The gentle hissing rose to a screech through the trees, knocking owls from their perches and stopping the night song dead.
I froze in my seat, rocking chair pushed way back on its curve while cold water beading on the side of my beer can dribbled through my fingers and threatened to slip. When the screeching ended and the crickets waited silent, I found myself waiting too. The looming house behind me stood dark and empty, the only light rising from the fire I'd built in the steel drum out front. My wife was gone. My kids were gone. Now even the dog was gone, and finally the screeching had come for me.
Shifting my weight forward inch-by-inch, I began to ease the chair back to neutral so I could climb out quietly. A smell like burning corn drifted in on the breeze from somewhere east, and the terror in my heart exploded into something worse.
The can spilled out along the planks and rolled off the edge of the porch as the piano-string tension in my chest snapped. I grit my teeth and screamed in pain while those two big eyes opened up like twin pale moons settled on my lawn. I lay helpless, my own body betraying me as the thing strode clicking and clacking up the steps and knelt before me, long snout hovering inches from my face and lit in only silhouette by the fire. It's tongue poured out and fell across the ground, its breath reeked like swamp water as the screeching sang again so loud my ear drums felt about to burst, and at last my soul gave out...
The night closed in around my senses as I took one last glimpse at the creature before me. I watched its rows of teeth chatter up and down inside its gaping maw, and the words it spoke rattled up my bones:
"I miss you, Daddy..."
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