It started a week ago.
I’m not sure what it was that alerted me to its presence. Maybe it was the slight buzz I felt through my entire body when it came into contact with my wards or it was the feeling of someone staring a hole in my fucking head. One moment I was watching TV and the next I was staring at my living room window. Watching a pair of fucking eyes peek over the bottom of the window frame. It was almost like it hoped I couldn’t see it. If the eyes weren’t so fucking massive I might have suspected it was a neighbor.
Even though the bottom of the window was only a few feet off the ground there was still enough room for someone to hide down there. It would have been super shitty if it had been. What woman wants a neighbor to creep on them like that?
I sat frozen on my couch, completely unsure of what was going on. What the hell kind of animal has eyes that fucking big? When it disappeared below the window I finally moved. I shot off the couch and locked the front door before bolting across the house to lock the back door. I finally returned to the front door and flipped the porch light on to look outside. As soon as I backed up to look out the window I saw the thing stand up.
It was tall and thin. Its head was taken up by teacup-sized eyes and a wide mouth that didn’t fully close. I got a look at its sharp, broken, fucking nasty teeth as drool dripped from its mouth. It was taller than the edge of the roof and I was willing to bet it was tall enough to nearly see over the top of my one-story house. The porch light washed out the colors of its skin but it appeared to be a mottled mess of green, gray, and brown. Something that could blend into the deepest woods of Alabama. It walked away and entered the treeline roughly sixty feet from my house and disappeared.
I closed the blinds and pulled the curtains shut before returning my couch in shock. At some point I’d finally wandered off to bed, closing every blind and curtain along the way.
My neighbors had talked about strange things in the woods since I was a kid. I’d even seen a few strange things over the years. Just flashes of things between the trees. Hell, I’d put iron in the ground at the corners and entrances to my house to keep iron-hating creatures out, but it was really just a precaution. A superstition steeped in witchcraft and my own religion. No one ever saw the creatures rumored to live in the woods in person anymore. Hadn’t in more than fifty years. They were just cautionary tales at this point.
Apparently fucking not if I wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating that thing.
Come morning I wondered if I’d actually seen anything or if I’d just fallen asleep on the couch. I went about my day as if nothing had ever happened. I opened the curtains and blinds in the living room and saw nothing to indicate that I’d seen anything the night before. My garden was fine. My animals were fine. Everything was just fucking peachy.
While I was working in my garden Rufus, my closest neighbor, stopped by with a warning.
“Damn fox or yote got my chickens last night,” he complained. “Fuckin things tore my birds all to shit. Didn’t leave a single chicken alive.”
“Sounds more like dogs,” I told him. “Foxes steal a few birds and coyotes do much the same. Raccoons and weasels take the heads the first night and the rest on the second. Opossums steal the eggs before they ever touch a bird. Owls rarely ever take adult birds and even then, they take the whole bird. Rats only take bites out of living birds and leave them injured.”
Rufus grumbled under his breath about know-it-alls before he finally replied. “Just keep an eye out. You live by yourself out here. Can’t have something toting your short ass off. Even if you are a damn witch.” I laughed but mostly ignored his jab. It’s the bible belt. I expect nothing less.
“Jeff and Martha saw some feral dogs running through their fields a few days ago chasing a Cane Cutter,” I said. “I’m not surprised they got brave enough to kill your chickens.”
Rufus isn’t a people person. He nodded a bit while looking everywhere but at me. I’d be touched if he let me know what happened if I didn’t know he was after something.
“Any chance I could get you to hatch some chicks for me?” He asked.
I almost snorted but I’d know this was coming. I agreed and wouldn’t you know it, Rufus brought the eggs with him. I expected him to leave as soon as he secured the favor he was after but he stood and looked around for several minutes before he finally spoke again.
“You see anything weird hanging around lately?” He asked.
I gave him a funny look. “As a matter of fact, I did. Last night. I’m pretty sure it was nothing but I thought I saw someone looking in my living room window last night.”
Rufus let out a grunt and shook his head. “Damn world is going to hell. Somebody did the same shit to me a few days ago. They ran away when I picked up my shotgun.”
“I closed my curtains and went to bed,” I said. “Didn’t hear shit else from them after that.”
I left out the part about seeing the damn thing stand up. It seemed like Rufus saw an actual person and I hallucinated a creature.
“Just be careful out here,” he said with a sigh. “I’m going home before I catch your sins.”
I laughed and yelled after him. “Bye, Rufus! Be safe!”
After that, it was a completely uneventful day. I rechecked the front door more times than was sane to see if there were any tracks left behind by the creature. Didn’t matter how many times I looked, nothing was there. No footprints or anything else. I eventually chalked it up to falling asleep and having a nightmare.
Once all my animals were settled for the night I went inside for dinner and some wind-down time in front of the TV. I locked the doors, just in case.
At some point, I fell asleep to the drone of the TV. I woke up to a light tapping on my living room window. I peeked over the arm of the couch only to see those giant fucking eyes again. I got up and closed the blinds before sitting back down. It continued to tap on my window while I had a panic attack.
Y’all, I called the fucking cops. Shortly before the county sheriff’s truck pulled into my driveway the tapping stopped. The fucker knocked on my door and damn near made me jump out of my skin. I cracked the door open slightly and was greeted by the smiling face of Officer Cooper. The dumbest son of a bitch known to man.
“Cooper,” I greeted with absolutely no enthusiasm. “Whoever the fuck it is is out there and not in here. Go find them.” I pulled the door closed and locked it again. He searched for all of five minutes and came back. I let him inside that time because I wanted to keep my door locked in case it came back. “Did you see them?”
“Nope,” Officer Cooper said, still smiling. “Are you sure someone was here?”
I let out a long sigh before finally replying. “Yes, I’m sure. They stopped tapping on the window not long before you turned in. They were peeking through my window last night but I thought it was one of my neighbors or a teenager. I don’t know who the fuck that was.”
“Well,” he said slowly with only the smallest amount of concern. “I didn’t see anyone and there aren’t any tracks under the window. I guess they could have stood on the porch and tapped on the window.” He shrugged. “I just didn’t see anything.”
“Rufus said someone was looking in his window a few days ago,” I told him. “They ran off after he threatened them with his shotgun. It’s probably the same weirdo.”
Cooper just shrugged again. If you dropped a Golden Retriever on its head a few times and turned it into a person, that person would be Officer Cooper.
“If they come back I’m just going to call again,” I said, crossing my arms. “I am not putting up with some rando bothering me in the middle of no-fucking-where.”
Cooper agreed that it was a good idea and left it at that. He got back in his truck and left. I was left frustrated as hell. I know it was there. I know I didn’t imagine it. It didn’t matter, though. He didn’t believe me.
It didn’t come back that night. No, it waited until the next night to start tapping again. It’s done it every night since. Every night I call the cops again. They keep sending Copper and he never sees anything. I’m fed up at this point. I have fucking had it.
I’ve searched online for anything like it but I haven’t found anything aside from some stuff that was happening in India. I’m pretty sure it’s not the same creature hanging around my house in the backwoods of Alabama.