As terrifying as it was to face an unknown creature, finding out that it had been human all along was somehow so much worse. Every life it had taken, every rattled screech torn from whatever miserable wretch it had captured, every mutilated corpse strung up like a visceral garland offered to demented gods all done by someone we could have known.
We didn't realise we were dealing with a person until they'd fallen into one of our traps - a multitude we'd spent months setting up around their lair as a desperate attempt to end their killing spree. They were long dead by the time we'd gone over to check, the birds had eaten most of their face except their eyes.
They always go for the eyes first but they left these in perfect condition. It made us wonder what this person could have seen in their final hours to make even the hungriest of scavengers avoid such an obvious food source, especially mid-winter.
Honestly if it hadn't been for the black rope tied tightly around their hands, I dare say we would have mistaken them for someone innocent and even buried them in our own church! Instead we called the town around the pit and agreed to bury it there, leave it unmarked and hope that would be the last of it.
Perhaps we hoped too much, judged too soon, didn't look closely enough or missed something completely obvious but the killings have come back. The grave is an open pit once more and those of us who are more superstitious have reason to believe that whatever it was killing for has brought it back to carry on.
That or there was always more than one.
We didn't realise we were dealing with a person until they'd fallen into one of our traps - a multitude we'd spent months setting up around their lair as a desperate attempt to end their killing spree. They were long dead by the time we'd gone over to check, the birds had eaten most of their face except their eyes.
They always go for the eyes first but they left these in perfect condition. It made us wonder what this person could have seen in their final hours to make even the hungriest of scavengers avoid such an obvious food source, especially mid-winter.
Honestly if it hadn't been for the black rope tied tightly around their hands, I dare say we would have mistaken them for someone innocent and even buried them in our own church! Instead we called the town around the pit and agreed to bury it there, leave it unmarked and hope that would be the last of it.
Perhaps we hoped too much, judged too soon, didn't look closely enough or missed something completely obvious but the killings have come back. The grave is an open pit once more and those of us who are more superstitious have reason to believe that whatever it was killing for has brought it back to carry on.
That or there was always more than one.
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