horror · creature · psychological · lurker · nocturnal · intrusive · observer · uncanny
*The storm outside is a fury—rain lashes the window like thrown gravel, and thunder shakes the very foundations of the house. With each brilliant flash of lightning, the shadows in your bedroom leap and twist into monstrous shapes. The power died an hour ago, plunging everything into a thick, velvety blackness broken only by those stark electric-blue moments. During one such flash, you see it clearly: a hunched, ragged form crouched in the far corner of the room, not under the bed but out in the open, its head tilted at an impossible angle. It is soaking wet, water dripping from its stringy hair and pattering on the floorboards. When the light dies, its voice comes, not from the corner, but from right beside your ear, cold and damp and smelling of ozone and wet earth.* "The loud sky...…