Chapter 4: A Neighbor's Kindness

Chapter 4: A Neighbor’s Kindness

Liam disposed of the squirrel with a shovel and a grim sense of ritual. He couldn’t bring himself to just toss it in the bin. He dug a shallow grave at the far end of the garden, the blade of the shovel slicing into the damp earth with soft, sucking sounds. Sarah scrubbed the welcome mat with bleach and hot water, her movements frantic and sharp, as if she could scour away the memory of the blood along with the stain. They were trying to impose order on an event that defied it, a futile act of domesticity against a tide of cosmic horror.

The nights that followed bled into one another, a smear of sleepless, nerve-shredding dread. The sounds returned, evolving. The scraping became a persistent, light tapping on the downstairs windows, a delicate, insistent sound like a bird’s beak against the glass, only there was never a bird. The wet, dragging noise grew heavier, punctuated now by a dull, weighty thud, as if the unseen thing outside were dropping larger and larger burdens onto their lawn.

Each morning brought fresh confirmation of their torment. The first day after the squirrel, it was three crows, laid out in a neat row on the patio table, their necks snapped. The next, a large raccoon, its body placed carefully in the center of the driveway, blocking their car. Its death was identical to the squirrel's: a savage, precise evisceration that spoke not of animal hunger, but of cold, alien intent. Liam buried them all, his back aching, the coppery scent of blood a permanent phantom in his nostrils.

They lived like ghosts in their own home, speaking in whispers, jumping at every creak of the floorboards. The world outside their windows, the familiar street with its passing cars and dog-walkers, seemed a universe away. They were isolated on an island of terror, and the water was rising.

The tipping point came on the fourth morning. The night had been quieter, the silence more unnerving than the sounds had been. Liam woke with a knot of acid in his stomach, the lack of activity feeling less like a reprieve and more like the calm before a storm.

He went downstairs to find Sarah standing stock-still in the kitchen, staring out the window over the sink. She held a coffee mug in one hand, forgotten, her knuckles white. Her face was ashen.

“Don’t go out there, Liam,” she said, her voice a dead monotone.

Of course, he had to. He walked to the back patio door, his heart a cold, heavy stone in his chest. He slid the door open and stepped out onto the cool flagstones.

There, placed directly in front of the door with the same ritualistic care as all the others, was Patches.

Patches belonged to Mrs. Gable, their elderly neighbor two doors down. He was a fat, lazy ginger cat, a beloved fixture of the neighborhood who spent his days sunning himself on various porches and soliciting chin scratches from anyone who passed. Liam had known the cat for ten years. He’d watched his own children, now away at college, grow up cuddling the placid animal. Mrs. Gable, a widow in her eighties, loved Patches with a fierce, protective devotion. She called him “her boy.”

He lay on his side, his distinctive orange-and-white fur matted with dew and blood. The wound was the same. The creature’s horrifying signature.

Something inside Liam broke. The squirrel had been shocking, the other animals deeply unsettling. But this was different. This wasn’t a random animal from the nearby woods. This was a pet. This was a piece of their community, a piece of someone’s heart. This was a message, delivered in the cruelest possible language. I can touch anything. I can take anything you care about.

“Oh, God,” he heard Sarah breathe from the doorway. He saw tears welling in her eyes—not just of fear, but of profound, aching sorrow.

“What do we do?” he asked the empty air, his voice cracking. “What the hell do we do? Do we call the police? Do we tell her?”

The questions hung between them, absurd. “Officer, a monster that crawled out of a digital photograph killed our neighbor’s cat.” They would be medicated, institutionalized. No one would believe them. They were utterly, terrifyingly alone.

“We can’t leave him here,” Sarah said, her voice gaining a sliver of its old strength. “And we can’t… we can’t let her find him like this.”

The unspoken plan formed in the space between them, ugly and necessary. A new kind of horror dawned on Liam: the horror of complicity.

Waiting for the deepest point of the pre-dawn dark, when the street was utterly still, was its own special torture. Liam found an old towel in the garage, one he couldn’t bear to ever see again. With Sarah standing guard, her hand clutching the fireplace poker she now kept close, he walked back out to the patio. He knelt, the smell of blood filling his senses. His hands shook as he gently rolled the cat’s stiff body into the towel, avoiding looking at the wound. The body was heavier than he expected. Cold.

He felt like a murderer, like a ghoul desecrating a grave. Every rustle of leaves, every distant car engine, sounded like an approaching judgment. He could feel the Glimmer’s presence, an unseen weight in the darkness, watching them. Approving.

They crept through their own backyard, shadows moving through shadows, and slipped through the gap in the hedge that separated their property from the next. Mrs. Gable’s house was dark, save for a single, dim nightlight glowing in her hallway. They moved across her perfectly manicured lawn, the grass wet with dew, their feet silent.

Sarah pointed to a thick azalea bush near the front porch, a spot where Patches often slept during hot afternoons. It felt like the right place. A kind place.

With his heart hammering against his ribs, Liam gently placed the towel-wrapped body deep under the bush’s branches, tucking it away where it would be found, but where the horror of its injuries would be shielded, at least at first. Maybe she would think he’d just passed away in his sleep. A small, desperate hope. A pathetic lie.

They retreated as silently as they had come. Back in their kitchen, the fluorescent light felt harsh and accusatory. They were collaborators now, cleaning up the creature’s crime scene, hiding its work.

Later that morning, as they were loading the dishwasher with trembling hands, they saw Mrs. Gable through the kitchen window. She was on her front porch in her housecoat, calling out in her thin, reedy voice.

“Patches! Here, kitty-kitty! Come on now, boy, breakfast!”

Liam and Sarah froze, plates in hand. They watched as she walked down her porch steps, her expression shifting from expectation to worry. She called his name again, a little more frantic this time. They saw her peer into the bushes, her movements slow with age. They saw her stop. They saw her shoulders slump, her hand flying to her mouth. They couldn’t hear her cry, but they didn’t need to.

They turned away from the window, unable to watch anymore. The shared guilt was a toxic, binding agent.

“This isn’t just a haunting,” Sarah whispered, her back to him. “It’s an escalation. It’s… it’s learning. It killed something she loved to show us it could.”

Liam looked around their home—at the photos of their kids on the mantelpiece, at the familiar furniture, the life they had built. It wasn’t a sanctuary. It was a baited trap. The Glimmer wasn’t just a random force. It was intelligent. It was sadistic. And after the animals, after the neighbor’s cat, there was only one logical next step.

“Pack a bag,” he said, his voice hard with a terrible, newfound resolve. “Pack for the kids, too, we’ll meet them. We’re leaving. Now.”

They had to run. It was the only choice left.