Chapter 558

Obiang clutched the rough fabric of her shawl tighter around her shoulders, the damp night air of the jungle seeping into her bones. The usual symphony of nocturnal creatures was strangely muted, replaced by a heavy, unsettling stillness.

The village elder, Baba Nguema, had warned them. He'd spoken of a darkness, a malevolent spirit inhabiting the body of a creature of the night. Nobody had believed him, of course. Until tonight.

She hurried along the muddy path, the beam of her flashlight shaking in her trembling hand. Her home, a small hut built of mud and thatch, was just ahead.

A flapping sound. It was closer, faster. Unlike the natural flight of other bats; this felt menacing, intentional, as if its direction was chosen with intention, but not simply for landing nearby; rather, it held malice and violent motive, seeking to cause Obiang fright in addition to any subsequent actions it might do on top of scaring the poor woman.

Obiang's breath hitched. She spun around, flashlight beam darting wildly, catching nothing but the dense, dark foliage of the Equatorial Guinean jungle.

"Who's there?" she called out, her voice wavering with fear. The language, Fang, usually strong and confident, felt thin and reedy in the oppressive silence.

Only the answering silence greeted her. The earlier sound was not so distant anymore; whatever was creating such sounds was rapidly drawing near.

Then, she saw it.

Perched on a low-hanging branch, directly in the path of her flashlight, was a bat. Not a fruit bat, with their gentle, dog-like faces. This was something…different. Its eyes glowed with a sickly, green light, the membrane on its folded and wrinkled and its wings appeared unusually thick, almost monstrous.

Obiang took a step back, a primal fear gripping her heart, because no bat that she'd seen, no creature with which she was familiar, possessed such an appearance.

The bat unfurled its wings, revealing a grotesque wingspan far larger than any bat she'd ever seen. They spread with alarming speed, like the unfolding of some monstrous dark blanket, covering her view.

It launched itself at her.

Obiang screamed, a short, sharp cry swallowed by the jungle's sudden, unnatural intensification. She threw her hands up, the flashlight clattering to the ground, its beam illuminating a patch of disturbed earth.

The bat attacked with savage ferocity, claws like sharpened razors, and now that she could feel them, having observed them first from the small, dim flashlight's pale-yellow, dim light, she felt terror; such razor-sharp claws were easily entering her body as if cutting through the most vulnerable flesh, soft like an organ or that between ribs or an abdomen.

Obiang fought, desperate and terrified, swatting at the creature with all her strength. But it was relentless, its unnatural speed and strength overwhelming.

She felt a sharp, searing pain in her arm as the bat's teeth, long and needle-sharp, sank into her flesh.

The world started to spin. The green glow from the bat's eyes seemed to engulf her, to seep into her very being, burning at her as it entered.

She fell to the ground, the bat still clinging to her, its claws digging into her with impossible strength. She screamed in a loud manner, hoping the sounds of the shrieks would alert someone, yet aware that it was futile.

The last thing she saw, before darkness consumed her, was the monstrous bat, its face contorted in a hideous grimace, and those eyes, burning with an unholy, green light, which no animal ever has; eyes like emeralds on fire, lit from deep within the monster with that infernal, unnatural green.

The village was silent when the sun rose. Smoke curled lazily from cooking fires, but there was no movement, no sound of morning preparations.

A young boy, Efiri, wandered out of his hut, looking for his mother. He found her lying near the well, her body contorted in an unnatural position, eyes staring blankly at the sky.

He ran to her, calling her name, shaking her. But she was cold, stiff, dead.

Fear choked him. He ran, screaming, to the next hut, then the next, and each time it was all in vain.

The same scene greeted him at every home. The villagers, his friends, his family, all dead. Their bodies broken, twisted, with the same horrifying, vacant stares.

Efiri, alone and terrified, stumbled through the village, his small voice lost in the awful silence. He saw birds lying lifeless on the ground, monkeys still and silent in the trees. Every single member of his entire world had ceased to exist, or at least cease to be among the living.

Even the ever-present insects were gone. The jungle itself felt dead, holding its breath in morbid anticipation.

He reached the edge of the village, turning back to look at the silent huts, a tear rolling down his dusty cheek. He wished so badly he had died as well.

A flapping sound.

Efiri looked up. High above, circling slowly, was a single bat. Its eyes, even from this distance, seemed to glow with a sickly, triumphant green, an evil, vibrant green that pulsed as the bat turned toward the direction Efiri fled.

He whimpered, a small, broken sound, and turned to flee. He ran into the jungle, small legs pumping furiously, not knowing where he was going, only that he had to escape.

The bat followed. Its shadow, large and monstrous, seemed to glide effortlessly over the jungle floor, always just behind the fleeing boy. He stumbled multiple times.

The sound of its wings grew louder, closer, until it filled his ears, drowning out even his own desperate sobs. Efiri didn't want this, no kid ever does.

He felt a sharp pain in his back, then another, and another. Tiny claws, like sharpened needles, tearing into his flesh, but far worse this time, more brutal, stronger and less inhibited than earlier, before dawn, before the sky got bright and turned it into the terrible new day of loss.

Efiri screamed, a high-pitched wail of pure terror, and fell. He landed face down in the mud, the weight of the monstrous bat pressing him down, its claws and teeth ripping and tearing at him as he breathed one more painful breath of his very final.

The bat feasted, undisturbed, the only sound the gruesome tearing of flesh and the sickening crunch of bone. After a period of pure suffering and a cruel demise for little Efiri, he had become no more than the others, his elders, a victim of the bat.

Hours later, the sun began to set, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple, the vibrant light casting an eerie, macabre scene upon the lifeless trees.

The bat, swollen and bloated from its gruesome meal, finally finished its bloody meal, not hungry enough to take another bite, as satisfied as evil would allow; satisfied as if one only were allowed to express one's evil through consuming another being.

It took flight, leaving behind a scene of unimaginable horror, only a trail of shredded remains, as small buzzards picked through the gruesome aftermath that only existed now due to the creature, the horror that Obiang could never have possibly imagined.

It flew higher, circling above the silent village, above the still jungle. It circled once, twice, and let out a screech which might be considered like a roar, loud.

Then, it turned and flew west, towards the setting sun, a single, dark speck against the fiery sky. A harbinger of death, heading towards another unsuspecting village.

Back in the devastated village, Obiang's body lay undisturbed. She hadn't been eaten, unlike the others.

But something was different. A slow, subtle tremor ran through her body. Not the spasms of death, but something…else. Something that involved a resurgence of something that had only been diminished rather than destroyed,

Her eyes opened.

They glowed, not with the warmth of life, but with the same, sickly, unholy green light that had marked the monstrous bat. A truly grotesque image; to observe such a thing, if only an animal existed to notice and know of this evil

A smile, slow and chilling, spread across her lips. It was not Obiang's smile. Not anymore. She moved with a slowness and cruelty.

She sat up, her movements stiff, unnatural, like a puppet being manipulated by unseen strings. But this time, more horrible than before, something she'd have never tolerated; she herself could never have possibly had conceived of being that way.

She looked around, her green eyes taking in the scene of carnage with a strange, detached sense. It might seem like calm observance, but inside that evil thing she was, it was something else.

Then, slowly, painfully, she began to transform.

Her skin became taut, stretching over her bones in an unnatural way. Her fingers elongated, the nails thickening and sharpening into vicious claws. She appeared so evil that she appeared even deformed.

From her back, sprouting with a sickening sound of tearing flesh, came wings. Not the feathered wings of a bird, but leathery, bat-like wings, far larger than any human should ever possess. They'd appeared seemingly from thin air.

Obiang, or rather, what had once been Obiang, stood on shaking legs. The transformation was incomplete, agonizing.

But it was working. She took to the air and fell again.

With a screech that echoed the bat's triumphant cry, the creature spread its new, grotesque wings and took flight, a grotesque mockery of human and beast, destined to continue the horrifying cycle of death, but she lacked freedom.

She would carry this cycle for many generations to come; the cycle and its curse she, and she alone, must eternally maintain, because that had become the purpose of what she'd become; what she was had changed forever. It had chosen her specifically because she had to live on.