A Shadow So Big

I am writing you my demon story.

I should warn you that memory is a lousy witness. It hides evidence, rearranges events, and lets the paranormal erase its tracks in daylight. But this much is true: when I was seven, I dared a boy to touch a dying bat. He died. When I was nine, a shadow began standing beside my bed. Then came the exorcisms, my father's murder, and my mother's descent into a reality no one else could see.

I grew up and did the sensible thing: I became a horror director.

Now I'm forty-eight, back in Wisconsin to shoot a ghost story. Old memories are cracking open. And the secrets buried by my mother, an occult church, and the mysterious man who led it are beginning to look like pieces of the same infernal puzzle.

To get rid of the demon, I have to learn its name.

To learn its name, I have to return to the beginning.

Of course, this assumes the Bat is real. It could be trauma. It could be madness. It could be the shadow my family has cast across my entire life.

But shadows aren't supposed to move on their own.