That Lunar Demon

Scratch had heard stories of the demon as a child. As an adult he still heard them. They all did. The elders passed down the tales of their lost loved ones to the youngest of the tribe while those caught in the middle dealt with the truth of the matter as best they could.

Countless generations had lived in under the watchful eye of that wretched beast. The few who had seen it for themselves and lived to tell the tale were rarely if ever the same afterwards, and the number of those who hadn't survived their own encounters with it was unfathomable.

Despite what might as well have been an eternity of unsuccessfully battling and safeguarding themselves from the horror entirely, Scratch's village and those nearby had come to understand certain truths about their oppressor. The mythology of the being spoke of it as a massive, winged creature. Silent in the night. Unwavering in its pursuit of dispensing death across the land.

Some said that the beast had made a pact with the moon itself, promising to gather sacrifices to it in exchange for immortality. Scratch had never believed those stories. He knew all too well of the danger that existed in the shallows of the forest and past them into the surrounding fields.

As a child, he had seen the crumbling wooden castle that the demon had made its home.

As a child, he had seen what became of those who ventured out where the demon could see them.

The memories were at times too much to bear. Scratch pushed them from his mind as best he could, just like he had the pleas of his wife to stay home that night. Violet had lost family to the beast as well. She too had seen what became of him. The wretched mass of former flesh that the creature left behind could only be identified as her loved ones by the scraps of fur that once adorned her mother's shimmering summer coat. It was what Violet's mother had always been most proud of, after her children. Violet didn't want to be the sole survivor of another family tragedy. She told Scratch that they could have another son, another daughter, as many children as he wanted, just so long as he wouldn't go after the two that had wandered out past the trees.

Scratch used to think he loved his wife more than anything in the world. He thought about the song she was singing when they first met. The look in her eyes when she realized he was eavesdropping by accident. The way her hair felt as he ran his fingers through it late at night. But that was all in the past, back in the home they made with one another in their village. Scratch's present was quickly approaching the edge of the forest, and in his present he could not stop loving his children.

The twins had to still be alive. They were. The idea that something could have happened to them wasn't one that Scratch ever let enter his mind. Not like his meandering thoughts about what it was he might be running towards. Scratch wasn't afraid. He knew all of the stories, all of the myths, and everything he had seen with his own eyes when he was young. He knew that the demon's castle overlooked a vast expanse of flat, open land. But a castle has walls, and the monster that lived within them could only have so many eyes. No matter how well it could see between the trees and unkempt fields between its keep and the forest, there were places to hide, and the twins were better at that than anyone else.

Scratch saw the moonlight breaking through the edge of the tree line just ahead of him and slowed his pace. There were only so many clear paths to the castle, and the twins would never have wandered anywhere someone from a neighboring borough might see them. Scratch was certain that his children would have taken the Eastern most route, up towards the lone cluster of rocks he would climb to use as a lookout during the cool autumn days of his childhood. It had been the only safe place from which to gaze upon the castle back then, all the way up until the day bodies were found nearby in the twilight hours. After that the villagers stopped venturing out so far. For the children of those who remembered those days the towering castle and the impossible expanse which it oversaw would be relegated to the stories they heard. It didn't surprise Scratch that his children had ventured off in the night to see it for themselves.

As the rocks came into view, Scratch focused on the sounds beyond his own feet frantically connecting with the ground. He heard nothing else as he scrambled up to the top of the old lookout, praying along the way that he would find any sight of his children. From the top of the rocks he could see everything that lie beneath the old castle, yet there was no sign of the twins.

Something snapped in the distance.

"DADYYYYYYY!" a voice cried out from the shadows.

Scratch turned to see the twins, huddled together beneath the lookout. He wanted to go to them. He wanted to run back to the village with them in his arms even faster than he had left.

"DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!" the twins shrieked in discordant unison.

Scratch followed his children's eyes to the skies above him. Finally he saw it. The monster that had taken so many was above him, and just as the stories he had never believed in said, it bore the moon itself as an unblinking mask. Its round, wide, silvery face would have been hypnotic if not for the speed at which it was coming closer.

Scratch looked down to his children with dread in his eyes. He didn't have to say a word to them. It was understood what they needed to do. In an instant the two were off back into the forest, and Scratch was back to facing the gruesome fate that was headed his way. Scratch heard the twins hurrying home, though he dared not watch them go while that lunar demon approached him. It had only been seconds, but the beast was already so close. There was no time left to think, and there was no way to fight.

This was it.

This would be his death.

Scratch tried to hold firm, but instincts took over as the horror closed in on him from above. One deep breath, one frightened leap from the rocks, one last prayer that he might somehow live to see his children again. Scratch felt one of the behemoth's talons graze his back as he dove out of its way. He didn't see what happened, but he heard the thud as his own body hit the ground below, just as he felt the impact of the monster on the jagged face of the lookout.

Every muscle in his body told him to run, but Scratch found himself frozen in place. He couldn't leave until he looked back towards the rocks. Blood adorned their edges. The pain coursing through his back was deafening, though it wasn't enough to keep him from pushing his way back up the rocks. Scratch had to know. He had to see it for himself.

There at the edge of the forest, caught halfway on the rocks leading back from the lookout was the body of the beast. Its torso was broken. Blood pooled out from its abdomen, and though Scratch could see the creature taking its final breaths, he could tell they were just that. Scratch waited there, never taking his eyes off of the demon until the last of its life was spent.

Something else snapped nearby.

Scratch spun on his heels, ready to attack whatever the next great threat to his people might be.

There was not threat. Instead, Scratch found one of the rabbits from a neighboring village staring at the bloody scene that had been concluded there at the edge of the forest.

"Is... is it really...?" the rabbit stammered out, incapable of completing its question.

"Aye," Scratch growled back, "The fiend is dead."

Scratch could see the wheels turning behind the rabbit's own eyes. They lit up once the realization had set in.

"You did it," the rabbit exclaimed. "You... you really did it. He did it!" the rabbit couldn't help but scream as it rushed through the trees.

Scratch couldn't help but wonder how, as he too wrapped his mind around what had just transpired. Scratch couldn't see the rabbit any longer, but he could hear them spreading the news to every village in earshot as it disappeared into the forest.

"Scratch the mouse has saved us! The barn owl is dead!" the rabbit cried.

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