It was a clear sunny day, but that was really the only thing that was going my way. I was out for one of my country rambles, at least that was what Maggie sarcastically called them. She disliked that I would disappear for hours on end for my walks, and took every opportunity to have a dig at me over it. If I listened to her, every waking moment would be spent looking for my next contract.

I was a freelance IT consultant and was between assignments at the moment; a full two months had passed since the last had ended and, to be honest, I had not put a great deal of effort into finding the next.

I was fed up of the work; it didn't interest me at all any more. Only two things stopped me from jacking it in altogether – the money was far too good, and I didn’t know what else it was that I wanted to do.

I suppose that's the way of things in this modern world of ours, no one is ever satisfied with their lot.

But I wasn't happy at home either. Maggie and I had been together for almost three years, living together for the last two. But things weren't going well and I suppose that was what drove me out of the house on my country rambles, and was also the cause of my current dark mood.

I normally enjoy my walks; all the fresh air and simple peace and quiet were usually enough to silence any nagging voices in my head and allow me to relax. Today was different, things had come to a head – something that Maggie said made it clear to me that she was not happy either, and it seemed that the only way forward was for us to go our separate ways.

I had been walking over an hour and what to do was still milling about in my head, occupying all of my thoughts and concentration. That was probably why it took me so long to notice the changes around me.

A noise startled me out of my reverie, and only then did I realise that the earlier clear blue sky was now overcast, and that the temperature had dropped considerably. Looking around, I tried to locate where the noise had come from.

Fifty yards off to my right something moved just inside the trees – it was big, a large stag I guessed, and I raised my camera to focus on the tree line. I could only make out a vague shape in the shadows under the trees, but I could tell it wasn't a stag. It was far too big, and it seemed to be stood upright on two legs.

“What the hell?” I muttered to myself, as I twisted the zoom to get a tighter shot. It moved suddenly and I lost sight of it altogether, so I lowered the camera and scanned the trees trying to catch sight of it again.

Nothing, just trees and shadows.

I stood staring for what seemed like an age. Then, as I finally began to doubt what I had seen, a terrifying bestial roar from behind made me almost jump clear of my skin.

Turning, with no conscious control of my body whatsoever, I saw a huge dark shape burst from the trees. It charged directly toward me, but before my mind could even process what I was seeing, I was running as fast as I could away from whatever it was, screaming my head off.

The run was a blur but I only covered a few yards before a pain, the like of which I had never experienced before, blazed through my shoulder, and I was thrown forward to the ground.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

I tried to crawl, screaming as I did so with the pain in my shoulder and the sheer terror that filled my mind. But something grabbed my leg and dragged me back towards the trees, as I frantically clawed at the ground and kicked with my free leg.

My resistance was futile, I was pulled along like a rag doll. Mere seconds later we were under the cover of the trees and I was released, but before I could even think to move, rough hands grabbed my shoulders and pinned me down. Then the pain in my shoulder increased a hundred fold as something was forcefully ripped from out of my back.

As I screamed whatever it was that had grabbed me rolled me over, and slapped me across the face, almost knocking me unconscious. Another blow came, and then another. Blood poured from my nose and mouth but still the blows came, accompanied by noises that sounded almost like laughter, low guttural laughter.

My eyes were closed tight, my hands and arms up trying to shield my head from the blows – I couldn’t see anything, didn’t want to see anything; I just wanted it to stop. It had only been minutes, yet I felt so very weak. Weak, helpless and absolutely terrified.

I don’t know how long I lay there before I realised that the beating had stopped, it might have been minutes, or it could have just as easily been hours; it was as if I had awoken from a drugged sleep.

I slowly opened my eyes, but through a haze of blood and tears, all I make out was the overcast sky above me.

The movement must have alerted whatever it was that had been hitting me because suddenly the clouds were blotted out by its huge shape.

It grabbed my jacket, through my jacket and into my flesh, and as I screamed hefted me into the air with a single arm.

Again came the guttural laughter but from behind me, and I realised with horror that there was more than one of these things. I was held off the floor at arms length, and even through my tear filled vision, I could see that this was the most horrific creature that I could ever have imagined. I screamed and screamed, but as I did so, some tiny fragment of my mind calmly catalogued what I was looking at, concluding that what I saw was completely impossible, and that this must be a nightmare, a really, really bad nightmare.

The creature was huge, at least seven feet tall. The arm that held me was as wide as my thigh, and ended in an enormous hand that was tipped with claws, claws that cut straight through my clothes and dug deep into my flesh. The face before me was grotesque. Its head was as big as a bear, and deadly sharp yellowing fangs, that seemed inches long, protruded from its leering mouth. Its skin was ashen grey, bloodless, almost that of a corpse. And the eyes that peered out of that so very dead skin were black, all black, no whites at all; just dull black orbs. Most terrifying of all was that I could somehow see intelligence gleaming behind those eyes, a cruel and merciless intelligence that delighted in my terror and pain. On the side of its head were curved horns like those of a goat, the tips ending in very sharp, barbed metal spikes.

Seeing those horns made me take in the whole picture. The creature was covered in armour. Dull grey metal and, what looked like, thick leather covered its arms, shoulders and chest, and the same dull grey metal covered its head, but with wickedly sharp protrusions standing out at all angles from its surface.

All this took a tiny fraction of a second to take in, and then my rational, processing mind joined my voice and began to scream with pure terror. I don’t know what happened next, whether I passed out from fright or the blow across my head that the creature gave me. The last I heard was those same sounds of laughter all around, as pain exploded through my head and everything faded away into darkness.

My name then was David Ellis, and by my reckoning that was ten years ago.