Hoosier Poet

Keeping Watch 5

(Author's Note: This will be the last installment of the story that will appear here. Further installments will be completed on Patreon, and then when complete it will be on Amazon.)

He heard his own scream inside his head. He felt his heart beating faster than it had ever beaten in his short life. Those were the only things that seemed to be happening normally.

The world was blue. Everything had a shimmer of blue around it. The shattered glass, the ruined window frame, the length of his rifle, and even the reed beast had a shimmering blue outline that went from bright dark blue to a pale light blue.

The window had shattered where the shimmering reed thing burst through it, and the shards were flying in towards him, but so slowly that they could have been merely floating there in the air between the creature and himself.

The rifle had a glow of light at its end, and the bullet floated in the air between the barrel and the creature’s open face.

Thomas stopped screaming and lowered his rifle. This was definitely a nightmare. The glass should have already hit him; the bullet should have already hit the beast. Or torn through it, since it looked like mere reeds.

He stepped around the bulk of the glass to get a closer look. The bullet, still tinged red from the heat of the barrel, was moving ever so slowly towards the open face of the beast. The opening resembled a sideways mouth, as if the head split from the top to the bottom to allow the mouth to open. The reeds curled inwards like makeshift jagged teeth.

Thomas poked at the reeds with the barrel of his rifle, and it slowly pushed the reeds inward without any resistance. As it sank, he saw an eye within the side of the head closest to him, and it snapped towards him. He stumbled backwards, but the creature did not follow him. It gave a slow and languished shudder, as if trying to shrug off the slowness that was gripping everything but Thomas. The reads themselves rippled in a slow wave from the tip of its gaping head towards its rear.

Then he noticed it.

Himself.

Right in front of the creature, he was standing, rifle still up, mouth still open in a scream, face still tight, half-flinching from the expectant blow from the beast charging through the window.

“What…?”

He slowly walked up to himself, squinting as intently at his own face as he had at the creature’s. He held up his hand beside the hand of his double. He held out the rifle to see if it would pass through the rifle his double held as it had done with the reed creature. It shook in his hand slightly, and then violently, before it flew from Thomas’s hand and went into the original.

He just barely heard it over the sound of own gasp.

The rustle of reeds.

He turned back to the creature, which was no longer quite as slow as the world around them. The waves that rippled from the tip of its head to its rear were now happening in rapid succession one right after the other. The reeds themselves rising and falling like the surface of a stormy lake. Its whole body seemed to be vibrating, and the reed fanged mouth was opening faster than it had been when the world went blue.
Thomas stepped back and felt himself bump into himself. There was a flash of white, and he felt himself jerk left. He was standing in front of the beast, rifle in hand and raised.

He was in his body again.

The blue disappeared, and the world snapped out of the slowness as quickly as it had been seized by it. The bullet went right through the gaping head of the reed beast and into the night. He dropped the rifle and brought his arm up to protect his face from incoming impact of glass and beast.

The moment happened so quickly compared to how it had been going, that Thomas almost missed it.
With a loud thud, a shadow landed on the wooden porch behind the reed creature. While the glass flew past Thomas, the creature did not. It hung in the air for a moment, its eyes spinning around wildly before turning its head behind it. There, the silhouette of a deer had reached out with humanish arms and had a fistful of reeds in its clawed humanish hands. It pulled the beast back.

The reed beast’s mouth spread wide, face reeds thrashing and waving in rage and let out a screech that Thomas thought sounded like a cross between a human in pain and a mountain lion. The sound hit him like a bucket full of cold water, and his body froze. His arms, and legs refused to move, and he could only watch as the thing that was clearly not a deer pulled the reed beast back outside from the window.
The reed beast lunged at its attacker, who lowered its antlers at the incoming head and then thrashed it sideways. The reeds ripped from the antlers but more took their place as quickly as they were ripped away. As the antlers ripped at the head, one hand was trying to hold it down, and the other struggled to fight off a tangle of reeds which had taken the form of a scorpion’s tail.

This was the greatest thing that he had ever seen, and he had just been looking at himself from outside of himself. He watched in awe, forgetting about his desire to move from the ruined window and his inability to do so.

Jessy scream brought his rebelling body parts back into control, and he spun around to see where she cowered behind Pa’s chair, peeking out to catch glimpses of it all unfold.

He ran to her and knelt behind the chair with her.

“What’s going on, Tommy?” She cried. Her eyes wide and frantic as she grabbed at him.
“I don’t know, Jess!” He put his arm around her.

The cabin shook as something slammed against the door with a boom. A loud screech pierced the air, followed by a deep guttural growl. Thomas had heard bucks growl before, but this was far deeper, and it seemed to echo within itself. His back was to the fire, but a wave of cold washed over him, and raced down his spine.

He could hear them still struggling outside, but he could not see them. He started to stand, but Jessy clung to him and tried to pull him back down.

“No! Don’t go!”

“I’ll be just a minute,” he hissed. “I need to see where they are. Maybe I can get better shot off.”
She whimpered but did not protest. He ducked low and edged as close to the shattered window, as he could before he slowly peeked over the shattered glass and ruined sill. The scene lit by the light of the moon made his breath catch in his chest.

The deer headed creature held its hooved foot on one struggling reed beast, while it grappled with another, tearing at reeds that seemed to replenish almost as fast as they were torn away. It swung hard and flung the reed beast against the oak. The deer then plunged its claws inside of the one beneath its hoof, tearing around as if looking for something. Finally, it gave a high-pitched bark in triumph as it pulled a small glowing stone from the creature which stopped its struggle and fell apart into a mere pile of reeds.

The deer put the stone in a small bag at its side. The reed beast that had been thrown against the tree stood and shook itself. It took an unsteady step, shook itself, and then its head parted, and the resulting screech made Thomas drop the rifle to cover his ears.

It ran at the deer in a flash. The deer lowered its antlers to meet it, when another of the creatures came out of nowhere to jump on its back. The deer flailed as it tried to fling it off.

Thomas picked the rifle back up and scrambled back to Jessy. “They are fighting each other. We need to go!”

“Who are fighting each other?” Jessy cried. “Go where?”

“I…I don’t know what they are!” Thomas said. “We need to go out that window there!”

He pointed to the window on the wall opposite the shattered one.

“We can run straight out into the woods, then round about get to granddad’s. he’ll know what to do from there!”

Jessy hesitantly nodded. “Ok.”

She looked around and then grabbed the wood poker by the fireplace. Thomas looked out the window to make sure the way was clear, then looked at Jessy.

“When I break it, I will lift you up, and then you run. I will catch up. Got it?”

She nodded again.

Thomas brought the butt of the rifle up to break the glass but didn’t have the chance before it exploded inward towards them.

***

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Exhausted

Keeping Watch 5

Keeping Watch 5

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Crafting

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

No more Kentucky runs

Monday, August 17, 2026

Storm

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Night

Saturday, August 15, 2026

Improvement