Show me your face, show me your stinking ugly face. Come on, crawl out
where I can see you. Don't be so gutless, you fucking freak.
Eduardo went inside. He shut the door but didn't lock it. After
closing the blinds at the windows, so nothing could look in at him
without his knowledge, he sat at the kitchen table to bring his diary
up-to-date. Filling three more pages with his neat script, he
concluded what he supposed might be his final entry.
In case something happened to him, he wanted the yellow tablet to be
found-- but not too easily. He inserted it in a large Ziplock plastic
bag, sealed it against moisture, and put it in the freezer half of the
refrigerator, among packages of frozen foods.
Twilight had arrived. The time of truth was fast approaching. He had
not expected the entity in the woods to put in an appearance in
daylight. He sensed it was a creature of nocturnal habits and
preferences, spawned in darkness. He got a beer from the
refrigerator.
What the hell. It was his first in several hours. Although he wanted
to be sober for the confrontation to come, he didn't want to be
entirely clearheaded. Some things could be faced and dealt with better
by a man whose sensibilities had been mildly numbed.
Nightfall had barely settled all the way into the west, and he had not
finished that first beer, when he heard movement on the back porch. A
soft thud and a scrape and a thud again. Definitely not the crow
stirring. Heavier noises than that. It was a clumsy sound made by
something awkwardly but determinedly climbing the three wooden steps
from the lawn.
Eduardo got to his feet and picked up the shotgun. His palms were
slick with sweat, but he could still handle the weapon. Another thud
and a gritty scraping.
His heart was beating bird-fast, faster than the crow's had ever beaten
when it had been alive. The visitor--whatever its world of origin,
whatever its name, whether dead or alive--reached the top of the steps
and moved across the porch toward the door. No thudding any longer.
All dragging and shuffling, sliding and scraping.
Because of the type of reading he had been doing these past few months,
in but an instant Eduardo conjured image after image of different
unearthly creatures that might produce such a sound instead of ordinary
footsteps, each more malevolent in appearance than the one before it,
until his mind swam with monsters.
One monster among them was not unearthly, belonged more to Poe than to
Heinlein or Sturgeon or Bradbury, gothic rather than futuristic, not
only from Earth but from the earth. It drew nearer the door, nearer
still, and finally it was at the door. The unlocked door. Silence.
Eduardo had only to take three steps, grab the doorknob, pull inward,
and he would stand face-to-face with the visitor.
He could not move. He was as rooted to the floor as any tree was
rooted to the hills that rose behind the house.
Though he had devised the plan that had precipitated the confrontation,
though he had not run when he'd had the chance, though he had convinced
himself that his sanity depended on facing this ultimate terror
