The Beast of Valnoir

The journey from the capital to Valnoir took two days. The road was difficult towards the end of winter. Twice I felt my horse would fall down a slippery escarpment concealed by the snow, breaking both our necks. The fact I was forced to travel alone did not make the journey easier: both nights, as I was thawing my fingers by a campfire, I scared myself into thinking I was being watched, by some brigand or devil lurking in the darkness beyond my warm circle of light. But, it had to be so. The Emperor was busy fighting his war, and he was not about to send valuable soldiers or officials to investigate midwives’ tales worrying the peasants. Still, pleas for help from the parish priest had come in at decreasing intervals and there was no denying that children had died, occult justification or not.

So, they sent me, Arthur Després, member of the Order of Liberation and, as such, someone the Emperor could spare as I contributed little to the war effort. I was not chosen for the coincidental fact that I, myself, came from a village neighbouring Valnoir. I was aware of the country and its beliefs, and the reports left me uneasy. It seemed to me that what the nobles called superstition, from the safety of their mansions, could amount to more in these remote parts, where the line between the realm of humans and the unknown blurred. Still, with the distance of years spent in the capital, studying at the University, I was conscious that the human mind, isolated from everyone and ignorant of the world, sometimes filled in the gaps in its knowledge with a wild imagination, to explain what appeared unexplainable by science.

Valnoir was nestled between a couple of grey, frozen hills covered with leafless trees like hair on the heads of two sleeping giants. The road wound between them, following a brook covered in a shining sheet of ice, reflecting the high midday sun. Its heat caused my face to tingle, a welcome respite from the cold. The place could, at best, be described as a disorganised pile of houses, as though they themselves huddled for protection from the wind which blew loudly through holes in their frames. I counted at least twenty, with one house further up the western slope, planted next to a field, and an old wooden church opposite from where I stood, at the end of the path. This was where I was to reside, in the rectory.

I led my horse down and through the gathering of houses. Few people braved the outside, but their eyes, and those of the faces peeping out the windows, followed my approach with suspicion. One man, especially, was chopping wood outside his cabin and, as I walked past, paused his labour long enough to scan my imperial uniform. A scornful expression twisted his traits when his eyes fell on the medal of the Order pinned to my chest. At this moment, I felt ashamed of how ostentatious my uniform must have looked to these people and cursed myself for not changing into something less reminiscent of the revolution. Surely everyone had seen me by now. Those who hadn’t would learn from their neighbour of the arrival of an imperial officer. I felt a flush of embarrassment rise to my face and pressed on.

***

Father Clément was kind enough for a clergyman. The Church had been reinstated five years ago with the proclamation of the Emperor, but I still harboured a pre-revolutionary mistrust of the clergy’s hunger for power and control over their flock. Still, this priest was accommodating and I was comfortably settled. Over a frugal dinner he told me about life in Valnoir; I asked perfunctory questions about livestock husbandry, but I had a different animal in mind. When I dared to ask about the “Beast”, he seemed reticent to talk of the matter out loud, as if it would conjure the creature to the dinner table. “Can you at least tell me who the first victim was?” I knew it was the Duval child, but he informed me that the family lived in the isolated house I had seen earlier, by the field. “And who found her?” Again, I knew the answer, from the missives sent to the capital: Jérôme Duval, the father. I did not want to open with my third, more important question, details of which had not been couched in the communications. “Have you seen the body?” He had. The child had been drained of her blood. At different points of the body – the nape, across the back and the chest – the same marks contrasted with the livid skin: small punctures of coagulated blood, arranged in concentric circles, two inches wide. The hunters could not attribute it to the bite of any animal known in the natural world and, rightfully or not, assumed they must have been dealing with some preternatural beast which, like the wolf, prayed on the weakest of the herd. Then, there were more victims. Children, five in total, all found dead in their bed. Each time, piles of hair were found, as though the Beast was molting, and claw marks had been left on the windowsill and the bedframe. Rumours started, and soon we were dealing with some eldritch creature from before the time of humans, or some devil from the circles of Hell. Some said it was sent to punish them for turning their backs on king and Church. Some versions said it was sent to punish any followers of the new Emperor, a known heretic and a sycophant to the Church. Others thought it had been sent by the Emperor himself, a known mage.

***

The next morning I left the church – in oversized casual clothes lent by the priest – and made my way to the Duval household. Jérôme was out in the fields, making the most of the day’s sudden mildening of the air, clearing out snow from parcels of land to till. I remembered what Father Clément had told me: the land here was infertile, afflicted by the simple curse of not having the right composition to foster life, and people suffered in utter indigence for it, surviving by keeping scrawny animals that grazed on the rare, dry herbs of these hills. It had been so for generations, and we knew nothing else, therefore we did not know how else to live, scraping by just enough to produce the next generation of anemic children who would, when their turn came, feed the land with their blood more than it fed them. Only Jérôme, more draft horse than man, persisted in cultivating. “I thought the land wasn’t fertile,” I remarked. “Yes, they say so.” Without as much as a glance, he continued his work. I asked if we could talk about the Beast. “What’s there to talk about? My daughter’s dead, and I’ve got a field to plow, now piss off.”

I felt it was better not to press a man whose child had died a mere 3 months ago. Instead, I left to hover around the edge of the village, observing him. Children were playing in the road nearby, ignoring me. Suddenly, the door to the Duval house opened, and out came a young woman, with a long plait of brown hair and a blue peasant dress, carrying a basket. She walked by and I pretended to be lost, walking in this direction, then stopping and muttering some confused words. With a smile, she stopped to ask if everything was alright. I asked for directions to the general store. She laughed, and offered to walk me there as she was going that way. She asked what a stranger was doing around these parts, but when I told her I’d come to investigate the Beast, she seemed wary, suddenly. “Oh, but only out of scientific interest,” I lied, “I am with the University.” This seemed to put her at ease, and for the rest of the way she was almost friendly with me. Her name was Marianne Duval, Jérôme’s wife.

***

I spent the next few days familiarising myself with the villagers. People would spend their spare time at the village’s public house. They worked hard and, after a long day, cherished this one pint of ale, sipped slowly, at ease, while chatting with the neighbours. Though suspicious of strangers, they were generally good-natured people, and by buying a few rounds I eventually found myself in the villagers’ good graces. This was progress, though not tangible: whenever I asked someone about the Beast, I received the same explanation of the physical evidence: the bite marks, the fur, the claws, accompanied by one’s preferred explanation for the creature’s motives or origin. Surely, I thought, it would soon attempt to strike again, and with luck it could be captured or killed. The peasants, on the other hand, were remarkably resigned to this situation; they did not know how to deal with the creature, and it had become almost a fact of life, another hardship to endure.

One evening I met Marianne again; she seemed overjoyed to see me, and if any villager still harboured mistrust for my intentions, it was fully dispelled with this public endorsement of my good faith. I hardly believed she had not heard about my arrival in uniform through gossip, but, if she caught on that I had lied about my reason for being here, she did not show sign of it. Jérôme also often came to the pub. He was only ever short with me: though he never spoke much, I thought him a very affable man in the company of his neighbours, and what little he spoke he did in a kind manner. As soon as he noticed my presence, however, he would scowl and stop talking.

***

There is not much to recount of the next fortnight spent in Valnoir, if only one peculiar incident involving Jérôme. As I was going out for a morning walk on the road leading out from the village, he was coming back from an excursion into the forest, and we found ourselves walking back to the village together. Or next to each other, rather, as no words were exchanged at first and my presence clearly annoyed him. I could not suffer the silence and felt compelled to fill it: “I’m only here to help you, you know, find out more about this Beast so we can get rid of it.”

“And you think bending over and acting like the Emperor’s little bitch is going to help us?” His lips tightened and he clenched his jaw, as if he regretted this outburst and was stopping himself from saying any more. He looked around to make sure no one had been around to hear him, then turned on his heels and kept walking. I could do nothing but look at him in shock as he disappeared at the next turn of the road.

***

The holy feast of Saint Pallas, which was followed religiously in these parts to celebrate the coming of Spring, happened to fall on the third week following my arrival. The holy day started with one of Father Clément’s services, followed by an idle afternoon at the pub. Naturally, I held close to Marianne for most of the day. “Where’s Jérôme?” He wasn’t feeling very well and had stayed in bed. I sighed my relief; I wasn’t keen on seeing him again after our last conversation, especially when I had resolved to enjoy myself. She smiled. “He was a part of the revolution, you know. He was one of the only ones: Valnoir was a loyalist village back then.” This probably explained why they received little to no help from the new regime, I observed. “We didn’t receive any help before, either.” Her tone had been cutting when she had uttered this last sentence. I thought best not to start a debate. “We married after he came back,” she continued. She’d been in love with Jérôme for a long time, but his restless nature prevented him from tying himself down with marriage: he wanted to join the revolt, and might not have made it back. His ideals eventually materialised, and for a short time, for him and everyone else, all was good. He’d married Marianne after coming back from the capital, and they had had a daughter. But happiness did not last, the democratic government was in turn overthrown by General Fausset, now Emperor Fausset. “He was a changed man after that. He’d never been especially happy or demonstrative, but from then on a resentment against everything and everyone, against life itself welled up from a dark pit inside him.”

A feast was held in the evening, in the church. We sat next to each other. I didn’t think I had payed much attention to her face before, but that night, in the light cast by the dozen torches, she struck me as truly beautiful, with her reassuring traits and kind brown eyes. I felt the glee of the festivities, and the ale working to accentuate it. I caught myself fantasising that I was sitting with my neighbours and my wife, I was one of them in imagination, enduring the same hardships but celebrating the end of winter as a welcome respite: new life, plenty of grass to feed the animals, the hope every year that, maybe, the curse would be lifted from the land and a first harvest would be allowed. Marianne asked me what I was thinking about, with a warm smile. “I’m happy,” I replied. She remarked with a playful gleam in her eye that this was unusual for me.

***

The Beast had not struck since my arrival, and I had started to doubt it would again. I resolved to investigate the Duval farm more closely, as this was where it had all started. I waited for Jérôme to leave in the morning and made my way to the back of the house. I walked up to the familiar window which bore the large claw marks I had previously inspected a couple of times. There were no tracks on the ground, but I thought the creature would’ve come down from the wood on top of the hill – it was certainly not hiding in the village, so this felt like a logical conclusion. The wooded area was only small, so I gathered my courage and decided to make my way up there; surely, I could cover the whole area quite quickly.

Jérôme’s tool shed stood near the house. I entered it in search of a weapon of some sort. There were many to choose from, pitchforks, saws, but one in particular caught my eye. There, sitting against the wall was a long pole, terminated in four straight prongs, arranged in a square. A tool for tilling the ground. It dawned on me. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach, like the germ of a sick certitude. I took the pole and hurried out of the shed, concealing it as best I could under my cape. I started half-running through the field, back to the church. How would I test my hypothesis? I left the tool in my room, ran to the butcher’s, and asked for a slab of pork, skin intact. I raced back to my room and put the tool to the test: with some effort, it tore through the skin, leaving four holes in a square. I rotated the pole by approximately 30 degrees, repeated the process, then again one more time. Twelve holes. A circle, two inches wide. A mark not attributable to any known animal or tool. He had done it. The fur could’ve come from a dog or other farm animal to put the others off the scent; the claw marks easily fabricated.

I ran out again, this time to warn Marianne. I knocked on the door in a frenzy. She opened it and I barged in. “It’s Jérôme. He’s the Beast.” I tried explaining the situation to her, but I’d run out of breath from all the running. “You don’t seem too well,” she said, “wait, let me fetch you some water.” I sat there, on my own, for a minute, trying to calm myself. She came back with a cup; I knocked back the content. I tried to talk some more, but everything was getting a bit fuzzy, I tried to get the words out, but my speech was becoming slurred. I looked at Marianne but the image was blurry, like there was a film over my cornea. She looked like she was smiling – and then, nothing.

***

I woke up on the ground, my face against a bed of scratchy pine needles. My hands and feet were tied. All was dark, except for a soft red glow in the corner of my eye. I twisted my neck to look towards its source. Marianne was on the ground, with Jerome lying on top of her, both naked. Standing over them, a creature I am only reluctantly describing in written form. It was a mound of bulging flesh, covered in parts with greasy fur. In places, sharp bones could be seen protruding from the flesh. No face could be discerned, save for a pair of glowing red eyes, shaped like those of a moth. Long appendages snaked from its bulk, ending in small, circular mouths, prehending the air with their needle-like teeth. This was an evil thing, there was no doubt about it, a god worshipped in perverted rituals, in sacrifices of human flesh. Again, I lost consciousness.