Every week since Christmas, someone disappeared from the village.
They always came back—a bit dazed, not really scuffed, and with no memory whatsoever of where they’d been. They were gone for two or three days at a time—just long enough for their friends and family to start fearing the worst.
In a way, the returning was more eerie than the disappearing. Why would someone want to kidnap, but leave the victims alive and with no recollection? Was the village being primed for some sort of horrible reckoning?
The wives had already set to worrying, what with the demon who saw fit to help himself to whatever girls wandered about outside without the supervision of a watchful eye. But now, no one dared leave their home without a companion. Wives and husbands sought out friends, children went with parents—and the whole town shuttered down at night.
The bar swelled to bursting at an earlier hour than usual. The rumors swelled as thickly as the drinks.
“It’s got t’ be Gretchen down the street,” Hugo grumbled. “Sh’s alw’ys givin’ me th’ evil eye.”
“That’s because you pass out on her lawn every night.” The bartender shoved on the man’s shoulder. “Can’t help but swear you out when you get sick on her petunias.”
The bar crackled with a smattering of laughter.
“How’s about Jacob?” Lennar pitched in, sloshing his mug of beer. “He went to the city, refused to talk to us for years, then one day came crawling back and wouldn’t say a word about it. What if he committed some kind of crime there?”
“You dummy,” Simon hollered from down the bar, “if he thought people were on his tail, then why wouldn’t he be killin’ ’em?”
Lennar twisted his lips, then sipped at his beer. “Think of your own damn theories, then.”
The patrons laughed again.
The last man at the bar, Russell, cleared his throat. “What about ol’ Eldrin up on the hill?”
The smiles that managed to linger weakened. Some of the men took a sudden interest in the contents of their drinks.
“What about ’im?” Lennar grunted.
“He’s always been an odd one,” said Russell. “Keepin’ to himself…never really listenin’ to what the village has to say.”
The bartender shrugged, the movement laced with the barest of stiffness. “He’s had all these years to do something. Why now?”
“I d’know…he just seemed pretty likely.” Russell frowned into his mug. “We all s’pect he’s a vampire. That’d explain this pretty handily, wouldn’t it?”
The bartender eyed the other patrons. “I guess. Though I’d like to think we’d know if we had a monster in our midst.”
Simon snorted. “You’re just tryin’ to scare us, Russell—and you’re doin’ a piss-poor job of it. Ain’t nobody around here who hasn’t heard of those rumors.”
Russell cracked a smile. “I just thought I’d see who was coward enough to believe ’em.”
A tentative chuckle rippled through the bar, thickening quickly to a full rumble.
The village never did receive their answers.
The disappearances did stop—one day early in Joviere, after Abel, the final victim, came stumbling along the main boulevard in the dark hours of the morning, screaming “I did it! I did it!! Oh God, please help me—have mercy on me in hell—I did it!!”
The sheriff asked him what the hell the man was going on about, and if he was hurt—but like the others, Abel remained unharmed, save for his sudden bout of divine guilt.
“It w’s me,” he slurred. “In the night…all those girls…they were jus’ so temptin’…’n my wife, sh’ left me, haven’t heard from her in over a year…”
The sheriff didn’t know what to think, but he locked up Abel anyway, and they waited. And sure enough, the attacks on the village girls stopped—as did the kidnappings.
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