a memory with dark feathers and edges too sharp to touch.
He forced himself to set aside his anger and consider her words. What if the moth was like any other animal? The creature had a deadly defense mechanism, but if it didn’t need defending…
“I stay still. Inconspicuous.”
