“Whoa. Whoa. Calm down.”

“Shit no, I won’t! We find…,” he gestured toward the body with the barrel of his gun, “-that. And then something fucking touches me?”

*PFFFFFFFT*

The room went black. Sheriff Tormel coughed. The air suddenly tasted like pennies. He could hear Deputy Winston coughing a few feet from him. Tormel ducked down and began crawling on his hands and knees toward the other man’s coughing. It was like all the light had been sucked from the room and replaced with dense thick smoke that burned his eyes and lungs. Winston’s coughing had turned to yelling and random gunfire punctuated the once stillness of the air inside the barn.

“Get the fuck off of me, you fu-”

The sound of gunfire stopped and was replaced by the rip of skin and the sound of dozens of bones being drawn tightly together, scraping and screeching as they rubbed against each other. The lightest trill of a muffled scream could be heard as the soprano line to the symphony of bone.

“Winston! You okay? Winston! Answer me dammit.” For half a second Tormel was able to see a few feet in front of him. The night breeze helping diluting the blackness and moonlight began to slowly filter in again.

Five feet away in clearing haze Tormel saw Winston sprawled out on the ground his legs jerking and shaking erratically like a marionette being controlled by a man with a stroke. And crouched over the space where Deputy Winston’s face would be, was a man.

At least at first Sheriff Tormel thought it was a man but upon closer inspection it seemed to have one too many tentacles to be considered human. He fired a shot at it and hit it, the bullet grazing across one of the many oily errant tentacles attached to his deputy’s face. He fired again this time hitting whatever it was in the back causing an unearthly squeal.

The creature contorted itself around to scan what was attacking it. Though Tormel could not clearly make out through the smoke or mist what he assumed was ‘the face’ he could see the ethereal glowing translucence of four eyes staring straight back into his.

Tormel lined his barrel sight straight on with one of the eyes. Before he could pull the trigger, it moved. Jumped. It was now perched on top of a metal shelf. Christ this thing’s fast, he thought. Again before he could sight and pull the trigger it had jumped. It was now resting on a cross beam. He began firing wildly into the air into it’s vicinity. The creature paused only for a moment before tensing and exploding straight up, the beam it leapt from cracked in two sending years of dusty bird shit to the ground below. The roof splintered as the creature crashed upward through it, even more bits of miscellaneous debris falling through the air. Tormel could hear the sound of it moving along the roof and ran outside the barn but it was too late whatever it was… was gone.

Tormel rushed back in grabbing his radio off his belt. “This is Sheriff Tormel at the widow Lucas’ farm on CR 47 get me an ambulance out here now!”

The radio crackled, “Ambulance in route. Advise of situation. Over.”

“Situation’s fucked up is what it is! Jus’ git that ambulance out here. And you have Rogers and Tomassey bring in Deputy Eleven and have him waiting in the interrogation room by the time I get back.”

Tormel dropped to his knees next to his fallen deputy. Winston’s body was cool but not yet cold and more than a hint of red remained in the exposed muscle of his face. Tormel took that as the best sign he could, peeling off his jacket he draped it gingerly over Winston’s torso to try and keep him warm. Winston’s mouth gaped like a wounded fish. Sheriff Tormel sat in the dirt next to him and put his head in his hands. He didn’t move until the ambulance came.