Eventually, they pulled through the black iron gates right before the road reached their house. It was a lovely old thing, all pale wooden walls and dark roofing. It was large and had too many windows, but it was nice all the same. Ivy covered the fencing and walls like green spiderwebs, and ravens crowded the tops of the house and the telephone wires suspended above it. Kaz and his mother stepped out, Kaz handing her the packet of paperwork. They walked up to the door, and his mom unlocked it before stepping inside. Kaz closed the door behind him before walking up the dark wooden stairs to his room. The door was lined with posters of superheroes and obscure bands, with a crude, silly name plate hung in the center of the mess of papers.

He opened the door, stepping inside and locking it behind him. The room was large, especially for a child his age. He flopped down in the middle of his oversized bed, his body the only thing interrupting the sea of dull blues and reds that patterned his sheets. He stared up at the ceiling, which was painted a dark purple. Glow in the dark stars were splattered across its surface, and a few shone dimly in the darkness of the room. His curtains were almost always closed, and they had the same pattern of stars. He turned to look at them absently. In kindergarten, when he was asked to tell the class what he wanted to be when he grew up, he always told them he was going to fly spaceships for NASA. He frowned, rolling back over to rest his face in his pillows. Silly. Silly little dreams, silly little lies. What an odd little thing dreams were.

Kaz rolled to his side, hand dangling over the edge of the bed, grazing the funny greyish-brown carpet with his fingers. His friends used to warn him of the monster under the bed, but he knew better. He was the monster on top of the bed. Nothing would dare hide beneath him. He rolled off the bed, sliding to his knees to look beneath it. He reached for something blindly, hand knocking against toys and shoeboxes before landing across a wooden surface. He grabbed onto it, pulling out a large woodbound book. It was old, and he knew it. He had found it at a yardsale a month ago, and had already read most of it. It smelled of dirt and smoke, and the man he had bought it from told him it held all the myths and legends no one had ever heard of.

He flipped to a page he had bookmarked with a neon blue sticky note. The browned pages fluttered in the small wind the ceiling fan made, making the image of what appeared to be a snake-like creature seem to move. It was odd, with an empty-eyed mask and horns curved straight up. The mask was pushed up a little in the picture, revealing a strange mouth curved in a grin. It bared its needle teeth, and a thin forked tongue flicked out from its mouth. It seemed like the top half of its body was made partially of wood, with odd runes carved into its chest. The rest of its upper body was covered in feathers, and large wings extended from the torso where arms should be. It had taken a while for Kaz to figure out how to read the creature's page. He was borrowing books on English in order to read half of the book, but he had eventually given up and decided google translate was the best he could do.