My heart is still beating out of my chest. I'm going to try to make this as detailed as possible, so that we have a record. It happened not ten minutes ago, and I need to get it down while it's still fresh. Just one second to get my hands to stop shaking.

Now, let's begin at the beginning.

Violet left just before six in the evening to go back to Baltimore. Rose and I got to talk for a while as the sun went down. It boggled my mind that she could talk to me like a normal person--hell, she was laughing almost like I'd known her to laugh. Eventually, I got round to asking her about "the witness" she'd spoken of to Violet. She told me it was nothing, just some conversation-filler, something to talk about. I pressed, but she got irritable, so I stopped. Her parents and brother were out having a family meeting with her grandmother (I made excuses for Rose, but they've become used to her being an introvert by now).

I left for a minute to get a drink. I heard her screaming from across the house. My glass fell to the floor and shattered, and I ran.

Her bedroom door was stuck when I got to it. Not locked--stuck. I threw my entire body weight against it a few times, and finally, it flew open. She was against the wall right by the door, as far as possible away from the window. Rose's bedroom is situated on the ground level. It was built as an addition to a foyer, and has a pair of glass French doors leading out to her yard. This was where he was standing, trying to get in.

Yes, he. Or it. Or whatever the fuck you can call something that only goes by a press-given moniker. He was pawing almost nonchalantly at the door frame with hands that weren't hands so much as just...appendages. Such a primal fear struck me that I nearly threw up right then and there. His face wasn't a face, but I could tell where it was looking.

Right at Rose.

I hit my knees right next to her, put myself between them, and Rose just screamed and screamed and clung to me...

And suddenly he stopped pawing at the door, and I felt him looking at me. Not with eyes--there were no eyes--but he was studying me through whatever sensory organs he had. I couldn't look away. Rose was choking out sobs through the godawful screaming, but I didn't even register it anymore. We could've stood like that for hours for all I know. It certainly felt like it.

Then he went away.

And I don't mean he walked away, or floated away, or fucking scooter'd away. I mean he was there, and then he wasn't.

Rose is still crying, but she seems to be calming down. She won't let me leave her alone, and honestly, I wouldn't leave her alone even if I wanted to.

I'm calling Violet. Then I imagine I'm going to pray.