To be clear, though, there IS a woodpecker.
That little shit has pecked no less than five holes in the siding of our house. My husband and I were concerned at first, because we thought, Hey, he’s after food. Maybe there’s termites in the walls.
Nope. He’s just an asshole.
Anyway, we’ve been lazy and the holes have been there for a few years now, being used by other birds as a nesting space. We recently had a squirrel scare, where we thought a pregnant squirrel had made a nest in there. Sounds of domestic violence rattled from within the wall. Thankfully, the squirrels moved on and it went back to just being birds.
But I digress.
The woodpecker is still around, and must have had babies last year, because we’ve seen some juveniles this year. Not sure if it’s them or the older one, but someone’s been at it on the house lately, and I’ve seen one pecking at the balcony banister, too. So when I was woken this morning by this shithead pecking on the walls again, I didn’t think much of it. Okay, I thought about murder, but that’s neither here nor there.
I checked my phone. 3:07. Way too early to get up. I rolled over and closed my eyes to go back to sleep, but then it hit me.
Woodpeckers are diurnal.
So what the fuck was this ass hole doing pecking on my goddamn house at 3AM?
No small amount of pissed, I threw my covers off and stomped to the window, throwing it open and sticking my head out to chase this fucker off, but my angry words died in my throat.
The creature outside of my house was not a woodpecker. It wasn’t even bird shaped. I don’t know what it was.
It was skeletal, about the size of a large man, but with a skull three times the size it should have been. Tattered scraps of dirty cloth hung from its frame. They twisted in a breeze that brought the scent of ground bones and musty leaves to me. The sound that I had mistaken for the woodpecker was this thing running its fingers along the walls of my house. Its knobby hands skittered across the siding like spiders made of bone, tap-tap-tapping a chilling beat as it moved methodically along.
As it traveled alongside the house, one step at a time, it worked its fingers up and down every inch of the wall. My chest started heaving, and I pressed a hand over my mouth.
It was looking for a way inside.
I ran to the kitchen, fumbling to open the cabinet where we kept the salt. As soon as I had the canister in hand, I ran back to the bedroom, picking the spout open on the way. I poured a line of salt across the windowsill. It was a trembling and uneven line, with thicker spots of salt here and there, but it was unbroken.
Peeking out the window, I saw the creature was a good six feet from the window, still tapping away. I glanced at my husband, still sleeping in bed. How was this not waking him?
Not knowing how thorough this thing would be in trying to find an entry to my home, I quickly went through all the rooms in the house, tracing the windowsills with a line of salt. For extra measure, I dug out an old bundle of sage, my intent being to follow the creature from inside the house with the lit bundle. I didn’t know what the best deterrent to this thing would be, but a bit of smudging couldn’t hurt.
By the time I got back to the bedroom, lit smudge stick on a saucer in hand, the creature had made its way past the first window, around the corner of the house, and by the sound of it was drawing close to the second bedroom window. I stood about a foot from the glass, quivering.
The skull came into view, and I fought to not pee myself.
Streaks of rusty brown coated the mandible and up to the orbital bone, thicker around the mouth. Bits of… something… were stuck on it like insects on flypaper. The eye sockets weren’t just empty, they were a void of absolute black from which it was hard to tear my gaze.
But tear my gaze I did when it paused its search for an opening and tilted its head back. A long, wriggling tongue emerged from its mouth and tasted the air. It undulated just outside the windowpane. I got the sense it was scenting the air like a snake. Could it somehow smell the sage?
It certainly smelled something it didn’t like. The thing gave a hiss that slithered into my ear and along my nerves until it reached my spine, where it flowed down, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake. Its head twitching back and forth, the creature backed up, the rag-clad bones of its arms waving around as if to bat something away.
I watched as it continued to back away, hissing as its arms flailed. Finally, with what I could only describe as an eyeless glare, it turned and walked away into the woods behind my house.
My breath rushed from my body as the last tattered scrap of fabric disappeared into the darkness.
Something brushed against my leg and I gasped, nearly dropping the plate and smudge stick when I jumped.
“Mrow?”
I looked down to see (well, sort of see, iykyk) my little void floof sitting next to me.
“Jesus Christ, must you do that?” I hissed.
The answer, given as another headbutt, was yes.
I stamped the smudge stick out on the plate. “Come on, you. You’re going to keep Mommy company while she’s waits for dawn.”
Because I knew there would be no going back to sleep. So I took my cat and curled up with her in the cushy armchair in the living room to wait for daybreak. To my relief, there were no more sounds from outside. As the cardinals and chickadees began their morning song and the first light of day was seeping over the trees, I finally dozed off.
I don’t think I was asleep for long, when my husband woke me with a gentle shake. “Honey, why is there salt across all the windows and doors?”
Blinking the crust of sleep from my eyes, I said, “We might have a problem, and it’s not the woodpecker.”