Feet banged on the stairs, and there was screaming but not from May’s throat, May was too stunned to scream, too caught out with the phone in her hand and the darkness that had demolished the French doors and slipped into the cozy living room. The room thrummed with wind. From the corner of her vision May saw the woman on the stairs, and yes, she did have a gun, the kind you’d take hunting for deer, and she held it stiffly and wild-eyed as it swung its aim across the downstairs. May was backing away, the lady’s screaming pushing her toward the open front door, which the wind was slowly arcing closed.
The great shape, the long-legged blackness and its great reverent leafless crown, stepped, set its hooves, stole forward. Its legs like boughs, its silhouette a thatch of dark fingers of void woven together. The room smelled of ozone, of crushed leaves. The storm swept through the living room, a physical punch of wind resounding against the kitchen cupboards, sweeping May’s hair off her neck.
The backyard trees bowed, thrashed, banged their elbows together.
The woman was screaming down the stairs, the gun sweeping over May and the rest of the room, and May couldn’t imagine she could possibly be a target with that magnificent, awful thing drowning the light out of the room between them. She stepped back again, felt the phone in her hand, wondered what 9-1-1 would do about… this. What kind of help to ask for. And what use was a gun? The lady was looking at her and shouting incoherent threats and terror, the long cold nose of her gun pointed high.
It—the thing, the creature, if it was even truly there—lifted its dreadful, awful crest and looked at May with no eyes.
Her back was against the front door. It must have swung closed. It must have shut in the wind as she backed toward it. She felt the knob, felt the catch of its lock.
The gun sounded, a powerful blast muffled by the house and the storm pummeling everything, and with the violence of the sound everything fell instantly still. Everything vibrated at the same imperceptibly high frequency. Everything felt the storm holding its breath.
Whose story would this be, May thought: hers, or Piper’s, or Ailey’s, or Elizabeth’s?
The thing, the creature, the blackness, shivered with the wind. It turned itself toward her slowly, like a question.
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Copyright © 2019 by Tegan Moore
Art copyright © 2019 by Samuel Araya