Page 13 of Mortis

Said woods came into view as I turned onto Church Lane, home of Adler & Sons. The treeline stood at the end of the street where the tarmac curved sharply left, as though even the road itself wanted to keep its distance. Tall ash trees rose from the darkness like silent sentries.

“If red eyes linger in the dark,

Barrowfell Woods will claim your heart.”

I’d heard the rhyme my entire life. From playground bullies looking for an easy scare, or parents trying to stop their children wandering off. From teenagers huddled in the park, daring each other to venture between the trees at night.

Still, ridiculous or not, the legend had done its job.

Blackthorn natives didn’t enter the woods. Especially after dark, and definitely not alone.

Hikers had been going missing there for decades, at least since the sixties when rumours of the notorious Satyr first began to spread. And the ones who were found usually weren’t in much of a state to tell their story. Most were reduced to little more than a severed limb or a body so badly mutilated it was barely recognisable.

The tale of the Satyr didn’t scare me. Not like my grandparents or the rest of the town might’ve hoped. Hell, Arlo hadn’t even been born here and he’d still given Barrowfell Woods the proverbial middle finger after hearing the stories, vowing never to step foot beyond the treeline.

Instead, I’d been left with a sick sort of fascination.

While studying to become an embalmer, I’d spent far too many hours digging through newspaper archives and requesting police reports under the guise of academic research. Some of the photographs still lived rent-free in my head. The bite marks were the strangest part, since they weren’t human. They didn’t match any known animal, and according to the reports, nobody had ever managed to identify them.

Then there were the chunks of missing flesh. Not neatly cut, but roughly torn. Almost like the bodies had been . . . eaten. By what, or by whom, nobody seemed able to say.

My eyes drifted towards the Adler & Sons sign, growing larger with every step, and I shook my head. A monster with horns and hooves. Honestly, even the idea of it sounded ridiculous. I worked with corpses for a living, but I wasn’t a huge believer in the supernatural.

Sure, I believed in ghosts and spirits. The possibility that there might be something after death. But man-eating monsters with glowing red eyes wandering around the woods?

Total bullshit.

Whoever had invented the story was probably somewhere laughing themselves silly. The treeline was covered in warning signs, for Christ’s sake. The legend was what drew hikers, ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, and every other flavour of weirdo to Blackthorn in the first place. And while the rest of the town blamed some mythical creature lurking in the woods for the missing people, I’d developed my own theory.

A cannibalistic serial killer.

It wasn’t exactly a better explanation, but it felt marginally more believable.

Then again, if it was a serial killer, they’d be getting on a bit by now. Either that or they’d recruited an apprentice. Maybe there was some sort of cannibal succession plan I didn’t know about.

I never claimed my theories were rational.

As I approached Adler & Sons’ front door, it became immediately obvious something was wrong. The exterior handle had been ripped off entirely, and wood around the lock hung in splintered chunks.

“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered, switching on my phone torch and crouching for a closer look.

My fingertips brushed the damaged wood, then the gouges.

Deep ones.

“Did they use a crowbar or something?”

Straightening, I frowned at the brass handle lying on the ground. The metal looked warped, not bent. Crushed, like someone had wrapped a fist around it and squeezed.

A cold prickle ran down the back of my neck.

This wasn’t the local teenagers’ usual handiwork, and it definitely wasn’t Mr Grainger.

I made yet another mental note to talk to my grandad about finally installing the metal shutters he insisted we didn’t need.

The door creaked softly in the breeze, tapping against the frame. With a sigh and a silent prayer that I wasn’t about to be murdered on entry, I pushed it open and stepped inside.

“Swear to god,” I grumbled to myself and the bodies I hoped were still in the fridges. “If I find a coffin missing or the safe empty, I’m going to scream.”