The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron Read Online Free

of bat-houses in various areas, including right here.”
    “Like a birdhouse, but for bats.”
    “Exactly.” That smile again. “I’ll be honest, Mrs Massenet—”
    “Lydie.”
    “—a lot of people seem to think the idea of opening their arms to flying mice is a bit of a deal-breaker. One lady was convinced they spread rabies, for example; that sort of stereotype. Old wives’ tales, to put it frankly.”
    “Didn’t want guano in their hair?”
    “Didn’t want bats in their hair.” They both chuckled. “Foolish, I know. Bats are nocturnal, far more interested in insects and nectar than anybody’s follicles. You’d barely see them, except at dusk.”
    “Sounds sort of nice, to me. Do they make noise?”
    “Not within the hearing-range of most humans.”
    Lydie shrugged. “Okay, then. I’m sold.”
    “Wonderful! You won’t regret it—we’ll be in and out, no muss, no fuss. And the public health benefits will be striking, once the bats have had a bit of time to do their work.”
    “I don’t doubt it. So… you must be from the university, right? Did they bus you in?”
    “Most of us, yes; some of us live here, in the area.”
    “Nice to work where you live.”
    “Yes.” Paula’s sharp eyes—an odd non-colour, neither grey nor blue, almost clear when glimpsed straight-on—shifted from Lydie’s, focusing instead on the tarp, as well as the earth piled neatly next to it. “You’ve been doing some work of your own, by the look of it.”
    “Oh, uh… not officially. I mean—”
    “May I see?”
    “Well…”
    …why not?
    Surprising, in its way, the idea that she would want to show Paula, a complete stranger, what she’d so carefully managed to keep from everyone else—her loved ones, supposedly. The people who loved her. And yet, that did seem to be what that usually silent voice deep inside her was suggesting… that midnight whisper, sexless and dark, ambiguous as Paula’s own throaty purr.
    ( Don’t listen, Lydie. They lie.)
    So—
    “Yes,” Lydie replied, and moved the tarp aside, allowing Paula to see: the hole, and what it concealed. A gaping, sod-lipped mouth which never quite promised answers, for everything else it delivered; oddities, rarities, the strange, the unique. Something you could hold in your hand and study, but never fully understand, except perhaps in dreams.
    The dig went ten feet in, these days, much of it almost straight down—a ladder she’d found in the shed providing access, tall enough to reach the roof when unfurled—and with an odd little trailing twist at the bottom, brief sloping sketch of further possibilities. Ethan would be horrified; Lydie couldn’t even venture a guess at what her mother-in-law would think. They were such sweet people, really, it seemed only right to hide the truth where it couldn’t hurt them… kinder, in its way, than the alternative.
    If Mom’d only done that, she found herself thinking, sometimes, as she hadn’t let herself for years, then things would’ve—might’ve been—very different.
    Paula took in everything Lydie’d spent the last two months doing, then hiding—the open wound of her craziness, at long last laid bare—with one swift, shrewd, searching glance. Then turned her back, stepping down into darkness, sinking ’ til all Lydie could see of her was the top of her head; her voice seeped back up, dirt-magnified, made hollow at the bone. “Fascinating,” she said. “This is… Neolithic, would you say?”
    “Older, maybe. I think it got folded under when the glaciers shifted.”
    “Yes, very likely. You’re extremely perceptive, Mrs Massenet.”
    Lydie shrugged, embarrassed. “Hardly. I mean—it’s weird to think about, something like this under our feet, just hidden away… still so perfect after so many years, with all this suburban crap slapped on top. But there you go.”
    “It is odd,” Paula agreed, words deepening further as she bent to rummage through the slick bottom of the shaft,