Devil Creatures

Do you know about Lycanthropes? Do you believe in them? Well, I don’t. At least I didn’t, until I moved into a little rural Alberta town two years ago. Now, my family have always been country people, ever since they first immigrated from Germany, and living out in the middle of no where can cause you to see strange things. Sometimes, an animal like a cow or a horse would die on our farm, killed by coyotes, we thought. Some of them probably were. But some of these were stronger animals, you know, and coyotes usually go after calves and sickly animals. Not the big, healthy mama cows. It was frustrating to my Grandpapa, a stubborn German man. He’d deal with the corpses, and that was that, because with coyotes and a huge herd of cows there wasn’t he could do. Just before the attacks began, one day he was digging up rocks in a field, and he found a rock that was just shallow enough to damage a plow, but too deep to see. So he digs it up. But it’s not a rock. It’s a skull, says Grandpapa. A funny looking skull. My Grandpapa’s a farmer, so he’s seen bodies. He’s seen dead cats. And he has a pretty good idea of what a human skull looks like. But this things not one nor the other. It looks like some unholy combination. Grandpapa digs a little more, and he finds even more bones. Femurs, ribs, bits of the spinal column, even digits and the hips. He looks at this thing, and doesn’t know what to do. He’s heard stories about things like this from his Mum. The devil creatures, who looked like humans, hunted humans, but were not humans. My Grandpapa gathered up the bones and put them in the back of the big tractor storage shop he had, where it sat collecting dust for years. The attacks began shortly afterward, and have continued off and on since. Of course, I never believed my Grandpapa’s story. He was notorious for his tall tales, and he conveniently forgotten the exact location of the body. He also claimed that the creatures were supposed to curse those who disturbed their remains, but he was enlightened, civilized man, so he knew it was ‘bullshit.’ I grew up, and moved away about an hour from my old home. And my Grandpapa passed away. In his will, he left me a necklace made from a polished ‘devil creature ‘ fang, a joke on his part, I’m sure, for my skepticism over his story. I wore it home, and found it to be my favorite necklace. I wore it all the time. One night, I wore it to a party, and I stayed out quite late. To get back to my home, I have to drive down a country road pretty far off the beaten path. It was around midnight, and I was just driving along, when I see some eyes reflected in the ditch. I slow down, just in case it decides to make a break for it. Sure enough, it starts to move into the middle of the road. It looks like a dog. A pug nosed, giant, shaggy dog. It’s freaky looking, and I’m trying to figure out what it is exactly, when it stands up, right in front of my car, on it’s two hind legs and looks at me. Now I don’t mean towards me. I mean it actually locks eyes with me, despite the headlights, despite the windshield. Oh my god. Oh my god! It’s pretty much all I could think. The creature just stands there, like its waiting for me to do something. It walks towards me, puts its hands/paws on my car’s hood, and then, it’s gone. Running away into the field. I don’t know what to make of what just happened. So I gunned the motor and was gone, back to my home. I put it behind me, and explained it away. It was nothing. At least, until a night a few months later, when I was watching a movie. I fell asleep on my couch, which sits just across from a picture window. When I woke up, though, it was way past midnight. I rolled over to drag my sorry ass upstairs to bed, and froze. That face was in the window. The creature on the road was looking in my window, at me. I couldn’t move. It knew where I lived. I couldn’t go to sleep. When it finally left, it was dawn. I couldn’t believe it. The devil creatures were real. And it knew about me. What did it want? And then I remembered the necklace my Grandpapa had given me was supposed to be a devil creature’s tooth. Maybe it wanted that? I left it on the ground outside, to see if the creature would take it. It did disapear, but I’ve always seen the creature. I’ve read about Lycanthropes, Native American and African Aboriginal stories about shape changers, and modern stories about them. Devil Creatures all have so many different stories. I don’t feel the sense of dread when I see them any more, but sometimes when I go snowmobiling, hiking or even just for a drive, I can tell they’re there. I sometimes even see them, which I know sounds weird. But I know they are there. I know they are real. And should you ever find such a body buried, don’t touch it. I’ve figured out they don’t like their kind being disturbed.