the Skins of Our Fathers is a novelette written by Clive Barker. It was first published in the 1984 collection Books of Blood, Volume II.
Plot[]
After his car breaks down in Arizona, a man named Davidson witnesses a bizarre parade of monsters. He learns creatures mated with a woman in a nearby town six years previously and now wish to reclaim Aaron, the child she bore. The woman's abusive alcoholic husband knows of the creatures and that they are mostly benevolent, but wants to take revenge on them for impregnating his wife. It is implied that all modern humans originally came to be from similar relationships between these creatures and primordial women, but over time male humans drove the creatures to the brink of extinction.
Davidson reaches the town, where a posse of gun-toting locals are eager to slay the monsters. After a violent confrontation in which the townsfolk manage to kill one of the largest creatures along with Aaron, the remaining creatures vanish and arrange for Davidson and a few survivors to become trapped in quicksand which then hardens when they are half-buried. Trapped, they are left to die in the burning desert heat.
The idea of a group of people sinking in quicksand which then hardens around them was later used by Barker in the film Lord of Illusions.