the curtain bat is a small, dust-coloured creature that spends its waking hours head-down between the folds of heavy curtains. it is mistaken, often, for a tassel that has come loose, and for the shadow a tassel makes.
when the curtains are drawn in the evening it stirs. when they are flung open in the morning it withdraws further in. it is, in this way, the inverse of the lamp; where there is too much light it folds. it eats moths but not hour-moths, by some discrimination not understood.
look for it on the seventh fold from the wall. it favours rooms with bay windows and rooms where someone has died of slow age. in the absence of curtains it lives in heavy ribbons.
— shook the curtain. nothing fell. shook it again. it looked back. — e.h.