But it was too late for all that. They had come and they were there and whatever was to become of them seemed inevitable. The thing below was looking up at them, watching them; waiting for one of them to fall in and become its midnight snack.

The old woman wished she too could blink her cat's eyes and disappear the way the animals around them were now doing. Some part of her entertained a mild curiosity about just exactly where it was that the animals were disappearing to. She hoped for their sake it was somewhere safe but she doubted that was the case.

Just at that moment a hand touched her shoulder, “You'd best be comin' along with me, Mam. You, your man and yer little dog. That is if you don't want to ketch yer death. It's startin' to snow. Besides, Mam, you don't want to be lingerin' near her grave like you was, 'taint safe.”

When the hand touched her it was as if someone had turned on daylight in the forest. She could clearly see that the animals had all disappeared and they were all alone except for the man who had spoken.

He was standing beside her. He looked like something out of a Lil' Abner comic strip, corn cob pipe and all. He carried a long-barreled rifle across the crook of his arm like any mountain man might. His beard hid any smile that may have been on his lips. He was looking at the ground in front of them.

The old woman followed his gaze to a round gravestone lying in the forest floor. Weeds and vines grew around its chiseled stone surface sending their tendrils across it here and there obscuring it somewhat and adding to the illusion that the gravestone was a well.

The inscription was ancient, worn by time but she could just make out the words, “Here lie the remains of the thing that fell from the sky. Entombed November 4, in the year of our Lord, 1546. Let all who hear her siren call for release close their ears and turn away lest they face the she-beast.”

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