Jesse

Silence for about 30 seconds.

Then they came back, north to south.

Then they stopped again.

Then something leaned over the edge of the roof and looked in the window.

I know that's what happened because I heard the creak of the roof edge taking weight, and then the window on the north wall went dark.

Not completely dark.

The window was already dark because the night was overcast.

But it got darker, as if something large was blocking the faint ambient light that had been coming through.

I was lying on my side facing that window.

I couldn't see details.

I could only see that the window, which had been a slightly lighter rectangle in the dark wall, was now solid black.

Something was in front of it.

Something was pressed against it or hovering just outside it.

i didn't move i'm not sure i could have moved even if i'd wanted to my body had locked every muscle rigid every joint frozen the fear i'd felt with the smell was nothing compared to this

This was the kind of fear that shut systems down.

My breathing went shallow and my vision narrowed and my thoughts reduced to a single repeating loop.

Don't move, don't move, don't move.

The windows stayed dark for a long time.

Minutes.

I couldn't count them because my sense of time had collapsed.