We don’t know where they came from. Though it was shortly after that terrible lightning storm that ma said she started hearing things scampering across that old attic floor just above our heads.
At first we thought it was the mice. But it was odd. There were none in the traps. In fact we hadn’t seen them in months. None in the barn or under the porch.
They were gone. And on the farm, that just doesn’t happen. Pa thought it might be the new poisons he had tested, but he couldn't be sure.
Then the dog went missing. But he was old and half blind so even that wasn’t much of a surprise.
But when the cattle started disappearing pa became afraid. We called in people to check it out and they told us it was thieves, come in the night and took them away.
Of the animals our cat, Esiah, lasted the longest. We’d wake up late in the night to hear her terrible hiss. As if she was waging some unseen battle for survival off in the cornfields behind our house. In the morning she’d be hiding in the rafters. Afraid to come down, her fur still standing straight up from the night before...
And then one night Ma woke up to go to the bathroom. I heard her scream. She said she saw one of them, sitting there staring at her from the shadows. It pointed at her with one of its little hooked fingers and then licked its lips. It turned to show her Esiah. Our cats eyes were lifeless, her body wrapped tightly inside that thorny spider-palm that sprouts from their shoulders. Her tail dragging limply behind it as it pounced off into the darkness.
After that it all happened quick.
Ma and Pa are gone now. As is everyone else. Its just me.
They’ve been leaving gifts for me. They want me to make it easy for them.
The towns I drive through are all quiet. Theres nothing on the TV or the radio.
Nothing is being broadcast from those big cities I always wanted to go to.
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