Mirror, Fox, Key

FOUR

"A few miles outside Annoth," Rook began, his sharp eyes narrow and cold, "at the end of a dirth path in the pines, is the house where Lea Rattlewood lived after her husband was hanged for murder."

"The Butcher of Annoth," Kib interjected, orange light blinking behind her wide eyes. "Anton Rattlewood killed seven people and buried them in the garden. It was in the newspapers archive."

Rook glared steadily at her while he took a slow sip of hot chocolate. After Kib promised to keep silent with a firm clamp of her jaw, Rook continued:

"Lea was pregnant when she left to live alone. On the winter night of a new moon she gave birth, but the kid never made a sound. She thought it was dead at first, but it moved and it breathed so she put it in a box that she used as a cradle, assuming it would cry when it was ready. But it never did.

"Days and weeks went on, and the baby wouldn't make a sound. It wouldn't sleep, it wouldn't react to surprise or pain, it would do nothing but lay in its box and watch her with black eyes. Lea was convinced it wasn't human. She refused to feed it or look at it, hoping that maybe hunger and loneliness would force it to cry, but the baby kept silent. After a month of no food, when the kid showed no signs of dying on its own, Lea sealed up the box and buried it in the woods.

"Years later, Lea Rattlewood found her dog torn apart in the yard, a trail of blood into the woods, and a gaping hole where the box had been buried."

"That story can't be real, can it?" Kib wrapped her thin cloak around herself. "And even if it is, it was probably a wild animal that dug up the box and killed the dog, that's just a logical explanation. And what would that have to do with a disaster in Annoth?"

Rook tipped back the mug and drank slowly, letting the quiet pull tight between them. A twig snapped deep in the forest behind him. A branch rustled overhead.

"The next day," he continued as if Kib had not interrupted, "Lea found her chickens mutilated in their pen. Then a deer, torn open in the garden. She locked herself inside the house while something scratched at the walls and windows in the dark. All this was written in a letter folded in her pocket, where it was found after a group of hunters looked through the window and saw her body hanging from the rafters. Then, the sightings started.

"People only saw glimpses of the Rattlewood Demon, but the description was always the same: it was thin and brittle like a puppet made of sticks and dry leather, with long piranha teeth and hollow black eyes, and it was fast. Quicker than a squirrel in the trees, and silent. And hungry.

"Livestock started turning up dead. Cows ripped apart in the fields. Pieces of horses scattered along the roads. Hunters scoured the woods but couldn't find the thing responsible. They dug up Lea's body and burned it, hoping to dispel whatever curse she'd put on the village. But then people started going missing.

"Everyone who left the village never arrived at their destination. Everyone who ventured near the edge of the woods never came home again. The nights seemed darker, the rippling woods seemed to come closer, and the village shuttered their windows and locked their doors, but it was too late.

"On a night of the new moon, the missing people came home again. They shuffled out of the dark, their bodies like sticks and their skin like dry leather, their long piranha teeth stained with blood.

"By morning, every soul in the village was dead."

The only sound was a slurp of tepid chocolate as Rook tipped back the cold mug.

Kib squinted hard at him, her shoulders hunched up to her ears. "That's just a story," she protested. "How come the internet says Annoth is fine? There's nothing about the Rattlewood Demon or missing people or mutilated anything!"

Rook peered into the cold remains of the chocolate in his mug. "The internet is just electricity, isn't it? Information coded into energy. That same kind of energy takes many forms."

Kib felt the piercing stare of his cold eyes, but when she looked up she found him watching the shimmer of energy that rippled like a curtain across the road.

"If everyone knew what happened," Rook spoke as if thinking aloud to himself, his icy eyes locked on the rippling curtain, "no one would pass through these woods. But the demon's still hungry."

"So why haven't you been eaten?" Kib huffed, and she folded her arms irritably.

Rook blew across the hot steam that had begun to rise from his mug. His smile curled sharp. "Turns out I'm not easy prey."