The Moth’s Last Flight

In the late autumn of 1997, the town of Bhaktapur was a pocket of stillness, its narrow lanes winding between brick houses like veins of an old heart. The air smelled of woodsmoke and damp earth, and the evenings closed in early, wrapping the town in a blanket of silence. My family had a two-story house on a lane so tight that a bicycle could barely pass another, and at night, the only sounds were the scurry of rats and the distant bark of a stray dog. We had learned to ignore the occasional cries from the neighboring houses, the muffled arguments, the sharp thuds of something heavy hitting a wall. It was just the way of the town, a place where secrets were kept behind shuttered windows.

Power cuts were a nightly ritual, announced by the town’s single siren at seven o’clock, a mournful wail that signaled the darkness to come. We would light candles and oil lamps, their flames casting dancing shapes on the walls, and we would huddle in the single room that had a working heater. On this particular evening, a Thursday, the siren had come and gone, and the house was in that liminal state between daylight and lamplight. I, a boy of twelve, was trying to finish a drawing for my geography teacher, a map of Nepal with the peaks marked in pencil. My three sisters were upstairs, sharing one lamp to study for their exams, their murmured recitations drifting down like a lullaby. My mother was in the kitchen, checking the batteries of the flashlight we kept by the door, her movements precise and calm.

It was then that I noticed something odd. On the wall above our dining table, a single moth had landed, its wings the color of dried blood. It was larger than any moth I had seen, with a pattern on its wings that looked like a staring eye. It seemed to watch me as I shaded the mountains. I called out to my mother, but she was focused on the flashlight, her back turned. ‘Leave it be,’ she said, her voice carrying from the kitchen. ‘It’ll find its way out.’ But the moth did not move. It stayed there, unmoving, as if waiting.

An hour passed. The lamp on our table began to dim, its wick drowning in the oil. My mother came in, holding the flashlight, and clicked it on. The beam swept the room, and for a moment, the moth’s wings flickered, and I could have sworn they were wet. ‘Time for bed,’ she said, but her voice was tight, and she kept the flashlight pointed at the floor. I knew she had seen it too, but she did not acknowledge it. She led me upstairs, and the moth remained, a red eye on the plaster.

I could not sleep. The house creaked in the cooling air, and the sound of my sisters’ breathing was a soft rhythm. But beneath that, there was a new sound, a low humming, like a distant generator. It seemed to come from the walls. I pressed my ear to the cold plaster, and the hum grew louder, pulsing with a rhythm I recognized as a heartbeat. I pulled back, and the hum faded, replaced by the crackle of the dying lamp downstairs.

I crept down the stairs, ignoring the creaks that seemed to echo in the dark. The dining room was black save for a sliver of moonlight from the window. I could see the outline of the moth, still there, but larger. Its wings had spread, covering the entire wall, and the eye pattern seemed to have multiplied, dozens of eyes now staring blankly. The humming was now a chorus, and I felt a vibration in the floor, like something massive shifting beneath.

My mother appeared behind me, her hand on my shoulder, firm. ‘Don’t look at it,’ she whispered, her breath cold against my ear. ‘It has been here for years. It feeds on attention.’ She guided me back to the stairs, and I felt the floor tremble as if something moved under us. ‘What is it?’ I asked, but she only shook her head, and the flashlight in her hand flickered, its beam dimming as if being drained.

We retreated to my room, and my mother locked the door, something she had never done. She sat on my bed, her eyes fixed on the door, and the humming grew louder, until it was the only sound in the world. The house seemed to sway, and I felt a pressure in my ears. Then, as suddenly as it began, the humming stopped. The silence was deafening. My mother did not move. She stayed rigid, her hands clasped, and she did not look at me.

In the morning, the moth was gone. The wall was bare, save for a dark stain the shape of a wing. We never spoke of it, but that day, my mother bought a new flashlight with a stronger beam, and she kept it by her bedside at all times. And every night, at the hour when the power cut came, I would hear a faint humming from my wall, a sound I have learned to ignore, like all the other sounds of the town. But sometimes, when I am alone in the dark, I catch a glimpse of a red eye in the shadows, and I know it is still there, waiting to be seen again.