Folklore of the Night

                       Fluid blue electricity raced across the night sky with a simultaneous roar of thunder.   The flash pierced through the small open window, briefly illuminating the blanket-shrouded figure huddled near the head of the bed.   The boy shuddered as a chill wormed slowly up his spine.   It wasn’t the storm that terrified him; there was something much more menacing somewhere, there in the dark.   After each flash of lightning, he desperately strained his eyes to readjust to the faint light, desperate to avoid being caught unaware.             The night before had been his first in that room.   The family had moved into that old house down by the river, and his parents gave him an upper room isolated from the rest of the home – his mother’s notion that all boys love attics.   He was melancholy’s child: all of his friends left miles behind and he left alone.             To appease the boy, the parents had purchased him a parakeet, caged in a black wire dome.   It was