Editing Abyss (section)

=== The Abattoir ===
Contains Bogeys such as the [[Milkmaid]], the Ram-headed Man, the Calfbone Child, and the Font of Meat.<ref name="Abyss QA" /><ref>
Other Bogeymen resemble living people, but fall more into the realm of heavy carnivores, dining on fear.  Like heavy carnivores, they don't need to eat often.  Finding other things to eat helps fill the space between, so they'll do that a lot, and beyond that they tend to patrol or wander.  If the Milkmaid locates herself in the abandoned farmhouse and the surrounding fields, then she might get to know the ins and outs of the property, where the fence is reliable, where the holes in the ground are, and she'd find the things to alter the property.  A whole day can be spent on one window, so it's ajar but closes when someone slips through.  A week can be spent on the floor, so that the window closes when someone comes running along the shaky floorboards of the house, directly toward the opening.  Two weeks to a month to have the window close just as someone puts their hands or head through the opening.
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This might be stretched out over long periods, the Milkmaid going through her routine of sleeping until evening, waking up, kicking at a floorboard here, adjusting a window there, getting her things and then going out to check the traps in the nearby woods for any caught foxes, deer, or coyotes.  If any are caught, then a few hours are spent stripping the animal, the meat eaten with some glasses of milk (a little bit more strength, a bit more time before she needs to eat real human fear instead of trapped animal fear), the offal strewn in strategic locations, the bones added to the collection in a key location of the home (like in the cellar one will fall into if they run too hard along that one stretch of breakable floorboards).  While passing through the home at the later half of the night, she'll adjust a door, move some curtains so that one hook isn't on the rod but is at a level to catch on some clothes, stomp at a floorboard.  She fixes up her milking machine for a few hours, feeds and milks the cows, then goes for a walk, touring the outer edges of her territory, familiarizing herself with that ground, expanding her territory out a fraction, maybe moving a rock so a tire might pop on the road or breaking a branch or three so the farmhouse is more clearly visible for anyone passing down the dirt road.  She watches the sunrise, then returns home and dozes off.
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When she does get a victim, it becomes about milking them for fear, literally.  They get snagged, caught, the exits turn out not to be exits, the fields have holes in them that don't seem to trip up this one-hundred-and-twenty pound woman with the cow-skin hood and wrapping, but do twist the ankles of the unwary.  One victim is chosen, the rest killed off, and she drags her victim off to the barn, where they're summarily chained up.  A cow is skinned and the skin is sewn onto and around the trapped man or woman.  Then she starts up the rusty old milking machine, places the first three glass tubes with the suction going, holds up the fourth with its shattered edge, and then places it- the suction rhythmically pulls the glass edges in deeper, releasing, over and over, the blood flowing in with inexplicable milk and other bodily fluids the machine is pulling in, to join her collection of regular cow's milk.  She'll have something to drink with her next meal of fox or deer, she has her supply of fear and pain for the next few days or weeks until her victim passes or slips into the Abyss, she gains some power, and she buys her continued existence in a world where she has quiet days and can watch sunrises.
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It's not really a Crone Mara style adjustment of territory over decades or centuries - more that obsessive focus, memories of the Abyss, and the influence of the Abyss itself staining reality can help make this work.  The places she visits and the things she does serve to taint areas and things.  The milking machine is a big one for this particular bogeyman, as are the cows of her barn, which might start to end up more abyssal (mutated, with special properties, potentially with skins that transmit sensation  after being sewn on).  For Bogeymen of this type who aren't the Milkmaid, it could be something like the house being bigger from the inside, or hallways that look different when you revisit them. - [https://www.reddit.com/r/Parahumans/comments/8r4hha/_/e0qz9pn What Do Most Others Do All Day?], Reddit</ref>