Colourful alien portrait with gold scrollwork on upper arm

The thing came up out of the marsh the summer the reservoir drained, the year Hollins Mill shut its gates for good. Ned Pruett found it sat in the reeds with its head on one side, two great eyes swivelling on stalks as if somebody had pinned them there for a joke. It was the colour of a brick left out in the rain, and it wore a waistcoat it had clearly stolen off a scarecrow. Ned, who never once in his life said a civil word to a stranger, offered it a pork pie.

The creature ate the pie, paper and all, then asked in a voice like a wet hinge whether the town had a frame. Nobody knew what it meant. It pointed a long finger at the chapel window, then at the gilt lettering over the barber's, then at its own face, and Ned understood it wanted to be looked at properly. So the town did what towns do. They beat the gold leaf off the bank's old clock hands, built it a scrolled frame, hung it in the square, and the creature sat inside all afternoon blinking at the bunting.

It never did leave. Folk still bring their children to see it, and the children go quiet, which is more than I can say for their fathers. Mind that red symbol at the corner of the board. It drew that itself the night I told it my wife had gone to Leeds, and it has never once told me what it means. Hand me the brush.