Nikki waited an hour to make sure her mother had finished her reading and fallen asleep before she knew it was safe to get up. She tiptoed carefully across the wooden floor, grabbing her blue robe on her way to the window. A cold breeze rushed in to meet her when she opened the window, but she wouldn't be deterred. She climbed out onto the sloped roof, her bare feet holding on the rough roof tiles. Like a cat she slowly climbed the incline a few feet and laid down, pulling the robe tight around her. Her plastic Hello Kitty wristwatch read 11:03 PM. Almost time. The golden ocean of corn behind her mother's house glowed silver-blue in the moonlight, with the wind rippling across the stalks in waves. But Nikki was focused on the darkness above.

They lived far enough out from town that the night sky became a blanket of jewels, a trillion shimmering diamonds like some celestial dragon's hoard. She used to sit out here with her father and count the stars, and on nights when her parents shouted in the kitchen she'd go up on the roof and count the stars by herself. And when her father disappeared and the police kept stopping by to ask her and her mother questions, the stars had kept her company. But every Wednesday night, at 11:15 exactly, a special visitor would make its way across her glittering sea of stars.

It had begun to visit the farm a few days before her father disappeared. While the shouts and insults emanated through the kitchen window two stories below, she would watch the object every night, and make wishes on it.

"I wish mommy and daddy would stop fighting."

"I wish daddy could find a job."

She had almost begun to fall asleep despite her shivering, when she saw it -- the stars seemingly began to disappear and reappear as a black square slowly slid across the sky, absolutely unnoticeable unless you were looking for it. It made no sound as it approached, moving in an unwavering straight line across the sky with one corner leading. Nikki was briefly draped in darkness as its shadow passed over the farm. From so far below, the object looked to be the size of a quarter in an outstretched hand, but the shadow it cast covered the house completely. Normally it sailed right past the house, off towards the distant glow of the city over the hills, but tonight it stopped. It stopped, and without turning, it changed course, sliding out over the corn fields until it halted. Nikki was stunned; she sat up more, shivering in the cold air as she watched it silently come down, out of the sky, until it was a few hundred feet above the field. It was huge at this distance, twice as wide as her house and completely black. Not painted black; it had no color, reflected no light.

The corn stalks bent back below the hovering shape; Then, suddenly, a sliver of light grew like a slit along its underside, illuminating a single line along the corn. Nikki's eyes widened; it had never done anything like this before. Slowly, the line of light began to expand into a circle, as if an aperture were opening on the underside of the visitor. A column of light burst out -- everything went white, Nikki screamed, her eyes felt like they were burning in her skull. She panicked and slipped, sliding down the roof, but dug her feet into the rough tiles to stop herself before falling off the edge. She laid there on the roof for half an hour. Her vision was still white and a patch of skin on each foot had been scraped raw by the slide. Eventually, her sight began to return to her, but it was still starry and blurred. Soon, she could see enough to make her way, carefully, slowly, back across to her open window. She fell inside, crumpling on the floor. The night air gently rolled into the room while she laid there, shivering all over with cold and terror, letting her senses come back to her.

When she felt able, she rolled onto her stomach and pushed herself up to her feet. Her knees felt like jelly, the soles of her feet screamed in stinging pain, but she had to see what had happened. She stumbled to the windowsill as her eyes re-adjusted to the darkness outside; she could see a wide circle carved into the cornfield by the column of light. The shape was gone, no trace whatsoever remained, no trail to see where it had gone. But then, from out in the field, she could hear a low wailing, moaning noise carried on the breeze. Even though her eyes still stung, she crept down the stairs and out into the cold night again. It seemed like a miracle that her mother hadn't been woken up by the light, but Nikki wasn't about to wake her now; she wouldn't believe, wouldn't understand. So Nikki made her way alone into the field, pushing through towering corn stalks as the noises grew louder: "Nih... Nih..." Each pebble and twig jabbed into the raw flesh of her feet, and she stumbled a few times, groaning in agony through gritted teeth. She couldn't stop now, wouldn't stop. Whatever had happened was important, and she needed to find out. Whatever was making these horrible sounds in the field sounded hurt, it might need help, might need her, she was convinced. "Kee... keeee..." the voice whined on.

Finally she broke through into the clearing. The stalks within the circle had been burned away completely; only the scorched earth remained. Her eyes went wide as she came face-to-face with the whimpering thing. "Keeee..." The thing writhed in the center of the circle, barely able to move for it had no discernable limbs. Its too-many eyes widened and all focused on her, and it started to lurch in her direction, groaning helplessly like a dying animal. She backed up into the corn; she wasn't sure if she should run. Could it even do anything to her? It was too pathetic, too shapeless and deformed to appear violent. It just kept making those awful noises from its too-big mouth; it looked like melted plastic, a shambling blob of flesh and teeth and fingers in mismatched places, of limbs sticking out at weird angles, of something that had been taken apart and put back together over and over until whatever it had been before had become a long-distant memory.

"Nih... Nih... kee..." the mouth hung open weakly, drooling some dark material down its chin. "Iss... meee... daaaah-dee..."

The loudest noise Nikki ever heard rang out like a thunderclap and the thing's head exploded in a fountain of red and white. It slumped back and seemed to deflate with its remaining eyes whirling in their sockets. Nikki turned and saw her mother standing at the edge of the clearing; she had never seen her mother so frightened before. The shotgun in her hands quivered with her fear, as she slowly turned her head away from the creature to look at her daughter. "I heard, baby... I heard."

Her mother burned the thing that night. Nikki couldn't sleep, and watched the smoke plume rise out from the center of the clearing until her mother doused the flame, buried what was left, and came up to Nikki's room. She woke up in her mom's arms the next morning. From then on, they told people her father had been found in the forest, killed by a boar while hunting. Every Wednesday night, at 11:15 precisely, the object would hover across their land like clockwork, off towards the distant glow of the city lights. Her mother would sit awake until the morning hours with her gun. Nikki didn't make wishes on it any more.