Dweller

As a small child, Toby caught sight of a strange shape moving between the trees near his home. When he tried to describe it, his mother and father told him he had imagined it. Years later, a miserable and friendless teenager, he meets the being again. This time it stays. It becomes a companion he can turn to whenever he feels alone, and it also turns its attention to the boys who pick on him. Its appetite, however, comes with a cost.

Their unusual partnership lasts for decades, a grisly bond shaped by the creature's hunger. The story follows what grows from that arrangement and hints that the two will share many more meals along the way.