Elsa

“It’s an awful sound, one that makes Joseph’s teeth hurt, like someone’s taken a swarm of some particularly vicious cousin of the cicada, tossed them all in a bag, and given the bag a shake, pissing them off. And yet Joseph feels there are words in that buzz. The thing in the trees is calling out a message, like a warning—This territory is mine. Stay off. Gracie motions to him to stoop down low, and they begin to creep around the area the sound came from. As they pass through one glen Joseph looks up through the branches, and he sees something at the top of a tree, near the trunk. It is dark, but he thinks he sees the silhouette of a man, balanced perfectly on a high branch like a rooster on top of a barn. In the starlight Joseph thinks he can make out the edge of the man’s face, and while he can discern a nose and a mouth, he cannot see any ears, or eyes… as he looks closer, the dark figure shifts a little on the branch, settles back its shoulders, and it lifts its head, and as it does the horrible buzz fills the forest again. Joseph feels his heart ratchet up its rate until he can feel his pulse in his eyes. The shadowy figure in the tree trembles as the buzz dies to a close, and he can see the thing begin looking around from the top of the tree, searching for intruders…”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, American Elsewhere