Not the wings, not the size. The eyes: two red discs that caught the headlights and threw them back, glowing on their own, set in a dark shape standing where nothing should have been. Point Pleasant, West Virginia, late 1966, and for thirteen months car after car reported the same red stare pacing them down lonely roads. Witnesses could never agree on the body. They never once disagreed about the eyes.
That is the strange genius of the Mothman. It skips the description entirely and lodges the one detail that follows you home.
Drawn here as red eyes over folded wings. Printed heavy on garment dyed cotton, for the ones who like their legends close to the road.
