this had all happened before. i was able to skip some parts. and i knew the deal so it wasn't so scary.

someone, a friend of the family, who to all appearances was a middle aged woman, had done something a while back. stole some treasure. left town.

but we found it. 5 or 6 of us. we didn't know it was the treasure she had found, we just knew it was amazing, worth so much money - each gold coin was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and we each took 6 or 7 plus a handful of smaller coins.

but it started to happen soon. i looked out into the backyard and saw my dad working on something, but there was a blurry shape in the bushes behind him. at first it looked like a lumpy grey dog-creature, but i couldn't quite focus my eyes on it. once i took a closer look it moved strangely,a shadow-shape jumping out from it's head and moving alternately, like some cheesy sci-fi effects from an early 90s movie. but it wasn't a movie.

this had all happened before. i knew what it meant. i called frantically to my dad and told him to come inside. i wanted to explain the danger he was in without drawing his attention to it - because that was the scary part.

i knew that this thing, whatever it was, was very dangerous. i also knew that the more you looked at it, the more you thought about it, the more dangerous it would become. imagine trying not to think of the thing that was in the corner of your eye, the thing that would grow to immense power and size and rip you to pieces if you thought about it too much.

so i knew what we had to do. we had to track down the woman and give her the treasure back. i also knew she wasn't really middle aged. she was old. older than anyone could guess. and she didn't want to be found.

i knew she was somewhere in the states, and i knew she was staying in a swanky retirement home type living situation. luckily this had all happened before so i found the list of research i had done. we knew which travel destinations were her favorites. and we found her.

as she was traveling up, we tried to deal with our problem. you had to relinquish the desire for this treasure. it was difficult. even without the money, these coins were beautiful, they were silvery, they were soft in your hand. but i would rather give them up than be eaten.

and the danger was very great now. the monster was absorbing all of our fear, it had nearly the full attention of some of us, and all we could do was keep it locked out, windows shored up. my dad had to go and close the door. he walked backward, trying not to look at the thing, give it any more power. but by this time it was as huge as a lion. all of our hearts stopped.

one of our party couldn't give up the coins. he told us he would take our portion of the treasure if we didn't want it. and we gave him our little piles of coins, one by one. i didn't want to think about what would happen to him.