Legends of Litha (Wheel of the Year Anthology Volume 3)
Page 19
I never believed monsters existed. I had them categorized to be like the Boogey Man. They were old wives' tales made up to frighten small children.
Then the bodies started to show up in random places around the town. First, it was small animals like cats and dogs. The furry corpses were matted with blood and torn to shreds, left to rot in gutters and on porches. Some were even left in mailboxes and hung from signs, fence posts, and telephone wires like perverse Christmas ornaments. Later, parts of deer and bobcats started appearing in doorways of the townspeople like harbingers of doom and despair. No one thought much of the “murders” except the local dogcatchers and, of course, those PETA nuts ... but that was before the children were snatched from their beds. In a quiet town, things like that didn’t happen.
Most of the missing kids turned up eventually. More or less.
The Peterson's daughter was found half-submerged in the creek that crossed through the town, her stomach ripped open to reveal an empty cavity.