“You good?” he asks.
Fuck no, I’m not good. But I nod, anyway.
Slowly, his hand slides from my mouth and reaches to shut the door, latching it from the inside.
Releasing me from his embrace, the man takes my arm and pulls me along the aisle. I get a glimpse—a mere first impression—and note he is tall, easily over six-five, with dark blond hair shaved down to his scalp. His shoulders are broad, muscles bulging under a brown shirt that hugs his frame. When he glances over his shoulder at me, his eye color is indistinguishable in the shadows, but I can tell they are incredibly light.
Not once do I consider this person to be a danger. I follow him, intrinsically knowing that at this moment, he’s a safer bet than whatever that was outside the barn.
The stranger stops at the ladder that leads up to a loft. I don’t keep hay up there—it’s stored in a separate barn—but rather boxes of junk. “Get up,” he says quietly, nodding up to the platform bolted into the barn wall and supported with beams along the edge. “Hide near the back, and don’t come down until it’s safe.”
“My gun,” I whisper, glancing at it lying on the ground near the door. “I need it to protect myself.”
“Your gun is useless against an erchras. I’m your only hope.”
I have questions.
What the hell is an erchras?
Is it a new species in Wyoming?
And how did this man just mysteriously appear?
However, the erchras has reached the barn door and is rattling the latch. I scramble forward, right into the man for protection. His hands come to my shoulders, and he turns me toward the ladder. “Get up there now. And stay absolutely silent.”
The barn door rattles violently, the damn thing on the other side clearly not understanding how a latch works. The door isn’t locked—all the erchras has to do is turn the handle clockwise and it can easily walk inside.
I don’t wait around, instead flying up the ladder and moving to the back of the platform where I sprawl on my stomach. The flooring is no more than about twelve feet wide, so I flatten myself as much as possible and hope I can’t be seen. The boards are old and shrunken, and I can peek between them to the barn aisle below.
The man has disappeared, and for a brief but crazy second, I wonder if he was real.
The barn door judders again, and then it goes silent.
Did the thing give up?
A huge explosion of wood and the sound of shrieking metal has me clasping my hand over my mouth to stifle my scream. I can see through the crack in the planks that the entire door is gone, and the erchras is entering. Its arm still dangles useless, dripping blood so dark, I think it’s actually black, which means it was strong enough to pull that barn door free with just one hand.
My entire body trembles with fear as I start to understand that the man below won’t be a match for this creature. What it doesn’t have in brains, it certainly makes up for in brute strength.
I need to calm down, but my blood pressure steadily rises. Deep breathing will make too much noise. Hell, I may just die of a heart attack rather than being pulled limb from limb by that thing. My body is once again so racked by terror, I shake uncontrollably.
Through the wooden slats, I watch the erchras move down the aisle toward the ladder. As it nears the first stall, the horse inside starts blowing and snorting. Hooves kick at the stall walls, riling up the other horses.
The erchras ignores their cacophony, instead tilting its head left and right as if it’s plagued by curiosity. The beast’s shredded, dangling arm and slouched posture with protruding potbelly make it no less intimidating.
It reaches the ladder, and I fervently pray for it to keep moving, but it stops. Dealer’s stall is opposite, and the big stallion is going crazy inside. As if noticing the horses for the first time, the erchras’s head swivels almost ninety degrees to look at the stall, saliva dripping from its mouth. It seems mystified by the noises, but when it licks its lips and moves toward Dealer’s stall, I’m horrified that it’s no longer looking for me.
Where in the hell is that man? Shouldn’t he be doing something, or did he abandon me?
Dealer screams in fright as the erchras nears his stall, and I can’t stand it. Twisting my head, I spot an old baseball bat a few feet away. I inch over, grab it, and sling it as hard as I can over the platform edge. It bounces on the concrete floor ten feet to the left of the creature.
As expected, the bat gets the erchras’s attention. But rather than move to the bat or even turn back for Dealer, its head lifts and it appraises the platform. It shuffles toward the ladder, that creepy head tilting side to side.