Coyote (Created: Part 1)

3

After my work, I came in and ran the same routine that I had the previous night. I grabbed dinner, ate in the game room, watched a movie with Kenzie, then went to bed.

This time, when I was on my way down the hall, Daniel emerged from his room. He wore an unusually serious expression, and was muttering something to himself.

"What's up?" I asked nonchalantly, expecting nothing more than a shrug and a vague answer. Instead, he flashed me a concerned glance. For something to bother him like that was unusual, at least in my experience.

"Oh nothing," he mumbled, "just saw someone messing around outside so I'm going to check it out."

I frowned. "Really?" I asked as I followed him down the hall. As we reached the front door to the house, I slipped my feet into a spare pair of sandals. "Has this ever happened before?"

"Not in a long time, no," he responded as he opened the door. The cool night air greeted both of us as we stepped outside. "I'm just gonna chase him off and make sure he won't come back."

I nodded as I followed him in the dark, followed by the dog. We moved around the side of the house, looking around us for any sign of an intruder. Daniel pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight feature, shining it this way and that.

It seemed odd to me that an intruder had gotten onto the property without Kenzie noticing, but I assumed that the stupid dog had been too busy kissing up to me in order to get pats to notice any stranger outside.

Once we were outside though, she grew very upset, running to and fro, and barking at seemingly nothing.

Despite our efforts, the search yielded nothing. No signs of any intruder were found, and believe me, we were thorough. We checked in the old chicken coop, in each and every pile of scrap that was lying around, and in every other place that an intruder could possibly be.

We had hoped that Kenzie would be able to sniff out the crook, but she turned up nothing, despite being agitated. At last, we arrived at the conclusion that the intruder was probably long gone.

We never checked the pasture though. There was simply too much ground to cover, and we were both tired. It wasn't until morning that we found signs of any trespasser. After all, we never thought to check directly underneath the window of Daniel's room.

I woke up the next morning, and after a light breakfast I headed outside for my work. That was when I caught a glimpse of a small, furry shape just underneath Danie's window.

Moving closer, I saw that it was a cat. However, it didn't run away as I drew close. No... how could it? No animal can run when it's been messily gutted.

A disgusted groan escaped me as I stared at the body that had been left there in a puddle of blood and organs. It was a grey tabby with short fur, much like one that my aunt used to own before moving out.

I simply shook my head as I turned away.

"Up to your old tricks again," I muttered, trying to ignore the awful stench.

***

After the incidents when I was eight, the animal corpses came back every single time I visited the house. The timing got better too, according to Grandma. They would show up the very night I arrived, and stop the day I'd leave.

After two years of the pattern, I could no longer convince myself that it was just a coincidence. The problem was, I had no idea where to start. I would try to stay up at night to catch the culprit in the act, but whatever it was, it was clever. It always managed to evade my sight.

At least for the most part. Some nights though, I would manage to catch a glimpse of something, but I could never make out what it was. Perhaps ears... yes, I think that they were a pair of ears. Maybe a snout too.

Despite the corpses being left about, I myself was never attacked. I never even seemed to be targeted. Remember how I mentioned before that the incidents reminded me of a cat leaving a little sort of gift for its master? This resemblance only increased as time went on, and I began to assume that my little stalker was leaving twisted "gifts" for me. Why? To tell the truth, I had no earthly clue.

After a couple more years of confusion (and frankly ignorance, as I had begun to learn to tune the strange events out entirely), I grew tired of wondering.

I needed answers. So one year on the week of Christmas, I asked each member of the family if they remembered anything regarding those happenings. Anything at all would do.

It probably seemed strange, a twelve-year-old boy asking those questions, but I needed to figure it out. Grandma and Grandpa weren't much help; they would tell me what I already knew about the strange animals getting stolen all at once, but nothing else.

I could tell they were keeping something else from me, but pushing the matter wouldn't have been wise, so I dropped it.

The rest of my stay was spent trying to fit together what few pieces I had without success. After some hours of puzzling, I gave up and conceded that there might not be a reasonable answer to the situation at all.

That night, however, after I turned off my light and went to bed, I saw something looming in my window. Just a minute before, there had been nothing, yet suddenly it was there.

A figure stood just beyond the curtain. I whimpered and turned the other way, clutching the covers and squeezing my eyes shut. Every child knows, after all, that such is the only way to deal with monsters.

I would occasionally turn my head to look, and it was still there. It was a humanoid shape with thin arms, and a strangely-shaped head that I couldn't quite figure out.

I did manage to drift off at one point, only to awake a couple hours later. I checked the window. The figure was still there. This time, however, it was hunched over, its head tucked in the lower right corner of the window.

My eyes wandered to that corner, where the curtain fell over the windowsill and left a small gap which tiny bits of light would shine through during the day.

There, in that small gap, I saw it. A pitch black eye surrounded by fur. I could see a little yellow iris in the middle, focused right on me.

A pit formed in my stomach as I turned away, suppressing a scream. It could see me. It could see me.

And most importantly, in my mind, it knew that I was awake. I'm not sure why that bothered me. I guess I always thought that being asleep would protect you from the monsters.

I never got another wink of sleep that night. It watched me until dawn, when I dared to take another glance and found that it was gone. Instead, a bloody hand print stuck to the window from the outside.

When I went to inspect it, I saw a gutted squirrel lying on the ground where the figure would have been standing. I told my mom about what I saw, but we both agreed that it was probably only a dream. It was a very vivid and strange dream.

In my mind, however, I knew the truth. The "gift" that it left for me confirmed it. That was the thing that had been leaving the animal corpses around. I had found the culprit at last.