Then There Were Five by Elizabeth Enright Page A

would sit up in his bed, turn on his flashlight and point it at the window. The effect was instantaneous and rewarding.
    Out of the thick, night woods in the valley the moths came, flying in hundreds, fascinated by the shining eye of Oliver’s window. As if attached to threads they were drawn by the light; clouds of them, swarms of them, fluttering out of the dark. And with them came all kinds of beetles; as well as the midges and mosquitoes which were small enough to crawl through the screen’s meshes. Oliver didn’t care, though. He slapped and scratched absently, and stared at the moths. He never tired of watching them, they were so beautifully made, with their patterned wings, tiny fur jackets, and dark, blank eyes. Up and down, up and down the screen they walked on tiny legs, their wings trembling. Others thumped and knocked against the broad overhanging eaves, and still others kept emerging from the shadows, soaring and drifting, like lazy confetti or blown petals in the dark. And now in Oliver’s room a sound could be heard: a whispering, a rustling, of hundreds of small, soft wings.
    Oliver sat transfixed and spoke quietly from time to time, telling himself the names of the ones he knew. “There’s a Virgin Tiger moth,” he’d say confidingly. “There’s a nice Sphynx, very nice,” or “Oh, boy, what a swell Leopard.” When an interesting one came along that he didn’t know, it was necessary for him to get out of bed, find the moth book and look it up. Really, with all this nocturnal scientific research, Oliver got very little sleep.
    Sometimes a big hawk moth would appear, clinging to the screen. His eyes were little, fierce flecks of fire, and his fringed antennae were like tiny ferns or feathers. His wings vibrated so rapidly that they became a humming mist. There he would cling, in love with the light, staring at it, longing to reach it. Why? Oliver wondered. What did the light mean to them all?
    Sometimes a big beetle would come, blasting and intoning, repeatedly hurling himself so hard against the screen that often he fell over on his back on the windowsill, and lay there for twenty minutes at a time, grappling the air with frantic, spurred legs. He never learned.
    â€œNitwit,” Oliver would say to him contemptuously. “Thundering around that way isn’t going to get you anyplace.”
    Danger also lurked beyond the window. Suddenly, darting up from nowhere, savage and swift, would come a bat. For a split second Oliver could see its tiny snout and mouse’s ears, as it pursued the larger moths. His heart never failed to give a little skip when he saw it, for now, to him, the scene framed by his window had enlarged, become enormous. The moths had changed from moths into animals, or people, or fantastic beings from another world; and the bat was no longer a bat, it was instead the devil himself, or an ogre among gauzy innocents, or a black panther in a jungle. Oliver, watching, had become moth-sized, too, and felt a thrill of absolute terror when the bat appeared. It was exciting, and he shivered as he looked. The flashlight dramatically illuminated all these activities beyond the window.
    One night after he had turned off the flashlight and lain down to sleep, and had just begun working on a dream, he was aware of a sound. At first he heard it reluctantly; far away, a gentle interruption which persisted. At last he opened his eyes and concentrated on listening. It was a velvety sound, very soft, like the pat, pat, pat, of a little felt slipper on the eaves. “A moth and a pretty good-sized one, too,” said Oliver, sitting up fast, interested as any hunter stalking his prey. He pointed the flashlight at the window and turned it on. Instantly the small insects which had been asleep on the screen woke up and began their tireless promenading up and down, always up and down, in their ceaseless search for an entrance. Pat, pat, pat, just