Keeping Watch 3
Thomas sat awake with his back leaning against his father’s chair, his stomach felt like it was in a knot. He faced the door and the window beside it. His eyes bounced from one to the other, half expecting the deer looking demon creature to lunge through the window or force the door open, crossing its threshold to do God knows what to him and Jessy.
On one hand, he was jealous that Jessy was able to fall asleep in front of the fire so easily. Yet, on the other hand, he was glad that she wasn’t awake to share the same fear that gripped him.
She lay curled up under a half-finished quilt that Ma was working on. Maybe its warmth, and the warmth of the fire had lulled her to sleep.
A lullaby that was withheld from him.
Try as he might to close his eyes and keep them closed in the attempt to force himself into sleep, they wouldn’t stay closed. After a moment or two, he would swear that he heard something, and they would flutter open and focus on the window and then the door.
He had put the bar on the door and pulled the rifle from the mantle. He was ready for anything that dared to come in. Or dared to gaze in for that matter.
A loud thump came from above him on the roof, and he sat bolt upright, scooting further back against the chair as if he were trying to disappear into it. The thump was followed by what sounded like a pair of hooves slowly and deliberately walking across the roof to the south side of the cabin, before going silent right over the door. He looked up, holding the rifle close, not sure whether to shoot blindly at where the sound had seemingly stopped, or to hold his breath.
He held his breath, ears straining to hear anything over the pounding of his heart in his own chest and the crackle of the fire. Swallowing hard, he pushed himself to his feet. He crouched down, and walked bent over towards the window as quietly as possible. Pushing himself against the wall beside the window, he peeked out. There was nothing on that side that he could see. He crawled under the window to look out the other side. Nothing.
The outside was well lit by the moon’s silver light, but he couldn’t make out anything out of the ordinary.
Until he heard it.
It wasn’t the hooves on the roof, though. It was a gentle and yet earnest rustling that he heard. Not of leaves or weeds, but something else. Something he couldn’t quite place, though it sounded familiar. He pushed the side of his face into the cool wood of the wall as far as he could, straining his eyes as he looked every which way out the window that he was able to as he tried to see where the sound was coming from.
He saw it as it rounded the corner of the cabin and came into view of the window. He squinted at it, blinked, and squinted again. He had no clue what he was looking at. It looked about as tall as their old Billy goat, but it moved across the ground with the poise of a bob cat on the hunt. Thomas couldn’t see any legs on the creature, but rather root like tendrils fluttering back and forth on the grass pushed it forward. It’s body appeared as a mass of clumped up silt, and out of its back were a heap of reeds and cattails. A knot of reads and dripping algae formed a head roughly the shape of a dog with elongated muzzle, two blue glowing orbs flickered and danced within its head like small fires. As they slowly danced from one side to another, Thomas understood that these were its eyes.
“What the…” Thomas whispered.
The creature stopped moving and dropped to the ground so quickly that if Thomas had not been watching it, he wouldn’t be able to tell where it went. Even it’s eyes dimmed to the point that he didn’t know if the orbs were still there, or if it was the glimmer of the moonlight shimmering on the mess of reeds.
An ice-cold wave of nausea washed over Thomas. What had once been prowling just outside looked like it had been there all along. He swallowed hard and allowed his eyes to drift around the window a bit to see if there were any other clump of weeds or reeds in a place that he did not recall seeing them before. He heard the rustle again, and his eyes flashed back to the creature, that was now slithering slowly in his direction, tendrils spinning out, as if growing and retracting as it pulled itself forward. Its pale blue orbs no longer dancing but fixed upon the window.
Thomas pulled his head back from the window and pressed himself against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to steady his breath. This was not real. No more real than the deer demon he had seen earlier.
“Just a dream…” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Just a bad dream…”
At his words, the rustling stopped again.
Thomas forced himself to slide his face to the corner of the window just far enough that he would see with one eye a mass of weeds and reeds sprawling on the ground just in front of the porch railing. He slammed himself back against the wall. Trembling, he pulled the hammer back on the rifle. He didn’t know whether or not a bullet would do anything to whatever this thing was, but it was the only thing he had.
He took a breath and stepped away from the wall and turned towards the window. He almost dropped the rifle before he could bring it up to aim. The reed creature was at the window, its muzzled “face” now flattened as it pressed against the glass, its orbs trained on him and flickering fast.
He stared at it for a moment, unable to think, or move.
A hole appeared between the eyes and a godawful and warbling screech came from within the creature, its reeds and weeds shaking and vibrating with the screech as if amplifying the sound.
The window cracked and snapped Thomas out of his stupor. He screamed and brought the rifle up to bear on the creature, and pulled the trigger.
***
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
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