In Conversation with Scott Mariani
The Scottish Highlands
November 1992
Outside the cottage, the storm had reached its peak. Rain was lashing out of the starless sky, the wind was screaming, the branches of the forest whipped and scraped violently at the windows.
The lights had gone out, and the old place was filled with shadows from flickering candles. The twelve-year-old boy had been cowering at the top of the creaky stairs, listening to the argument between his parents and his grandfather and wishing they’d stop. Wanting to run downstairs and yell at them to quit fighting. Especially as he knew they were fighting about him—
…When the thing had come. A creature that looked like a man – but could not have been a man.
The boy had seen it all take place. Watched in speechless horror, peering through the banister rails as the intruder crashed in the door and strode through the hallway. The argument had stopped suddenly. His parents and his grandfather turned and stared. Then the sound of his mother’s scream had torn through the roar of the storm.
The creature never even slowed down. It caught his father and his mother by the arms, whipping them off their feet as though they weighed nothing. Like dead leaves. It dashed their heads together with a sound that the boy would never forget. Candles hissed, snuffed out by the blood spray.
Then the thing had dropped the bodies and stepped over them where they lay. Smiling now. Taking its time. And approached his grandfather.
The old man backed away, quaking in fear. Spoke words that the boy could not understand.
The thing laughed. Then it bit. Its teeth closed on the old man’s throat and the boy could hear the terrible gurgle as it gorged on his blood.
It was just like the stories. The stories his parents hadn’t wanted his grandfather to tell him. The boy shrank away and closed his eyes and wept silently and trembled and prayed.
And then it