***

You’ve made a lot of them. But you’ve always managed to escape the consequences so far. You know that flash out of the corner of your eye, like picking up some peripheral movement just out of sight, and then you turn your head and there’s nothing there? That was one of the times you’ve made a mistake.

That creeping, unsettling feeling that you’re being watched, that there is something dark and sinister near that can see you? That’s a warning tens of thousands of years of instinct has driven into your body that you’re about to make a mistake.

And that unexplained bruise, that fresh cut you can’t remember receiving, those times you wake up sweating, screaming, and breathing like you’d just run a marathon and can’t remember why? Those are the times when they almost got you.

What are they? Well, it’s hard to describe. Imagine trying to explain ‘red’ to a blind man. You can’t really explain it, you just have to experience it for yourself. And you really don’t want to experience this. I can tell you that you are just one thing to them: food. And they can keep you alive for quite a long time while they eat.

You’ve probably heard at least one unexplained sound while reading this. Maybe it’s nothing. But sometimes it’s one of them trying to break through, to find you. But they won’t, not unless you make a mistake. When you make a mistake, it’s like dangling a piece of meat in front of a pack of hungry dogs and then yanking it away again. Sometimes they don’t react quick enough. Sometimes they do. There are so many unsolved disappearances over the centuries, it’s hard to tell how many were victims of their own kind, and how many simply made one too many mistakes.

You see, it’s when people are most worried about making mistakes that they tend to mess up the most. What mistakes are there to make? If I told you that, you’d just make sure you didn’t do them anymore. And that would be a shame.

We almost got you last time.