Hellsborough Exposed

Ask two people round the Hinge's edge which came first, the bat or the word, and you will get two answers delivered with equal confidence, because backflit is also what the old hands call the crossing manoeuvre itself — out, round, and back facing the way you came — and the creature performs the same trick with its whole body on a loop, every few seconds, for reasons nobody has pinned down. Its eyes are decorative; what it reads is sound, all of it, constantly, building a picture of a room out of echo the way I would build one out of a glance, fast enough that watching one hunt feels like watching someone read a page over your shoulder that you cannot see yourself. The real danger is not the creature at all but the psycmask on your own head: idling near a roost, its low background chatter reads to a backflit as a rival colony declaring territory, and what follows is not an attack so much as a full scramble — every backflit in the roof void off the rafters at once, aimed at the mask rather than the person wearing it, a distinction that stops mattering once there are forty of them loose in a stairwell built for one. They roost in dead space, loft voids and collapsed stairwells and the backs of long-dead chimney breasts, and leave at murkfall in a single wave that sounds like applause being told off halfway through. Set one loose against a yellow-wagtail and the wagtail tends to lose the argument; there is usually a scatter of yellow tail-feathers under the eaves the next morning to prove it. Mute your psycmask before you reach the roost, not after you hear the first wingbeat — by the time you can hear one, the whole roof is already awake.