The Chicken Coop Sentinel

In the sweltering heat of an August night, Friday the 13th, sleep eluded me. I lay in my narrow bed, listening to the ceaseless drone of cicadas through the thin walls of our rented farmhouse. The old house creaked and groaned, settling into the darkness like an old man sinking into his armchair. At some ungodly hour, a pressing need pulled me from my sheets. I shuffled toward the hallway, my bare feet slapping on the cool linoleum, heading for the bathroom at the end of the corridor.

As I passed the kitchen window, a flicker of movement outside caught my eye. Beyond the glass, the yard was a quilt of moonlight and shadow, and there, near the ramshackle chicken coop, stood a figure. It was too tall, too still, and it faced my house with an unnerving stillness. My breath hitched as I watched it: it seemed to be staring directly at me, though its face was lost in the gloom. I fumbled for the light switch, and when the harsh bulb flooded the yard with yellow light, the figure hadn’t moved. Now I could see it clearly: its skin was slick like a caterpillar’s back, a pallid gray, and its eyes—its eyes were dark pits, absorbing the light rather than reflecting it.

‘Just a neighbor,’ I whispered to myself, but the neighbor’s house was a mile down the dirt road, and this thing had come from the direction of the abandoned well that sat at the edge of our property. I tried to ignore it, to continue to the bathroom, but as I turned, I realized the figure had shifted its gaze, tracking me. And then it began to move—not walk, but glide—toward the back door, which led into the mudroom where we kept the deep freeze. That door had been broken for weeks, the latch hanging loose, and a cold dread washed over me. My parents and my little brother were asleep in their rooms, unaware of the threat that had come calling.

I knew what it was. The old folks called it ‘aswang,’ a creature that craved human flesh, that would peel skin and crack bones with relish. And I remembered, in a half-remembered sermon, that they were whispered to be fallen angels, cursed to walk the earth hunting the living. My heart hammered as I retreated to my room, slamming the door and pressing my back against it. But the door had no lock, and I could hear the soft, wet sound of something pressing against the back door downstairs, testing it. The wood groaned, and I knew it wouldn’t hold for long.

I dropped to my knees and prayed, my voice trembling. ‘Please, God, deliver me from this evil. Send your angels to guard this house.’ But as I prayed, I heard a rustling outside my window, and I looked up to see the aswang’s face pressed against the glass, its mouth stretched into a grotesque smile. It tapped on the window with a long, curved nail, and I swear I heard it whisper, ‘The chickens are already dead. You’re next.’ In that moment, I realized that the chicken coop had been silent all along—there were no clucks, no movement, just the unsettling quiet of a place where death had already visited.

A sudden burst of courage filled me. I grabbed the heavy Bible from my nightstand and hurled it at the window, shattering the glass, and with it, the creature’s gaze. It recoiled, shrieking, and I seized the moment. I ran to my parents’ room, shaking them awake, shouting about the thing in the yard. But when they looked out, there was nothing there—only the broken window and the still, silent chickens. They thought I’d had a nightmare, and they sent me back to bed with a glass of water.

I didn’t sleep. I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening for any sound. At dawn, the first light revealed the truth: the chicken coop was empty, every hen gone without a trace, not a feather, not a drop of blood. And on the back door, scratched into the wood, was a message in a language I didn’t recognize, and next to it, a single gray scale, slick and iridescent. I knew then that the aswang had been real, and that it had been watching us for days, waiting for the right moment. And as I looked out across the fields, I saw the neighbor’s house in the distance, and a figure standing by their well, staring back at me. I haven’t slept with the lights off since, and I still hear the silent clucking of phantom hens in the dark.