Larry felt a fool. What in the world was he doing out in Abry’s field at three in the morning? He’d let the worried farmer talk him into standing watch, but enough was enough. He was cold, hungry, and plumb tuckered.
He stood, meaning to tell Abry they should call it a night, when his companion grabbed his elbow and yanked him down.
“There! Just by the barn. That’s the same damn thing!” Abry’s eyes had gone wide and his hand shook a little on Larry’s arm, but when he let go and pulled his old hunting rifle around, he brought it up steady as a rock. His hound dogs had started up their alarm, barking like crazy.
The sheriff could see a massive black form coming from the trees toward the barn. He couldn't make out what the thing was. It was...smudged came to mind. Indistinct. But the shape was wrong, somehow. It seemed upright, but he saw no limbs or head. He blinked, doubting his eyes when he saw the thing's shadow leading it, between its body and the light from the house.
Like the shadow was casting the figure.
The hairs on his neck and arms stood straight up. It was definitely not one of Abry’s livestock. Slowly, almost oozing along, it seeped toward the barn, making no noise he could hear. Not over Abry’s dogs, anyhow.
Just outside the door it stopped, raised up, and slowly turned, a distinct snuffling sound reaching Larry's ears, until it was facing them. Larry saw it freeze, going on point he could tell, and heard the distant ethereal keening Abry had told of.
“Get it!” Abry hollered, and started firing his .30-06 as fast as he could work the bolt.
Larry wasn’t far behind, jacking shells and pulling the trigger until the shotgun ran dry. God help him, he’d seen a person’s blue eyes in that black and misshapen face, boring straight into his own. Those eyes stood out in the night like he was right there in front of the thing, not on a hill over forty yards away.
The beast turned and fled toward the treeline, flowing across the pasture like an undulate hole in the world. It was making a noise that Larry would remember the rest of his life. A howling, cackling laugh. A laugh full of evil and cunning and mockery. But a human laugh just the same.
“Sweetjesuslordgodamighty,” Abry said, eyes bigger than saucers, shaking like a leaf. “What the hell is it, Larry?”
“I don’t have a clue, Abe,” he said. “But I don’t think Jesus has anything to do with it.” He left Abry standing watch and went back to his cruiser for an extra flashlight. When he returned, the grizzled and frazzled farmer was in exactly the same position, eyes still wide and staring.
The two of them walked slowly toward the barn, heavy six-cell Maglites sweeping over the grass, the barn, and out toward the trees.
Nothing. No tracks, no crushed blades of grass, no stains—nothing but a faint reek of rancid cabbage or spoiled eggs.
Brimstone.
Larry glanced in the barn to check the animals. The cows were frantic, lowing and stomping, but they didn’t seem hurt. Even Abry’s prize milker Strawberry didn’t look any worse. No better, either, but she’d been down for over a month. It struck Larry then that the dogs had gone quiet.
Abry looked his stock over, forked some sweet hay into their troughs to soothe them, then the two men spent nearly three hours going over every inch of the pasture between the house and the woods, in line with the barn and about fifty yards to either side. Nothing at all. Even the smell was gone by the time Larry called a halt.
“Abe, I don’t reckon that sucker will be back today, not with dawn coming up. I doubt it’ll try anything when it ain’t dark. Besides, I can’t take much more tonight, and you don’t look any better.” He rose, shook Abry’s hand, and turned down the hill. “You call me if your dogs so much as squeak again and I’ll come runnin’, but for now I’ll be at the old home place. I got to think on this.”