This story won me last year’s Halloween writing contest. Thank you to everyone who voted for me!

The Romanian sky was black as ink, held hostage by the greedy clouds hoarding the moonlight while soaking the darkened land in freezing rain. The autumn chill weighed heavily and fogged the breath of man and creature alike. In this small village of Runa, everyone should have been asleep in their beds, kept warm by quilts made with love and fires crackling in hearths, but there was little peace this night.

“The Lord rebukes you, O Devil, for he came into the world and dwelt among men in order to shatter your tyranny and free mankind; hanging on the Cross, he triumphed over all the hostile powers, when the sun was darkened and the earth was shaken, when the graves were opened and the bodies of the Saints rose; he destroyed death by death and conquered you, O Devil, who had the power of death! I adjure you in the name of God who revealed the tree of life and appointed the Cherubim and the fiery sword that turns each way to guard it!”

The timbers of the local church groaned and creaked like a ship at sea, as the house of God tried to contain the malevolence frothing within. Inside, a man lay on the floor, crucified like the effigy of Christ overhead to try and defeat the demon possessing him. He screamed with a voice that wasn’t his and pulled at his binds with strength that he shouldn’t possess. Nearby, the priest stood, reciting the prayers of exorcism with haggard breathing. He held a cross in one hand and a bible in the other, but both were trembling from exhaustion. The demon’s malice was a physical force, washing over him like powerful gale and threatening to knock him off his feet. Each wave felt like someone walking on his grave, filling him with a chill that reached deep into his heart.

“Be rebuked and depart; for I adjure you in the name of him who walked on the water as if it were dry land, and calmed the tempest whose look dries up the abyss and whose threatening makes the mountains melt away! It is this same Lord who now commands you, through us!”

The man howled in retaliation, and his clothes became shredded, ripped away by invisible hands. His muscles undulated beneath his skin as if his body was a sack filled with seething rats, all trying to claw their way out. His flesh was rapidly changing color, switching back and forth from deathly white to darkened and bruised. When it paled, the blackness of his veins was clear as day.

“Fear, come out and depart from this human being, and never return, not hide in him, neither meet nor act upon him, not by night or by day, not at dawn or at noontime, but depart to your own darkness until the appointed day of judgment! Fear God who sits upon the Cherubim and looks down into the abyss; before whom tremble Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Authorities, Powers, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim; before whom tremble the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them!”

The man howled again, his unholy scream accentuated by a crack of lightning. The wind was picking up, hurling the rain at the church windows with seemingly malevolent force.

“Come out and depart from this soldier or Christ our God, for he has been marked with the sign of the Cross and newly enlisted! For it is in His name that I adjure you, the name of the Lord who walks upon the wings of the wind, who makes his Angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire! Come out and depart from this human being, with all your power and your angels! For the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is glorified, now and ever, and to the ages of ages! Amen!”

“Amen!” The word was repeated by a dozen frightened villagers, trying to keep their eyes on the candles in their shaking hands. Several of the men bore cuts and bruises, wounds suffered while trying to apprehend the raving beast before them. The crucifixion wasn’t only to aid in the exorcism, it was the only way they could properly restrain him. They were trying to support the priest with their faith, but every time the man screamed, they felt the hatred and malice of the spirit bound within his flesh, and they could smell his breath, stinking of rotting meat.

“God the holy, the fearful, the glorious, incomprehensible and inscrutable in all his works and all his might, who ordained for you, O Devil, the punishment of eternal torment, through us his unworthy servants, orders you, and all the powers that work with you, to depart from him who has been newly sealed in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, our true God!”

The priest barely finished shouting the words, then broke into a coughing fit. It was like ants were crawling through his throat, biting and stinging his flesh. He felt the blood pepper his hand with each hack and tried not to look at the crimson shine catching the light of the torches and candles. The demon was fighting back. Fear gripped the priest, and it took everything he had to resume the prayer.

“Therefore, I adjure you, most wicked, impure, abominable, loathsome and alien spirit: Come out of the man and never again enter into him! Depart, admit the vanity of your power which could not even control the swine!”

Then, everything fell silent, as if all the air had been banished from the church. The rain still pelted the windows, but produced no sound. The priest and the attendants could no longer hear their fearful breathing and racing hearts. It was as if God himself had been left stunned in terror. Then, a lightning bolt struck the church, breaking the silence with a thunderclap that boxed the ears of everyone inside. The windows shattered, filling the air with broken glass while the wind and rain surged inside, blowing out candles and sending bible pages flying. Though every flame was extinguished, light poured into the church from the lightning outside, but not even the booming thunder could drown out the man’s screams.

“Remember him who, at your own request, commanded you to enter into the herd of the swine!” the priest roared, forced to his knees by the overpowering wind. “Fear God, by whose command the earth was made firm upon the waters; who made the heaven, who weighted the mountains in a balance and the valleys on a pair of scales, who placed the sand as a boundary to the sea and a safe path in the raging waters; who makes the mountains smoke at his touch; who clothes himself with light as a garment; who covers over his lofty dwellings with waters; who laid the foundations of the earth so secure that it should never be shaken from them; who lifts up the water and the sea and returns it as rain upon the face of all the earth!”

The priest then watched in horror as the man began to rise in the air, still tied to his cross. He was hanging vertically, upside-down, defying both gravity and God. Then, with one final howl, the man, at last, ripped his hands and feet free from the cross and dropped down onto the floor. He kneeled before the effigy of Christ as if in reverence, but beneath his flesh, his muscles were twisting and changing shape.

He slowly stood up, with all his bones and joints loudly cracking. The men and women behind the priest were either rendered silent by terror or weeping like children. The man was no longer screaming. Instead, he turned and began to approach on unbalanced steps while lightning continued to flash outside, casting his shadow upon the attendants.

“Come out and depart from him who is now preparing for holy illumination!” the priest shouted, pushed by fear for his own life. His words no longer evoked any kind of reaction from the man, not even slowing his steps. Still, he prayed, as it was all he could do. His legs lacked the strength to carry him away. “I adjure you by the saving Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and his sacred Body and Blood and his awesome return; for he shall come without delay to judge all the earth, and shall assign you, and all the powers working with you, to the fire of hell, having deliver you to the outer darkness, where the worm constantly devours, and the fire is never extinguished!”

The man grabbed the priest’s head, glaring at him with bloodshot eyes and gnashing teeth. Faced with such horror, the priest continued to pray, but his words were hollow, as all faith and courage had left him. “For the power belongs to Christ our God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and ever unto the ages of ages. Am—”

He was dead before he could finish the prayer.

Samuel Wilks woke with a start, looking around for invisible enemies. What he thought had been a shell going off was simply the train coming to a stop. “Attention, everyone!” a train worker announced in German. “Some debris has fallen onto the tracks ahead. We’ll have to wait for the obstruction to be cleared, but it shouldn’t take long.”

It was the middle of the afternoon, but the sun was quick to set here in the Carpathian Mountains. The region had been buffeted by storms lately, causing the cliffs to crumble and blanket the tracks with debris. This was just one of many stops to clear the way. Sam reached into his coat and checked his revolver. Five bullets. Only when he saw them could he breathe easily.

His body was stiff from sleeping in the hard seat, and he decided to stretch his legs since the train was still. He walked through the alleys and cars, eyeing the other passengers, all of them muttering among each other in German and Russian. Riding from Warsaw to Bucharest, the passengers weren’t exactly the image of wealth and modernity. With his patchwork clothes and shoddy appearance, Sam fit right in.

He went to the dining car and got himself a sandwich and coffee, which he topped off with liquor from his flask. While there, he noticed someone who stood out, a German man wearing a suit, looking like he should be giving a lecture in Munich. He was eating an orange omelet with one hand and reading Kritik der reinen Vernunft by Immanuel Kant with the other. Germans loved arguing about philosophy when they got drunk. Sam had heard that name argued about in a few of the countless German taverns he had visited while bumming across Europe.

Eventually, the tracks were cleared, and the train resumed rolling. Though the hour of his arrival to Bucharest mattered little, Sam was still relieved that they were moving again. Waiting aimlessly left him tightly wound, feeling like a sitting duck in the crosshairs of unknown enemies. The train crawled out of the valley and began its climb up the nearby mountain. With its raised elevation, the passengers could enjoy a better view of the mountains, a picture of priceless beauty. Though the grass was still green, the trees had donned autumn colors, and their leaves now fell like the snowflakes soon to come.

Seeing them, Sam thought back to the Great War, fighting in the trenches. Shells blanketed the landscape like rain, erasing every structure and hint of life to be found. The trees were killed just as easily as the soldiers. Bullets would shred the trunks into woodchips, and explosions stripped the branches of their leaves. Those that survived the incessant gunfire and artillery could not escape the ravages of the war. Though the blood of countless men should have nourished the roots, the toxins of combat had befouled the soil. Rust, lead, and deadly chemicals saturated the earth, leaving it so even weeds struggled to grow. In his post-war journey, Sam had seen lands both untouched by violence and raped by fire and poison. He was glad to have a view like this, to be reminded that even the most horrific war in history could not eclipse all life.

Then, just when he could finally breathe gently, all the air was ripped from his lungs, courtesy of a catastrophic tremor that ran through the train. Sam and countless other passengers were knocked to the floor, feeling it shake beneath them. Sam scrambled to his feet and looked out the window. A boulder had fallen down the mountainside and struck the steam engine, knocking it off the tracks and sending it rolling down the cliff back into the valley below, and it was pulling all the other cars with it. “Oh God,” Sam gasped. It was the only thing he could think to say.

They were falling over one after another, becoming a wave of death moving down the line. The passengers were screaming as the car began to tip. In anticipation of the plunge, Sam secured his belt around a railing and gripped it with all his strength. Then, the world flipped. For the briefest second, his body seemed weightless, and Sam felt his stomach rise up into his throat, then came the first impact as the car toppled over. Every window shattered, and the passengers were thrown around like ragdolls. The train was twisting as it rolled down the cliff, with every car experiencing a mind-jarring tremor with each impact.

Sam clung to the railing with everything he had, feeling his body pulled in all directions. He had experienced something like this before. Every time a crash rumbled through the car, he remembered a shell striking the ground near him and his buddies. The sound, the shockwave, and the jarring force throwing him off his feet shot through his brain like a bullet every second. He kept one eye shut, but the other saw everything. He saw bodies and debris tossed into the air and blood splattering nearby surfaces. Pain replaced the terror in everyone’s scream, then silence as victims lost the ability to voice their fear and suffering. It was impossible to count how many times his car flipped while rolling down the hill. Sam only remembered the final impact of it hitting the valley floor, when it seemed like all of the kinetic energy of the crashing train was transmitted straight through his body. He was robbed of consciousness while cars continued falling like meteors.

Sam didn’t know when he woke up, only that every inch of his body was in excruciating pain, and his entire skeleton felt like crushed cardboard. It was a struggle to think, and his position didn’t help. The train car had landed on its side, leaving him suspended from the railing by his belt. It took everything he had, but he reached into his coat and grabbed his revolver. The sun was setting, and the last light struggled to fill the valley, so he had to count the bullets by feel. Five bullets, he had five bullets.

He put his gun away and tried to look around. Even without the darkness, the crash had wrecked his vision. It was like his eyes could only communicate with his brain through Morse code. He reached up and tried to unfasten his belt, but under tension, his buckle might as well have been a steel lock. He leaned his head back and groaned. Something answered. Sam looked over, spotting movement farther down in the car and hearing sounds he couldn’t recognize. He focused his gaze, trying to sharpen the blurry world around him. There appeared to be someone in the wreckage, crouching over another person, but Sam couldn’t see what they were doing.

“Hey,” Sam groaned. The stranger perked up. “Please, help me.” The stranger stood up and turned around. Sam could only see their lanky body in silhouette, but they appeared to be naked. “Please, help me,” he said again, this time in German.

The stranger replied, not with words, but with a malicious growl. Hearing that sound, primal fear flared up within Sam, coursing through his brain and forcing his grogginess aside. Half-dead from the crash, his body suddenly felt a rush of strength. The stranger stepped forward into the palest, dimmest light in the valley. Sam could see the man’s body; it was ghostly, but looked like it had been badly burned. His face remained in darkness, but blood was dripping down his chest. Sam pulled out his revolver and took aim with a shaky hand, feeling like a worm on a hook.

“Stay back, I’m warning you.” The stranger took another step forward, and in the darkness, Sam could see the gleam of its eyes, staring at him without a shred of humanity. “Stay back!”

He was about to pull the trigger, but then he heard voices outside the train. “Hello! Can anyone hear me?” they shouted.

“Here! I’m in here!” Sam replied in English. He dared a glance away from the stranger. “Help me!” He could see light in the broken windows above his head and hear multiple footfalls as people climbed atop the overturned car. He looked back, and the stranger had vanished. Or had they been there at all?

Men and women climbed into the car, fellow passengers like himself holding candles, torches, and a few intact lanterns. They helped Sam get down from the railing and carried him out. As soon as he touched the ground, he collapsed. Finally, his body could begin to recover, but there was a lot of damage to fix. A small crowd of fellow survivors was working its way down the train, pulling out the wounded from among the piles of dead. Few had come out of the crash alive. By the time the survivors had gathered, the sun had fully set, and the night was upon them.

“What do we do?”

“Where do we go?”

“Is it safe out here?”

The survivors all tossed these questions back and forth until, finally, someone stepped forward. It was the well-dressed German man Sam had seen earlier. “People, we are not without hope. If we are where I think we are, the village of Runa is not far from here. Let us make camp here tonight, gather our strength, nurse our wounds, and then set out in the morning.”

It was as good a plan as any, so the survivors set out to find food and bedding in the train. They set up camp in the wrecked cars, building fires to keep the autumn chill at bay, but that wasn’t all. The mountains were full of bears, wolves, lynxes, and plenty else. Fortunately, enough firewood and coal were available to keep the fires burning through the night. Sitting by one fire, Sam heard a wolf howl in the distance and checked his revolver. He had to be sure. Five bullets. He slept lightly that night, cursed with soreness.

No one was quick to rise the next morning. Everyone was feeling the trauma of yesterday’s wounds, and the bruises were vast and many.

“Those of us who can travel should head for Runa. Those who can’t should wait here for help to arrive,” said the German man in his native language.

“We should do something about these bodies first,” said Sam in kind. “We need to collect them, pile them up, anything. We can’t leave them where they are to be scavenged and rot.”

“American, yes? You speak German?”

“I know enough to get by, along with some French and a few words in Italian. If we don’t have the strength to deal with the dead, we won’t make it far through the forest. Besides, the fact that our train never made it to Bucharest will draw plenty of attention. We shouldn’t have to wait long for help to arrive.”

“You make a good point.” He extended his hand. “Volker Hofmann.”

Sam shook his hand. “Sam Wilks.”

The word was spread among the survivors that the dead were to be collected. They moved through the cars, grabbing mangled bodies and dragging them out into the sun. Women cried, and men crossed themselves, trying not to look at the smashed and contorted faces of the victims. Luck, that was all that separated the two groups. Had they been sitting in a different location, had they grabbed onto something else for support, or had they simply faced in another direction, they would be dead. That was all that separated the corpses and those who now carried them. Sam wished this was a new experience, but he had done more than his fair share of hauling corpses during the war. At least these bodies hadn’t been chopped into pieces by artillery and machine gun fire.

They laid the bodies out in the morning sun, but a scream soon cut through the autumn air. A pack of wolves was feeding on one of the corpses and dragging another into the woods. Enraged by their audacity, one of the survivors ran over while screaming and waving a stick. They felt no fear at his charge, and one leaped into the air with its jaws spread wide. Sam drew his pistol and fired a single shot, piercing the wolf’s heart and killing it midair. The rest continued the attack, biting the man from all sides and tearing into his flesh. He screamed in agony as his blood soaked the ground. Sam, Volker, and the other men charged in with any makeshift weapon in reach. The wolves snarled and howled, refusing to give up their food.

BOOM!

Volker blasted one of the wolves with a shotgun, knocking it off its feet with its pelt turning red. The crack of a pistol didn’t dissuade the wolves, but the thunderclap of a shotgun decimated their courage. They hastily retreated, but surprising everyone, the wolf Volker shot slowly got up and limped away, wounded but alive.

“We might have to rethink splitting up,” said Sam, panting heavily while others tended to the wounded man. He instinctively checked his pistol and removed the empty bullet casing. Four bullets.

“We can’t stay here, not with those prowlers close by,” said Volker.

“It’s because of those prowlers that we have to. Almost half the survivors can’t travel. What do you think is going to happen to them if they get left behind? Besides, how long will it take to reach Runa on foot? A day? Two? Do you really want to be out in those woods during the night?”

“My friend, I’ve hunted lions and elephants in the Savanah. This is not my first time in the great outdoors.”

“Well when you were in the Savanah, were you shooting those lions with fucking rock salt like you did that wolf? You do that to a bear, and all you’ll accomplish is pissing it off. He’ll take the time to eat your soul along with your face. At least here, we have some decent shelter. I’m not normally one for waiting, but I say we dig in, try to fortify our defenses, and wait for help to arrive.”

“And the bodies? They’ll lure every beast of the wild.”

“We could just stick them in one of the cargo cars.”

“If you do that, the moment you open those doors again, you’ll be awash in a tidal wave of maggots. We need to bury them.”

“Less than a dozen of us came out of that train alive, and not unscathed. Digging a grave for every corpse simply isn’t feasible.” Sam then paused. “Actually, there may be a way to do one without having to do the other.”

The dead bodies were lined up at the very base of the cliff, with the newest addition bearing fresh bite wounds. Sam, Volker, and the few other capable survivors climbed above them with shovels and began digging into the cliff, with all the loose dirt and clay falling down onto the bodies below. It didn’t take much to set off a small landslide, leaving many bodies sufficiently covered. The mass burial was repeated down the line, and once complete, a cross was hammered into the ground.

With that taken care of, the survivors worked on defending themselves from wild animals. One of the cars tipped on its side offered the best defense, and the broken windows overhead were covered up with logs and metal. That night, the survivors huddled together, sleeping on scavenged bedding with what space they could find. Sam stayed up, cooking a can of beans over a fire and drinking. Volker sat across from him, nursing his own liquor bottle with his shotgun across his lap.

“So what business does an American have this deep in Romania?” he asked.

“The same business I have everywhere else: none at all. I’m just wandering across Europe.”

“You didn’t see enough of it during the Great War?” Sam glanced at him. “The way you check your gun five times a day and the way you drink tell me you spent time in a trench.”

“I spent a lot of time in a trench, and plenty other places. Once the war ended, I decided it would be nice to explore Europe without getting shot at, so I’ve just been roaming from one country to the next for the last few years. You’re on the few Germans I met that hasn’t held a grudge.”

“I was never in the war. I’m a scholar, and what is the point of knowledge if I end up dead in a futile battle? What about you? I hope you don’t hold a grudge against my people for the deaths of your friends.”

“I wish I could, I really do, but I can’t. Speaking to prisoners, I learned that your guys really were no different than ours. There was no malice or ideology on the battlefield, just men told to kill each other. We were merely pawns, fighting over nothing.” He paused for moment and eased himself with a sip of spirits. “Anyway, what brings you out here?”

“Runa, that’s where I’m headed. The train crash just made the last leg of my journey extra cumbersome.”

“And what’s in Runa?”

Volker took a long drink from his bottle. “The truth, in all its beauty and horror.”

“And you expect an answer like that to satisfy me?”

The German chuckled. “I’m a psychologist, a doctor and researcher of the mind, from the Wilhelm Wundt Institute for Psychology in Leipzig. I’m looking for someone, someone in Runa I believe is worthy of extensive study.”

“You’re looking for a madman.”

“That wouldn’t be far from the truth. My goal is to find what caused his condition, see if it can be fixed, and if it can’t, then to bring him back to Leipzig for further study.”

“So that’s what the rock salt is for.”

“As much as my colleagues and I would enjoy dissecting his brain, I need him alive. I also brought a couple nets and a steel cage. They’re in one of these cars. Hopefully the cage is intact, it’s worth a great deal of money.”

“Yes, THAT’S what you should be worried about...”

It was another restless night for the survivors. The beasts of the wild showed little fear, sniffing and growling outside the train cars. Fortunately, help arrived the following day. A hunter, passing through the region, spotted the crashed train and returned, leading a party of men on horseback. Tears of joy were shed by many as the survivors were finally rescued. Most of the survivors’ luggage was left on the train, except for the most essential items. A few hours of riding brought them to a muddy road, which they followed to the town of Runa, a small farming community hidden in the mountains. Life here had experienced little development over the centuries. There was no electricity or running water, no cars, and the only machined steel was a handful of shotguns and rifles.

Sam and the other survivors were brought before the mayor in the Town Square. He was a wrinkled man with wool clothes and a bearskin coat, flanked by villagers. “Welcome to Runa. I’m sorry your arrival doesn’t come under better circumstances, but my people will give you shelter as long as you need.”

The villagers appeared genuinely sympathetic to the survivors’ plight, but something felt wrong to Sam. They all looked tired, weathered by stress and fear, but of what? Sam and a few others managed to get rooms above the local tavern, a dream come true for him. It was a quaint establishment, a watering hole born of the soul of Romania. He parked himself at the counter and remained there for the rest of the day, nursing one mug of beer after another. But as afternoon turned to evening, his drunken solitude began to eat at him.

“Where is everyone? This place looks big enough to hold half the village, but the only other drinkers are from the train?”

The bartender, a large man with a thick mustache, shuddered. “It’s not safe to be out at night. Four people have already been killed.”

“What, do the wolves prowl the streets?”

“Wolves don’t kill like this.”

“You’re saying a person is responsible?”

“Not a person, not anymore.” He then spat on the floor to ward off misfortune and refused to say any more.

After some biscuits and rabbit stew, Sam went to bed in a spare room upstairs. He looked outside and expected to see candles burning in windows, much like his own, but shutters had been drawn, and curtains were closed across town. The villagers were blocking out the night as if the darkness was a flood leaking into their homes. They huddled around their fireplaces and surrounded themselves with candles and lamps, hoping the light would keep them safe.

Sleep came easily for Sam, thanks to having a real bed and a belly full of beer. His body was still recovering from the trauma of the crash, so he was out cold, but no matter how deeply he slept, some part of him was always on alert, and it ripped him from his dreams in the middle of the night. A gunshot and a scream rang across the town, opening Sam’s eyes and sending him tumbling out of bed. He grabbed his pistol and checked it. Four bullets.

A second gunshot echoed, and the screaming continued. Sam stood by the window with his pistol in hand. He couldn’t tell where the shots had come from, but it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The fearful screaming had now become a wail, a cry of grief. Someone had died this night, and no one who heard it managed to fall back asleep.

The following morning, Sam got up and was given breakfast by the tavern owners. However, as soon as he sat down at his same spot from yesterday, Volker entered the bar. “For God’s sake man, the day has just started.”

“Yes, and I’m already way behind on my drinking. A pint, my good sir,” Sam said to the barkeeper.

“Come on, I need help catching my madman, and you’re the perfect candidate to help me.”

“Can’t you see that I’m busy?” A stein was handed to him, but it was empty. “Excuse me, I know I was rather vague, but when I asked for a pint, I didn’t mean a pint of air.”