The Valraven

Emil unlatched his locker, and the door burst open, spilling its contents on the floor. A pile of notes and torn papers rustled at his feet.

Among the mess, one sheet caught his attention. He bent down hesitantly and picked it up. It was a drawing—crudely done in black ink. A boy stood alone, weeping in the woods. Behind one tall, lanky tree, there was a monster with a long, elongated body and sharp claws. But the most terrifying thing was its head, of a giant raven, its bulging eyes staring hungrily at the boy-

-Emil crumbled the stupid drawing, frowning. Someone laughed behind him, and he glared at them.

The rumor of what he saw spread like wildfire through a cornfield.

The most terrifying moment in his life, and the worst part was that nobody believed him.

His mistake was blurting out everything to Harry and Mikkel. He thought they were his friends, but he should've known better.

The day before, he met them in the woods to hang out. Mikkel decided that they ought to play hide and seek, while Harry had deliberately chosen Emil as it. They told him they would hide nearby. But after an hour of looking for them, he realized they’d already gone home, ditching him. He felt like an idiot. By the time he’d realized that, the sun had already set behind the mountains, and in the dark he lost his way home.

He wandered into the groove, while the trees grew darker and their shadows longer. As the minutes stretched into hours, he felt increasingly anxious, as if stones had been dropped into his stomach.

Then he heard it—a raucous, deep voice, coming from a hollow ash tree.

First, he thought he’d imagined it, but the second time, he heard it well. A long, cavernous wheeze that chilled the blood in his veins.

“Emiiil”

The boy stared at the gnawed trunk, battered and rotted. The hole in its middle stared back at him, a void so dark it was ready to suck him in, only to spit out his bones.

It suddenly became hard to swallow. Emil took a hesitant step forward.

“Mikkel, this isn’t funny. Come out!”

The forest stop breathing for a moment. The silence was deafening.

He squinted his eyes as he felt the darkness pulling him inside the hollow tree. He could barely make out an outline, but he saw it. The skull of a giant bird, its beak slowly disclosing, letting out a skin-crawling death gasp,

“EMIIIIL!”

The school bell rang, waking him up from the nightmarish memory. The hall filled quickly with students.

After what he saw, he ran as if death were on his heels. Somehow, he found his way back to the playground where his friends were playing soccer. He was panicking, and he hadn’t considered the consequences when he told them what had happened. He knew that Mikkel and Harry were a little mean, but he didn’t expect them to mock him in front of the entire school.

He shook his head and knelt to pick up the last page on the floor, when a hideous neon yellow sneaker stepped on top, holding it back. “Well, well, what do we have here? Isn’t he the talk of the school?”

His stomach knotted as he recognized the voice.

A large hand, too big for a regular teenager, seized his shoulder and tugged him up on his feet, to meet his stare.

Of course, the rumor had already reached the ears of that dumb overgrown bully called Heine Altman and his goonies, Bart Gessel and Torvald Lund.

His small porcine eyes scanned him, while his large mouth curled in disgust, before breaking up into a mocking grin, ear to ear. Yellowish crooked teeth flashed out like a crippled fence of a hunted house.

“So…” he asked, “did you really see it?”

Emil looked down, checking for an escape route. If he were fast enough, he could dodge them and flee to his class.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“C’mon, don’t play dumb with me, Sorensen.”

Heine was at least one head taller than he, muscles built up on top of fat. There was no chance to win a fight against that ogre, much less with his friends flanking him. So he tried to sneak under his shoulder, but the same hand grabbed his hoodie, slamming his back on the lockers.

A couple of students passed by, looking apprehensively. But ultimately, they scurried away.

Just his luck.

Heine pushed his bulldog face in his, too close for comfort. His breath stank of beer and cheap smoke.

“Very well. If you can’t tell me, you’re gonna show me.”

They tugged him outside from the fire escape exit. He didn't put up a fight. He knew struggling was pointless without any witnesses around. He thought they would beat him up behind the building, where the teachers couldn't see them, and be done with it.

But instead, they walked inside the woods.

When Heine manhandled him down an abandoned hiking track, his heart sank. Nobody has walked those paths in years. The weeds and brambles were already covering most of it, scratching at their ankles and tangling in their sweaters, as the forest wanted to hold them back.

He realized with horror that nobody would ever find him if they decided to beat him unconscious and leave him there.

He wriggled to get free, but the bully tightened his grasp, chuckling under his breath. "Not yet, Sorensen." We walk until you show us the monster. If it really exists."

He could hear his blood pounding in his ears—the bird's skull watching in a corner of his mind.

"It was a lie!" he yelled. Shame and fear colored his voice. "I lied to get my friend's attention. I didn't imagine they would tell the entire school about it. There is no monster.”

Heine stopped. Emil felt his cheeks burning. He was red up to his ears, just like the loser they thought he was. This way, at least they would have to let him go. He didn’t want to look at the bully’s face, but when he forced himself to, his hopes were crushed under the weight of his vicious laugh.

“You know, Sorensen, here is the thing. It’s been a few weeks now since the police implemented the curfew after 7:00 p.m. Kids had been disappearing more frequently these days, and not a single body had ever been found. I don’t believe in the “Valraven” or the “Boogieman,” as they called it. They are just names that the adults make to scare kids like you.”

He stepped in front of him, his sweaty paw tightly clenching his shoulder, fingers digging painfully into his muscles. He locked his stare—dirty ice blue eyes, cool and ruthless.

“But do you know what I believe? I believe a man could have done that. A very, very sick man, enjoying the sight of torturing and killing little wimps like you.”

Emil swallowed hard; his voice finally broke through the fear. “Then, if you didn’t believe it from the start, why did you bring me here?”

The trees groaned under a sudden gust of wind. The air felt heavy, foreboding rain. Beyond the leafy canopy, the sky darkened. Huge charcoal clouds advanced quickly, blocking out the sun.

Heine’s smile faltered for a second, then he hustled Emil down the path. “You’ll see. C’mon now, move.”

They walked for what seemed like hours until they reached a familiar spot. Emil remembered coming here with Harry and Mikkel a couple of times before people started to disappear.

Heine shoved him on the ground. Soft, dewy moss arrested his fall. He scurried away from the three jackals.

Heine exploded in a boisterous laugh, his goonies echoing him.

Emil looked at them, waiting for the beating, but it never arrived. He looked up at Heine, confused, “W-what now?” He stammered

"Now we see what happens.”

"What?"

“We’ll give you up to the killer and see what he’ll do to you."

The three laughed again, exchanging high-fives, while Emil backed off a couple of steps.

Fuck these sickos.

Before they could add anything else, he turned back and dashed deep into the forest.

"Hey!" called Bart.

"It's ok. Let him go. "It was just a joke," Heine said to his buddy, then he added to Emil,

"Run, Sorensen, run before he catches you!"

He heard them jeering, the wind picking up, carrying the sound far between the tall trees.

He didn't know how much time he had run, but after he made sure he wasn't followed, he slowed down, trying to catch his breath.

The air was damp, with a scent of wet grass and pines. It was like trying to breathe underwater. A few seconds later, the sky rumbled and a downpour exploded. Before he realized he was soaked up to his underwear. He shivered, chilled to the bone.

Another thunder shook the sky. Emil jolted, pressing his back to a tree. It was better to find a cover until the rain calmed down a little.

He found a giant old sequoia, its branches wide enough to shelter him from the downpour. He slumped his back against the solid trunk, tiredness taking over his body.

He felt lead in his arms and legs, soaked clothes weighing him down. He took a few calming breaths, resting his hands on the grass, the long wet blades tickling his fingers. He reached for the mossy roots running at his sides. He always found it relaxing, closing his eyes and feeling the soft, uneven texture of the earth beneath him.

He didn’t know how much time had passed, but it was so dark that it could have been night already.

What he would have done for a torch or a match. Anything to have some light.

His eyes slowly got used to the thick darkness, but he could only see shapes and silhouettes.

He looked around, scanning the surroundings until he thought he saw something moving. A long shadow, like one of the hundreds of trees. He stood up, taking a couple of steps closer to see better, but he almost lost his footing stepping into a splotch of mud.

A branch cracked, and he twisted his head toward the sound.

Amidst the darkness, the monstrous bird skull stood still, like a statue, stark white in the black of night.

Emil's heart thundered inside his rib cage. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. A pale ray of moonlight breached the clouds, revealing the monster in all its foulness.

It was a tall, skinny man, clothed in pitch-black robes, with inky feathers brushing his neck. His long, bony fingers were twisting and creaking like the branches of a dead tree. Its crooked silhouette was hunched, with a razor-sharp beak smeared in crimson.

The pale bird skull resting on its shoulders wasn't a mask, Emil realized. It was its head.

The Valraven stared at him from its empty holes where its eyes should have been.

Only then does he realize that it was holding something near his face, but it was too absurd to be real. His brain refused to accept what he saw.

An arm, dangling like a broken doll piece. A shattered bone, poking out from its meat sheath. The bird-monster threw the half-chewed limb like a rubber prop. Its attention is now entirely on Emil.

He couldn’t move. He didn't understand what was going on.

The monster was observing him the way a predator studied its prey. It stood there completely still, waiting for the right moment to strike.

A small twitch of his hand, and Emil's body reacted before his brain.

He broke into a run.

He didn’t know how long it would take or where to go. His only thought was to get far away from that thing.

His body forgot the fatigue; driven only by blind terror and adrenaline, it pushed beyond his limits.

The tree line abruptly ended, leaving a clearing. Emil slowed down the pace, looking back and panting hard. He fell on his knees as a sudden wave of nausea hit him. He threw up his lunch, almost choking on his bile.

A distant howl from somewhere in the woods drew his attention, and he quickly pulled himself up, wiping his mouth with the sleeve.

There was no time to be sick; he needed to get out of those cursed woods.

A slender white rock spiked in the middle of the clearing. He hasn’t noticed it before. There was something about it that drew him close.

For some reason, he felt safer in that open space, where the moon shone brighter and the trees, filled with shadows and dangers, were farther away.

The stone lay naked under the silver moon's gaze. It reminded him of the stone henges that he had read about in school—gigantic monuments. Ancient ritualistic temples of some sort. Standing there before the old gods, or maybe even before.

He caressed its smooth surface, cool to the touch, and he noticed a carved text. He didn’t recognize the language, but it looked like a series of runes. Almost completely faded under the inevitability of the weather and time.

A red droplet from above tipped the text, filling its narrow spaces, followed by another, and another.

Then, suddenly, a limp body dropped on the stone, as the violent sound of breaking bones struck his ears.

He scrambled back, falling on his rear, putting as much distance as he could from the corpse.

He recognized Heine, no longer smiling. His face was a twisted mask of pain and horror. His eyes were plucked out of their sockets, leaving blood streaming down his cheeks. His torso was split open, ribs blooming like a disturbing flower, while blood drenched the stone.

The Valraven screeched from the sky. A high-pitched, victorious scream that sent shivers all over his body.

Before the monster could make his reappearance, Emil bolted through the trees. He could feel it, watching him as he ran. Its predatory gaze follows the boy, crouching down under a fallen branch, or dodging an exposed root.

Another corpse dangled from a tree. Torvald hung with arms splayed open like a crucified martyr, thorns wrapped around his wrists. His torso was cut to his navel, entrails spilling on the ground.

“Sorensen!”

Emil whipped his head down only to meet the last one of the group.

Bart crawled at his feet, his face covered in blood. “Please help me, help MEE!” But before he could do anything, Bart disappeared in a flash, dragged back into the darkness by an invisible force. An incoherent scream tore through the woods.

Emil took a couple of steps in the opposite direction, but he didn’t see the ditch.

He slipped. The world spun, before it was over.

He woke up staring at the slender branches above, stretched toward the starless sky.

He blinked a couple of times, as his eyes got used to the night, and he realized he had fallen into a pit.

His head throbbed, but after a quick check, he ascertained that he hadn’t broken anything. As he pulled himself up, his vision swam. He must’ve hit his head in the fall.

It took a couple of seconds before the world stopped spinning, and it was then that he smelled it. A sweet and rancid scent filled the air, like spoiled meat and rotten fruit.

Not again.

He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath to calm himself, but it was even worse. The bile in his stomach roiled up. He forced himself to keep it down while he staggered on his feet. In the complete darkness, he heard it—the sound of meat crunching under sharp teeth.

The monster was there with him. It was holding an undefined bundle of links. From the foul smell, he guessed intestines. Its beak was smeared with dark liquid, revealing a line of small, sharp, pearly teeth.

The creature swallowed the whole thing and looked at the boy as if it were its next course. The curve of its beak twitched impossibly into a crooked smile.

Emil shuddered. He was about to lose his mind.

It’s just a nightmare; this can’t be real. Please wake up.

Wakeupwakeupwakeup!

He threw himself against the wall of dirt, scrambling to climb it. But the soil was mushy, and every time he thought he’d found his footing, the surface collapsed. He tried again and again, covered in mud, while the beast approached like a vulture.

Human hands stretched forward, long grey nails clawing towards him.

He reached for an exposed root, his fingernails filled with dirt. He scraped and panted, eyes bulging out of his skull, filled with terror. Somehow, he crawled his way up to the surface, like an unearthed worm.

But just when he thought he’d finally made it, a cold hand wrapped around his ankle and pulled him back into the hole.

He jolted up, gasping, only to realize he was in his bed, covered in sweat, hair sticking to his forehead.

He felt cold, even if he was buried under three layers of blankets. His heart was hammering in his chest. He took a moment to realize that he was safe, in his bedroom, and not in the forest. He took a long sigh, staring at the ceiling.

It was a nightmare, just a nightmare.

He slumped against his pillow, but as he stretched, something felt off. His feet were heavy.

Slowly, he lifted the blankets, watching with newfound horror as he realized he was still wearing his boots, crusted with mud, staining the immaculate linen.

A sudden movement at the corner of his eye, but when he’d turn to look, he saw a pale, slender hand sliding out the open window, and a single inky feather settling on his desk.

It wasn’t a nightmare. The Valraven was real.