By Tom Gruer

It had been a cold winter in the French commune of Hesdin. Fourteen kilometres from the site of the battle of Agincourt that happened two years prior in 1415. 

Simon had awoken to the sound of buzzards in the fir trees outside his small house. The smell of wet thatch, the distant bustling of the townspeople, and a host of fiendish thoughts circling his mind. Each morning, Simon was visited by a tirade of devils and imps who were there to remind him of his pitiful emotions and the uselessness of his existence. He remembered a time when he had only been tainted by dark thoughts and not the small fiery beasts that played hide and seek with him each dawn, granting him no solace from the cold French winter.

“Leave me alone!” Simon screamed with his eyes closed.

Gone. The monsters were gone — as far as he knew. He was aware his efforts were always fruitless, but he could not let them win. 

Sudden berating noises boomed from Simon’s small oakwood door. He was sure it must have been the thwack of the heavy tail of Satan himself, there finally to face his tormented soul. 

Simon rose with the rage and reckless abandon of a sunken man. He grasped the door handle and pulled. When he opened the door, Simon saw not horns, but a round mess of brown hair. No forked tongue, but instead thin lips shaped into a weak smile. No whip-like tail, but instead the round plump body of his friend, Pierre.

“Hello, Simon. Those night terrors persist, I assume?”

Simon noticed a huge silver cross that hung from Pierre’s neck in open display. Pierre was not a religious man, but certainly a cautious one.

“Nothing I can’t manage, Pierre. Good day to you,” explained Simon while he moved to close the door. 

“They’re not coming back, I hope you’re aware.” 

Simon hesitated, shocked by the gall of his childhood friend.

“It’s been two years my dear friend. You need to let go or else I fear what might tighten its grasp upon your heart,” said Pierre, fiddling with the hem of his tunic. “Auntie Katherine continued after her son died, she had another four kids!” Pierre  protested.

“Well, I suppose Katherine didn’t really care for him much. Ysabeau and Margot meant more than the earth and the heavens combined to me, and I will not let them go!” Simon slammed the door hard enough to make the two buzzards fly off in panic.

…

Simon ladled the last bit of gruel into his wooden bowl. A plain mixture of oats and barley grown in his field with milk from the market that he got during his only weekly venture into town. Before sitting down to eat, Simon poured two thirds of his gruel into two other wooden bowls laid on the table. Each day he would do this, until the gruel set like a corpse in the cold open air.

Simon stood, his ribs rattling from the fierce hunger in his stomach. He pushed past his starvation as he always did and went to tend to his wheat and barley. He swiped at the heads of his crops with ferocity, as if they were the heads of the enemy.

Simon got about halfway through his field when he heard the beautiful sound of buzzards screeching whilst he loaded the crops into his donkey-drawn wagon. An unignorable impulse wormed its way into Simon’s brain. It drew him to move towards the sound. As Simon approached the back fence of his field, he saw the two brown, clawed birds, helpless to watch as they instantly flew away.

Again, Simon felt the pull to follow them; and, against his better judgement, he pursued. For three miles he followed the birds through forests and open fields until they arrived at a hedgerow on the side of a desolate road. 

The dirt of the road looked like it had been trampled by a great force of men. Parts were coloured by the deep black of ash with rich splashes of red blood. 

It was in this hedgerow where Simon discovered what he had been searching for but did not want to find. 

At first, there was a cracking underneath Simon’s foot, a small white bone. Then he found fabric, and more bones. Simon realised what he was looking at: the same clothes they were wearing on that grim day, a beautiful silver necklace and a small wooden doll. 

He had found the body of his beautiful wife Ysabeau and their darling daughter, Margot. 

Simon’s legs became weak while he clutched his heart. His wife had a puncture wound in the breast of her shirt, and he could tell they had been defiled by monsters scarier than those he himself faced.

Simon ran. He ran as fast as possible, away from his problems. He didn’t know if he was running in fear, anger, or out of the belief that somehow, he could return to a life where they were alive. He ran all the way through the forests and fields, through the barley and wheat, all the way back to his little stone hut. 

He felt as if cold, lifeless hands were tightening around his neck.. He ran through the door and slammed it behind him before looking at the shelf and sweeping the cast iron pots and wooden bowls to the ground. He smashed windows, broke chairs, and snapped the head off his scythe before he got to the bowls of gruel he had left on the table for his family. Unable to muster the strength to destroy his shrine, he sank to the cold floor and howled like a she-wolf being offed by her captor. And he closed his eyes as a familiar thumping sounded from the door.

“Come give me another useless tirade then Pierre!” as he stormed over to open the door. The door swung open. A nine-foot snarling man-beast with the legs of a goat, the body of a man, a whip-like tail and huge horns atop his grotesque head stood in front of Simon.

“Finally, come on then you son of a bitch!” He yelled before the beast pushed him against a wall.

Simon kicked the devil in the stomach and dived towards where he had collapsed. The cold steel of the scythe head filled Simon’s hand. He clawed up Satan’s back and squeezed his eyes shut while plunging the scythe into Satan’s putrid heart.

Simon’s eyes opened and he felt the trickle of liquid down his tunic. When he looked down, he saw the scythe head embedded in his own chest. The heat of his new rich red coat warmed him in the cold Hesdin winter as he slumped to the floor and closed his eyes, hoping he might not see demons, but instead the warm faces of Ysabeau and Margot.