Silver Sins [MJ FanFiction]

Winter of 1953

It was a quiet night lit by the vivid silver light from the round moon above our heads. Beneath our feet was the deep snow that sparkled under the beams of the silver sun. The air was cold and smelled of fresh forest, snow and fear. Our feet made sounds as they sunk into the deep snow, accompanied with owls and the loud beating of our hearts.

We were getting deeper into the thick forest to seek for the beast and its lair. Tonight all of us, young and old men, have gathered our courage to finally kill the bloody beast that has been like a plague... like a curse, hanging over our poor village for almost 40 years now.

The dog of the Devil himself has been praying on our families, our fathers, mothers, sisters and children! In the morning we would find their corpses in the most unholy condition a human mind is capable of imagining – parts missing, probably devoured by the hungry beast, bones sticking, organs and intestines everywhere, blood trails, pieces of the victims here and there... But what was even worse than this, was the face of the siblings of the victim when they found their beloveds in this condition. My ears have heard the most terrifying screams a human being was capable of producing. At those times, I thanked God that I was an orphan and had no siblings.

"Watch your every step, men! Be very careful!" Mr. Jones, the leader of our "pack" warned us. "I've dealt with the beast for 30 years and know it is smart... Keep your hands on the weapons and watch with four eyes wide open!" we all had great respect for him since he had managed, and was to only one, to stay alive for 30 years around the beast. He was a man of honor and well known for he's bravery. If he wasn't the leader, I'm sure that none of those men would have dared to leave their well locked houses to go into the forest in the middle of the night.

Our pack consisted of around 50 men and we were moving forward in smaller rows. I was somewhere in the front rows behind Mr. Jones. We were walking in silence with sharpened ears so as to hear if the beast approached us.

To be quite honest, I have never laid my eyes upon the beast yet and don't know what it looked like. The image I have of it is from what I have heard from the villagers which is that it has the shape of a big wolf. I wasn't quite sure of that since the people who saw the beast didn't live after the "encounter" to tell us what exactly it looked like – I was a modern man and to me those descriptions were all made up by the people for they needed to have a certain image of the beast to satisfy their curiosity and lessen the fear – if such thing was possible. However, I have seen the victims of the beast every time after its feast and as I have said before, the view was not pretty. My point was that a single wolf only could have most definitely not been able to produce such a tremendous damage to the corpses! To me, the beast was something more than just a wolf... wolves were made by God but this unholy creature certainly wasn't.

"Jones!" a voice from one of the men behind us called.

"Yes?" he pushed my arm with his ankle.

"It wasn't me, Mr. Jones."

"Then who was it?" he impatiently asked. I shrugged my shoulders not knowing the answer. "Oh Lord, this is no time for such things! Now who wa-" he spun around and froze with mouth wide open and his lantern dropped on the snow. I turned around too to see what made him behave like that and realized behind us were only a few men left.

"Stop everyone!" he shouted and the men in front of us stopped and turned around towards their leader.

"Where is everybody?" "What's going on?" they begun asking and I could sense the fear in their voices.

I was scared too... we were around 50 men and now only 10! We begun looking around but the men were nowhere to be found. Did fear cause them to run away and abandon us?