The thing outside hasn’t gone away.

It has no nose. Its eyes are tiny and hollow. Its skin is a pale blue, and its teeth are massive, hideous. Part of me wants to believe it’s a man, but if it was… that time has long passed.

I live in Windle Rock, a coastal town on the furthest tip of Galway, Ireland—all of us are just too far away from one another to even really be considered neighbors. There’s nothing but rocks and hills out there… and still, the thing found me—it found me, not Saoirse Kelly in the house closest to mine (just a tiny blip of light over the hill), not Mr. Lerma and his wife even closer to town, or even the fisherman in the local lighthouse, it found me. It came to me.

It showed up around last week, at midnight. I was watching television in my living room when I heard a thump against the sliding glass door. Thinking it was my dog wanting to come back in, I got up to open it. When I realized I had not left him outside (he was sitting by the fireplace, ears up and body stiff), I froze.

There was another thump.

Carefully, I pulled back the blinds.

Instantly, my dog started to bark, backing away. I fell, staring at a hideous face pressed against the glass. I couldn’t tell if it was smiling or frowning. It seemed the thing’s lipless mouth was forever stuck in a crescent gash. My dog barked and barked, then settled on whining and trying to hide from the thing’s glare. It had no pupils—but I could see it looking at me, in the way its eyelids stretched wide.

I had no idea what to do. It put up its hands; its massive, gargantuan hands, and groped around for the handle of the door. I am thankful that it was locked.

But now I am not so thankful.

I have been trapped inside my house for a week. It keeps finding new windows. My dog is running out of food. When we hide in a windowless room (like the bathroom) it bangs on the sliding glass door. When we retreat to my bedroom, I hear it outside in the grass, hobbling along the perimeter of the house until it reaches my window, pressing its noseless blue face against the glass, breathing out a wet fog.

Sometimes it makes noises.

If you’ve ever heard a doffer choking at the pub, trying to suck down breath but being unable to, then I would say you’ve heard a sound close to what this thing makes. It can’t speak. Or maybe it just doesn’t. I tried to talk to it. But the whole while it was just looking at me. Looking at my dog.

Tired of the fear, I went into the garage and dug through the gun cabinet, determined to get rid of the freak in any way I could. My grandfather had left me this house on his deathbed in 1992, and in it I discovered his darkest secret. Known to all but me, it seemed. For he’d been part of… a political movement. If you know the personal histories of many retired old bags living in Windle Rock, it takes little effort to guess which one. I do not often think of it. And I had lived alone for years without problem, so I could not for the life of me find any ammunition. Panic set in, because the time it took to open the locked trap door within the cabinet and actually retrieve any guns at all was more time than I’d hoped to spare. The rifle hadn’t been used since the thirties… would it jam? Then I swallowed, hard, remembering that my only box of rounds was probably in the attic.

I turned to walk through the laundry room, and forgot that the back yard entrance in the garage had a doggy door.

Something outside was tapping against it.

It opened.

I crouched down behind my lorry. The thing put its head through the doggy door, retching and growling. My dog, who had been waiting for me in the laundry room, started to bark.

In an instant the thing bolted into the garage, then into my house. It was so fast, even on four lanky limbs the creature was faster than a grown man running at top speed. I stumbled, standing, ready to kill it with whatever I could find in the laundry room, but it had closed the door. I searched the garage, hoping for anything that was long and heavy, but then it opened the door again, and I ran for it.

That night I sat outside, listening to my dog scream and whine. I imagined the thing tearing him apart, first grabbing his tail and pulling as hard as it could with its dangling blue arms. I imagined the thing ripping off his skin, biting down on his flesh with those massive, hideous teeth, scraping them along the knobs of his spine. I imagined the thing eating him, shoving handfuls of meat into its maw and chewing, chewing, chewing.

I imagined these things because I heard these things.

Outside the sliding glass door, I stared into my home. There was blood all over the television set, the couch, and the carpet. I cannot see my dog—not all of him. But his little brown leg lay beside the kitchen table.

The thing has made a home of my home, face pressed against the glass, watching me. The tables have turned, but we’re back where we started.

My charge is nearly dead after hours of recording the thing, taking pictures, and trying to call emergency services—the service around my house always was terrible, and now I regret not installing a home phone more than anything. My lorry is in the garage, but my keys are in the kitchen. I pulled out my phone to write this down, because if they find my body one day, then they can find the note and possibly kill this thing. It’s not like I can just run away. The thing is way faster than me.

And it can open doors.

This is what I get for acting the maggot. For being a ludder, a fool, and frightened aging man. And—

...

[NO BATTERY]