Chapter Text
1994 Friday 9th of September. My Bar in Brădeni, Romania. Roughly 20 past 10 pm
One customer today was sitting there,“Just bottled water” was all he had to say, the cheap măgar.
He was just sitting there looking at his watch, smoke trailing from a single lit cigarette on the same hand and taking nursing sips out of the plastic container with his right.Then looking straight ahead, waiting on something. Eerie. Made the hairs on my neck stand up. Two empty bottles stood on the counter in front of him.
He had turned up on a beaten up old motorbike, the engine spluttering, alone. I checked what was outside while sweeping imaginary debris at the door.
Had the look of someone on the run, but I thought better of calling the authorities. One, we don't get many patrolmen or customers here anymore. Especially with that devil in the woods disappearing any wannabe hunters or nosy explorers coming this way.
The fridge was loudly humming behind me and flies were buzzing around an earlier spilt beer stain, while I decided to stare at the stranger.
He looked young enough to be one of the wannabe private hunters who never live long, but his demeanor was controlled, and quite frankly intimidating. No nervous glancing at the few unsettled locals or change of expression at my obvious disapproval.
He was average height and lean, kind of wiry, that build that emphasizes…..precision. He was already sitting upright before I noticed him, spine held so straight it looked like a drilled practiced posture rather than someone being comfortable. When he reached for anything his hand moved in a clean, exact line, like he’d rehearsed it beforehand and saw no reason to deviate.
Even while still, he didn’t in fact truly settle. His gaze kept slipping to windows, room corners, the seam where the wall met the floor—never lingering long enough to rest, as if something might appear the moment he stopped checking.
He dragged a hand briefly along his jaw; no stubble to be caught in his fingers, but there was the slight shade of a frequent shaver. His hair stayed in place despite the motion, trimmed dark brown hair, disciplined like the rest of him, short at the back and ears, barely longer at the front to half cover the forehead.
He shifted in his chair, posture never quite breaking, only tightening as though whatever he was waiting for might already be in the room. He had angular facial features that gave him an almost sterile forgettable appearance. Except if you looked close enough that was a single mole on his bottom left eyelid.
Professional or aping what you thought made you professional. However his eyes kept up that flicking to windows and dark floor corners when he would shift his head. Like he was expecting to see something. He had visible bags under eyes, faint shadows darker than they should’ve been, the kind that don’t come off with a good night’s sleep. Eyes whose color was dark and hard to make out at the distance between us.
He had stepped in without bothering to change, still wrapped in what he’d arrived in. His faux-tan leather jacket hung open, the shearling lining spilling out, the whole thing looked heavier than it probably should. Beneath it, a navy blue ribbed turtleneck clung close to him, neat against the bulk above. His brown pants, chinos I thought, were fitted, held in place by a plain leather belt, and he had stepped in softly before taking his chair at the counter in black workman’s boots. The kind worn by someone who’s always on their feet.
He glanced at me,while I was taking in his appearance, our eyes meeting, making me click my tongue to the roof of my mouth to acknowledge the new awkwardness. He put his cigarette out in an ash tray, and put his wallet out to leave the right amount in Bani on the counter and asked if I could get him a cup of ice.
That Muist making me walk over to the freezer and back.
---
09.09.1994, Bradeni, Sibiu County, Romania. It’s 10:35pm
“There is a devil in the woods.” One that apparently talks, babbles and curses. At least, that’s what I could gather from the locals in Retiș and Teline as it wanders the plateau. Could be a fiend, still tangled in the remnants of its host’s former life. Or something worse. Either way, it’s clever enough to be cunning.
Dangerous.
I stepped outside the local drinking hole, a squeaking polystyrene cup in my left hand, ice rattling inside from the freezer. The building behind me had probably been refurbished a decade or two ago. Inside, it was almost lively: newer furniture, a polished counter likely the most life this place could still muster.
But the smell lingered. Something long since seeped into the floorboards and gone rotten, the kind you never quite get to scrub out.
A halogen bulb above the doorway behind me flickered under siege from flies, wavering between dead and alive. The warm amber glow highlighted a village, old and stubborn but wounded. Houses sagged under chipped brick and cracked plaster as the surrounding flora slowly reclaimed them.
Like many parts of Europe it was marred by ruins of the ‘Great Catastrophe’ around fifty years ago. A natural disaster that tore across the continent and deep into Eurasia. No one remembers exactly how it happened, only that some fifty…maybe fifty-five million people died.
What remained was endemic abandonment. Places like this village, hollowed out. Most of the population had retreated inward, toward cities promising safety and prosperity. Only the stubborn or the trapped stayed behind.
No one cared enough to rebuild.
The cities, meanwhile, swelled. Drawing in business, bodies and ever greater predators. Dense, pressure cookers, restless places packed with prey, turmoil, and finally sweetest and most vital for devils: fear.
Not all predators are strictly devilish in nature.
The thought crossed my mind as I looked towards the blasted wreckage of the local landmark, a Fortified Church from the 14th-15th century. History reduced to rubble, never to be raised again.
Very convenient, really, to have heard rumors when looking for my possible first job back, and to find it waiting in a place this isolated...
I exhaled, half-expecting smoke from the cigarette I held not a moment ago, and watched my breath fog in the early September night air.
Cities made it easier to find and watch people. Easier for governments to reach into their lives, to ‘intervene’. And beneath it all. Corruption, exploitation, whole classes of people ground down into slums and forgotten…
And here I am, drifting off into the rights and wrongs of it all again.
Focus.
Task at hand, and I knew my gracious hosts in the creaking walls behind me were not keen on me remaining much longer.
Keeping to bottled water probably kept them from spitting in my drink.
I mused as I stepped off, heading away from the river and lakes that marked the south of the village and went north-west on foot.
---
Trespassing on a private dirt path through a meadow most likely set aside for livestock. A twinge of remembrance at the scene struck from my brain to a heavy sensation in my gut, to be breathed out and set aside like something disposable. Not that it ever could be disposable.
Now to perform
I let my posture loosen deliberately, shoulders slack, steps uneven. Feigning the disorientation of a drunk. Each movement was measured rather than natural, practiced imbalance. The trick tonight was not to act convincingly drunk, but convincingly unguarded. Heading into the surrounding woodlands.
I took a deep breath, feeling an inner warmth from the smell of tree bark sharp and dry at the edges, moss damp and almost beneath it, mud that held yesterday’s rain.
I kept my attention just above my breathing and steps, letting it drift outward instead, listening for anything that didn’t belong. A branch snapping out of rhythm. A creak without wind. The faint ruffle of disturbed leaves. Even the subtle mistake of breath held by something else.
Night hunting is usually a bad idea, low visibility. But with my case notes, activity is mostly nocturnal and around the hours 12am-3am.
At least the sky was cooperative. Clear enough that the moon could cut through the treeline in fractured bands of visibility. Stars scattered above like static.
It was cold enough to preserve the illusion of stillness. Less collateral movement when fewer living things are willing to expose themselves.
Not cold enough that the ice cubes I’d brought had stopped melting.
They shifted in the cup with a dull, wet clink each time I moved my wrist. That told me I’d been walking for roughly thirty minutes since leaving the edge of the road in the woods.
I let my voice loosen next.
The first note came out rough on purpose, a slurred fragment of a local song swallowed by the trees.
“Faaareweell… faaareweell… druumm is beeeatin’, faaareweell, braaave booys… hoorraaay…”
The song carried poorly, bending strangely in the damp air, as if the forest itself was reluctant to echo it back.
“Wiiith the saaack tiiied at the baaack… wiith weapooons in haaands… hoorraaay…”
I dragged my steps slightly on uneven ground, letting gravel and roots catch my boots at irregular intervals. The ice clinked again louder this time.
No response yet. No interruption. No corrections in the environment.
I gave the cup a small shake, letting the melted water slosh beneath the remaining ice. Still intact. Still cold enough.
---
The forest floor was unusually clean here. Leaf litter thin, as though recently disturbed or simply avoided. No early winter shedding yet. No obvious animal paths crossing mine.
“Beee it suuunnny daaay… bee it… or a clouuudy skyy…”
My voice rose and fell unevenly, exaggerated into something almost reaching theatrical.
Then
A shape in the distance resolved itself against the shade.
A one-story lodge. Abandoned. A sagging structure with a porch tilted slightly to one side. A swing chair hung still on its right edge, frozen in place. Two windows were broken, glass missing rather than shattered outward, which was its own kind of information. A single shut wooden door. Likely locked.
“Beee it raaain… snooowin’ bee it… we gooo cheeerf’ly… faaareweell…”
Ah, classic
The cabin in the woods where darkness dwells eternally.
“Faaareweell… faaareweell… druumm is beeeatin’… faaareweell, braaave boooy… hoorraaay…”
Useful. Either as cover… or as bait.
“Wiiith the saaack tiiied at the baaack… wiith weapooons in the haaands… hoorraaay…
Beee it at the paraaade… bee it at waaaar…”
A creak came from behind my left shoulder.
Not wood settling.
Not wind.
“Eeev’ryone in a roooow togeeeether… joooyful we gooo…”
Hope I do not get sent through all that rotting wood in front of me at some point tonight.
I didn’t turn immediately. They always reveal more when they think they haven't been noticed yet.
One breath. Mine
Two. Theirs
Then I tilted my head slightly, still humming under my breath like I hadn’t registered it fully.
My grip tightened from tension on the cup just enough for the ice to complain softly.
And I smiled, small and unfocused.
Whatever had followed me in the trees was now exactly where I had been trying to place it.
With me.
There was then a low loud cackle. “The headsman comes, it’s not the lamb it apes but instead it’s a jackal”
I didn’t answer immediately
More than just a cunning one, jig is already up and it wants to talk first?
“You got a bounty on you” I said while slowly turning to the croaking voice.
“Too many missing pets and livestock?” It hissed into the wind.
“I imagine it was the patrolman or two, the Witch Devil I take it?”
“You’re the devil hunter who reeks of the forest,” it went on, voice uncomfortable to listen to like scraping a stone against bone. “Damp earth. Split pine. Yes… the right one. If not you will still do just fine.”
…
Sudden movement as I just spotted the large silhouette, A nearby tree warped into misshapen flesh and folded inward, compressing itself into a sphere. I dived left as the makeshift cannonball came hurtling toward me. It slammed through the doorway behind me, sending splinters cascading through the air.
I spilled icy water from my cup in the scramble, then– I reacted on a pre-planned instinct and quickly chugged what ice cubes I could into my mouth to hold there while discarding the polystyrene.
The cold burnt and numbed my tongue but it was a trick I had learned from…somewhere to stop your breath appearing in the cold and giving your position away.
But this is the wrong order to do things when your position is already given away.
Springing up and sprinting forwards, I heard an insect-like fly buzz, suppressing an involuntary shudder at the sound. I slid across the ground and under a gust of wind above. Another tree exploded into the shape of a shower of knives, looking like wild magic from a magician’s fantasy.
A quick pivoting kick up to the ground to get back up to my feet as the flurry of blades flits towards me from the left while I hear a mass on heavy feet coming towards me on the right.
It would have been easier if they were letting me slink back off.
Spitting out the cubes to not choke mid-motion,I dropped backwards, and planted my hands beside my head. A controlled push to flip my body and into a backward roll. Barely clearing the incoming blades. Several struck something behind me with a wet impact.
The mass on my right adjusted mid-charge, rerouting toward me without hesitation.
I had landed back on my feet and turned to see The Hag.
Its body was a distorted hulking mass of tightly bound human remains, with what appeared to be muscle sinew joining between the arms and shoulder joints. An elongated neck with human digits, bones and torn strips of flesh like torn rope sloughing off. This impossibly long neck ended in a head with the skin tightly pulled back almost like a stretched human skull. It had thinning strands of white hair dotted in clumps. Pale, moonlike eyes peered balefully and broken gnashing disjointed teeth. A missing nose, just two nostrils. Additional strands of sinew arched down to their chest from under their chin, as if supporting the serpentine distended neck.
Teeth snapped inches away, while I sidestepped and pulled a hatchet from my left coat pocket into my right hand.
The Devil, closed in enough to me, and swiped with a large powerful forearm, ending in sharp bonelike four fingers.
A swipe fast enough to break the skin of my chest, but a just grazing blow with a reactive step back.
First strike to you then
With an audible snap I pulled the P93 concealed pistol holstered in the hidden compartment in my right jacket pocket and fired a 9mm hollow-point round lined up to the Devil’s heart.
Its swipe’s momentum carried it forward off balance, close enough to make missing impossible.
Going louder than I needed to.
Tightened global gun regulation or not, an uncommon shot like this was going to bring more attention than I could have afforded
Sloppy.
It choked in shock with blood gurgling out its throat, and I raised my right hand back and struck down with the hatchet into the back the elongated skull.
The impact drove it to the ground. The right eye burst free out of the skull, skittering a few inches across the floor.
The neck suddenly twisted as the devil laid on the ground, its head facing towards me.
Then it guffawed, wet, heaving sounds as it half-drowned in its own lungs, struggling to force words out.
It spoke in English.
“One hundred years of tears… then a hundred more screaming…”
It coughed, laughing through broken teeth.
“You are going to die screaming, Headsman.”
A grin split its face wider than it should have been able to.
“You will scream for..”
I stepped in.
“You can scream first” I heckled.
The hatchet came down.
Clean through the neck.
The head rolled free. The body slumped like a puppet with its strings cut.
With the tension gone a cascade of thoughts bubbled up.
I didn’t even need to give anything up for this one, am I really still in shape or was this too easy a job?
The locals knew too much about this devil but had done so little?
A setup feels likely, too many conveniences, draw out a devil hunter?
It had an idea of my smell?
Does someone want to make sure it’s me who shows up to collect?
A shiver went down my back.
Local Iron Guard fascists? The Lion? The Cockrel? The Hammer and Sickle? Or worse
The ringed Citrine eyes in the dark, on every night, always staring….
Heart rate heightened and with a new sense of urgency I gave up on collecting the Witch devil’s head as proof for the sake of caution and security, it will have to be fuel.
Their heart would do instead.
I crouched beside the corpse, already reaching for a blade and the oiled rag. The cloth was stiff from past use, treated to keep rot and seepage at bay, at least long enough to get it somewhere secure.
“A boon for a boon Sten, as per the usual agreement” The words slipped out, more our ritual than request. The answer came immediately.
The head collapsed in on itself. Flesh sloughed away in wet, sagging sheets, blood hissing and bubbling as if it had struck heated iron. Bone followed, crumpling inward, thinning to brittle fragments before breaking down entirely into a fine, grey dust that scattered into the wind and vanished.
I watched the sprinkles go for half a second, then exhaled through my nose.
Right. That settles that.
At least they were definitely my ‘enemy’ then. No ambiguity to ponder. Now to the nasty unpleasant part.
I went back to work.
Sorry about this.
---
Blood and viscera spilled out across the forest floor, thick and sluggish, clinging more than flowing. The smell hit harder now, stale rot layered over something metallic, copperish. As the butchering went on, the underlying fat and the muscle beneath was dense but withering, layered in uneven bands that came apart too easily under pressure, like the corpses that composed the devil’s outer layers.
“They haven’t fed in a while,” I muttered, cutting deeper. “Not properly.”
This wasn’t what was killing out here.
That realization settled cold and heavy.
Another Devil?
I pushed the thought aside and reached in, fingers closing around something that still held its shape. The heart, ruptured from a hollow point expansion, but intact enough to count.
I tore it free with a wet, resistant pull, then quickly wrapped it in the oiled cloth, folding it tight. A plastic shopping bag went over that—cheap, crinkling insurance and cover in public—before I tied it off and secured it at my belt.
No leaks. No scent trails. No more excuses.
My contract’s effects began to kick in. My vision sharpened first. The dim forest peeled back into layers, shadows separating, edges clarifying until I could see further than I should in this light. The dark under thick canopies stopped being a wall and became something more navigable.
Then the rest followed.
Strength coiled through my limbs. Reflexes tightened. And beneath it all, that familiar surge. Hot, insistent, pushing at the back and front of my skull.
Move. Break for cover. Don’t think.
I gritted my teeth, jaw tightening as I forced the impulses down.
Easy now.
I rose slowly and slipped into the treeline, keeping low, moving from shadow to shadow. No straight lines, no unnecessary noise. Careful.
Can never be too careful.
Back to the bike. Check for a tail. Then the safehouse.
After that then asking the questions that need answers.
I flexed my hands, then forced them still. The ‘boon’ may make it easier to avoid an immediate trap with the enhanced movement, reaction, awareness but it came with that edge.
A hefty urge to smash though the obstacles face first, kill whoever is sitting there and have thoughts later.
Useful in a fight when you don’t care what happens to anyone around you or yourself. If you aren’t keeping on top of that wave to keep your brain actually ticking.
Got to keep a grip.
My gaze swept the treeline. High first at the branches, perches, for anything feathered that might be carrying more than its own thoughts.
Then low at the forest floor, leaves and roots, watching for anything that skittered and especially anything that moved just a little too deliberately.
The woods felt wrong. Not empty, but occupied terrain.
Watching.
Waiting.
I slowed just enough to stay controlled in my pacing.
Jumping to the gun in this world is usually more trouble than it's worth.