"They are stronger than you think" by Jermaine Leroy Joseph

“They are stronger than you think, child.” The old woman turned off the television and mumbled something unintelligible. Her grandchild looked at her for a moment and then laughed.

“Hah, I’ve never hear of them being strong.” He looked at his father for some sort of support and found him frowning at nothing. “Dad, it’s not true.” There was a note of questioning in his tone, and that finally got his fathers attention.

“Mum,” he said slowly. “You shouldn’t tell him such things. Do you want your grandchild to grow up like some… ah! You’ll go on anyway.” He paused and shrugged before looking at his son. “They can be quite strong.” He said, almost absentmindedly. “Some of them…”

“Yes, some of them are.” The old woman shuddered. “They kill things that are not like them, and eat their flesh. They bend metals to their will, and can actually cross water. The old tales you hear…” She shook her head. “Well, when I was young my mother used to tell me that they didn’t exist. It was a lie, of course, but it sheltered me for a while.” She cackled and the boy’s father groaned. “Your father met one of them if I remember it aright. A veritable beast it was, indeed.”

“Dad…? Are they really as dangerous as grandma believes?” His father shrugged again and then sighed.

“Some of them…” He said again, only graver this time. “But not all of them eat flesh. Some of them can stop themselves from actually consuming…” His father shuddered.

“But surely they can’t all cross water?” His father nodded.

“They go into it, child. They call it swimming.” The boy paled and wet suddenly dry lips. He couldn’t understand if this was a joke or not. “But…” The old woman conceded. “They can be slow, and get tired easily. Unless of course they consume flesh first, so I heard.” She shuddered again and laughed. “They exist. One of your friends might even be one. Plotting to stab you, or worse… bathe you. Make you swim.”

“With the fishes, mother… what a good saying.” The boy’s father smiled. “But they are terribly easy to kill when they are on their own. So frail and yet so… ah! Well, enough of this conversation for one night. You’ll have nightmares.”

“I won’t. And it’s early. Can’t I at least stay up until mum gets back?”

“Oh let him dear.” Said the grandmother, chidingly “He needs to learn, doesn’t he?”

“Well…” The boy looked at his dad and watched as he drank from his mug. “As long as the telly stays off… but if you get nightmares then it’s your fault.” He gulped at his drink, burped heartily and then chuckled. “If you ask your mother, then she’d probably say that there are all eight feet tall, with quick darting eyes and savage voices. She’d say that they seem quite fond of shouting, and think themselves all attractive beyond measure, when really… really they’re hideous to behold. There is something quite unnatural about them.”

“Tell him about the one you met.” Said the grandmother chillingly, cradling her own worn mug.

“Yes, dad, tell me.”

“Ah! You really want to know don’t you? Well, I warned you about… ah! Alright, alright…!” He leaned toward the boy. “I was just outside, riding of course, as I’m wont to do in the summer. Riding, and in the distance I see something moving stealthily in the distance. Now I know that they don’t normally move alone but… ah! Well to put a long story short, there came a terrible knocking during the day. When all had darkened, shouts came from the woods, ah! And fire.” His eyes were wide as he leaned back into his armchair, remembering. “A week this went on: the knocking and the pounding; the shouting and the fires. They came ever closer, those fires. Hunting, I believe. Hunting for flesh perhaps, or worse; they are murderers, all.”

“And, what happened then?” The boy asked eager, and scared.

“Well, it got too much, son. I went out to meet them, at night of course, when they would not see me; at night where it is safer from them and their evil ways, safer, if only a little. Ah! It made me wince inside the woods. You might not know it but… ah! They are loud. Even from far away I could hear them hammering away, the sound that they make whenever they move, and even when they don’t. A strange sound… we don’t make it.” The old woman nodded sagely and the boy grunted disgustedly. “So I came, and I saw them seated around a fire so bright that only magic surely conjured it. Seated there and eating flesh. One of them laughed as they ate. If I remember right I puked there and then. It was the laughing one that chased me.”

“You ran away? But I thought that they were easy to kill?”

“Ah! Right you are. But I didn’t know that then, son. I found that out only afterwards.” He shuddered and then snorted disdainfully.

“I saw one at a distance once.” The boy’s grandmother said with a chill smile. “It was the one than ran away. When I caught it…”

A sound came that was the jingle of keys. The boy’s mother was home.

“Off to bed with you, now.” The boy groaned but obeyed. He always did. He looked at the window and saw that it brightening. He’d stayed up late. “We’ll be down in a bit, too.”

“But dad…” The father looked up and frowned, puzzled. “Can they really be…?” His father nodded. It was enough.

With frightened wonder the boy went to kiss his mother before going to sleep, thinking on all he had heard. Surely it wasn’t true. Surely there were not things that ate flesh and made such sounds in the night. Surely they could not bend metal to their will or hunt other things not like them. Surely something so disgustingly different could not be so dangerous.

“AH! YUMMY…!” He heard his father laugh and grimaced as he went to his bedroom. He wondered what real food tasted like, the type his parents had when he went sleep. And was that a drumming sound he heard, getting steadily faster and louder… No… It couldn’t be.

Laughing, the boy got inside his coffin and smiled to himself.

Humans, after all, were only in the movies.