The silence inside the chapel’s nave was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.
Every single resident stared at me, hanging on my every word after my exclamation.
Without wasting a second, I bolted down the stairs, parted the crowd, and stationed myself right in the center of the room, facing the Mother Superior and the sheriff.
Under the terrified gazes of the assembly, I drew my weapon at a blistering speed.
Bang!
Bang!
Two deafening blasts shattered the air.
One bullet straight through the nun’s head.
One bullet straight through the sheriff’s head.
Their bodies collapsed heavily onto the stone floor tiles.
A collective shriek of horror erupted from the crowd.
The other nuns threw themselves backward, while the villagers, driven mad by rage and panic, began to encircle me, ready to lynch me.
Facing their makeshift weapons pointed right at me, I calmly brought my gun back into position, a smirk playing on my lips, and began counting out loud:
“Three… two… one…”
Behind me, the corpses of the sheriff and the nun suddenly began to convulse.
Their limbs elongated, their flesh tore apart, unleashing sharp claws and gaping maws from the shadows.
Before the stunned eyes of the residents, who scrambled backward screaming, the two leaders finally revealed their true faces: they were Calamities.
“Just a little longer… and they would have been ours!
We were going to devour them to perfection!” the transformed nun spat, her voice distorted by hunger.
I tucked one hand into my pocket, completely unfazed by the monsters:
“Why wait so long before attacking?”
“We absolutely relish humans on the verge of losing their minds…” she ecstatically hissed, unfurling her monstrous, webbed wings.
“When they no longer understand a single thing that’s happening… That exact moment… we absolutely LIVE for it!”
The sheriff-creature, on its end, shook its massive head, growling toward its sister:
“It’s this idiot of a sis who ruined everything.”
“No, I’m positive it was you, bro.
You were already pathetic as a sheriff,” she shot back.
“It’s true… She really is the one who ruined everything,” I chimed in, fueling their argument.
“See?” the sister said, turning toward me, flattered.
“But as a sheriff… you were impressive,” I continued, addressing the brother.
“Seriously.
One could truly feel the hard work behind it.”
“Do you want to know my secret?” the sheriff-Calamity asked, proudly puffing out its chest.
“With pleasure,” I replied, calmly pulling out a notebook.
The sister-Calamity then dealt a violent slash of her claws right behind his head:
“Stop fraternizing with the enemy, you moron!”
The chapel turned into absolute chaos.
The residents ran in all directions to find an exit, but the brother-Calamity stood before the main doors to block their way out.
I didn’t hesitate for a millisecond.
I raised my weapon and squeezed the trigger twice.
The sister dodged the first bullet with a fluid motion, but the second one wasn’t aimed at her: it cleanly severed a metal cable hanging from the ceiling.
With a sinister screech, a heavy wooden stake attached to the woodwork slammed down from the ceiling, instantly impaling and pinning the male monster against the wall.
“Run!” I shouted to the residents, who flooded through the breach.
I spun on my heels and sprinted toward the stairs leading to the chapel’s roof.
The sister-Calamity, drunk on rage, took off after me.
I bounded up the steps four at a time, firing several bullets backward to slow her down.
Reaching the roof balcony, I slammed the heavy iron door shut, but she struck it with a blow so monumental that the structure exploded.
The shockwave sent me crashing violently to the floor.
I lay flat on my back, panting under the rain, with the balcony railing right behind me.
The creature approached slowly, savoring her victory.
“Before I kill you,” she hissed, “I want you to tell me how you managed to expose us.”
I raised my head slightly, a provocative smile on my lips:
“Fine.
Since I’m about to die, I might as well reveal everything to you.”
I took a deep breath, my eyes gleaming with malice:
“First, when I went to question the resident closest to the sheriff, he assured me he had never seen any creatures.
Except I claimed I had found his name in a witness registry… a registry that never existed.
I completely made it up just to test your reactions.
And you took the bait.”
The monster’s eyes widened.
Four were easy to guess: the sheriff, his assistant, the nun’s assistant, and the farmer himself.
But the fifth one?
It belonged to someone else.
And finally, the finishing blow…
I hadn’t revealed my name or Alya’s to anyone in this cursed village.
Yet, you called us ‘Eden’ and ‘Alya’ the very first time we met.”
The Calamity stepped back, dumbfounded.
“That was enough for me to realize that Alya had figured you out, and that you had set a trap to get her out of the way,” I concluded, slowly pulling myself up against the edge of the balcony.
The creature froze, a cruel sneer on her lips:
“Next time, we’ll be more careful.
Any last words before you die, hunter?”
I raised an eyebrow, staring at her hideous face:
“Yeah.
You look like a dick-sucking bitch.”
She let out a furious roar and lunged at me, claws bared.
At that exact instant, I raised my arm and fired a bullet straight into the sky.
The signal.
Down below in the courtyard, the former sheriff’s son ripped away the tarp concealing a gargantuan, custom-made defense crossbow.
“Fire!” he shouted.
The mechanism snapped with a dull thud.
The giant projectile flew at a wild speed, slicing through the air with surgical precision.
The immense bolt pierced the Calamity mid-air, violently impaling her against the chapel wall.
At the same time, down below, the brother managed to break free from his trap.
In a desperate surge, he smashed through a section of the wall, grabbed his wounded sister, and both took flight, soaring away into the dark clouds.
“You won this time, Eden… but next time, we will kill you all!” the sister shrieked before striking her brother mid-flight.
“This is all your fault, you idiot!”
I watched them recede into the sky, then quietly lit a cigarette, a satisfied smile on my lips.
“In my entire life, I have never let a target slip away…”
I paused, scanning the horizon, then muttered in a low voice:
“Your turn, Alya.”
Suddenly, a blinding shadow cut through the air from the top of the bell tower.
Alya leaped forward, slicing through the balcony railing in her trajectory.
At a truly divine speed, she fell upon the two monsters mid-air.
In a masterful flash of lightning, her black blade reduced them to shreds.
The remnants of the Calamities dissolved into dust.
Silence finally returned to Happy.
The dome of clouds seemed to almost clear up.
I glanced at my watch and exhaled a puff of smoke:
“Thirty minutes.
New record.”
Back inside the chapel, the residents had gathered, dazed.
One of them stepped forward, trembling:
“But…
you told us they weren’t the culprits!”
“Yes, that’s right,” I replied, walking across the nave.
“Because they weren’t the only culprits.”
Right then, a silhouette emerged from the dimness of the underground rooms.
The former sheriff stepped forward, very much alive.
The crowd instantly exploded into angry shouts:
“He owes us explanations!”
“You pactised with monsters!
Traitor!”
I raised my hand, enforcing silence with a firm gesture:
“Calm down.
If he hadn’t done it… none of us would be standing here today to talk about it.”
A heavy silence fell once more.
I took the floor to explain the truth behind this tragedy:
“One day, the Calamities came here.
They made a proposition to the former sheriff: play their cruel game, or watch his son get devoured before his eyes.
Like any father would have done… he accepted.
The deal was simple: one resident sacrificed per season.
That’s what the farmer had eventually found out.
But over time, the Calamities grew greedier. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
They even forced the former sheriff to write me that invitation letter to draw me here.
An offer you couldn’t refuse, as they put it.”
I turned toward the sheriff’s son, the potter:
“The sheriff and his son were hiding the victims’ bodies in the chapel’s underground to cover up the murders.
And you… it was you, the son, who helped the Calamity escape into the forest after I trapped it with my electric wires.
While guiding it, you tore your clothes.
Those are the exact tears I noticed when I joined you.
Your footprints were also next to the corpse in the forest.”
The young man lowered his eyes, crushed by guilt.
“That’s why the moment I spoke with you in the chapel, I trapped both of you.
I told you that if you wanted to make amends for what you and your father did, you had to cooperate with me so we could make it out alive.
I asked you to go and arm the great crossbow on the roof the moment you stepped out.
Without that, I was dead.
So… thank you, kid.
But if you truly want to be forgiven… it’s time to rebuild this village of survivors now.”
The former sheriff stepped up beside his son, took off his hat, with tears in his eyes:
“I am sorry.
Everything is my fault.
I will never be able to forgive myself…”
Some villagers drew knives to rush him, but I stepped in one last time, my gaze dark:
“Enough!
He made a terrible choice, but he did it to save lives.
If he hadn’t, you would all have been dead since day one.
Thanks to his sacrifice, you are still here.”
The case was finally coming to an end.
Sometime later, Alya and I had regained our freedom.
We were now settled on our wagon, traveling through the open desert, leaving Happy far behind us.
On the dusty trail, the roar of an engine echoed out.
A massive all-terrain vehicle approached and pulled up right beside us.
Inside, an extremely muscular man with a left arm made entirely of metal greeted us with a wide smile.
“Lamar!” I called out, smiling.
“Hey, Eden.
It’s been a while,” he replied, cutting the engine.
“What have you been up to?”
“Starting a new job.
I decided to stop hunting Calamities,” Lamar said, shrugging his shoulders.
“Wasn’t it rather Elena who forced you to?” I said, bursting into laughter.
“You know me too well,” Lamar grunted with a smile, before glancing toward my partner.
“Still as beautiful as ever, Alya, I see.
Could you give us a lift?
We received an emergency signal in the sector, we have to get moving.”
Lamar immediately thought: “If I don’t hurry, Elena is going to kill me…”
But before he could even voice his answer, Alya and I had already hopped in and taken our spots in the back of his off-roader.
I patted the car’s frame, laughing:
“Are you stalling or what, Lamar?
Let’s move!”
As the vehicle sped across the sand dunes, a silhouette appeared in the distance on a ridge, waving wildly in our direction with their arms.
Lamar narrowed his eyes, trying to lip-read the person from afar:
“Wait…
is he saying ‘Careful… there’s sand in the sea’?”
“No way!” I burst out, hilarious.
“He’s saying: ‘Bless you.
There’s a Calamity in the sand!'”
“Man, we are seriously terrible at this lip-reading game…” Lamar replied.
Suddenly, the ground began to vibrate violently beneath the wheels of the off-roader.
The dunes exploded.
An immense, armored monster mouth, gigantic and terrifying, surged from the depths of the desert, lunging straight at our vehicle to swallow us whole.
In a single burst of panic, our voices synchronized into a unanimous scream:
“WATCH OUT, THERE’S A CALAMITY IN THE SAND!!!”