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she transformed right in front me. I hugged her even more tightly. “Everything will be okay,” I said, even though I didn’t believe it.
    “Everyone got up and ran out of the room. They all left me. They were afraid of me.” Her sobs intensified with each statement , and h er tears brought about my own tears . “Mrs. Kuzma said that if dad didn’t stop interfering, they were never going to be let ou t. That it would be all his fault if they remained trapped.”
    Never going to be let out… What was up with all this talk about being let out and trapped? “Everything is going to be okay,” I lied again.
    She sniffe d and gave a small laugh in embarrassment as snot started pouring out her nose. There was no joy in that laugh, and for that, I’m sorry because the next time I heard her laugh, she was gone for good .
     
    I held back tears as Lori cried herself to sleep in my arms .
    While she slept, I kept playing the image of Lori in her classroom over and over again in my head. Then I combined that with what had happened before. I could imagine how terrified those kids were. I had seen in myself. There was some sort of connection between Lori and these creatures, and I wasn’t sure what. Had they marked her in some way? Claimed her as their own? It would seem if she was transforming into one, then maybe that was the case. Maybe like a vampire creates new vampires.
    I remembered back to what my father had said in my vision . He said the well—which was just a hole in the ground really—was where the chiroptera dwell . I didn’t know if that well was real, or if it was just a figment of my imagination, but I knew where it was located in my vision, so whatever else I did, I had to make sure Lori never went out that way.
     
    That night was one of the most difficult nights I had ever experience d . Lori slept soundly, which was a blessing, but outside, it seemed as though the creatures —the chiroptera— were about, skulking about in the dark, their red eyes lighting up the night like the head lamps of a work crew.
    I could hear the screeching sounds they made. It was bone-chilling. There must have been at least a hundred of them.
    They seemed to be searching for something, looking frantically through the grass.
    My curiosity got the better of me. I had to see where they were searching. I left Lori on th e bed and got up. Walking to the north window, I had an idea what they were looking for, and confirmation would come depending on where they were concentrating their search.
    I could clearly see the remnants of the burned trailed that Lori had made when she had first transformed into one of those things. It struck me as strange that when Lori was one of them, she burned marks on the floor and through the grass. The other ones I had seen seemed to freeze anything they touched. But then, I remembered the pipe. It was first freezing, and then hot. Maybe these creatures could control temperature at will.
    With the combined light from their eyes, I could see what they were doing pretty well. They seemed to be looking around, picking up various tomb stones. Then they stopped at that clearing—which I could clearly see from my window—and removed the stone.
    Why was my father’s body buried out here? I thought back to his funeral, and I was told there was no body. He must have died out here in Orchard Hills and was for some reason buried here. It was a long road for me to come to this realization, but once I was there, certain things began to fall into place.
    Dad’s death had to have had something to do with whatever was going on around here. His body was here, but why? That was the question. If I could just figure it out, then maybe, just maybe I could get to the bottom of all the strangeness here. Maybe he was trying to kill the chiroptera and died trying. Maybe that’s why his ghost came to me in a vision to tell me where they lived so that maybe I could finish the job he started.
    Before moving to this crazy