THE DEVIL BEHIND ME
by Christopher Fulbright & Angeline Hawkes
THE DEVIL BEHIND ME
Christopher Fulbright & Angeline Hawkes
© 2013 Fulbright & Hawkes
This edition of The Devil Behind Me
© 2013 Dark Regions Press
All rights reserved
Cover Image: Fotokostic/Shutterstock.com
This ebook edition published 2013 as part of the Dark Regions Digital line. Find more of our ebook titles by searching for "Dark Regions Digital" on your ebook platform of choice.
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1
Füssen, Bavaria, Germany
“Ssh--” Adelbert hushed the other boys. “Hören Sie. Listen.”
Something was rustling in the bushes outside the window. Alex pulled back the blue striped curtains while DiDi turned out the bedroom light.
“What is that?” Adelbert whispered.
Benno leaned close to the frosty pane. He wiped a clear circle on the glass. “It’s your sister!”
Alex peered outside between the curtain panels.
“Where’s she going?” Benno asked.
Alex shrugged. “Ilona does what she wants. Papa grows tired of her behavior. She wants to return to university, but I heard him and Uncle Henrik talking about a convent school in France.”
The boys watched Ilona creep across the yard toward the forest edge on the Brandt property.
“Let’s follow her!” Benno suggested, excitement in his voice.
“I don’t know. I--”
“Wirklich. Come on, Alex. She’s probably kissing someone!” Benno said.
The boys laughed nervously.
“Okay, but we can’t let her see us. We follow her, and then we come home. Papa will never let me have friends over again if we get caught.”
The boys agreed and, together, shoved open the window, all the while trying to keep Ilona’s red skirt in sight. One by one they tumbled over the sill and into the snow below. Alex pulled the window closed behind them.
Dodging behind trees, bushes, fences, wagons and anything else large enough to conceal them, the four boys followed Ilona to the forest edge and then onto a dark path rising like an ebon ribbon through the dense firs and birch. Ilona hiked at a quick pace, confident and seemingly familiar with the journey. Up ahead, she abruptly stopped, turned, looked around, and then stepped into the woods. Snow was deeper there, falling in clumps from the forest canopy.
The boys ducked behind a downed tree.
“This is as far as we go,” Alex hissed. “We aren’t to leave the path.”
“Come on. She’s in a skirt. She can’t go very far.” Benno reasoned.
DiDi shook his head. “I’m with Alex. There could be wolves or bears.”
Adelbert mocked DiDi. “There could be bears – are you all chickenshit? There’s a party in the forest, that’s all. There’re probably half naked girls from the university and beer. Look, Ilona knows where she’s going, so we just follow her.”
Alex looked at DiDi. DiDi looked at Benno. The three looked at Adelbert who stood in the moon-slivered darkness, hands on hips, scowling.
“Okay, but we’re not staying!” Alex said.
“Agreed.” Adelbert started into the woods, each step cracking brittle wood and crunching snow louder than it ever seemed before.
The boys struggled to keep up with Ilona and not be discovered.
“Es ist kait,” muttered DiDi, teeth chattering loudly.
“Of course it’s cold, you ninny,” Adelbert whispered. “It’s Dezember.” The boy smacked DiDi on the back of the head.
DiDi pulled his collar as high as the fabric allowed and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.
Up ahead, Ilona was a red speck dancing in the night.
“Let’s go home. Es friert,” DiDi chattered again.
Adelbert stopped, turned and knocked DiDi into the snow. “Go home, then, baby!”
“I am not a baby!”
“Ssh--” Alex commanded. “Stop it! We’re losing her!”
The boys returned their attention to Alex’s sister and hustled to catch up. The overhead branches were so thick here that snow hadn’t penetrated the treetops as much as it had in the places they just left behind. It was easier to walk, but Ilona had gained too much of a lead on them. Soon they lost sight of her amidst the thick trees.
“Where’d she go?” Benno asked.
“I don’t know,” Alex said, but then pointed. “Look! There’s a fire!”
The boys dropped low and crawled to an overgrowth of hazel bushes on the edge of a grove of birch trees. Thick ivy clustered around the white birch trunks. The trees formed a semi-circle around a flaming bonfire.
Safe in the thickness of the hazels, the boys huddled side by side and peeked through the branches toward the fire’s glow. So intense were the flames that, even from this distance, the warmth took away the bitter bite of winter. They trembled a little less.
Several people clad in black robes mingled near the fire. To the right of the blaze stood an ancient, weathered limestone altar. Tendrils of ivy clung to the crevices and cracks of the rectangular formation, which stood atop a rocky rise. The boys gasped at the sight of a crimson puddle on the ground, thinking it was blood, but realizing it was Ilona’s cast-off dress discarded on the stony ground. Spread naked atop the table-like altar was Ilona.
“Look at those!” Benno said, feigning a whistle, tracing the curves of an invisible girl in the air.
Alex frowned. Ilona lay motionless on the stone, her alabaster legs spread, her arms bent slightly, resting on the altar surface above her head.
“From the looks of it, I’d say she’s a little nippy,” Adelbert whispered and laughed.
“Knock it off! That’s my sister, you slobs!”
The three boys looked from Alex to the naked Ilona and then fell silent.
The robed people formed a circle around the fire. As soon as they were in formation, a slow, tribal beat sounded from drummers seated to the left of the flagration. The deep rhythm throbbed like the heartbeat of the forest. The air pulsed around them.
Around the base of the altar, over the ground beneath and surrounding Ilona’s red dress, what had at first looked like rocks looked more curious now. Scattered, stacked and tossed about, the white shapes seemed to bounce with the steps of the robe-wearers as they moved around the fire.
“What is all that?” DiDi asked.
“Dunno. Can’t see good,” Alex replied.
A pause.
“Are those bones?” Benno hissed close to Adelbert and Alex’s ears.
All of the boys squinted, trying to zero in on the details of the objects in question.
A robed person crunched a black boot on top of a rounded white “rock.”
“That’s a skull!” Benno whispered, voice high-pitched with horror.
“It’s a little one.” Adelbert said. The three boys looked at Adelbert. “Like a kid’s.”
The drums increased their tempo and the robed crowd began twirling, dancing, gyrating around the fire in a wicked frenzy. They were holding some sort of clay or stone statues – no, phalluses.
“They’re holding a giant Schwanz!” Benno hissed a little too loud, but the beating of the drums obliterated evidence of their presence.
The dancers hopped and shook their hips and shoulders. They flailed and marched, heavy cowls hiding their faces. Ilona lay panting on the altar. A cloud of black smoke began to form at the foot of the altar. Gray smo
ky tendrils curled around Ilona, caressing her like a lover’s hands.
In the center of the smoke pillar, a man took shape. As he stepped from the plumes, it was not a man that stood there, but a horned, red-skinned demon covered with coarse black hair. He was naked.
Eyes growing wider, the boys exchanged terrified glances.
“Krampus!” DiDi whispered, clutching Alex’s arm.
“Rot! He’s not real!” Benno shot back.
“Ssh--” Alex quieted them, putting his finger to his lips.
Around and around the robed dancers twirled with their giant phalluses raised above their heads as if in some ancient fertility celebration.
Krampus grabbed each of Ilona’s bare calves and pulled her over the altar surface toward him. Her thighs glowed marble white against the red of his gnarled, exploring hands. The abomination yanked Ilona right onto his huge, cork-screwed member.
The boys didn’t move. They sat frozen, watching in horror, as the creature noisily copulated with Alex’s big sister. Ilona shrieked and panted, writhing on Krampus’s engorged penis.
One of the robed celebrants ceased dancing and approached the altar. Krampus continued his enjoyment of Ilona, but watched as the woman hypnotically disrobed and stood naked before him. She then turned her back to him and dropped to all fours.
Krampus removed his shrinking member from Ilona. While stroking himself to another erection, his long swollen tongue darted from his mouth and licked Ilona’s cheek. She moaned. He gave her thigh a solid slap, and then crawled off the altar.
The kneeling woman visibly tensed as Krampus slithered his red tongue over her buttocks. Then he mounted her savagely like a ravenous beast.
Something was different about this coupling. The boys sensed it. Something sinister and viler than the mating with Ilona. This fornication had another purpose.
While the boys cast glances at each other, suddenly, Krampus grabbed the woman’s hair, snapped her head backward, and tore it from her body. Blood spurted from her neck stump, and the lifeless corpse collapsed beneath Krampus’s weight. Krampus continued to hump the headless woman.
At that moment, the drums abruptly ceased and DiDi let out a horrified shriek.
Alex was already running toward the path before DiDi finished his scream. Something in him – instinct, fear, common sense – sent him hurtling through the forest even as his friends continued to ogle the red demon as DiDi finished his last note of terror.
Alex was aware of the screams of his friends, their shouts for mercy, their cries of terror, but he kept running. He hit the path, skidding, and ran toward the yard, toward the house, pushed open the window, climbed the wall, scrambled over the sill and fell inside.
He slammed the window and locked it, then yanked closed the curtains.
He fell onto his floor beside his twin bed with the spread boasting American footballs and helmets over a blue background. He covered his face, closed his eyes, breathing heavily, and then … a black spot in his memory; he didn’t recall what he did next.
When he awoke, he didn’t remember going to sleep. He only remembered terror, and the echoing shouts of his friends.
He told his father everything.
The Polizei were summoned. He then told them what he’d seen. They pretended to listen intently as he detailed the demonic forest orgy, but Alex saw them snickering behind open palms when they thought he was out of ear shot.
Ilona was not in her bedroom. Nor was she at any of her friends’ houses in town. Calls to her former university friends turned up no Ilona either.
When the Polizei searched the forest, now illuminated with cold, frosty daylight, they didn’t find her there either. They did find the smoldering embers of the bonfire, the scattered piles of the bones of animals and long-dead children, the headless, ravaged corpse of a local girl named Anika Schmidt, and a crude burlap bag full of the broken, gutted, chewed and mangled remnants of Benno, Adelbert and the poor, forever-cold DiDi.
After that, Alex spent long hours with Polizei sketch artists sketching one portrait after the other of Krampus – whom each artist tried to render into a brute of a man instead of the demon Alex described.
A few months later, Alex’s father, Hayden Brandt, accepted a position in America at a university in Dallas, Texas and packed up his remaining child, leaving for the United States.
Henrik Brandt stayed behind, ever hopeful his niece, Ilona, might return someday unharmed.
2
Dallas, Texas
“So, that’s why I hate December, why I don’t celebrate Christmas,” Alex said, staring blankly into the pink-hued wine in his glass. The firelight made the shimmering liquid glow.
Kimberly shifted awkwardly beneath Alex’s arm wrapped around her shoulders. She fidgeted, nervously arranging the folds of the quilt tucked around their legs as they snuggled on the couch.
“Well, say something,” Alex said.
Kimberly’s eyebrows arched sharply and she ran a hand through her wavy brown hair, swishing it over one shoulder of her blood red sweater. “That’s a lot to process, Alex.”
“Tell me about it: try being ten and figuring all that shit out.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’ve figured it out to me.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Alex leaned forward, stretching, and put his empty glass onto the coffee table.
“Demons? Some monster in the woods?”
“Krampus. He was a very distinct monster in the woods.”
Kimberly laughed quietly. “Alex.” She said it like she was talking to an irrational child, one convinced a monster lived under his bed even though he had observed for himself nothing was under the bed but a few matchbox cars and dust bunnies.
Alex stared into the fire. When he met Kimberly Yerina through the online dating service he had told himself he would not tell her about his past, but now, ten months later, he felt it necessary to explain why he didn’t put up a Christmas tree, didn’t hang up some old felt stockings, and why he didn’t exchange presents.
She sat there studying him as he pretended not to notice. “Exactly what is this Krampus thing? I mean, besides sounding like a symptom of PMS or something?”
Alex didn’t laugh.
“Is he, like, some kind of a German thing?”
“You know how adults tell kids if they’ve been bad that they’ll get a lump of coal or a switch in their stocking instead of gifts from Santa?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, Krampus is the one that brings the coal and switches.”
“So?” Kimberly shifted so she could look directly into Alex’s face, which was bathed orange from the fire.
Alex wiggled free from the nest and got up, crossing the short span to the fireplace. He grabbed the poker and pushed the logs around. A spray of orange and white embers exploded around the hearth. He sat on the stones and twisted the implement around as he continued. “Krampus is like Santa’s evil alter-ego. He ‘knows if you’ve been bad or good’ too. He’s a demon: shaggy or thick black hair, red, horns on his grotesque head, huge--” Alex made an obscene gesture, “cock.”
Kimberly raised her eyebrows.
“He lives in a cave in the mountains and shows up in December to dole out punishment. He rattles chains and scares kids, but the bad ones -- the really bad ones -- he beats savagely, eats them, rips them to shreds, and after devouring them, drags their souls to Hell.”
Kimberly laughed loudly. “Oh, Alex. My god. You can’t possibly believe this is true -- no more than you believe Santa Claus exists.”
Alex stabbed a log. “I know what I saw.”
“You were a child who witnessed a horrible, traumatic rape and murder,” Kimberly paused. “You know our brains have ways of protecting us, of protecting our sanity. What you saw, what you think you saw, is your brain’s way of explaining very terrible events.”
“Thank you, Dr. Yerina,” Alex said sarcastically. “Did they teach you that at Erie Community College?”
“Think about it. Why would a punisher of children be cavorting in the woods, fucking women on an altar beside a fire?”
“Because he’s Krampus?” Alex shook his head. “This isn’t some new age kookiness. Krampus is an ancient Pagan demon. Eroticism. Fertility. Whips. Lashes. Fetish. Some say the original Santa was actually an angel sent to protect children from the demon Krampus.”
Kimberly got off the couch, walked to the cabinet and poured herself some more wine. She looked at the remnants of the coconut cream pie they’d eaten earlier, but given the somber conversation, decided against it and just settled for the wine. She returned to the couch. “Stop. Just stop. This is crazy.”
“This ‘crazy’ is my life.”
“Alex. I feel for you. I really do, but listen to what you’re asking me to believe. I get why you don’t want to observe the holidays, and I, 100-percent, support you on that. My god, to see what you saw, to hear what you heard, to have your little friends butchered and slaughtered just steps behind you, to watch your sister brutally raped and another woman decapitated – there just aren’t words!”
“But?”
“But – I think you need to re-examine reality, or the reality filtered through the perspective of a traumatized ten-year-old boy. Your sister was obviously involved in some fucked up Pagan shit. You witnessed some rite where your sister was violently raped, another raped and killed, and your friends were killed. In your mind only a hideous, supernatural demon could do something so terrible.”
“So, you’re saying, I made this all up?” There was an edge to Alex’s voice.
“No. I’m saying your brain has made it easier for you to deal with all of this.”
Alex burst out laughing. “Shit, Kimberly--”
“You need to go back to Füssen and talk to the police who worked the case. Walk that path in the woods again and get some closure. Look at these events through your adult eyes.”
Alex was quiet as he mulled over her suggestion.
“I really think it would help you.” She didn’t look at him. Instead, she absently fiddled with the crystal bracelet on her wrist. Snap. Snap. She pulled the elastic cord and let it flick her wrist again.
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