Mors E-Book

Raphael Mateju

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 349

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

When it came to the forest, the residents of Mors were sure of one thing: Stay the hell away from it. And keep your children even further away. The Sheriff's Department talked about a child molester, but the hunters had a completely different opinion. One day, when Williams' daughter disappears, the deputy discovers a truth in the search for her that couldn't be any darker.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

1 Emma

2 Williams

3 Timmy

4 Williams

5 Hunter

6 Timmy

7 Stone

8 Murray

9 Timmy

10 Williams

11 Timmy & Stevie

12 Williams

13 Stone

14 Ben

15 Williams

16 Murray

17 Williams

18 Stone

19 hunter

20 Timmy

21 Williams

22 Murray - at the same time

23 Williams

24 Stone

25 Williams

26 Timmy

27 Stone

28 Stevie

29 Timmy & Stevie

30 Williams

31 Stone

32 Hunter

33 Timmy & Stevie

34 Stone

35 Murdstone - a few minutes ago

36 Stone

37 Timmy & Stevie

38 Stone

39 Murdstone

40 Stone

41 Phil

42 Murdstone

43 Excerpt from Williams’ diary

44 Stone

45 Hunter

46 Ben

47 Williams, Murdstone & Hunter

48 Williams

49 Murdstone

50 Docks

51 1899

52 The Traveller

53 Williams

54 The Traveller

55 Williams

56 The Traveller

57 Williams

58 Murdstone

59 Timmy & Stevie

60 Stone - about an hour ago

61 Williams

62 Stone

63 Timmy & Stevie

64 Williams

65 Hunter

66 Williams

67 Timmy & Stevie

68 Hunter

69 Williams

70 Excerpt from Williams’ diary

1 Emma

When it came to the forest, the inhabitants of Mors were sure of one thing: stay the hell away from it. And keep your children even further away. One of the few things that the hunters in the area and the Sheriff’s Department agreed on.

Even Emma’s father, a respected deputy in town, had expressly forbidden her from approaching the forest’s edge. Still, the eight-year-old had other plans on that melancholy autumn evening.

“I’m sure Daddy will be happy when I come home with big mushrooms for dinner,” she thought with the same childlike naivety that had driven dozens of other children here. She had no idea of the significance this decision would have.

Her father always insisted that he didn’t believe a word of the hunters’ stories - in his opinion, stories of dark creatures and ghosts were pure nonsense - but he was sure something else was lurking up there. He didn’t want to tell her what was happening, but she once overheard him saying, “child molester.” Emma thought it was a strange word, and it didn’t sound like a friendly playmate. Many adults also claimed that the hunter’s stories were just old wives’ tales that bored drunkards told when they had had one too many (whatever that meant), no more and no less.

Gradually, she approached the infamous forest path. When she finally stood before it, she stopped reverently, uncertain whether she should dare look inside this dark place. Her trust in her father’s words was the reason for her hesitation. Still, her childlike curiosity began to itch more and more like a swarm of burning ants.

Ben, an older boy from the neighbourhood, had once told her that the mushrooms there were as giant as his face. If Emma wanted anything, it was to come home with a successful harvest of giant mushrooms. Her scrutinizing gaze flew over the beginning of the path, which became narrower and narrower and eventually disappeared into the darkness behind thick tree trunks. The wind whistled between the branches, rustled in the treetops, and picked up dried, brown-orange leaves from the ground, barely brushing past Emma. Her hair blew in the wind.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Her voice sounded hesitant.

No answer. Only a cool breeze.

Emma looked back in the direction she had come from. The colourful roofs of the town shone in the evening light. She wondered if it might be better to follow her father’s advice but soon gave in to her childlike curiosity.

As she searched for the long-awaited mushrooms, lost in thought, she didn’t notice that the sun was sinking lower and the horizon was gradually getting darker. It didn’t take long before the red in the sky disappeared. Eventually, Emma realized with alarm that she had gone so far into the woods that the threshold of darkness was now within reach.

She stopped. The unexpected wall of shadows in front of her would not let her see more than ten meters ahead. She looked around, feeling genuine concern for the first time.

Which way did I come from? she thought. Where am I? Nervously, her eyes searched the ground. The darkness filled her with discomfort. She looked back. There was still some twilight, probably the forest’s edge. She then turned back to the bitterly cold blackness before her as if someone was pulling an invisible string. For in the darkness, there was a peculiar crackling sound.

Suddenly, a horrible thought occurred to Emma. What if there really is a monster back there? Just like the hunters tell the tale.

The wind whistled. The treetops rustled. The darkness seemed to growl. Suddenly, Emma froze, and the darkness that had spread rapidly in all directions seemed shock-frozen from one second to the next. The forest edge and the adjacent town of Mors were far in the seemingly infinite distance behind her. It was as if an icy breath were blowing into her face from one second to the next. She began to shake, wanting to run away, but her whole body refused every command, her soul frozen solid, and her gaze scourged. She only felt the beat of her little heart hammering against her chest faster than ever before.

The question of whether there were monsters in that jetblack darkness that sometimes looked like a spooky cemetery night, even at noon, had long been answered for the girl. Something even darker stood less than twenty meters away. A gaunt figure with pearly white owl eyes stood out amid a shadow-drenched face like glowing buttons.

Maybe they are just buttons, ones that can float. Maybe big fireflies. Or balls, attempting to convince herself. Still, the longer she looked at these circular lights with a small black dot in the centre, the clearer it became that she was staring into something terrifying. And that these eyes were looking back murderously.

Silence mixed with the icy wind rushing and rustling of leaves as if someone announced death. Growling. Snorting.

Emma held her breath. Felt fear creeping through her veins, a thunderstorm brewing under her chest. The figure resembled an oversized, elongated silhouette. A living shadow. A tall man enveloped in the night like a shroud.

“There are no monsters,” Emma heard her father’s voice resound emphatically. “Not under your bed, not in the closet. If there are any, only in movies or in your head, and you can fight against them! But real monsters don’t exist.”

But who or what was this in front of her? Panic overtook her fear. A gust of wind stirred up leaves and came close to her pink shoes. The deep snorting behind the dark wall reminded her of a horse. It crackled again.

Run suddenly shot through her mind. It’s not like in video games. In real life, you only die once. Run!

Now, as if she had only heard the starting signal with a delay, Emma ran for her life. At eight years of age, she did not know that the substance that suddenly worked on her relentlessly like gasoline on fire was called adrenaline. Still, she felt it, and it invigorated all her senses. Every branch that touched her led to a loud, shrill scream, every sound she heard made her fear for her life. She ran as fast as she could and felt the cold wind on her skin. The child molester must not get too close to her! How much she wished that all this was just a dream. But deep down, she knew: this was real. The leaves, the cold night, the trembling of the ground.

Suddenly, the earthy ground under her disappeared. She stumbled and fell into the abyss. Her pink shoe got stuck on a root coming off her foot. Many twists and turns later, Emma came to a halt.

I’ve gone the wrong way! Dad, where are you?

Her heart was pounding in her chest. Emma sobbed desperately, frantically searching for a way out. Still, the dark forest seemed like a single, lightless labyrinth of death. She still hoped to make it home unharmed. But the next moment, a numbing pain pierced her stomach, the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth, and an involuntary gasp led to complete paralysis. That was when she knew the pitchblack labyrinth was the last thing she would ever see.

2 Williams

One year later, Deputy Craig Williams was busy reviewing his daughter’s case files - again. He felt like he had done it a million times in the past year, but the despair that had become a daily occurrence forced him to do it again and again. (Besides, as a deputy in Mors, there was nothing else to do except hand out parking tickets and confiscate cigarettes from thirteen-year-old kids.)

Why the hell, my daughter? A question that circled in his head like a carousel every day since. The fact that his wife had died of cancer had been terrible enough, but losing his daughter was like having a screwdriver stuck in his heart every day. Nonetheless, he tried to approach the case as objectively as possible.

Stay focused, man. Stay focused. No witnesses and nothing that could be considered evidence except for her shoe.

The only usable lead had been the blood near the Hole. But the trail ended suddenly and seemingly untouched as if someone had calmly painted it there, right at the same spot where it appeared. No tracking dog in the world could have followed it, not to mention the forensic biologists. There were too few nearby, and the authorities paid insufficient attention to the countless missing person cases of the past years to initiate further investigations.

Children, especially teenagers, sometimes disappeared, according to the statement of smart-ass know-it-alls, none of whom had ever set foot in Mors except for one. And that one smart-ass happened to be Williams’ superior, Sheriff Murdstone.

“Some kids leave town because they’re tired of their parents and eventually end up at a cheap motel’s roadside as prostitutes a hundred, two hundred miles north, where they are often relieved to be taken home by the authorities after finding out that even eight fucks a day won’t necessarily make them rich and their kissers begin to itch after twenty blowjobs,” Williams quoted the Sheriff’s charming words in his thoughts. “Others just disappear forever, leaving behind a huge mess or so little trace that it doesn’t even make sense to put them in the files - unless you have to. That’s bureaucracy, so here we are with a pretty big pile of shit on paper that we’ll never be able to finish.”

Emma’s case at least managed to wake up the local authorities, so Williams was assigned a dog squad to search the forest.

“Only this time, Williams. Because she’s your daughter. But don’t get your hopes up. You know how things work in this area. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.”

But Williams had hoped; after all, Emma was his only child. The interrogations of the five suspects who were considered led nowhere. Four of them had solid alibis, and only the fifth, Eddy Murray, caused an uncomfortable feeling in Williams, not for the first time. The insidious smile under the blond, tousled hair of the middle-aged man stood out from the photo in Williams’ hand like a freshly sharpened arrowhead. As the only registered pedophilic sex offender near Mors, he had already been investigated. Still, the evidence had soon spoken against him as the perpetrator. He repeatedly claimed his innocence, so the investigators eventually let him go (even though the guy had already spent a few years in jail). However, the uneasy feeling in Williams’ stomach remained and sometimes made it difficult for him to fall asleep at night, especially considering what else he heard about Murray. Unfortunately, as a deputy, one got used to child pornography, but cannibalism was different. That required a thick skin. A damn thick skin. So far, however, it had only remained typical small-town gossip because they couldn’t prove anything against the scumbag.

Although nothing promising had come out of Murray’s house’s more or less legal searches, Williams still couldn’t shake the idea that cannibalism and pedophilia made for a dangerous combination. Perhaps this small-town gossip should be taken more seriously.

With his glasses on his nose, Williams now examined the photos of the crime scene. Although he already knew them by heart, his microscopic view remained as detailed as during the first investigation a year ago.

I must have overlooked something. Williams reached for his coffee cup (“gasoline for civil servants,” as he and his colleagues lovingly called the brew), almost knocking the disordered stack of papers off his desk, and put the cup back down after tasting the bitter flavour on his tongue. Then he ran his fingers through his full hazel-brown hair, which he used to comb neatly back before Emma disappeared, before immediately shaving his cheeks. A habit Williams had since abandoned. While he used to look like he came straight out of a shaving foam commercial, he now resembled someone who desperately needed such a commercial. His three-day beard had expired, and greasy strands hung down his eyebrows.

“But what? What the hell am I overlooking?” There seemed to be no prospect just as the privacy glass in the windows that kept curious from peering into his office. Williams made a disapproving sound, set the photo aside, and reached for the next one.

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in ...”

The door swung open.

“Williams!” A uniformed man with short brown hair and red cheeks swaggered before him. “Sorting puzzle pieces again?”

“Mr. Murdstone,” Williams greeted the Sheriff, sitting up to lend his interest more credibility. “What brings you to me?”

“Stay seated.” Murdstone made a placating gesture. “I just got a call. Some hippies in the park are causing a commotion. Can you take a look? I’m busy. You know... bureaucracy.”

Although Williams knew that his superior meant: ‘Someone needs to take care of my beer‘, he replied casually, “Sure, boss.”

“Take Thomas with you. He should be back from his break any moment now. Oh, and tell him he owes me a twelve-pack of doughnuts. The ones with chocolate on the inside... but without nuts, or I’ll get the runs again!”

“Will do, sir.”

“And while you’re at it, giving him messages, please tell him to stop with the moustache. It’s bad enough that the boy is so fat and couldn’t catch a single gangster in the world, but this moustache... my God. It’s a true crime, I’m telling you. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was a darn childfucker.”

“I’ll do my best,” Williams replied laconically. The word childfucker triggered a movie in his head, which he could do without in his current situation.

“Thank you... oh, and Williams,” Murdstone continued as Williams was about to return to the photos, and the Sheriff was already halfway out the door. “I know she was your daughter, and you have my deepest respect for dealing with it, but from experience, I can tell you it won’t do any good. You’re only in your late twenties, so save your nerves for other things. Dates or whatever people your age do, or else you won’t look that good anymore in a few years, I swear.” His gestures suggested that he took himself as an example.

“Are you telling me that I should give up on my daughter’s case and focus on things like parking violations, gum thefts, and dates?”

“No, no,” Murdstone replied hesitantly, soothingly waving his hand. “Of course not, although parking violators can be quite annoying, and gum theft is no trivial matter. I just want to advise you to conserve your energy for things that are still solvable. And believe me, I know how callous that may sound, but Eddy Murray was the only man who could have been the culprit, yet he has an airtight alibi. And a damn good lawyer. And the fact that he has a predilection for child pornography, unfortunately, does not play a role here. There is nothing to suggest that he could have been the one...”

“This case is still solvable,” Williams interrupted his boss resolutely. “And I won’t rest a day until I solve it.” He wanted to lecture the Sheriff on the emotional pain that a parent experiences when their child disappears without a trace, and they are left in the dark about whether they are still alive.

Damn it, I’d rather find out about her death than cry myself to sleep every night because of the uncertainty. And I would love to punch you in the face, Williams thought about his boss. But he remained silent, refraining from the lecture, which left him feeling like the air was forming a ball in front of him.

Murdstone nodded imperceptibly. “If you say so.” Then he disappeared behind the door, which closed almost silently.

Williams shook his head, upset by his boss’ work ethic and audacity. The man who had the final say in most matters in Mors. Not even the mayor dared to contradict him. If this had been the approach for the past years, then it was no wonder that the other missing persons’ cases were still unsolved and gathering dust somewhere in the files.

3 Timmy

Timmy only heard a muffled bang before landing on his butt.

“Hey, fatty! Eaten three packets of cornflakes again today?” he heard a sardonic voice from behind, triggering an overwhelming hatred within him. Stone stood with Phil and Ben, his lackeys, right before him, letting his gaze pendulum between him and the knocked-over chair.

“Where did you leave the guy with the speech impediment?” He meant Stevie, Timmy’s best friend.

Out of the corner of Timmy’s eye, they looked like a bunch of clones. The same short haircut. The same awful sports clothes. The same spiteful grin. The only thing that differentiated Stone from the other two was his wiry curls, which made Timmy wonder if Stone would use them to cushion himself if he were to dive headfirst into a wall.

“Look at this fatso,” Stone jeered while Timmy cowered on the ground, trying to avoid the gaze of the gawking classmates. “Disgusting. So, loser. What are you up to? Trying to solve some criminal cases again with your lover?” Stone reached for Timmy’s smartphone, on which a webpage was open. unsolvedcases.com.

“You don’t seriously believe this dumb shit, do you?” Stone laughed derisively and read out the title of the article. “THE MONSTER FROM THE NEST? Does the fat baby still believe in monsters? Does mommy have to check under the bed every night too?” Stone mimicked the voice of a toddler as the rest of his group bent over in laughter. “For a nerd, you’re fucking stupid.” He threw Timmy’s smartphone in front of his feet, where it landed the screen down on the ground.

“When was the last time he took a shower? He stinks like hell,” Phil mocked, holding his nose.

Timmy turned red with shame and anger. One day he would get back at them! Yes, he definitely would, but he made the same decision almost every day, and until now, he still didn’t have the guts to stand up to these guys. After all, one day was not a very precise time frame.

“Come on, guys, let’s go get some drinks. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.” Before Stone left the classroom, a mocking “unsolvedcases.com. Ridiculous” was heard.

Timmy stood up, brushed a blonde strand out of his face, and noticed that he had scraped his elbow in the fall. Quickly, he texted Stevie.

T_ME: “Another case for the reserve band-aids... are you coming?”

SteV: “Fuck, again?”

T_ME:

SteV: “Someday I’ll kill those guys, I promise you. Let’s meet downstairs.”

All of the lockers were located one floor down in the basement. The smell of freshly painted walls hung in the air. Somewhere a faucet was dripping.

Stevie waited near Timmy’s locker, which had the number 109. The few students who were lurking around down here at the same time scrutinized the two with questioning looks. One whispered something to another. Timmy couldn’t hear what it was, but the surprised expression and the fact that the other person had to repeat it, eliciting a grin, made him suspect that it must have been something mean.

“People are looking at us as if we’re the biggest losers in school,” protested Stevie in a low voice. Lotherth in thchool. Stevie’s lisp was one of his main features, making him an easy target for Stone and his gang of junior delinquents.

“We are the biggest losers in school. We’re at least in the top five.” Timmy shook his head irritably.

“Damn, I hate these guys.” Guyth.

“You okay?”

Timmy shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Before he put the key in the lock, the disgusting smell of urine hit him, instantly overpowering the smell of the paint. They sensed trouble, and Timmy sighed. “Not again...”

Their foreboding proved true. Timmy’s soaking wet sweater lay on the bottom of his locker, where the smell of urine gathered and now hit them even more intensely.

“God, how disgusting! I can practically taste it!”

Judging from the dripping drops, Timmy suspected that Stone had urinated in a container and poured the liquid through the ventilation slots at the top of the locker door. Stevie held his nose and just managed to control his gag reflex.

“Again?” came a grandfatherly voice from behind. Docks, the janitor, stood in his blue overalls in the hallway, holding a mop in his right hand and his left hand on his hip. The furrowed brow and slightly open mouth carried a touch of pity, which Timmy desperately needed.

“Hi, Grandpa,” said Stevie, who was sometimes unsure if having his grandfather as the janitor at his school was considered cool.

“I wouldn’t put up with that any longer if I were you, kid,” advised Docks, who had already cleaned Timmy’s locker several times and, as far as Timmy knew from Stevie’s stories, had caught Stones’ clique red-handed messing around with other lockers.

“At some point, you have to learn to defend yourself. Just go after the leader and beat him as hard as you can. Have you ever seen Karate Kid? That’s how you do it when you’re in trouble. I know the advice isn’t pedagogically valuable, but I’m not your teacher either. If I had had your weight at twelve, I would have already smacked that bastard; excuse my language.” Docks imitated a left hook. He wasn’t Timmy’s teacher, that was true, but unlike Timmy’s teacher, Docks was at least trying to give the twelve-year-old some advice. Timmy wasn’t a boxer, but he liked the idea.

“I’m sorry for you, Timmy. I know it’s not always easy to be a kid, but don’t hang your head. I swear that someday, you’ll surpass those guys on the career ladder. Come on, I’ll take care of it,” said Docks, smiling gently and patting Timmy’s shoulder with grandfatherly care. “Don’t worry, I have a universal key, and I’ll lock it up again later. Stevie will bring your sweater back to school tomorrow. Freshly washed, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Timmy embarrassedly.

“You’re welcome. That’s what old Docks is here for, after all. Oh, and maybe you’d rather trade?” Docks reached into his pocket and pulled out a fresh pack of band-aids.

Timmy and Stevie had the next class together.

“The only thing I like about the art class is that Stone isn’t there,” whispered Stevie. “What are you reading? Found anything new?”

Timmy held his smartphone so that Stevie could look at the display. Together they browsed unsolvedcases.com, a site dedicated to solving unsolved criminal cases and mysteries (most likely operated by hobby detectives).

Since the disappearance of Emma Williams last year, they loved putting together mysterious puzzle pieces of unsolved cases to possibly solve one of them in the end. Even though they had not succeeded yet. They had heard many stories about missing children, some of which were about pedophile rings that first abducted children and sold them internationally. A thought that had initially caused Timmy sleepless nights during his research. But Docks had assured him that it was rather unlikely.

“Do you think these Adrenochrome stories are true?” Stevie asked Timmy.

“You mean that Pizzagate rejuvenation from children’s blood nonesense?”

“I’ve also read something about lizard people.”

“Dude, even I, as a twelve-year-old, know that’s bullshit,” said Timmy, zooming in on a keyword on display, “But that could be a possible answer.”

Stevie looked at the glowing letters that rose in the midst of Timmy’s hand. Timmy could guess from his friend’s complexion that Stevie was inevitably thinking of all the horror stories they told in town and all the admonishing words that Docks had given them. Stay away from everything up there.

“Are you saying...?”

“We need to learn more about the hunters’ stories.”

Stevie swallowed. The thought of the hunters, of their weathered faces, as they roamed the forest camouflaged and armed with bow and arrow, made them both shudder. No one in town liked being in the presence of the hunters. No one.

4 Williams

Excerpt from Williams’ diary - one year ago

Until now, I didn’t know you could have nightmares even when awake. It feels like someone has put a curse on me, making time stand still and trying to rob me of my last bit of sanity. It’s been forty-eight hours since Emma disappeared, and there’s still not a fucking clue. My body is exhausted, and my eyes feel like concrete blinds. If I hadn’t abused the coffee machine to the limit, I would have probably collapsed by now. Maybe I would have fainted. Maybe I would have had a heart attack from all the caffeine. I'll try to sleep tonight, but if I can’t, look for me in hell because that’s where I’ve been for forty-eight hours.

“Always the same with these kids,” grumbled Deputy Thomas as he took a bite of his doughnut, shooing the teenagers out of the park. “No respect whatsoever. If it were up to me, they’d all clean the whole town as punishment. Unpaid. On the weekends.”

Behind them, they could still hear the teenagers cursing after Williams and Thomas reminded them they were supposed to be in school. Finally, they disappeared on their bikes, out of sight.

“As if they’re really going to school now,” Thomas grumbled, shaking his head.

“As if we were any different back then,” Williams replied as he opened the driver’s side door of the patrol car. “They’re kids. Let them be.”

The engine started. Chewing noises from Thomas’ mouth. “I’m just saying. We should drop them off at school to make sure.”

“And you think that'll keep them from skipping in the future? Come on, Thomas, we should be glad they’re enjoying their youth and at least still giving some sign of life. Can’t say that about all the kids in this town.” It was another one of those moments when Emma’s face appeared before his mind’s eye involuntarily. Much quieter, he added, “Better they spend their time here than up in the woods. I, for one, have had enough to deal with. If another child goes missing, I swear, Mors will go down in history as the creepiest town in the world.” Surprising that parents still willingly lived here with their children, he thought.

Thomas shrugged as if Williams had touched a nerve. “True, although they’d still be better off in school ... My moustache doesn’t look that bad, does it? I don’t understand what Murdstone has against it. I think it’s nice.”

Williams chuckled. “Don’t look in the mirror; look at the road.”

“Me? You’re the one driving.”

“Still. You’re a deputy, not a fashion blogger.”

“Says the one with the sleazy son-in-law of the year hairstyle?” Both laughed heartily. Something Williams had only been able to do again recently.

Back at the police station, Williams overheard Murdstone almost choking Thomas when he realized he had again devoured the entire box of doughnuts.

“You useless idiot!” he shouted angrily throughout the department. “From now on, you owe me two twelve-packs! And a beer on top because your damn moustache still hangs like a broom in your fat face!”

Exhausted, Williams sank into his chair and reopened the case files on his daughter’s disappearance. This time, he inspected photos from a different part of the woods. However, the only insight he gained was the same one his colleagues had years before; all the missing persons disappeared within a maximum radius of two hundred meters from the Hole, were rarely older than fifteen, and were both male and female. There was never any trace of the perpetrator. Nothing indicated that anyone else was present at the crime scene at the time of the crime. The perpetrator seemed like a phantom of the night, a recurring nothingness. Trying to catch him was like trying to catch smoke with bare hands. So it didn’t seem unreasonable that someone had somehow dissolved the bodies. Was Eddy Murray clever enough to do so cleanly?

I mean, he would have had to develop incredible precision in his actions that even the best investigators were deceived. When we discovered his collection of child pornography, he certainly didn’t have that precision. That much should be said.

Although Williams would love to see Murray in court, the theory had an unusual catch he was reluctant to admit. Because more important than these conjectures was the question: who the hell was murdering for over a hundred years? The first reports of missing children in Mors were from the nineteenth century, and if Williams could be sure of one thing, it was that Murray was not yet born then. Unless someone adopted an inheritance.

An imitator? The only plausible answer, thought Williams. Of course, he knew that the hunters in the region told stories, but he had never been interested in such nonsense and swore to leave it at that for the time being.

“Old man stories. Nothing else. There are no monsters! Listen to me, Emma. There are no monsters! Not under your bed. Not in the closet. At most in movies.”

For him and his colleagues, a child molester was the most obvious explanation. In his eyes, the stories were nothing more than superstitious nonsense. As an investigator, only facts and clues counted for him. Belief was something for the Vatican, and even though he loved stories about demons and ghosts in books and movies, they belonged only there, in books and movies, but not in his files. Space was already scarce. Thinking of his ex-colleagues and Murdstone, who apparently had not managed to solve even a single case over the many years, he shook his head. In the surrounding areas, the cases had brought the small town of Mors into disrepute. They were referred to as clumsy deputies who lacked an eye for the essentials. He even kept the newspaper report published shortly after Emma’s disappearance. Not because he found it particularly exciting or helpful but because the journalists had gone to the Hole during the investigation to see for themselves and take some photos, which he kept just in case they turned out to be helpful at some point.

He lit a Lucky Strike, and drew the gently scratching smoke deep into his lungs as he read the newspaper article.

A small town straight out of a picture book with roofs as colourful as a painting, but what has been haunting this place for a long time is every parent’s nightmare. Every few years, children disappear without a trace in the woods here. (...) Sheriff Murdstone says: “I simply can’t explain who is targeting our wonderful town in such a perfidious way, but I assure you that we will find the perpetrator. I stand by that with my name.”

A blatant lie, Williams thought, who knew that Murdstone hardly lifted a finger.

It seems that the Sheriff and his team are approaching the matter very emotionally. Or are they just clumsy deputies without a sense of the essentials? How can someone have been kidnapping children in the same place for decades without getting caught? Isn’t there anyone taking action in Mors?

The latest victim, eight-year-old Emma Williams, was the daughter of one of the investigating deputies here in Mors. Still, apparently, even a stroke of fate in their own ranks is not enough to finally get the investigations going. Some residents have even decided to take matters into their own hands.

Below was a picture of a group of men and women armed with guns and torches, determined to take the law into their own hands. Williams could still vividly remember the day when an angry mob had marched through town - screaming, cursing, spitting as they passed the Sheriff’s department and up towards the woods. Some participants held signs high in the air. WHEN WILL YOU FINALLY BRING OUR CHILDREN BACK?

On another sign, it read: NO CHILD JUST DISAPPEARS LIKE THAT!

Others showed pictures of missing children.

“If you ask me, it was that crazy guy, Eddy M.,” one resident told us during an interview.

A censored photo of Eddy Murray was shown.

“Who else could it have been? He’s the only one in the area with a criminal record for child pornography. Plus, he’s a damn cannibal! Everyone here knows that even if no one dares to say it out loud. We’ve had enough, and all I can say is that if I don’t see that pig in court soon, he’ll burn in real life and then in hell!”

A threat that, as Williams knew, had almost come true. When the angry crowd had discovered, frustrated and outraged, that there wasn’t much more to be found in the woods than what Williams and his colleagues had already found, it didn’t take long for them to show up one night unannounced and with burning torches in front of Murray’s house. Williams reluctantly remembered having to take exactly that person, whom he himself would have loved to see on the stake, under police protection. In Williams’ opinion, Murray’s house wasn’t set on fire due to sheer luck and the fact that Murdstone had shown up at a crime scene in record time for the first time in his life. But for Murray, this luck wasn’t reason enough to leave Mors. The damn bastard had stayed and still lived in the rundown house on the edge of town next to the cornfield.

And I believed we had gotten rid of you once and for all, you miserable son of a bitch, thought Williams as he took a deep drag on his cigarette. He skipped a few lines but eventually tossed the article back onto the desk. Maybe his boss was right. Perhaps he should let the matter rest once and for all and close the files forever. A thought that sometimes crept in out of frustration.

No, damn it. You can’t, he told himself. And not just because of Emma. The dirty bastard will come back. Again and again, until he has every damn child in this town. Just like all serial killers eventually did. They were collectors. And just like with all collectors, this one would eventually become careless and leave a trail of false confidence and arrogance that would lead Williams straight to him. To the source of the evil, to the truth. The question was only, when?

5 Hunter

Hunter reached for his eagle head totem, disguised as a necklace resting on his chest. As a huntsman, he firmly believed that it protected him from the dark energy of this place. However, it did not provide any protection from the cold in the forest despite the hot summer day. As a hardened huntsman, he was not bothered by the cold anyway. His arrow and bow lay still in his hands, his crouch low, and his breathing practised, shallow and quiet. His gaze was so concentrated through the thin branches that they became almost invisible. Not drawing attention to himself was the top priority as a hunter if he did not want to scare away his prey. Hunter had wrapped leaves and bushes around his body and painted his face with camouflage. Admittedly, a measure that seemed exaggerated if he was just hunting wild game, but over the years, he had learned that there were other things in the forest that he should be wary of. His grandfather - from whom his father had also learned the hunting trade - used this technique to blend in with the environment, invisible to anyone wandering through the forest. In fact, almost all hunters near Mors (of which there were not many due to the many horror stories) primarily used bows and arrows for hunting. Effective and silent, just as his father and grandfather had taught him.

After all, one doesn't want to draw the attention of unwelcome guests, he thought.

Hunter had learned that a sick deer was wandering around the forest and urgently needed to be hunted, so he was now sneaking to the raised hunting blind with cat-like agility, from where he had a direct view of the Nest. The bushes rustled almost inaudibly as he continued to move forward, his boots gliding almost noiselessly over the ground. Years of practice were as necessary as his arrow and bow to avoid drawing the attention of the most unpleasant forest residents. He knew the stories all too well. As a hunter, he had no fear, not only because he always carried a totem whose power and protective spells he believed in but also because he trusted his instincts.

“A hunter without instinct is not a real hunter,” his grandfather had always said. It was more of a healthy respect that lurked in the back of his mind and helped him to focus all his senses on the environment. Climbing onto the raised blind, he saw a red warning sign on the other side of the Nest that he had sprayed on the tree over there.

WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH!

He had placed a warning sign several times around the forest, but it didn’t stop adventurers from ignoring them. Mostly strangers, including teenagers who were particularly drawn to horror stories like moths to a flame.

He still vividly remembered five years ago when a group of four sixteen-year-olds had disappeared without a trace. (This case remained so vivid in his memory because usually, only one child disappeared. Four at once had never happened before).

When some kids started stealing his warning signs, he ended it once and for all. If the authorities didn’t feel responsible, why the hell should he?

After all, they’re not my damn kids, he thought. As a huntsman, he knew the forest and the things that lived and moved in it daily. Hunter would even claim he could distinguish every damn deer from the others. And as well as he knew the forest, he knew it, for he had seen it once before, emerging from the shadows (damn monster, he thought) and going on the chase. It had always been Hunter who had heard the last screams, the last pleas, the last desperate struggle for breath, and the subsequent gurgling noises of the children. The sound of feeding. Nevertheless, the people in town called him crazy.

Damn, pack! Better off running with torches and guns to Murray. Murray, the Cannibal! What harm could he do? A louse would crush the bastard, dammit. Thinking of that disgusting guy, Hunter spat on the ground as if he wanted to ward off evil spirits.

The Sheriff’s department also wanted nothing to do with the alleged monster. Only the other huntsmen believed Hunter’s story. It fits with the other joyless reports they had heard over the decades. Reports made some people stick their fingers in their ears to avoid waking up from nightmares drenched in sweat.

“For god’s sake, Hunter. I believe you, but spare me the details!” Toothless Twain had hissed when they met in the raised blind weeks ago.

“Well, the truth is not pretty, Toothless,” Hunter had replied, immediately sinking the bullet into a passing deer.

Moreover, the other huntsmen could see in Hunter’s eyes that he was telling the truth, for behind his pupils, the memory of the dark shadow that had snorted out of the ground in the forest in the darkness of the night was shining. Like a plague rising from the underworld. A walking shadow with pearl white owl eyes, in the middle of which was a black dot. Hunter went cold at the thought of the creature. He saw something in the bushes up ahead. Not a deer. Just a fox.

6 Timmy