The evening sun, split in half by the horizon, was burning out slowly; there were no more blinding rays of white, there was not a hint of blue in the west England sky. The dying star smothered itself into the ocean, heat waves steaming off its rim, leaving nothing but the warm, copper hue to fade the sea cliffs and rolling grasslands into the night. Noah sat at the edge of his granddad’s old, grey rocking chair, elbow to knee as he always was, staring across the field into the swaying shadows that lined the base of the small wooded patch behind their farm. Isolated forests, surrounded by thickets full of vines and serrated thorns, littered the country side, separating neighboring fields like castles over-run by foliage. Deep in the dark, moat like brush, something stirred. Noah’s eye snapped to the sheep in the field, as they herded together, each one fighting for safety in the center. They flew about the field like a flock of swallows does when bouncing from tree to tree, as if they were one entity, jerking about in random directions but seamlessly, without a single one willing to break formation.

A few nights earlier he had gone to count the flock and found several lying dead near the thicket, their throats torn out from jaw to shoulder; grass and ripped bits of wool stuck in the black clots and severed veins. Tales of a predator to large to be a fox or badger, thus not likely native to the land, drew his shoulders tight, compressing his organs until he could not breathe. He stood motionless, the wet grass brushing a damp brown on his khaki pants, his eyes bouncing from the mutilated sheep to the razor silhouettes that stabbed at him as the wind tore through the thickets. He would have stayed there all night, waiting for the beast, had his mother not called him in for supper. Two more sheep were slain that night..

Noah cut away from the herd, homing in on the fox trails, the only paths through the mess of vines and briars. They stirred, but there was no wind, no cool breeze that usually came with the evening; only the herd and the thorns moved. He bent his arm back towards the farmhouse door to grab his rifle, his eyes and head locked forward. The few, short hairs on his arms, stood erect, excited and nervous, as his fingers rapped around the chilled barrel of his Winchester, drawing it from the corner of the doorframe and the outer wall. His body tensed, as it had when he found the first victims, and the stained oak stock found its way deep into his shoulder, tugging at the bone’s pocket. The chair creaked and groaned like an old elm in the wind, as he leaned even further over his knees, the rifle’s sights blurring away as he traced them over the frantic herd and into the brush. The motionlessness that had froze him at the graves of those he protected returned, his breath left, and his finger eased onto the trigger, careful not to break his aim. The beast paced back and forth inside the thorns, picking its prey, and then slowly, like a stretching cat, began to slide under the snares and hooks, right into Noah’s crosshair. Three shots cracked into the evening like a bull whip popping at nothing, deafening him for a moment. The animal darted back into its fortress with much less effort than it took to cross into the edge, retreating from the threat. Noah glared at his stepfather, who now stood on the porch holding a colt revolver, smoke oozing into the air from its barrel, thinning away like drops of blood in water.

“What are you doing?! I had him, Paul.”

Paul had usually mistaken the boy’s address as Pa, but Noah made it perfectly clear this time. His brow tightened and wrinkled between his eyes; his step-father had stolen something of great value. There was something somber in Paul's face that resembled the shadows of the briars; a bitterness of some sort, a resentment to Noah's remark, perhaps something darker.

“You had nothing, boy. Now put that thing away before you hurt yourself. Go help your mother with dinner.”

Paul’s eyes twitched back and forth, scanning the thicket, the trees, the fading horizon. There was a grit to his voice when he said “mother”; it wasn’t anger or hatred, but a distaste Noah heard in Paul when he said “your mother”. It was the same distaste he heard when his stepfather would yell and complain, screaming “your son” or “your boy” every time Noah came in late or left the barn door open. He had seen it early on, before his mom married Paul; his eyes; his thick, black brow; the way his forehead looked like an old, cracking board. Years of frowning and old bitterness had not been kind.

Noah sat there, tense, ready to pounce at any moment and rip Paul to pieces, until those twitching eyes cut to the corner and glared at him, immediately killing the momentary boldness.

“I told you to do something, son. You better get. Now.”

The deep sternness that forced those words out sent Noah inside, but not before he purposefully brushed shoulders with the monster and made sure to slam the door behind him. Paul grinned at the beast, turned, and followed Noah inside, dragging and scuffing his boots on the wooden porch, the heels catching on the cracks, each step slow and powerful.