On the fourth day of the fourth month in the year of Our Lord, eighteen hundred and fifteen, more than three weeks after the fête, the monster came to the village of Gaillemarde.
Willem’s mother always said that four was an accursed number. That it was the sign of death. And so it was.
But it was not a monster, just a saur. Neither devil nor demon, not mythical nor fantastical. A creature of flesh and blood: a wild creature from a wild and dangerous world.
It came at night, hunting in the moonlight.
First to be taken was Angélique Delvaux, the eldest daughter of the schoolmaster. She was walking back from the nearby township, well after midnight. There was no shame in what she had been doing. Wars had ravaged this part of the world for more than a decade. The country was like its people: emaciated, cadaverous. It was a time of great hardship. There were few in the village who could count on food for the next day.
Yet a young woman of a certain age could return from nearby Waterloo with a purse that jangled with coin. No one would judge her for it. If anything, those with empty tables and bellies envied those with something ripe and luscious to sell.
It would be many weeks before the remains of Angélique’s naked, maggot-ridden body were found.