It was christmas eve, in 1866 when a christian woman Matilda Herrings got violently attacked. Or so she claims. No evidence was found of violence. No bruises, scratches, wounds. Only her story. When she was laying on her bed and questioned for the details about this attacker, he couldn't tell what he looked like. But she referred her attacker as "it", not he.
People of the town lit their torches and torchlights and armed themselves what ever they could find. Some with guns, other with pitchforks and even with kitchen knives. Search lasted for a month, but nothing out of ordinary could be found what could be this mysterious attacker.
Towns elder started to question, if one member of their community would have done this heinous attack. Maybe drunken after a day, but they did not find any evidence against no one or couldn't accuse anyone for the attack so it was speculated, that maybe some outsider or wandering traveller had did this.
With no evidence, physical harm on woman or anything to make fuss about the hunting for attacker withered and was forgotten.
A month or two later woman was found pregnant. Without previous children and his husband dead for five years for a mill accident woman started again to blame, that the seed she is carrying is from "it", the mysterious unsolved attacker. No one believed, and they thought now that woman tried to cover up her adultery, and she was spitted and outcast for giving her widow body for a stranger in a sinful lust.
Woman had to live alone, without support from his community. He was nearly forgotten for the sin he was committed.
The day came, when woman gave birth alone all by herself in late 1866. She had a baby boy, but soon woman realised, it was not normal boy. She hurried to town crying for a doctor and even though villagers told doctor to leave woman in sin alone, doctor couldn't but do his deed and listen to woman and he decided to look the baby. It was ethical way to do. But even though doctor was a respected member of society, from that night he was looked at suspiciously as he lost his reputation helping this sinned woman.
What doctor Matthew Smiths found, no one clearly knows. He did not write any official document about his inspection, but someone from the village has written:
And the boy was horrible. Not deformed as freaks you see in the circus, but something else. His head was not in right shape, eyes closed and ears a bit pointed. Guess there was little hard spots on his forehead, not bigger than the tips of my finger. Boy was of a strange color, what I don't know better of.
But the worst appearance of this boy was his back. Where his spine ended, there was skin flap like a small tail of a beast. And in his back, I heard him tell me, was wings.
No one knows who this writer is, and is it fictious or documental. It is speculated that "him" that writer referres is the doctor, and the writer would have heard this story from the doctor, maybe after few stiff's in a local pub.
It is also told, that local priest cursed the woman and her deformed bastard child, some rumors tell, that it was local witch, as priest was too afraid to go see a child what was told to be demon spawn.
No question, the village believed now that woman was violently attacked. Not by a man, but a demon or devil himself.
In 1874 the cattle was attacked at a ranch nearby. All of twenty sheeps were brutally killed and gutted. Butcher told, that it was not a knife used, but more likely talons or claws. Wolfhunt begun, but no wolves were found in the area. Killed sheeps remained a mystery. Whispers told, that it was same demon which attacked woman, or it was actually that child himself.
At this point no one had seen the woman or the deformed bastard boy anymore. They were forced to move away from the village, and were known to live nearby at a deserted old hunting hut.
It was 1876 when first human was killed in the streets of the village during night. Again, marks indicated wolf attack, but now people accused demon boy straight away and lit their torches and marched to that old abandoned hunting hut in the dawn. No questions, they just set the hut on fire and watched it burn, as priest chanted his prayers.
Villagers decided to keep their mouths shut about woman, demon baby and the arseny. "Tis' the way it should be," they told eatch other to make it right. "Ye must burn witch, it's the way it's always been."
People avoided the place where hut was burned down and told their children, that their sould would wither and they'd go to Hell if they go near the hut. So the hut's remainings were left alone, and village went back to normal life.
Some might say, that villagers killed innocent woman who did give birth to a child who got his life in violent attack from a male, and all superstition were just religious zealot. But it did not end there. It was just the beginning.
Few years after when village had it's peace during bright daytime they heard horrible scream outside the village. They did not know was it a man or an animal, but it was creepy enough to have attention. Night after the day it was raining hard when men in the pub saw a lady walk to the door. She was all wet, and her skin was ash gray. Her long dark hair looked like partially burned and her clothes were ragged and dirty. One of men told woman to go away, the pub is men's place, not women to set their foot in. Woman just stared them and grinned.
"You, are you proud of yourself? Burning down innocent and defenceless woman's and her baby boy's house? You, god fearing men, who tell yourself you are good christians tried to commit a murder?" Men gasped.
"Did you succeed or not?" Woman asked.
One of the men, Timmy Borgan escaped, and it is accounted that after those words pub's fireplace flamed and set it in fire. All doors and windows suddenly shut and could not be opened. Man did not know how he got out, but everyone inside the pub were burned to death and there was not much left of the building either. Man told, that maybe he was ment to stay alive to tell the story.
It was suspected, that maybe the man who survived was too shocked by the accident and was delusional. But in his death bed he insisted that he tells the truth.
Matilda Herrings was not seen since.
Timmy Borgan was old man and very ill several years later, when nurse downstairs heard him scream:
"It's the demon spawn! He is here to take revenge! Oh God give mercy for my soul and save me!" When nurse hurried upstairs rooms window was open and curtains waving. Man was laying on his bed his throat slit open. The wound was too rough to be from a knife and there was no way a beast could have got into the room what might have done that kind of damage.
But this was just only the beginning. One by one, people started to die. Those of old age in the village. They did not die in natural death, but allways ripped by a beast. Rumors started to roam to say, that Devil Boy was killing everyone who were involved in the arseny. They all died one by one by clawings even in places animals and beast have no access to. Some also claimed to see this "beast not a man nor animal, but a demon" in the village before or after deaths.
Panic started, as people believed that the deformed boy was actually a half demon, half human as they have expected back then. They knew in their heart, that it was a revenge it was after. Everyone was scared and hours before dusk they locked themselves in their houses and waited spooked by every little voice. But it was the elderly who died. At first.
Younger people started to move away at that point. They had borned in that community, lived their lives there and planned to die there, but nightly terror and murders were too much for them. Village started to wither. Elderly people was brutally murdered, younger people moved away and who were left were nerve wrecked. There was nothing left but church for them, but when old priest was murdered in his very own chapel, the villagers knew they were doomed.
Those who were left or stayed in the village died. Not a normal death, but everyone was clawed to death. Village was now deserted. Everyone murdered by this beast or moved away.
You can today find that village, or what's left of it but strangely there are no good documentations of it. Little is known who has lived there, or who has died.
At this point, devil boy was forgotten. He was not even an urban legend, just a story, almost no one knew. And those who left the village, did not talk about it.
But the murders did not stop there. When the village was destroyed, first died brutally in the New York streets. Police claims it to be assault, possibly robbery but still wounds stayed unexplained. Too rough to be knife made. Official explanation is, that it was a large dog robber had with him, but still the wounds didn't match.
When similar murders started to occur across the continent, FBI started to investigate how are those murders related. And they indeed were related, by blood. Seemed that every killed person was connected by relations or blood to this deserted village with next to none of information. Also at the places the murders occured, urban legends of a weird creature started. Half man, half demon with horns, wings, tail and talons. Like a humane devil.
Of course they were not taken seriously by FBI, but as just legends around the murders. But when private investigator, journalist Jimmy Smiths started to dig deeper into this urban legend, he was astouned and shocked. He was sure, that this is just a legend as it had not real documentary in the history, only words and a nameless letter describing a devil boy with no eye-witness account from the writer himself, he found out that he is a distant relative to a doctor named Matthew Smiths.
Then he started to study relationships and families of murdered people, and tracked their family ties back to the village. He then found out, that the monster in urban legend is like deformed baby born in the village, and how he was described in anonymous account. Similarities couldn't be coincidence.
Few years later, Jimmy Smiths was found ripped apart in his office at work the next morning he stayed at work late night. His studies were classified by the FBI.
For Roleplaying Game
Demon boy, sounds like an urban legend, but it might be true. Still, if it was just a story, how would one explain the murders in different parts of the continent and the fact, that all similarly killed people are in the way or another relatives back to the village? History tells, that there is no single natural death for these people. All were killed early by accident or murder, not even by dicease.
That might be the mystery characters might be solving.
Or maybe character/s is/are relative to the villagers, and people from his family start to die. One by one in unnatural ways. And he starts to investigate, what is going on.
Character or characters might even be in FBI or similar branch and take this mystery to solve. They might be in X-Files type of sect, unexplained mysteries type of sect or ordinary crime investigators.
And the Demon Boy? Deaths and villages undocumented history are just too strange. So is Demon Boy in modern world and it is like any other urban legend except this has a pattern. If Demon Boy was real, is he immortal or does he age slower than ordinary human? Is he just deformed human after revenge, or really supernatural monster? Or is it just a creative killer making legend true?
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