MATTHEWS, N.C. —  Genetically-mutated spiders have made their way onto the streets of this town!

After initial reports that a “cobweb-like” substance was found on nuclear waste near the Charlotte National Laboratory, sources have now confirmed that geneticially-mutated spiders have made their way into the streets of the nearby town of Matthews. The spiders, the assumed culprits for the strange substance found on the site, can be easily identified from their pale-brown body and length of about 3 feet.

In addition, some of the spiders are also said to have red, “glowing” fangs, according to reports.

As far as the origin of the dangerous creatures, many have cited the national laboratory as the “obvious” source of the spiders. Labworkers have been analyzing the web material found on the site for the last two weeks, and the prospect of the substance being born from biological means has created a buzz in the scientific community.  A Charlotte scientist, who has asked not to be named, neither confirmed nor denied where the mutant spiders originated.

“Look, let’s not point fingers,” the scientist said. “The important thing is just for everyone to calm down and alert your local authorities if you come across the animals. We don’t believe the spiders actually show aggression toward humans, but as a precaution, you should keep smaller domesticated animals behind locked doors.”

Patrols for the creatures will continue over the course of the evening.

Sources have also confirmed that teenage boys should not let the spiders bite them in an attempt to acquire super-powers, as this act will most likely prove to be hazardous. However, many local teenagers have ignored this advice, with many remarking to authorities that “you’re not the boss of me.”

JERSEY SHORE, PA – Purple Squirrels are running wild – attacking property and people!

The fuchsia beasts are rampaging through the streets of Jersey Shore.  Swarms of the purple squirrels have destroyed dozens of houses and there are over 57 people that have been taken to the hospital with multiple squirrel bites.

One couple put out a squirrel trap that they’d left out to prevent the rodents from stealing food from bird feeder – and were shocked to see that they caught a purple critter.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes,” said Gladys Marberry.  ”We thought it was a doll, but then it growled at us.  It was so scary.  I hid under the bed.”

A local squirrel expert, Tad Billings said:

“If it has white hair on it at all, it’s probably not dyed. I’ve had multiple squirrels as pets, though, and I’ve certainly never seen a purple one. I’ve seen dark red, light red, gray and brown, but never purple. Also, I’ve tried to dye my dog before, and trust me it didn’t look like this. Though, I’ve only seen a picture, so your guess is as good as mine.”

Billings doesn’t know why the squirrels are destroying property and biting humans.  ”They must have been provoked in some way, that’s all I can come up with.”

Authorities in Maine and New Hampshire are also reporting vicious attacks by purple squirrels.  If you see a purple squirrel, do not approach – just call 911!

MT. PLEASANT, NY – The Eastern Cougar, (the Ghost Cat) thought to be extinct has been spotted on the East Coast!

The ferocious Ghost Cat, the Easter Cougar has been spotted up and down the east coast over the last few months.  Today it there were numerous reports of the Ghost Cat roaming the streets and woods of Mount Pleassant, NY.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had recently determined that the species of cougar that once prowled from Michigan to Maine to South Carolina was extinct.

Oops… they were wrong.  The Eastern Cougar is alive and well and… prowling the streets!

The eastern cougar  had been removed from the federal endangered species list because it was “extinct”.. but there have been sightings of over 60 different Eastern Cougars!

There are hundreds of reports of the Eastern Cougar being spotted this year from Maine to Georgia!

Also known as pumas, panthers or catamounts, cougars are the most widely distributed land mammal in the world besides humans. Adult cats typically range from 75 to 150 pounds — much larger than Maine’s other wildcats, the bobcat or Canada lynx — and are distinguishable by their tawny color and long, thick tail.

The eastern subspecies was once abundant but was driven to extinction by humans in much of its former range by the late-1800s or early-1900s. The last confirmed eastern mountain lion was killed by a trapper in Somerset County, Maine, in 1938.

A carcass of the Ghost Cat has NEVER been found.  That’s why biologists say there is no scientific proof that a wild population of cougars exists anywhere… but those biologists discount the eyewitness accounts.

Police Chief, Louis Algano, of Mount Pleasant said that the Eastern Cougar has been terrorizing residents for the last few days.  Citizens are advised not to approach the Ghost Cat and call authorities immediately.

KARNATAKA, INDIA – A mutated human? An alien hybrid? What is it?!

It’s just Ashes, the hairless chimpanzee! Ashes is a 13 year old chimp that lives at the Mysore Zoo in India.

[image courtesy of richu]

Ashes was born with fur like any other chimpanzee. But by just a year old, he had lost all of it! While he is somewhat frightening, it is a wonderful opportunity to be able to see a chimp’s musculature.

Ashes is not the only one of his rare kind. Another hairless chimp called Cinder was born at the Saint Louis Zoo in Missouri. Also born with full hair, she soon lost it but was still readily accepted by the other chimps.

Both animals suffer from alopecia universalis, which is also found among humans! Sadly, Cinder passed away this past February, so curious visitors will have to travel to India to get a peek at Ashes.

Bat Boy heads to Nation’s Capital to bring his mutant-y goodness to the Catholic University of America!

Don’t miss out!  Head to the Caldwell Auditorium at the Catholic University of America,

620 Michigan Avenue NE,

Washington, DC

The show will be running for a limited time:

February 3rd @ 7:30 pm,

February 4th @ 5:30 pm and 9 pm

February 5th @ 1:30 pm

So get your tickets now!!

Reserve Here:

svy.mk/batboytix

Or for larger groups, call (202) 643-SHOW (7469)

Go see the Bat- Child before he escapes again!

SAN DIEGO – The Chulapa Monster was discovered on Mission Beach in San Diego.

The beast is about two feet in length.  It has and the body shape of a pig—kind of a fat stomach, middle area and the canines are ridiculously large – 8-10 inches.

Some thought at it first was some kind of Chupacabra that swims in water.

Its hind legs are longer than its front pair.  It appears to be mostly hairless and it scares young children.

The San Diego Chulapa Monster has been talked about by locals for the last few decades, though no one has ever really seen it – until now.  It was named the “Chulapa Monster” in jest by a local fisherman, but the monster is taken very seriously by local authorities.

“We’ve had over 30 deaths blamed on the Chulapa Monster over the years,” said Sgt. Monica Williams of the San Diego Police Department.

The Chulapa Monster corpse smelled like dead rotting flesh and flies filled its mouth as observers tried to get close to it.

Original story by Rocco Castoro at vice.com
Check out their site!

Photos by Josh Menard—a 19-year-old snowboard from Lake Tahoe.

Bat Boy tried living the high life – but he hated it.  He’s selling his Vacation Cave.  You want it?

Sitting on 37 acres just outside of Morgantown, West Virginia a mining town-turned-Baby Boomer retirement, the Bat Boy Cave House is carved into an outcropping of granite boulder, extending more than 2,000-square feet into a desert grotto.

“Bat Boy is down-to-earth.  He doesn’t believe in hype and he just didn’t see the need to have a second cave.  He felt it was too  much,” said Dr. Barry Leed, who has been following Bat Boy since he was first discovered years ago.

Bat Boy’s strange and unusual dwelling is up for grabs and could be yours for $1.5 million. It occupies 2,890-square feet of living space and comes with a 890-square foot guest house, a subterranean game room underneath the guest house, a library building, a stand-alone workshop space, a separate home office, and a carport.

The main house features rough walls, rock and cement ceilings, and potable wall water seep that is collected from a natural spring. There’s a glass-walled batroom, a commercial-grade kitchen with stained glass cabinets and mosaic tiling, an-eight mutant dining room, a sunken living room, two full bathrooms, a sleep loft with walk-in closet tucked below underneath the loft stairs, and a back room that is currently used as an exercise and yoga room.

There’s also a wild party room, that Bat Boy took advantage of often.  Here he is with one of his many lady friends:

“It’s technically a bat made cave that was actually blasted out of the rock existing there,” explains Jean Noreen, a Realtor with Bisbee Realty and the listing agent for the Bat Boy Cave House. ”But it has all of the good qualities of a cave for living like it stays the same temperature all year round.” Maintaining a so-called ‘rock temperature,’ the house never slides below 66 degrees Fahrenheit or above 72 degrees.

Rather, the home’s natural pools are a short hike away, up the side of a nearby mountain and fed by a freshwater creek for six to eight months out of the year. The higher up the mountain you climb the more pools you have to choose from. The owners also installed a carefully camouflaged hot tub.

The other buildings on the premises peddle some secretive amenities, too. Lying below the two-story guest house is a game room with a separate entrance. The subterranean space is constructed of cement blocks and fluorescent lighting. The nearby library building, also constructed of cement blocks, doubles as a safe house, with a back room accessible through a roll-down metal security door hidden behind a sliding glass door. The back room is equipped with a Murphy bed, an air conditioner, an antique vault and a climate-controlled gun safe.

Some buyers are hesitant to own a cave that Bat Boy lived in but local realtors said that “it’s a celebrity property, demand is high.”

Go buy yourself Bat Boy’s cave!

WWN presents the true story of Bat Boy in a series excerpted from the hit book, Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed!

“In a world gone batty… there was one Bat who could save the world.”

In an exclusive agreement with Barry Leed, PhD (MBS) and Neil McGinness ( the authors of Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed), WWN will excerpt parts of the popular Bat Boy book for our readers.  It tells the complete story of Bat Boy – and he’s not happy with us, because the book contains classified, personal, sensitive files concerning Bat Boy that have never been made public.

The book can be ordered HERE.  

Read Chapter 1 – HERE.

Read Chapter 2 – HERE.

This entry is from Chapter 3,  THE SCHMING THING:

Over an intense observational period, Dillon studied the creature intently and attempted to communicate with him in an effort to locate the rest of his race. This quest drew Dillon inward and made him less communicative to his underlings in the lab. He grew distrustful of those around him and began to guard Bat Boy zealously. His security guard, Thrush, actually bugged the cage area so that he could eavesdrop on Dillon when he went into Bat Boy’s holding pen alone. On two occasions, Thrush allowed me to listen in on Dillon during one of his speech therapy sessions. Dillon was trying—unsuccessfully—to communicate with Bat Boy. The session was nothing more than a squeakfest. Dillon would start with three short squeaks followed by a long one, and Bat Boy would echo him. Dillon could get Bat Boy to parrot him, but that was all. The dialogue (if you can call it that) reminded me of the sad exchanges between a delusional parent who believes his one-and-a-half-year-old has started to talk when in reality the child merely babbles.

Dillon grew more exasperated as his attempts to deepen communication with Bat Boy met with failure. Then he located a speech therapist named Catherine Peake. Peake billed herself as the “lisp fixer.” She also took pride in correcting unreconstructed Southern drawls. She spent several days attempting to “squeak it out” with Bat Boy. She lasted only three sessions before she ran out of the room red faced and vowing never to return. Many in the office believed that Bat Boy may have exposed himself to her. Others took the position that Dillon exposed himself to Peake. Thrush boasted that he knew what really went down but wouldn’t cough up the information unless someone paid him two hundred bucks. No one took Thrush up on his offer. Instead, someone leaked incriminating security camera footage of what happened when Catherine Peake left the lab that day. Misplaced conspicuously on the coffee lounge bulletin board where they would certainly be discovered, the grainy black-and-white still shots showed Peake beating Thrush back with a femur that she had dislodged from the lab’s skeleton.

Lab controversies aside, Dillon went out of his way to please the creature. He ordered a diverse collection of bugs from an insect supplier. The company supplied Dillon with tons of mosquitoes and gnats and fourteen different types of flies. Mayflies and scuttle flies were Bat Boy’s favorites. Dillon found out that Bat Boy, unlike most bats, liked to feast on bugs with stingers. Dillon figured the stingers gave him extra taste, the way some people like a dash of Tabasco on their food. He ordered wasps by the millions.

Then, in October of 1992, Bat Boy escaped. Unbeknownst to Dillon, his cage cleaner and part-time custodian, Sayer Schming, would torture Bat Boy during his nightly cage-cleaning duty. Schming later confessed at trial that he would set his portable stereo near the door and play Cher’s greatest hits at the loudest possible volume. He would then run a spotlight into the room and fix the light on Bat Boy’s eyes. The light would disorient Bat Boy. As he squinted in a futile attempt to get his bearings, Schming would prod Bat Boy mercilessly with the handle end of his mop broomstick. As Bat Boy lay collapsed in a cage corner, Schming would place the mop end of the broom on his head and don it as though it were a wig. He would then grind-dance to the pole end that dangled from near his head, mouthing the words to the Cher hit songs as he danced.

Bat Boy bore the brunt of this abuse heroically while looking to flee at the first chance he could get. Late one night when one of Dillon’s assistant researchers had been careless with the dead-bolt auxiliary door, Bat Boy made his move. He was able to twist off his cage’s padlock and flee the lab.

Schming was ultimately brought up on charges. At the trial, a court-appointed psychiatrist testified that Schming’s beatings were administered as a sadistic release against his own failures. The jury found Schming detestable and quickly found him guilty of personal injury assault. Many people applauded the judge’s decision to allow the case to be tried as a human personal injury claim rather than an animal rights abuse case.

During Schming’s trial, Dillon maintained that he knew nothing of Bat Boy’s abuse and he ruefully recounted how Bat Boy’s ability to mask his unhappiness while in captivity should be taken as a sign of his advanced intelligence. Publicly, Dillon vowed to find the creature again. Privately, he felt crushed over the loss of his find. To those in the know, his public vow rang hollow. Everyone knew Dillon had really dropped the ball.

Dillon found reasons to fire most of the lab personnel. Somehow Thrush stayed on as head of security. When asked if his staying on had anything to do with inside information on the Catherine Peake affair, Thrush politely demurred with a smile.

Dillon got rid of me by accusing me of selling lab secrets to FEMUR—Bat Boy ranked atop their most-wanted list. Dillon was paranoid that FEMUR would locate and steal Bat Boy. Dillon was convinced that FEMUR had planned Bat Boy’s escape, and he lumped me into his conspiracy theory.

When confronted by Dillon, I explained to him that I wasn’t with FEMUR. I did confess that I took a payment of $2,300 from the Defense Department to conduct research on bat flight studies in order to help pay for my PhD. Bats have a hinged joint that allows them to pivot in flight on a dime and the Air Force has long tried to have someone replicate their natural flight pattern to build a new breed of super fighter jet.

Dillon flew into a rage. He threatened me with having Thrush torture me to get the truth. Knowing that Thrush enjoyed torture (even to this day his Facebook profile lists waterboarding as a hobby), I fled out the side door of the lab.

Looking back at it now, I realize that Dillon had started to grasp for straws in the days following Bat Boy’s escape. When I started at the lab, I divulged my Defense Department association to the compliance officer. I figured the doctor must have known about it. The witch hunt that Dillon led against lab employees provided a convenient shield from the reality that the blame for Bat Boy’s escape fell squarely on his shoulders.

For the next seventeen years, Dillon and I watched from the sidelines as Bat Boy eluded subsequent would-be captors. Major media outlets, chief among them Weekly World News, celebrated Bat Boy’s life on the run and elevated him to an American folk hero in the process. Bat Boy became our new Huck Finn. Adrift on the Big River of American culture and clad in his trademark jean shorts, Bat Boy never looked back. He was beyond reproach. To the delight of millions of Bat Boy’s fans, it looked as though there was no padlock strong enough, no scientist clever enough, and no governmental agency powerful enough to capture this wily and impish new hero.

Dejected by Bat Boy’s escape from Dillon’s lab, I returned home to Indiana to complete my doctorate. Marie and I wound up getting married. After obtaining a PhD in mutant bat studies at the University of Indianapolis, I set out to capture the creature to study him while banging out scientific articles detailing how Bat Boy and bats would save us all. It proved a tough way to make a living.

To pay the bills, I found myself doing guest lectures, or substitute science teaching, as my ex-wife, Marie, called it, at West Virginia middle schools. Prior to each guest lecture, the words of my former PhD adviser back in Indiana would ring in my ears, “Watch yourself out there, Mr. Leed, or you’ll end up teaching remedial science to a bunch of illiterates at Podunk Middle School.”

At night, following the sporadic substitute-teaching assignments, I would track Bat Boy. Downhill, uphill, around hills, I sought the mutant. I crisscrossed the West Virginia mountainsides, down into the flats and back up the foothills. From Reddish Knob in the Cumberland Plateau, up to Seneca Rocks in the Monongahela National Forest, I kept searching. Between Brushy Run and Teterton, I crawled along ridgelines to conceal my body outline. My charcoal-activated layered suit masked my scent from the mutant as I searched nearly every pocket and draw of those ridged valleys. Obsessed with my hunt, there were many nights where time slipped away, leaving me no choice but to spend the night under the stars at altitude with a makeshift shale slab serving as my bed. I shunned cell phones out of fear that the mutant would home in on my frequency via echolocation and triangulate my whereabouts. My mountaintop sleepovers started to take a toll back at home. With no means to phone home, my wife, Marie, worried until she stopped worrying.

Yet, through the years and the dissolution of my marriage, I never lost hope. When we had finally saved up enough money to get divorced, I got to keep the Taurus wagon and a Snuggie-style fleece blanket from Pompanoosuc Mills. Marie, somehow, kept the condo and my collection of Japanese anime.

Enduring it all, I remained optimistic that my path would cross again soon with this unique Wunderfledermauskind: Bat Boy, who himself remained out in the world—too wily to hunt down like an animal, too wily to capture, even too subliterate to interview.

In the alarming frequency of Bat Boy’s recent rash of attacks, I sensed my opportunity. I had reached out to Dr. Dillon and he agreed that Bat Boy must soon be captured and, in a reconciliatory gesture, the good doctor even invited me back to his lab to discuss next steps. The tone of his voice expressed a new spirit of cooperation. As he told me on the phone, “Dr. Leed, let’s bury the petri dish and find my Chiropteran Tot before he kills somebody.”

For all those who had made fun of my quest to find Bat Boy, my ex-wife chief among the group, it would be time to eat mosquito pie. This was my time to prove them all wrong. I was not a vampire freak; I was a scientist on the verge of groundbreaking discoveries, and I was about to begin working again with the Mammal Messiah.

…the Bat Boy story will continue…

ORDER GOING MUTANT:  THE BAT BOY EXPOSED HERE.

NEW YORK, NY – Bat Boy rang in the New Year the only way he knows how: with good-natured mischief.

Continuing with tradition, Times Square hosted the annual New Year’s Eve ball drop, in which a time ball is lowered down a pole during the last minute of the year.

This year, the redesign of the ball doubled it’s size, making more than enough room for our favorite little mutant to take a ride!

Security noticed a dark figure clinging to the back of the ball around 11:51PM. They quietly attempted to get him down by using chocolate covered mosquitoes as bait, but Bat Boy was on a mission.

When the clock hit 11:59PM, the ball began it’s slow descent and Bat Boy scrambled onto the top. He raised his arms in triumph and sent high-pitched squeaks ringing across Times Square.

The cameras attempted to film only the lower-half of the ball to keep his victory pose out of the shot.

As the ball stopped and 2012 began, amid the chaos, confusion and confetti erupting through Times Square, Bat Boy was able to slip away, avoiding police apprehension.

The NYPD has not yet released a statement on whether they will issue a warrant for his arrest.

WWN presents the true story of Bat Boy in a series excerpted from the hit book, Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed!

“In a world gone batty… there was one Bat who could save the world.”

In an exclusive agreement with Barry Leed, PhD (MBS) and Neil McGinness ( the authors of Going Mutant: The Bat Boy Exposed), WWN will excerpt parts of the popular Bat Boy book for our readers.  It tells the complete story of Bat Boy – and he’s not happy with us, because the book contains classified, personal, sensitive files concerning Bat Boy that have never been made public.

The book can be ordered HERE.  

Read Chapter 1 – HERE.

This entry is from Chapter 2,  THE MAMMAL MESSIAH:

Two days earlier, Dr. Dillon had text- ed me that he was closing in on Bat Boy again. He had tracked the mutant to a mountain cave near Seneca Rocks, West Virginia, only twelve hundred yards away from the very same cave where he had first captured Bat Boy in June 1992.

Early in his career, Dr. Dillon had earned respect within the scientific community for his work on natural color selection among winged mammals. Then, in 1992, he found Bat Boy in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. Dillon was two miles below Earth’s surface in a cave complex when he heard a faint squeal of pain. As it turned out, Bat Boy’s foot had wedged into a crack between two rocks.

With Bat Boy temporarily immobilized, Dillon was able to sedate him with a tranquilizer dart. Dillon took the creature to his lab in Wheeling for observation. Dillon’s life would never be the same. The acolytes in his lab called him the Mammal Messiah. Every researcher in the lab felt as though they had hitched their petri dish to the next Charles Darwin. When Dillon hired me in 1992 as a research assistant, I was on summer break from writing my doctoral dissertation in mutant bat studies at the University of Indianapolis. As an eager young doctoral candidate, I gained Dillon’s trust and was granted second-class, or supervised, access to the creature.

My memory of that first day in Dillon’s lab remains with me to this day. Dillon assembled the staff to introduce me and began to speak in his trademark scientific tone that dispelled all mystery. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is young candidate Barry Leed. He is to have full access to all of your findings, and you all are to consider his inquiries with the expeditiousness that you do mine. He is here because he is what you all routinely fail to be: perfectly, incorruptbly, and passionately aware of what would befall the human race if our bat population were to ever be compromised. I have never known a young scientist of such purpose—with, of course, the exception of myself. You are all to consider him my Moses.”

I couldn’t have predicted that my dissertation work on the relevance of bats to the human ecosystem would strike the chord it did with Dr. Dillon. My professors back in Indy treated my work with skepticism.

My adviser warned that my theories relied solely on hyperbole and worst-case scenarios. “Beware of the temptation to invent the catastrophes you hope to prevent, Mr. Leed. History tends to treat this kind of scientific/martyr complex with enduring scorn. And the decision makers in the grant department tend not to fund them. You should also know that this so-called Mammal Messiah, Dr. Dillon, is rumored to dabble in mutants just like a Bigfoot hunter. Watch yourself out there, Mr. Leed, or you’ll end up teaching remedial science to a bunch of illiterates at Podunk Middle School.”

Instinct compelled me to leave Indy. In my gut I knew that the Mammal Messiah was no circus act. Yet my heart wanted to stay put. In those first weeks, the swirling lab smells of formaldehyde and other chemical agents couldn’t shake the lingering scent of sweet Marie in my bed. It killed me to leave her back then. Years later, even after all of the deceit and humiliation, I still catch myself drawn back into those early days of our romance, in Indian-no- place, Indiana, of all places, sucking back cold beers down in Broad Ripple in between marathon lovemaking sessions on those oppressively hot Midwestern summer nights. Johnny Freakin’ Mellencamp in a dirty lab coat.

Dillon despised the innocence of my uncomplicated, beer-swilling, Midwestern youth. The doctor knew that in the back recesses of his lab prowled the one thing that would shatter my innocence forever: on the morning of September 19, 1992, Dillon took me to meet Bat Boy.

Dr. Dillon led me through his main lab area, where we passed by his staff of tight-lipped, anal white coats and the petri dishes they dutifully manned. No one looked up as we moved toward the back of the lab. Dillon was a task- master and a vicious perfectionist; his staff never made eye contact with him and pressed on with their work as if it were the Manhattan Project for bats.

At the back of the lab, an addition had been made to the building. The gaps of ceiling panels above and the differing vinyl floor surfaces that joined together unevenly beneath my feet suggested that the addition had been done hastily to make room for an unexpected, special purpose. In the middle of the threshold of this newly created addition, a janitor sporting a name tag that read scheming swept patches of scuffed plaster into a central pile.

“Morning, Doc,” the janitor greeted Dr. Dillon. Dillon walked on without acknowledging the sweeper. The hallway grew darker. I noticed that the fluorescent light tubes had been removed from the ceiling fixtures and that someone had placed cardboard boxes over the windows and taped them over. We reached a steel door flanked by a guard sitting in a fold- ing metal card-table-style chair.

Perched in the chair outside the door with a wooden baseball bat in his hand sat Alan Thrush. Thrush wore taut fatigues and over- sized aviator glasses, and had a nine-millimeter gun strapped to his side. I could smell wet tobacco. Thrush’s jaw had an uneven jut that suggested some kind of shrapnel incident. This was a man who had stuck his chin out too many times. “Thrush here is in charge of security, Mr. Leed. Thrush, Mr. Leed here is being granted second-class access.”

“Boss, you sure about that? You ain’t known the kid too long. How do you know he ain’t with femur?” Thrush peered over his shades to make eye contact with Dillon. Dillon nodded. “Nice to meet ya. Call me Thrush,” the guard said as he waved the bat in front of my face. The bat came from a Cooperstown souvenir shop called the Hall of Fame Bat Company. thrush was branded on the side.

Underneath, the second brand read kontra killer. Lab scuttlebutt later in- formed me that Thrush had served as some kind of mercenary before Blackwater made that line of work glamorous. Thrush fancied himself the Sultan of Sandinista SWAT. On his coffee breaks, Thrush could be found in the lounge doing check swings with his souvenir bat, bragging loudly to unimpressed females about what he called the Thrush & Ollie show, a reference to his Sandinista-thumping, back-jungle Nicaraguan adventures with contra supporter Colonel Ollie North. Thrush now earned his keep running security for Dr. Dillon.

“Thrush, I don’t pay you to question my judgment. I pay you to kill anyone who tries to enter this door without my authorization. Mr. Leed, you have now met the real Bat Boy, our rent-a-cop Alan Thrush. Thrush, just add Leed to the short list, please. As for anyone else, it’s—” “I know, Doc, I know,
two in the chest and one in the head. And you don’t have to tell me how to do my job.” Thrush picked up a pa- per coffee cup and fired a sluice of tobacco juice into it. He then stood up to begin unlocking the three dead bolts on the steel door.

With the dead bolts cleared, Dillon stepped forward to use his keys to open the first steel door. He led me into a dark anteroom. Thrush poked his head in and handed two cylinders to Dillon. “Here are your bugs, Doc.” Then Thrush reached out to me offering two earplugs. “Kid, you’re going to want these. Bet you haven’t heard a squeal this loud since prom night. Hell, I ain’t heard a squeal that loud since I stuck a
Sandie with my bowie down in Nicky Gra-Gra.”

“That’ll be all, Thrush,” Dillon ordered while he secured a miner’s hard hat to his head and turned on the head- lamp. Thrush retreated and closed the door and began fastening the dead bolts. Dillon tested a penlight by pointing it into my eyes. “For the time being, you are not to be trusted with any flashlights. The slightest mistake with a flashlight and you’ll set him off.” Dillon then handed me a pair of thick protective mittens. “You’ll want these on as well. These are animal- trainer-approved gloves.”
Mind you, all I knew of Bat Boy that summer was what I had read in Weekly World News.

Unverifiable smatterings had been printed about the sighting of a potential missing link in the Shenandoah Mountains, but as I stood there in the dark, suffering a rash of very real paranoia that Dr. Dillon had not-so-platonic motives concerning me—he was, after all, awfully appreciative of my talents—I didn’t know whether to dirty my shorts or cry for help. What the hell was I getting myself into? Dillon pushed us through a low-ceilinged alcove and began to futz with more locks and yet another door.

“Stay calm, Mr. Leed. Life is about to become very interesting for you. You are about to meet
my Chiropteran Tot, or Bat Boy, as the press corps has labeled him.

Whatever you do, keep your arms and fingers to your sides. Don’t tempt him with any sudden movements. You’ll get only a glimpse from the penlight. Bat Boy’s not so fond of daylight, or any other light, for that matter. Temperamental prick. Trust me, you don’t ever want to anger him. The little guy’s stronger than an ox on steroids.”

As we passed through the second set of bolted steel doors, all external noises ceased. It was dead silent. Dillon put his shoulder up against a large iron bar and slid it back to un- lock another large steel door. The door swung open. Using the door as a shield, Dillon hid behind the steel to make sure the mutant was caged. Convinced he was enclosed, he inched forward. Inside it was dark, pitch-black. Dillon waved the weak light beam across the creature and I caught my first glimpse of Bat Boy.

He moved in a rush, a quick, pale sixty-five- pound blur of motion. Dillon pointed the flashlight toward him again, and it seemed to dazzle him for a moment. Bat Boy froze and I caught him clearly. The creature had a haunting white lantern of a face that looked to be the unholy by-product of a one-night stand between Nosferatu and Mickey Mouse. His bulging eyes darted back and forth. When his bulbous pupils moved, the whites of his eyes shone wildly in the darkness. I could feel his core torso muscles tighten and detected his large ears prick back just like a horse when it senses danger. Suddenly the bat child let loose a bloodcurdling scream. My eardrums nearly burst and my pants soaked instantly. I had forgotten to insert the earplugs and dropped them to the floor in fright. The scream had to register over 120 decibels.

“Sweet Marie, get me out of here,” I said to myself, longing to be back in the flat Indiana plains pressed against the acreage of her rolling curves. Dillon used the penlight to open a large cylinder that he had brought with him. It was packed solid with mosquitoes, and they started buzzing around the room. Bat Boy went to work darting about devouring the bugs. He was caged but you could feel the air move and hear the swish as he sprang back and forth inhaling his protein with wings beating. Dillon then reached into his lab coat pocket and threw five frozen dead mice into his cage. “Here you go, Tot. I didn’t forget dessert.”

Dillon motioned for us to back out of the room. On the way out, his headlamp flashed near Bat Boy’s right ear, causing another shriek. While he chewed hungrily on his mouse-icle, I saw what looked like an earring.

The chiropteran bared his teeth and hissed a stream of liquid at me. My cheek felt the splatter of warm goo. Dillon grabbed me by the arm and pulled me out of the room. “It’s his natural anticoagulant. Don’t worry, it’s harm- less—unless he bites you. If he bites you and injects that anticoagulant into your wound, you’ll never stop bleeding. When he spits, that means he’s ready to eat. Let’s get out of here.”

As we emerged, Thrush pointed his bat to- ward me, on the end of which he had placed a soiled towel. “That mutant got you pretty good, kid. Here, take this to clean up.” Not wanting to offend the guard, I grabbed the crusty old oil rag. Warm urine dripped down my pant legs. Loud ringing obscured my hearing. In the space between my two damaged ears, a warm, filmy goo coated my face. My eyes started to sting. My heart pounded with a disorientating fear. My dignity crushed by this caged creature, I hobbled back toward Dillon’s office, sliming the lab hallway with a snail trail of wetness.

Back in the safety of Dillon’s office, I regained some composure. I toweled off and spoke to the doctor.

“Was he wearing an earring?”

“Good. You noticed that. We had to sedate the hell out of him to get that in. It’s a transponder. I am hoping that it’ll give us the opportunity to track him one day back to the race of people he left underground. I am hoping this little guy leads us to his tribe. You did good in there, candidate Leed. His appetite is insatiable. I really don’t have enough to feed him.

That feeding you witnessed is merely a fraction of the bug intake that he would consume in the wild. I am waiting for my bug shipment to get here.”

Dillon was understandably obsessed with the creature. He refused to think of Bat Boy as a mutant, as most others did. Based on his knowledge of natural selection, Dillon believed that Bat Boy belonged to a new species of subterranean cave dwellers. I remember him telling me, “Find one mutant and get your name in the paper; find an entire new species and you’re Charlie friggin’ Darwin.”

He told Weekly World News in his famous interview announcing the discovery of the creature, “His eyes are twice as big as they should be, and his ears are like satellite dishes. This boy clearly belongs to a race of people who live miles beneath the surface. It’s my belief that they evolved batlike features to enable them to survive in total darkness.” He went on to explain, “Bat Boy almost certainly strayed from a much larger pack.”

The doctor pulled open a steel file cabinet door to show me the records he had begun to compile on the creature. To this day, I re- member seeing that initial file and knowing then and there that I could not retreat to the Hoosier hospitality of my native state and the pinup-pretty Marie. This was the front line of everything that I had studied for and I had just glimpsed what they can’t teach you in school. Just like Dillon, I found myself ensnared under Bat Boy’s spell. The buzzing in my ears melted into a rhythmic whoosh as an ethereal calm came over me. I was disoriented, my pants were wet, my hearing cut in and out, and warm goo was crusted on my face, yet somehow my anxiety dissipated now as it all sank in. My muscles relaxed as though I had ingested a strong benzodiazepine. Bat Boy was my medicine. Everything felt soft and fuzzy, even Dillon’s pointy fifties-style glasses. In that moment, I knew I had fallen off the precipice into a life-altering free fall. Sorry, Marie, there would be no turning back.

My life was about to become the cave I had always wanted it to be. I was in it, beautifully lost in a subterranean alternate universe, where I found myself seated at the right hand of the Mammal Messiah himself. As I scanned the documents Dillon handed me, he began speaking in excited tones about how close he was to communicating with the creature. He told me that within months he would locate Bat Boy’s lost tribe, that there were other species out there to be discovered. The tingling sensation in my ears made my hearing itself seem more acute. It was as if I were hearing for the first time. Everything began to make sense. My eyes bore through Dillon’s glasses. We locked eyes as I held the file close to my chest and listened intently to his spellbinding theories. I had become a disciple of the Mammal Messiah.

…the Bat Boy story will continue…

ORDER GOING MUTANT:  THE BAT BOY EXPOSED HERE.