It came back. I’m not even remotely surprised. I had a nasty surprise waiting for it this time. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Before anyone asks, Officer Cooper is still useless. I called again the night of my first post and he still couldn’t find it. Granted, he does think he’s looking for a person. I wish they’d stop sending him. At this point, they don’t want me to call anymore. Which is fair.
I should probably point out that I’m a subsistence farmer. Mostly. It basically means I produce enough food to feed myself. It’s a long-standing family tradition. One my mom decided to get out of after a particularly aggressive bull killed my dad. She moved to Montgomery about five years ago to escape the reminders. Mom gave the farm to me after I made it clear I didn’t want to leave this life. My sister made it clear when she turned eighteen that she wasn’t going to be a farmer.
I never learned to stop producing enough food for four people. So I sell the extra in whatever city I feel like driving to that day. It’s not perfect and I don’t make a ton. It suits me, though. I barter and sell livestock to my neighbors. I do odd jobs for some of my older neighbors when I really need cash. It works.
After my last post, I was so frustrated that I decided to fuck its whole day up.
I mentioned a few times in my last post that I’m a witch. I practice witchcraft (duh) and figured I’d step up the protections I have in place. I use wards that are just meant for general protection and to scare the shit out of my neighbors. They look more intimidating to certain people than they actually are. They’re basically just symbols I created and, using paint mixed with herbs and some other stuff charged with intention, painted in visible places on the front of my house. They’re tiny but I have really nosy neighbors.
Some of them are on my windows but I use a mixture of herbs soaked in vodka, mixed with water, charged in the same way, and painted on with my fingers. It works, just not well enough to keep that thing away. They aren’t made to combat things I was on the fence about believing in the first place. I’m a mundane over magical kind of gal.
So I went with the mundane before bothering with the magical. I had an extra electric fence energizer hanging around and plenty of supplies to go with it. I used some screw-in insulators to snake the wire across my window. I stuck a grounding rod in the ground and rigged the whole thing up. Thankfully it didn’t short out. I was playing stupid games to protect one window.
I did, however, decide it would be best to kick my wards up a notch and repaint them all with the intention of protecting my house from the creature. I even added a few to my coops and barn. I had no idea if it would work. I just felt better having a backup. My other backup was my 30-30 I use for hunting. As thin as it is, I’m not sure I could hit it.
I kept a close eye on the time and as soon as it got close to dark I locked all my animals up and locked myself in the house. I left all the lights in the front of the house off so I could see it coming. My bedroom and bathroom lights were all that was left on. I hunkered down on the couch and waited.
I did not see it walk up to the window. One moment there was nothing there and the next it was trying to peek in at me. I glared at it as its head rose far enough for it to see me. It seemed to take forever. Like the bastard was making a show of it. The tops of those bulging, jaundiced eyeballs made contact with the wire. There was the pop of the electric fence coming into contact with something wet and it screeched so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. I covered my ears and watched with wide eyes.
It scratched at its closed eyes with its long fingers like it could claw the pain out. All it did was bloody up its face. It stuck a hand out to steady itself on the window and screeched again as its hand touched the wire. I snorted, trying not to laugh but it turned into a horrified gasp as the creature ripped the wire off the window in a rage. I started backing down the couch with my rifle in hand.
It reached out to break the glass and recoiled with another scream of pain as my wards burned its skin. It tried, again and again, to break through the ward on the glass and it failed each time as its hand was burned.
I let out the breath I was holding in as it finally turned and fled into the woods. If it wasn’t going to kill me before, it was probably going to try to now.
I relaxed into my couch as much as I could. I’d honestly expected my whole plan to fail. I likely wouldn’t be able to use an electric fence to keep it out again. I doubted it would fall for it. Maybe it would be enough to keep it from trying for me again. I was tempted to fence my property in with it but it had such long legs I didn’t think it would work. Not without being extremely expensive.
I slept poorly. No surprise there. When I finally left the house this morning my animals were safe and annoyed at the late feeding. It hadn’t touched the wards on the barn and coops. It was a relief, honestly. Food or not, I didn’t want them to suffer.
When I checked on the window I expected to find blood. There wasn’t any. The ward left a burn mark on the window, though. I’m not sure I expected such a violent reaction. I didn’t expect a reaction at all.
I have a confession. Prior to last night, I didn’t really believe in magic. It was a way to scare the crap out of my neighbors and bring me a bit of peace mentally. There’s something calming about casting spells and performing rituals. It alleviates a bit of stress over certain things. Basically, I just saw it as a handy placebo effect. Not so much now. At least I don’t have to waste electric fence wire now.
Rufus stopped by again today. It’s not normal for him to visit so often. I maybe see him once a month, if even that. As soon as he exited his truck I ran out to see him.
“Hey, Rufus,” I called. “What brings you back so soon?”
He gave me a sour look. “Jessi, something tore up my bull. Fucking thing ripped right through him.”
I was stunned, to say the least. Rufus raises Brangus cows. If you didn’t guess by their name, they’re a cross breed of Angus and Brahman. They aren’t huge but they aren’t small either. I knew the bull he’d lost. He was a big boy. If something could tear him apart like it had the chickens, I didn’t want to meet it. But I wondered if I already had.
“Shit,” I said slowly. “What the fuck?”
Rufus grumbled about my language before asking, “And you haven’t seen anything?”
“Not of the livestock killing variety,” I said with a sigh. “Just the window creeper. I gotta tell ya, Rufus, I don’t think it’s a person. Not with those eyes. Shits getting too weird around here.”
He nodded and sighed. “Yeah, I was hoping all you saw was a person.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Just what the hell do you mean?”
“It wasn’t a person I saw,” he muttered. “It was a tall creature with big ass eyes. That’s why I came to see you. I was hoping it had moved the hell on.”
I sighed and stared off at the trees where the creature had disappeared the night before. “Well fuck. I pissed it off last night.” I told him the story I told y’all.
Rufus gave me a look that said I was a fucking moron. “It might have moved on if you had left it the hell alone.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know,” I muttered and looked at my feet. “I was sick of it tapping on my window.”
“Draw me up some of those damn symbols,” he sighed. “Just in case.”
I agreed and sent him on his way with a promise to visit if anything else happened. Rufus doesn’t have a phone and I worry something’ll get him and no one will know. I don’t understand what’s going on around here. Why in the world is this happening now?
Whatever it is, I don’t have time to worry about it now. That thing is already tapping on my window.