When the farmer first found it he kept his distance, only venturing far enough, rifle in hand, to see that it was a figure dressed in black sprawled unconscious atop a grassy hillock near his barn.
Two hours later the Sheriff had arrived, and on seeing what was to see, had called in his two deputies and the town’s doctor. They now all stood around the unmoving body, one of the deputies clearly disturbed by the sight. The thing, for on closer examination it was clearly no man, was small. It was no larger than a young teen, it’s thin lithe body all the more obvious due to the skin tight black suit it wore which covered it from head to ankle.
The doctor, kneeling beside the body, held up one of the hands. The hand appeared too large for the small body, each of the fingers tipped with a long heavy slightly curved brown-black claw. All the fingers but the middle which was entirely missing, in it’s place a larger claw where the finger should be. The doctor carefully prodded the middle claw.
“It appears to articulated, like a finger but with just a single knuckle where it connects to the hand”
The Sheriff cocked his head to one side looking at the back of the hand, “are those freckles," he asked, disbelief coloring his words. The pale hand was indeed speckled with orange freckles.
Carefully placing the hand back down into the grass, the Doc shuffled up to the head, remaining crouched down as he did so. He looked down his nose through his gold rimmed bifocals as he examined the strange black head.
“Hmm, looks like helmet, strange too, kind of Medieval don’t you think?" the Doc looked up at the Sheriff who responded with a noncommittal shrug.
He tapped it with a tongue depressor, he had ferreted out from somewhere on his person, the angular matte black helmet made a distinctive metallic ‘tink’ sound.
“Looks to be steel too, very Medieval. Got a bit of a look of a shark to it as well," as he said this he tilted back the head, trying to get some sunlight into the pair of three diagonal slits that appeared to be for the eyes. When he did this, the helmet fell open at the mouth.
Everyone took a step back at this sudden movement. One of the deputies, the frightened one, reached for his gun. The Doc jumped up from his kneeling position stumbling as he struggled to get his legs to both run backwards and stand up.
“What the hell Doc!" the Sheriff yelled, an act totally out of character for the normally quiet stern lawman.
