Jesse

I sat up and looked through the window.

It was in the yard, standing in the center of the gravel turnaround between the house and the barn, fully lit by the floodlight.

making no attempt to hide or retreat i saw it clearly for the first time it was tall seven feet or close to it the body was humanoid but emaciated to a degree that shouldn't have been compatible with standing upright i could see ribs i could see the shape of the pelvis through the skin

The skin itself was grayish brown, mottled, not uniform in color.

It caught the floodlight in a way that looked wet, as if it was coated in something, though I couldn't tell if that was moisture or the texture of the skin itself.

The arms hung well past the waist.

The hands were large, the fingers long and slightly curled.

The legs were bent at the knees, not dramatically but enough that the posture looked like a permanent crouch, as if the thing was always a fraction of a second from dropping to all fours.

The head was wrong in a way I'm going to struggle to articulate.

It was the right size for the body, roughly, but the shape was off.

The skull was elongated toward the back, sloping away from the face in a way that human skulls don't.

The face itself was narrow, the features compressed into the lower half, with a wide, flat forehead above, and a jaw that jutted forward slightly.

The mouth was a thin, dark line.

The nose was minimal, two slits.

the eyes were large and reflective picking up the floodlight and throwing it back as a flat pale shine it was looking at the house at the window at me i stood up i picked up the shotgun i went to the front door and i opened it

I don't know why I did this.

Every rational part of me was screaming to stay inside, to lock the door, to hide.

But something else was driving me, something that came from Mama and from Pearl and from the women before them who'd lived in this hollow and faced whatever lived in these ridges.

Something that said, ''This is our home, and you are not going to take it from us.''

I stepped onto the porch.