The Halloween Project 2025 – Story 2: Santa Rosa SwanSong

Three divorces; the first amicable, the next two contentious. Money-hungry bitches. And back then, he had a little. Money that is. Not ex-wives. Thank God, only one kid. She was 38 now, married a guy from Scotland who she met on a semester abroad from college. They live in England, don’t ask him exactly where. 

Career had seen better days. Three decades ago, he was the shit. A young-ish horror novelist fresh on the scene. Crossing 30, he put out two books that almost cracked the top 20 on the New York Times bestseller list. Hoped to become the next Stephen King. Ended up being less. Far less. 

Now approaching 60 he was giving it his all, one last heavy lift to find his mojo. Again. Cashed in a lot of assets to rent a house for a month in the mountainside hills above Santa Rosa. Spectacular 360-degree view into the sparse landscape stretching miles away. Pine trees, blackened into upright spars that burned in a fire five years ago, stood erect, vigilant. Tan, dry grasses covered the hillsides, dotted with grouped stands of Douglas firs. To the south, through the Sonoma Valley, the mist from San Francisco Bay would crawl a cloud of milky tendrils up into the valley below. 

Beautiful, and he hoped, inspirational. It was his last best shot. Such was the life of Ivan Casimir. 

The writing went well from the very start. He had the gem of an idea for a long time. Just the spark, but that’s all you need to get started. He didn’t know exactly where it was going, but he liked it. He felt the juice again. The largest cup of coffee with refills aplenty kicked in just after he rose, and he cemented his ass in the chair from seven until noon. Took a three-hour break for lunch and swam laps in the pool. Settled back down and wrote until eight. Dinner and a horror flick, or sometimes watching the night sky unfold the stars, in bed by ten. He was producing 10, 12, and a couple of times 15 pages in a day. The story was about a monster. No, a person who was a monster. A person/monster who was killing werewolves. It worked. He knew. Or at least he hoped it did. Ivan could feel it. 

More than two weeks in, on the 17th evening, it began with the bats. An exquisite moon raised itself above the mountain ridge. Ivan looked it up online. Except for a reasonable slice scraped from the top right side, it was growing. A Sturgeon moon was coming in ten days. He chuckled as he thought, “What the hell is a Sturgeon moon?” And then, “Good premonition for the book.” 

Stepping outside with a good glass of Barolo, he noticed four inky black bats careen back and forth between the expansive deck and the pergola. They darted in jaunty, directionless loops appearing in the dark sky, a kind of joyous dance of feeding and frenzy. Despite the growing night and the pinpoint stars exposed through the curtain of increasing blackness, they were easy to see. Then Ivan did something even he had never expected. He moved quietly to a spot almost beneath their flight, looked up as they swirled closer, and began to sing. 

The song, if it could be called that, came, not in words, but in a low thrum, something akin to a chant. It was sonorous, deep in his throat, then lightening, growing higher in pitch but somehow deeper in resonance. He projected it louder across the small space between them. Ivan took a step forward and increased his volume. In his head a voice said, “What am I doing?” Almost immediately, the same voice answered, “I’m calling them.” 

The bats changed their winged gymnastics. Their flight smoothed, somehow evened, more a soaring than an erratic, jerky flight. They curved in ballet-like arabesque, almost seeming to pair, two revolving here, two there. A dark, mysterious dance played out against the night sky. 

And they flew off. 

The next day, Ivan prospered, his writing muse kicking into overdrive. He was 17 pages in all when he finally stepped away from the Chromebook. He was over 200 pages in and realized this was his opus. He came to an understanding that he would complete the entire novel by the time he left Santa Rosa. Finished in the coming two weeks. Elation rose within him. 

The next night eight bats arrived. 

Two nights later, their number reached 25. 

Then it was a hundred or more, he couldn’t be sure. Whirling and spinning, calling and responding. 

Each ensuing night in the parentheses between sunset and pure dark, they gathered, more and more. And Ivan continued to sing. He really couldn’t believe what was happening. Somehow the bats, this gigantic horde of winged partners came to him, danced with him, inspired him. 

On the 27th, Ivan closed the Chromebook with a tender touch. He had completed the novel. His heart raced, then calmed itself. He walked out to his rented Jeep Cherokee, scissored back and forth along the switchbacks down the mountain and drove into town. 

He stopped at The Cave, the finest wine shop in Sonoma. After speaking at length with the owner, he made a decision: Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa. It was described as the single, most famous,“cult” wine of the region. The 1997 went for just under $12,000. Ivan settled for the 2016 for $3000. The owner barely wanted to sell. 

Back at the house he decanted the Cab. He couldn’t afford it, but he didn’t care. Waiting an hour in anticipation, he poured a glass, swirled, sniffed, sniffed again, then took the first sip. It was liquid heaven. Through the wide expanse of glass wall now retracted to allow the early evening breeze, Ivan opened the screen door and stepped outside. 

This book would put him on the literary map. Hell, he didn’t care about literary, he wanted sale numbers, not an Oprah Book Club nomination. He wanted to be on Good Morning America, sell the movie rights, be a welcome guest at film festivals, Halloween celebrations and dinner parties. 

Ivan stood on the deck, Chromebook nestled in one hand, the wine held aloft to the bat maelstrom above him. The full Sturgeon moon radiated with a deep orange-yellow light. He sipped the Eagle Cab and smiled. He sang, lower and deeper than he ever had before. The black tribe of bats soothed and fell into a cadence, a rhythm of sweeping movement. 

Ivan Casimir never felt this good in his entire life. He raised the wine to his lips when the moon disappeared. A black heavy cloud blotted the sky with the rotating flying creatures suddenly raising their screeches in ecstasy. When the darkness descended into the reflection from the underwater pool lights he could see its shape, its size, its enormity. 

A bat, a monstrous, tremendous bat, easily 15 feet tall, wings spread for yards on either side, hovered rather than flew. It peered down with eyes the size of black softballs. Beating wings raised a wind into the night. Frozen, Ivan gaped upward as the beast descended and in a fluid grasp stabbed both claws into his shoulders. Ivan’s song morphed into a screaming, high-pitched wail. The glass of Cabernet shattered on the pool deck. Flapping, with the horde of bats swirling around their king, the bat rose 10 feet, then 20, then 50 feet into the night. 

The Sturgeon moon once again bathed the night in orange. 

As Ivan disappeared into the night and beyond, the Chromebook slipped from his grasp and plunged into the pool.