Gredg

It is an unusual word, gredg . It does not appear in dictionaries. It has no known etymology, no cousins in Romance or Germanic tongues. It is, by all accounts, a typo or a forgotten name.

I said the word aloud: Gredg . It felt wrong in the mouth, like chewing wool. The soft gr- scraping against the hard -edg , the closure of the final consonant too final, too sharp. A sound that ends like a door slamming. It is an unusual word, gredg

Don't look behind you. But if you do—don't blink. It is an unusual word