The scream file is two animals wearing one legend.

Barn owl: disk face, cavity shriek when wind threads the tree, a cry that can sound like a person who lost a word. Red fox: hunting scream in the field, prints in wet grass, no devil marks, just a brush and a job. Neighbors heard them on different nights, or the same night, and stacked them into a woman in the marsh because brains like characters.

You write both. Jonah reads over your shoulder and makes a face like he is swallowing a smaller, truer story. “So the banshee is a duet.”

“A duet plus darkness plus somebody’s uncle,” you say.

Lightning opens the clouds like a camera. The dike is a black line. The lights on the water go crazy for a second, chopped into glitter. Ms. Ellison’s window is still yellow. The storm is a third almost-ghost: omen, if you want it; electricity and pressure, if you are taking notes.

You can give the scream file to the scrapbook, where it belongs in two columns.

You can take it onto the dike and let weather try to scare you with the same trick, now that you know the trick’s name.