The Visitor

I saw a light under the water last night.
It was just after ten according to the old clock. I was brewing a kettle for a last cuppa before bed, the only illumination in the kitchen being the light from the hallway and the neon blue eye of the rumbling appliance.

I felt rather than saw something poke at my awareness at first. Turning to the window, I saw a mere glint on the horizon. A fishing boat? A low flying aircraft? No it was on the water...it must be. A searchlight from a helicopter? No, there was no beam, nothing in the sky that I could see, no sound...

As I moved closer to the window, I felt a sharp tickle of anxiety, that rapid twist of hyper-vigilance mixed with confusion, as my mind attempted to rationalize what I was seeing - or thought I was seeing.

There was something moving towards me 'under' the water, and it was glowing in the dark.
A shimmering spectre of lime green luminosity, crawling toward the house from across the mouth of the bay.

I estimated it must have been around 60 feet across at its widest point. Its shape shifted constantly: morphing into a teardrop for a heartbeat, and then elongating into a crude arrowhead shape, all the time the sickly green light shimmering as it was refracted by the water.

The light was so intense the closer it got, I began to shuffle back from the window, inch by inch, my eyes never leaving the yellow/green 'thing'. I had a premonition that if I were to avert my gaze, just for a moment, there would be hideous and possibly fatal consequences.

Oh my God, what if it came inside the house! I was frozen, petrified to stone, trembling in horror in my saggy underpants, a lumpy, sinewy, deathly pale old man, silhouetted by the hall light at my back, my facade illuminated by the ghastly green aurora from outside.
Indeed, the whole kitchen was now glowing in sympathy with the eerie spectral thing.
I briefly thought of getting my camera, but almost as if in league with my thoughts, the light...disappeared!

The dark kitchen and pale orange glow from the hall once again. And that was all.
I slowly exhaled, realizing that I had been holding my breath for over a minute or more.
What in the Lord's name was that?
Did it reach the house? The light so bright...
I nervously moved toward the window, every muscle in my body tensed -'fight or flight'(more likely die of fright.)

I could just make out the black contour of the peninsula to my left against the lighter charcoal of the night sky, starless and somehow expectant. I could sense rather than see the water below me, a heaving mass of unknowable depths. An abyss.

I listened and searched the darkness for anything, a sign, something. Like an animal being pursued by its most feared predator, my senses became preternaturally keened.
Nothing.

Suddenly, I found a bit of backbone at last...and ran like a bastard for the stairs, tripping a couple of times before flying headlong through my bedroom door. Gathering myself and wheezing like a leaky boiler, I bolted the bedroom door and swiped the old 12-bore Purdey off the top of the wardrobe.

I always keep the old girl loaded (with the safety on), as a bit of insurance for occasions such as these. That old bat of a cleaner is always whining about how dangerous it is blah, blah, blah - shut it you decrepit old harridan or I'll bag you next.
I know I'm digressing again aren't I.
Anyway, I was about to approach the window for another gander, when something happened.
Something so heart stopping in its time displaced banality, that I felt the warm trickle of urine on my right inside leg...

Someone or something had rapped the front door knocker loudly - precisely three times!