The thing we call the Stranger started stalking our family back in the early 1800s. There are several theories about how it began that I’ve heard over the years. It was a side effect of some ancestor’s deal with the Devil. It was the result of someone killing the entity’s master or family or pet dog. It was the practical effect of a curse that had been placed on our family for some real or imagined wrong.

This last has a bit more traction in the family than the others, though whether it’s because people know something I don’t or because it is the version that makes it less likely our ancestors were assholes, I don’t know. I think an equally likely hypothesis is that we don’t know why the Stranger hunts us and we never will. It’s like the surfer asking if the shark that attacked him had some deep and abiding grudge against the company that made his board. Shit, man, probably not. That shark is just sharking, and you had the bad luck to cross its path.

And in the end, does it really matter? The Stranger is still coming whether you understand its motivations or not. So setting that aside, let’s go over again exactly what it hunting us looks like.

First, it takes on the appearance of others. It does this by killing them and then taking their place. While there is usually a fairly short time gap between when it replaces the person and when it tries to get us, I have known it to wait several days between replacing someone and beginning to hunt us in earnest. It is very intelligent, and can pass for the person it is mimicking in most situations, up to and including even having some of their memories and habits.

When I was in my late twenties, before I met your mother, I had a diner I would always go to. Good food and cute waitresses. There was one in particular I always talked to and had known for almost a year. Then one night she jumps me. After it’s all over and police found the real girl’s body, I learned she had been dead for over four days. The Stranger had waited on me twice since then, chit chatting and seeming perfectly normal. And I had never noticed the difference until she reached for the back of my neck.