Story Outline
The story begins with George, Henry and Eugene returning home from the 55th Annual Hillcrest Pumpkin Festival. They are driving on a curvy country road surrounded by gold and brown autumn foliage. The sun is setting and bathing the countryside in a warm, golden glow. The scent of burning leaves lingers in the cool Midwestern breeze.
They soon happen upon a young woman named Vivian, who is walking along the side of the road. She tells them that her car has disappered into a nearby swamp, and that she is not from the area. The three of them offer her a ride back to their home, where she can telephone a tow truck. she accepts and they all drive off.
When they arrive home, Vivian uses the phone, while George, Henry and Eugene talk in private about having Vivian stay with them. When she returns, she asks them if she can stay with them and they all agree she must.
Later that night, George is awkened by sounds from the attic. Upon investigating, he witnesses Vivian standing in the attic and watches as she transforms into a hideous monster.
The next morning, the three wake up to discover Vivian missing from her bedroom. George tries desperately to convince Henry and Eugene that he saw her turn into a monster and fly out the window, but they think he must have been dreaming and instead scared her away.
At that instant, they hear something fly into the attic and come down the stairs into the kitchen, where George, Henry and Eugene are eating breakfast. To their surprise, it is Vivian! However, she looks as normal as she was the day before, and nothing like how George described seeing her the previous night.
Later that afternoon, they decide that they will allow her to continue staying with them, but George is going to keep an eye on her. Henry is not suspicious, but Eugene witness something that makes him think george was telling the truth all along.
That evening, Eugene wakes up from a terrible nightmare, while George explains to him and Henry that Vivian may be an evil demon disguised as a young woman. He shows them a passage from one of his books on the occult, and it sounds plausible.
However, Henry is still less than convinced. That is until they notice that Vivian is once again missing from her bedroom, and later is heard feasting on something in the attic. They all stay awake the rest of the night, curled up in their beds, the horrible sounds of the monster in their attic gnawing bones and devouring flesh fills the house with a foreboding sense of dread.
They next day, Eugene distracts Vivian while Henry and George hide out in the basement and devise a plan to get rid of vivian. they are afraid to simply tell her to leave, for fear of what she might do to them, so they decide they have to kill her.
Their plan entails waiting until nightfall when Vivian will shed her human skin and leave the house in search of victims to feast on, then they will all get to work painting the doors and window frames of their house blue, in accordance with what folklore tells them about this specific kind of monster. The point is to separate the monster from its human skin, and they learn from their book that the monster cannot pass through a door or window that is painted blue.
That evening, Vivian once again shed her skin and leaves the house searching for victims. While she is gone, George, Henry and Eugene paint all of their doors and windows blue. As dawn approaches, they nervously wait for the monster to return. Soon enough, they hear the painful shrieks and cries of the monster as it agonizingly tries to get back into its skin before the sun rises. They think that have succeeded, until the wails of misery from the monster cease and are replaced by the sound of it squeezing into their basement window.
The monster gets into the house and its skin just as the sun rises. They hear Vivian crying in the attic and go to confront her. Feeling bad for attempting to kill her, they decide she can stay with them and they'll try to make amends.
The next evening, three women are driving down a country road from the pumpkin festival. They see George, Henry and Eugene standing beside the road and stop to give them a ride. Just as they are driving away, we hear them tell the women a similar story that Vivian told them at the beginning.
