The first cry comes at dusk, three weeks before the first snowfall of the year.
Tilly's scrubbing dirt from her fingernails, hunched over the farmhouse's basin with a warped hunk of lye soap in-hand, when she hears it, distant and echoing and wrong in a way that raises the fine hairs on her arms and sends her heartbeat skittering in her chest sideways.
No lamb cries like that, loud enough to echo, and there's no lambs out on the farm, anyways, not since Nelly quit lambing a year back, too old and half-blind, and Tilly's Papa said she couldn't bear any more.
The sound rings in the quiet outside, a throaty cry for help.
Heart in her throat, Tilly abandons her task, rounding the corner to the door just as Mama does, her brown eyes dilated with fear and her calloused hands strong when they catch her arm, Mama saying, "Tilly," sharply.
Startled, Tilly twists, just as there comes a snarling growl from outside, and through the front door's glass, Mama and Tilly both watch Jack, the aging mutt that's been guarding the farm since Tilly was a baby, goes charging off the porch into the dim light, seconds before Papa comes from the kitchen, gun in-hand and his eyes half-wild as he shoves past them.
Tilly doesn't see the aftermath, given Mama's breath catches and she covers her eyes with trembling hands, but it rings through her ears all the same—the scream of the gun firing, Jack's barks trailing to whines and then silence, and the echo of that lamb's cry turning louder.
She doesn't see Jack's body, either, when Papa returns, and in a small act of gratitude and guilt for the loss that Papa shakes his head at and calls a weepy-eyed fool over, Tilly buries one of Jack's old collars beneath his favorite tree the next day with a palmful of daisies.
It doesn't change anything, she knows, especially when the thing keeps returning, dragging off next the lean, aggressive hound Papa brought home the next week that none of them even had the chance to name and then the scarred pit-fighting dog he brings home the week after that, cursing up a storm when dusk comes and it goes charging into the fields like Jack and the lean hound did, that eerie lamb's call echoing closer and closer each night, but Tilly is still young, barely nine summers old, and she liked to believe the daisies she buries first in Jack's name and then to the memories of the lean hound and the pit-fighting dog were enough to let them know someone had cared.
By the time winter's arrived, they're all tense and wary-eyed, with Papa keeping the fourth hound he's dragged home strictly in the house; soft-furred and young, he bonds to Tilly quickly and shadows her every step, sleeping at the foot of her bed.
He whines at night, listening to the cries that are now close enough to rattle the farmhouse's walls and windows, but Tilly talks to him when he does, half-awake in the dim light, and by morning the thing's gone again.
Papa ventures out further and further every day, seeking out knowledge of what it could be, while Mama picks up the slack of the chores, quieter now and more focused, her grey eyes dim and dulled beneath a fringe of long, dark hair.
Tilly finds herself avoiding her, unnerved by something she can't sense, the soft-furred pup she's named Shadow growling at Mama often, though Papa doesn't seem to notice anything amiss when he returns home at night.
(Some nights, when she can't sleep, Tilly peeks out the windows of her bedroom, and for a moment, she imagines she sees Mama standing in the dark near the treeline with Jack and the lean hound and the scarred fighting-dog, but when she ventures out to the same spot in the morning, the grass is untouched, and Tilly finds herself scattering daisies over it.)
Weeks pass before a winter storm's forced them all inside, the fire in the fireplace flickering as outside something other than the wind shrieks, and curled in one of the chairs of the living room with Mama quietly knitting and Papa, jaw taut, staring at the flames, Shadow curled between Tilly's legs, Tilly's warm enough that she's mostly-asleep when the tapping sounds, a sharp little tap-tap-tap at the front door.
Tilly stirs, confused, just as Mama rises, Papa saying, "Jill—" too late, stirring, Shadow bristling with a low growl.
Mama doesn't slow, however, throwing open the door, and the night's cold sweeps in at the same time something tall and dark comes to loom in the doorway, too many teeth and grey, unseeing eyes, and Tilly, frozen in horror, can only gape for a long moment as Papa charges up, shouting as he reaches for his gun, but the thing knocks it from his hands, and, with a jolt, Tilly sits up as it comes skidding across the floor towards her.
Near the door, Papa stood stiffly near Mama's frame, his hand on her wrist, and Tilly shivers as his eyes roll back to find her—empty and blank and grey.
The fire's gone out, and in the dim light, Shadow stands between Tilly and the thing as that lamb's call echoes through the room, his fur bristling along his spine as his lip curls above his teeth, and for a moment, Tilly thinks back to the basin, the lye soap beneath her nails, as she'd reached for the door, a part of her wanting to step forward.
She reaches for the gun, instead, and her fingers shake as she takes aim.
By spring, no lamb calls at night, and while their neighbors eventually come to call, offering meals and sorrow and prayers, Tilly, now ten, keeps daisies in her pockets and strung to Shadow's collar, and she spends her nights humming to him as outside the farmhouse the world remains quiet.
In her reflection, she finds grey suits her just as well as brown did.