When he was through he simply got up, put on his overcoat and went outside. In a few minutes she could hear the car start and knew it would be another lonely evening. Mac would be home when he felt like it, reeking of liquor but handling it well. She did not begrudge him these absences because the man obviously needed something to take his mind off his work. But she wished she had some comparable escape.
She had got out her writing board, had settled herself comfortably with pen in hand in Mac's big chair and had even put the date on the letter to her mother who lived in Canada when she heard Dobie's excited bark.
She picked up a shawl on the way to the kitchen, turned on the big light on the windmill and looked out the window. Dobie was in the middle of the yard barking at something she couldn't see. She went out.
"Dobie," she called. "What is it?"
The dog whined and moved about nervously, looking first at her and then at the darkness between the big barn and the machine shed. As she sought to pierce the blackness there, a shape moved out from between the buildings and the sudden move caused her to step back. Dobie at once set up loud and ferocious barking.
"Quiet, Dobie," she managed to say, laying a hand aside the dog's head and viewing the figure before her. It was a man—at least a man shape—with hands (she thanked God the creature had both its hands), a head, neck, shoulders and legs. But the head was a lot larger than a man's, there was no hair on it and the eyes were smaller, the nose longer and the mouth a narrow slash across the face. The neck was short, the shoulders thin and the legs and arms were spindling. She saw that each hand had six fingers. Across the narrow shoulders had been flung what looked like a carpet and from beneath this fell a skirt that went to the knees, held to the body with a metal rope belt just under his ribs. The shoes were enormous things for such pipestem legs—until she saw they were soft and furry and that this gave them their size. For a moment she almost laughed because he presented such a grotesque figure, but she did not dare. The creature spoke.
"Good evening, Mrs. McNearby," it said in a not unpleasant, whistling voice and Alice wondered how it could talk so well to her.
"I come from the crashed ship. You know of it, of course. You were there this afternoon."
Alice was on the point of asking how he knew she had been at the wreck site when he started in again.
"We have traced the severed hand of one of our crew to your place here. We came down at considerable velocity when our ship went out of control. We were lucky to escape with our lives. But one of us was thrown from the ship with such force that his hand was cut off by an obstruction on the ship. Your dog happened on the scene before we could find the hand."