"Family Reunion"

Deep beneath Nowhere, in tunnels that hadn't seen light since the 1940s, something ancient stirred in its sleep.

The Batsquatch had been dreaming for decades dreams of darkness and hunger and the strange, warm emotions that seeped down through the earth from the town above. It fed on those emotions in its sleep, growing stronger with each passing year, waiting for something powerful enough to wake it fully.

And now, filtering down through the rock and soil, came a banquet of dysfunction rich enough to rouse even the deepest sleeper.

The Nakamura family reunion had begun.

Keiko stood in the kitchen of her restaurant, watching her mother's rental car pull into the parking lot, and felt the familiar knot of dread tightening in her stomach.

Her mother emerged first impeccably dressed despite the long drive, already scanning the restaurant's exterior with the critical eye that Keiko remembered from childhood. Then her brother, successful in his suit and his promotions. Then her grandmother, small and sharp-tongued, wielding her cane like a scepter.

They hadn't even walked through the door yet, and Keiko could already feel herself shrinking.

Satoshi came up behind her quietly and observed that they were there. Keiko acknowledged she'd noticed. Satoshi told her it would be fine.

They both knew he was lying. They'd been married long enough for that particular fiction to be comfortable.

The dinner started badly and got worse.

Keiko's mother criticized the restaurant's décor, the town's remoteness, Keiko's choice to stay in "the middle of nowhere" when she could have had a real career back home. Her brother mentioned his promotion three times in the first hour. Her grandmother asked pointed questions about grandchildren that felt like accusations.

And Satoshi. Poor Satoshi, who had never quite been accepted by Keiko's family, who came from the wrong background and had taken their daughter to the wrong place. He tried to help, tried to smooth things over, but every word he said seemed to make things worse.

Willow retreated to her room within thirty minutes of the relatives' arrival. Keiko envied her.

In the abandoned mines beneath the town, the Batsquatch's eyes opened.

The argument happened at dinner, as arguments in families always do.

It started small. A comment about Keiko's cooking. A comparison to her brother's achievements. A subtle dig at Satoshi's heritage. But each small cut added to the others, and before long, the table was a battlefield.

Keiko heard herself speaking, years of suppressed resentment finally breaking free. She told her mother that she had always expected Keiko to be her, but Keiko wasn't her. She never wanted her mother's life. She wanted her own.

Her mother's voice turned to ice. She observed what Keiko had chosen: a failing restaurant in a dying town, married to a man who took her away from everything. Keiko countered that Satoshi didn't take her. She chose to go. Her mother accused her of abandoning her family.

The ground shook.

At first, Keiko thought it was her imagination the physical manifestation of the emotional earthquake at the table. But then the windows rattled, and dishes slid across the counter, and everyone fell silent as the shaking grew stronger.

Something was rising from beneath the earth. Something large enough to make the ground itself tremble with its awakening.

The Batsquatch erupted into the town square with a sound like the world tearing open.

It was massive a creature of nightmare combining bat and ape and something older than either. Its wings blotted out the stars as it rose, and its eyes burned with an ancient, hungry intelligence.

But it wasn't hunting the way other cryptids hunted. It wasn't seeking prey. It was seeking... something else.

Benji, watching from the video store window with Abigail, understood first. His voice hollow, he explained that the creature was feeding. Not on flesh. On conflict. On the poison that families create when they stop being honest with each other. Abigail realized the Nakamura reunion was what woke it up, and that was what was drawing it to them now.

The creature descended on the Nakamura home with terrible purpose.

But it didn't attack not in the way monsters usually attacked. Instead, it herded. It cornered. It forced family members who were trying to flee back toward each other, blocking every escape route until the only way out was through.

Keiko understood, in a flash of terrible clarity, what the creature represented. She said aloud that it was the monster in the room, the one they all pretended not to see. The dysfunction they'd been carrying for generations, given form.

Her mother stared at her, demanding to know what she was talking about. Keiko explained that they couldn't fight it by running. They couldn't fight it at all, not physically. The only way to make it stop was to face what it represented.

The Batsquatch loomed in the doorway, wings folding, eyes fixed on the family with an expression that was almost expectant.

Waiting.

In the creature's presence, there was no room for pretense.

Keiko's mother spoke first her voice cracking for the first time Keiko could remember. She admitted she wasn't disappointed in Keiko. She was jealous. Keiko had found happiness in a way she never could. She chose love over duty, and part of her mother had always hated her for having the courage she lacked.

Keiko's brother went next, the confidence stripped from his voice. He confessed he resented her for escaping. He stayed. He did everything they wanted, became everything they expected. And she just left. Found her own life. While he was still trapped in theirs.

Her grandmother, smallest and sharpest of them all, spoke last. She admitted she was afraid. Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid that this family would drift apart when she was gone, and no one would remember the traditions, the stories, the things that made them who they were. So she pushed. She criticized. She tried to hold them all so tightly that they couldn't leave. But all she did was drive them further away.

The Batsquatch shuddered. Its wings drooped. The hunger in its eyes began to fade, replaced by something like satisfaction.

It retreated at dawn.

Not defeated Keiko understood that instinctively. Satisfied. The creature had fed, but not on conflict. On resolution. On truth. On the painful, necessary work of healing that the family had finally begun.

Her mother embraced her before leaving, really embraced her, for the first time in years. She whispered that she was proud of Keiko. She always had been. She was just too afraid to say it.

Her brother promised to visit again soon this time, just to visit, not to compare or compete. Her grandmother asked to see photographs of the restaurant's early days, wanting to understand the life Keiko had built rather than criticize it.

It wasn't a complete healing. Decades of dysfunction couldn't be undone in a single night. But it was a beginning.

Thaddeus came to the restaurant that evening, after the relatives had departed.

He wheeled himself to Keiko's table without preamble, his expression grave. He explained that the mines beneath Nowhere were Beaumont property. They closed them in the 1940s, after a series of incidents. When Keiko identified the Batsquatch, Thaddeus acknowledged it was one of several creatures his family had attempted to harvest for their own purposes. His voice was heavy with old guilt. Her family drama had woken something they tried to tame. He told her to consider it a warning: the things beneath Nowhere were restless, and not all of them could be calmed by group therapy.

He left without another word.

And far below, in the darkness of the abandoned mines, the Batsquatch settled back into its lair. But it wasn't alone anymore. Its awakening had stirred others things that had slept even longer, dreamed even darker dreams.

One by one, in the endless underground dark, eyes began to open.