By
Steven Lloyd and Eric S. Brown
“Do you ever see them?” Grady did not look at his son when he invited this. Outside, unwanted shapes moved in shadow along the beach, a steaming cup of coffee set in front of him at the kitchen table. He cupped his withered hands round the mug, and said, “They will come for me, you know…” He looked away from the bay window and smiled at Thad. “They took your mother from us!” He finished irritably.
“Pop. Nobody’s coming for you. We’ve had this conversation before. Remember? Mom died in an automobile accident five years ago. Why must we go through this every time you come to visit?” He remembered his father being so strong growing up as a child. And now… “There’s nothing out there, Pop. Nothing.” Thad pleaded in frustration. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“You haven’t much of a choice, dear boy.” Grady growled. “When they do come, and they will, you might see them for what they actually are. Pray you never do or see them in the act. If you do, they will stalk you until…” He brought the cup of coffee to his slim lips and blew gently.
The night outside was unsettling, Thad had to admit, though he couldn’t understand why or a put a finger on the reason. He found himself staring out the window, coffee untouched. “Mom died in an automobile accident five years ago.” He repeated. At times it seemed to help.
“They’ll get me soon enough.”
“Pop, please…”
“They will,” Grady snapped. “They always get what they want.”
“Ready for bed?” Thad coaxed. “I know you had a long drive out here. You’re just tired Dad. You need to get some rest.”
No reply.
And then it rolled out of his mouth before he could stop it. “It’s not your fault she’s gone, Dad. Things happen. Life happens. We learn to move…”
“On.” Grady finished. “Is that what you have done? Moved on? Forgetting your mother? You fail to remember how much she loved you. I saw them, Thad. I saw them do things to her. I saw them…they…” He was on the brink of tears now. He sipped slowly, and then placed the cup back on the table. “You forget I was in the car too. Thought I was dead, Thad. And then I opened my eyes. They were…they were pulling her from the wreckage with savage intent. I couldn’t move and there was nothing I could do. Absolutely nothing.”
“Stop it, dad!” Thad rubbed at his tired eyes. It was midnight and his father had not moved for three hours. “She’s gone. You’re alive. Why can’t you accept that?”
“My life was over the day I saw them dragging her body out of the car. I was too afraid.” A long pause and then, “I think she was still alive when they started to work on her.”
“All right, dad. Tell me what happened that day. If it helps you, I’ll listen this time.”
“You’ll think I’m crazy.” Grady scoffed.
“I already think you’re crazy.” Thad said trying to break the tension in the room. He looked out the window, following his fathers’ gaze. “Do you see them?”
“Every night,”
“And what are they doing, Pop?”
“Waiting.”
“For what?” Thad looked at his watch, wondering how much longer this was going to continue. He needed to get to bed himself. “Talk to me…”
“Your mother was on the brink of death. I was barely coherent. I heard the ambulance coming and fought to stay conscious. Its approach was slow and I remember thinking about how much I wished the bastards in it would hurry up. Your mother was praying. She held onto her faith in God to the end. It was too dark inside the wreck of the car that night to see anything but I heard them break open her door with a tool of some kind then it started. . . I heard wet-smacking sounds, awful sounds. My stomach turned. I figured the paramedics had pulled her from the wreckage and were trying to help her. I didn’t call out and let them know I was trapped in the car too. Your mother meant so much to me, I . . . I wanted them to help her first. Make sure she was alright,” Grady sipped at his coffee, looked out the window, and sighed deeply. His lips trembled. “They were working on her.”
“Paramedics?”
“Them,”
“Them who, dad?” Thad questioned. “I don’t understand who ‘Them’ are. Explain to me so I can understand you? Who are they?”
“I don’t know who or what they are. That they exist is all I know.” His eyes seemed vacant then suddenly he slammed his coffee mug so hard onto the table top it shattered in his hand. “This is why we lost the war! Why we’ve never fought back against them. Don’t you watch the news Thad? All the killing, the missing people, the wars, it’s all them now. Sure the world was messed up even before they crossed over into it but now . . . Now it’s so much worse. We’re their food, their homes, and their playthings and they’ll go right on toying with us until they’ve used us all up or get tired of the game and end it all in one bloody rampage before people like you even admit they’re here!”
“This is ludicrous! There is nothing out there. No creatures. Nothing will happen to you. It’s all in your head, dad.”
“What I saw them do to your mother…” Tears welled up in his eyes. “They look like us most of the time but when they show what they really are they have long black talons. Their eyes…oh…you should have seen them, Thad, they were like glowing orbs of yellow fire. Their teeth resemble that of a piranha. Rows and rows of them.”
“Okay.” Thad asked: “What did they do to her?”
“They ate her soul.”
Thad reached up and rubbed at his forehead with both his hands which only served to piss his father off even more. “Dad, I don’t have time for this shit. It’s going on one o’clock in the morning. I have work tomorrow.”
Grady settled down and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry son. I just had to try to warn you before I went public. I know I’ll be dead after tomorrow. They won’t let me live after I drag them out into the light for everyone to see.”
“What are you talking about Dad?” Thad asked staring at his father.
“I have proof now son. I’ve spent the last five years chasing them, studying their ways. I know how to reveal them as what they are.”
Thad laughed. “And how’s that?”
“It’s their eyes, son. Take a flashlight and shine it into a human’s eyes and nothing happens but maybe it hurts them a bit, maybe leaves spots in their vision for a few seconds, but with them Thad, it nearly kills them. They revert to what they are when the feed or hop bodies.”
“How could you possibly know that Dad?”
Grady smiled for the first time that night. “I caught one a few months back. I locked it up in the basement and kept the thing alive while I studied it. It wouldn’t talk to me except in an odd screeching language I couldn’t understand. It would go back and forth between its human host’s form and its altered state all the time as it fought to get to free but there was one thing that always made it change, Thad, and that was when I cut on the huge lights above the table it was tied to. It took me a while to figure out the light had to go right into its eyes to cause the change though. I couldn’t figure out why sunlight didn’t do it because they walk around like us in the daytime too. It wasn’t until I started examining it in the darkness with only a flashlight that I figured it out. The eyes really are the windows to the soul, you see.”
“Dad, you are really crazy.”
“It’s okay that you don’t believe me. I just wanted to tell you goodbye.”
Thad smiled, “I’m glad you did,” he said as he got up and cut off the lights. As darkness fell in the room, Grady looked out the window at a sea of yellow eyes staring at him from the beach. Long talons dug marks into the plexi-glass of the window as dozens of the things opened their mouths in silent screams of anger. Grady turned to yell for Thad but his son was already standing above him. Thad looked down at Grady with yellow orbs burning brightly where his own eyes had been. “I really am glad you told me Dad,” Thad said as his overly long fingers closed about Grady’s neck and lifted the old man from his chair. The sound of snapping bone filled the room before the glass of the window shattered and the creatures poured inside to feed on the father of their latest host.