SPECTRAL WHISPERS: tales of the unexplained

"Coyote"

Maybe once a year, my family drives about 10 hours to visit my grandma way up in the mountains. I mostly really like it. There's not another house in sight, and the views are beautiful. In the early morning, you can see the clouds of fog lingering around the trees. It looks super eerie but beautiful. My grandmother has a pretty nice expanse of yard, but after her yard ends, there is nothing but trees as far as you can see. There's also lots of wildlife. We see turkeys, deer, birds, and even bears sometimes.
    But the story begins about two years ago. Well, maybe it does. This little anecdote might not even be connected to what I'm going to tell you later. It was late at night, and we were just finishing our drive to my grandmothers house. We were maybe 15 minutes away when my mom got a call from her. She sounded incredibly panicked. She told us that her dog, Sampson, had escaped and run off into the woods. This wasn't unusual, we had experienced him running off many times. My grandma had heard him yelping and went to go look for him in the dark. When she found him, he was very badly wounded. Gaping claw marks lashed his sides. He was barely alive. She had to call us to let us know that she wasn't going to be home when we arrived, as she had to take Sampson almost two hours away to the nearest animal hospital, and she would meet us in the morning.
    When we woke up in the morning, she was there with Sampson. He had a huge white collar on, and many stitches, along with a little white plug stuck in his side, in order for the fluid to drain out. Turns out he was going to be just fine, but he just laid pitifully in his bed the whole time we were there.
    My grandma informed us that the vet said he had no clue what had attacked Sampson. The claw marks were too small to be a bear, and anyways, it was winter, the black bears shouldn't have been active. I guess maybe it could've been a mountain lion, but when I did some research, apparently there aren't any mountain lions in the area. It couldn't have been an eagle, or any other bird of prey, as Sampson would definitely be too big for a bird to consider. So we never found out what attacked Sampson, and I don't know that we ever will. But because it confused the vet so much, and because no one in my family could come up with a solution, my first thought was something that maybe couldn't be explained with science or logic.
    Anyways, let's get on to the main part of the story, as I'm not even sure if the former part is connected, like I said. When we stay over, one of my sisters and I always share a bedroom on the first floor. There's a large window facing the bed with a perfect view of the yard and woods. It's really nice to wake up to in the morning. But as I learned, can get kind of eerie at night. It was pretty late, probably around midnight when my sister and I finally got to bed that night. She fell asleep right away, but I just couldn't. It's always hard for me to sleep there because I just think about how isolated it is, and let my thoughts run wild. I would tell myself that I was being illogical, because my grandma has never had issues or anything of the sort, but maybe I wasn't.
    Anyways, I was kind of in that state where you're almost asleep, but you're still conscious of it, if that makes any sense. I heard a sound. I didn't even register what it was, I just knew that it had pulled me out of my almost-sleep. I looked over at my sister to see if she had heard it too, but apparently she hadn't, because she was still sound asleep. I laid on my back and listened for awhile, but heard nothing else. I chalked it up to it being an old house, and old houses sometimes make weird noises. I fell back into that almost-sleep state again, when I heard another noise. This time I could sort of guess what it was; it sounded like whimpering. Like an animal or something. I honestly thought my grandmas dog Sampson was at the bedroom door, begging to be let in, so I ignored it. But the noise came again, and I realized it wasn't coming from outside the door, it was coming from outside the window. I didn't want to acknowledge it, so I just tried to go back to sleep. I didn't look at the window. The odd sounds continued for about 5 minutes, slowly turning into grunts. They reminded me of a sound a man might make after being punched in the stomach. A kind of sharp "uh" sound.
   By this point I was pretty freaked out. I didn't want to wake up my sister, because I didn't want her to be scared as well. But I sat up in bed and looked out the window. My grandma has a motion sensor that turns on a porch light when it detects movement. The light illuminated the creature in front of me. Upon seeing it, I felt more at ease. It was just a coyote. It was just pacing around in the grass in front of the window, but I had noticed that the weird noises had stopped. I just sat and watched the coyote for a few minutes, as I'd never seen one that close before. I was feeling more relaxed, and actually kinda lucky because I would never get an opportunity like this back at home. It wasn't too close to the window at this point, maybe 20 feet back, so I couldn't tell yet that something wasn't right.
    But after those few minutes the animal started acting... weird. It just started walking around and around in circles very slowly. It got closer and closer to the window until it was almost right against it. Suddenly, it snapped its head around and I swear, it stared directly into my eyes. I started to get a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, a feeling that told me that something was seriously wrong. You'll know this feeling if you ever get it, it's sort of primal, like the monkey part of your brain is telling you to get the hell out of there. The coyote stepped even closer to the window, pressing its nose against it. I realized its muzzle was scabby and gross. Its eyes were white. It looked sick. Its coat looked matted, and I could make out that some patches of fur were missing. At this point I realized something else was off, too. It was subtle, but once I noticed it I couldn't unsee it. Its neck was too long, and bent at a weird angle. Doesn't seem super unusual, but seeing that sent chills down my spine. With its nose still pressed against the glass, the coyote opened its jaws and pressed a dry-looking gray tongue against the window. It might've been funny if not for how disturbing the scene was. It was almost like the creature was purposefully trying to scare me. It just stayed that way, face pressed against the glass for awhile. I don't know how long, I was too terrified to think at this point. The motion sensor eventually switched off after not detecting movement for some time, and my heart was beating out of my chest just thinking about what the creature was doing.
    A few moments later, the light turned back on. The thing that definitely wasn't a coyote was just sitting there, watching me with its sickly white eyes. I had no clue what to do. It cocked its head. Then it opened its diseased jaws and spoke to me. "Please?" I heard it ask, only I swear to god it sounded just like my mother. I slowly shook my head, absolutely scared out of my mind, every fiber of my being telling me to just run. But I couldn't leave my sister alone.
"But, Kat, it's so cold out here," it whined, still sounding like my mom. I have no clue how it knew my name. But I couldn't bear to even look at it anymore. I flopped back down in bed and pulled up the covers like a child. I could hear it whispering incoherently, but I tried to block it out. After awhile it just went away I guess. But I didn't fall asleep until early in the morning. I think I might know what that thing was. I've heard enough stories. I think it was a skinwalker. I'm a huge skeptic, and really never believed in supernatural stuff like that. But how do you explain what I saw and heard? There's literally no rational explanation I can think of and believe me, I've tried. I'm still visiting my grandma, and I want to leave as soon as possible. I can't tell my parents or sisters anything though, they'd never believe me. I just want to be as far away from this place as possible.