The Mothman of London

He was the first of his kind, and of course, we now know that he wouldn’t be the last. Jebediah Knox was a son of the land who joined the British Army, who was shipped off to Africa to fight the Boers, and that dear friends is where his life changed. Forever.

As long as Jebediah could remember, he’d had trouble sleeping. It grew worse in strange lands and strange beds.

So most nights when the camp was sleeping, he would take to the veldt and run under the stars and the moon.

One night, one moonless night, while Jebediah was flying like the wind across the wildlands, he felt a crack of pain in his ankle. He couldn’t see the snake, but he heard it scuttle away. Total darkness came very quickly.

The next thing he was aware of was coming to, in a wooden hut. A young girl had a wet cloth to his forehead, and an older male was giving instructions in an unknown language. He couldn’t make out the face of either people.

The dreams, oh, the dreams had been strange and weird. In those dreams, he talked to folks whom he knew were dead. He had assumed the venom had been doing its work.

No one from his camp came looking for him. In these cases, people were usually assumed to have been dragged off and eaten by some beast or another. After the Sun had passed over the hut three times, he started to feel better. His strength had returned. Sure enough, the girl or the man would always be sitting close by and, when required, would dampen his fever with a wet cloth.

Seven passes of the Sun later, and he was sure he could hear British voices in the distance. He was able to sit for a short time but unable to call or move. The voices passed and were heard no more.

One evening he awoke to find an elderly man sitting next to him. The man had a kind smile and seemed intent that Jebediah should drink from a cup. This Jebediah did. It tasted pleasant enough and felt warm as he let it slide down his throat. It immediately helped with the pain.

His strength grew as did his need to be back with his regiment. He had picked up several of the words spoken by this tribe – but in reality, he wanted a real conversation with his colleagues. He missed the nights in the Mess.

One morning in the fourth week, the elderly man took Jebediah by the hand and led him out into the veldt.

The elderly man signalled to Jebediah to take one end of a long bag that he carried. The two of them walked into the hills above the camp.

From where he was standing, he could see the Army Camp, but he was sure that he could not manage the distance with his current state of health.

They waited until dusk, for it was then that the lions roamed the plains. The old man opened his bag and constructed a large set of wings. And that was when Jebediah saw the beauty in the hunt.

The older man sat hunched, waiting to leap at a moment’s notice. Jebediah’s concentration waned waiting to see what move the man would make. At dusk, a young lion walked out into the veldt in order to stalk some wildebeest. As the animal gathered speed, the elderly man stood, started to run and then lept into the air. The wings automatically spread out to several feet in both directions, and the man swooped down on the lion, attacking it from the air.

The lion fell almost instantaneously. Now Jebediah understood. The man, this tribal chief, was protecting their animals from attack by eliminating their enemies.

Within a week, Jebediah was mastering the wings for himself. He didn’t fly to attack animals; instead, the older man taught him to control his flight across the veldt.

By week three, Jebediah was an expert at the process. The older man was impressed with the improvement of his student. He could stay aloft for over an hour, and this by finding rising hot air across the grasslands.

One evening in the following month, Jebediah went to sleep in the hut, as he had for several weeks. When he awoke, he found himself back in the fort. His commanding officer had told him, that he had been presumed dead and they were surprised to find him unconscious outside the gates. Jebediah had assumed he had been drugged.

“There was one other thing,” said the officer, “there was this package lying beside you. Is it yours?”

The package contained the old man’s wings.

It was another year before Jedediah returned home to England. It was there that he found a new job as a baggage handler at the Saint Pancras hotel in London.

One night after he had finished a 14-hour shift at the hotel, he went to the highest tower in St Pancras and opened his wings brought back from South Africa. He stood up there and watched the city below him. It was then he jumped with the wings. He soared over Euston Road and across the East End. He landed next to Regent’s Canal without any injuries.

Over the next few years, he would climb to the top of the building and launch himself, flying unseen over the streets of London.

It was in April, of the year 1888, that Jebediah was passing over the chimneys and roofs of Whitechapel, when he heard a woman scream in Osborne street, below.

He swooped down to see a darkly dressed man attacking a lady in an alley that led off from the street. He managed to land on the gentleman, the way the chief had pounced on the animal all those years before. The woman ran off as Jebediah held the man. This was activity short-lived, however as the man turned and stabbed Jebediah in the arm. The man then ran away.

He was the monster known as ‘Jack The Ripper’, and someone who Jebediah would meet in the months to come.

bobby stevenson 2020