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They say monsters don’t exists, that there are no beasts lurking in your closet when you as a child beg your father to check it one more time. But sadly they are wrong, they do exists and they seldom feel the need to make the life’s of those who knows they do easy. These things are what I seek to oppose, or in some cases kill and banish back to whatever place spawned them.
I learned this in ways I would not wish upon even my most hated enemy. But before I get ahead of myself a explanation is perhaps required. My name is Jonas and this is how my vigil came to be.

I was born in the mid west, in a small rural town where everyone knew everyone, I had a good enough childhood I suppose. I never lacked anything and never went hungry or uncared for, well expect for the normal things all young boys ask for.
School was a absolute drag, I wish not to slander the names of those I attended school with but sufficient to say I never had much in the way of fond feelings for them. Being interested in other things than football and the regular Saturday dance at the local youth club had a habit of making you a social pariah.
But when all is said it was something I survived without much trouble from anyone well almost. I never picked up the signals she sent me during class and lunch breaks.
Her name was Maria Steward, she was in many ways the complete opposite to myself, who was if one shall use stereo types a silent bookish type. While she was a outgoing girl who was liked by one and all. How she ever took a liking to me I never understood until years had passed.
As time passed however we drifted closer and soon by the time we finished our graduation year we ended up as a couple, time passed and we both found work. All was as good as I could ever have hoped for.
Until the horrid winter night of the 1990, I was making my way home in a fierce snow storm. Our home lay on the edge of town, near the beginning of the great tracts of farm land that bordered the town. Only a single car passed me by, a matt silver Ranger rover with glaring bluish headlights, while not a strange thing but still. It caught my attention.
I drove my trusty car up the drive way a strange sense of unease begun to filter into my whole body. Stepping on the pedal I finished the last hundred meters in less time than normal.
Grabbing my sheepskin jacket I stepped out into the snow and jogged up to the house. It was there I first begun to feel true unease, the snow cover steps up to our front door.
While fumbling for my keys I noticed that the door was unlocked. While somewhat less than normal noting to be worried I told myself. Standing in the small hallway while hanging up my jacket and kicking of the pair of worn boots I wore. It was the silence of the house that first made me tense, the radio was always on when Maria was home. She never could get enough of the thing. “Maria you home?” I called out as I entered the kitchen, it was then I saw her.
I will not describe what had happened to my dear Maria, sufficient to say that I realized she was beyond any help. The weeks that followed where noting but sorrow and somewhat blurry. The burial was a sad affair, I was noting more than a weeping wreck and so was her own kin.
But in all this there where dark images that haunted my mind, both when I was awake and when I slept uneasy plagued by horrid images and visions of what I had seen. The fang marks on her graceful neck and the gash on her chest.
According to both the police and medical staff who examined her body it had been a clear case of forceful entry followed by a gruesome act of violence, the case was closed with no clear resolution or killer cached by the long arm of the law.
I steadily drifted into a state of life less than optimal, I somehow managed to keep my job as a farm hand between spending the evenings drowning myself in cheap alcohol and cigarettes. When looking back at those dark weeks and months I wonder what kept me from putting an end to it all one way or the other.
One night I sat in my new home,a small and somewhat ragged apartment near the town plaza a knock on the door roused me from my uninterested gazing at the television.

I got up and threw on a shirt, and opened the door expecting to see some kind hearted samaritan standing there to check upon me. But instead a stocky woman accompanied by two large blood hounds stood there, in her left hand she held a big brown envelope while the other rested on the hilt of a huge Bowie knife.
I simply stared at this unexpected and somewhat scary late night visitor.
“Jonas before you slam the door shut and call the cops let me say I’m sorry to hear about your loss. Secondly what would you say if I offered you a chance to get the thing that killed your Maria. The name is Evelyn by the way” she finished and extended a hand marred with pale scars and nails with a pale yellowish taint to them, she reeked of smoke and a somewhat unpleasant animalistic smell.
I don’t recall exactly what I replied with, but Evelyn walked in followed by her two dogs who never left her side. But what I do remember is the content of the envelope she handed me before sitting down with her back to the wall.
Pictures of a thing I only thought existed in Hollywood films and folk tales, and pages upon pages of hand written notes. And what made me almost throw up and toss her out of my home, the pictures of Maria laying dead on the coroners table. I felt sick to my bones but also angry, oh how mad I felt.

“I don’t expect you to believe me, or what is in that envelope but if you do. I want to give you this chance to get the damned beast responsible for taking the life of your wife.” she said and light up a cigarette she had taken from my own pack laying on the table, she blew bluish smoke into the air while patting one of her dogs on the head.
I was to dazed to reply at once, I took a long hard sip of my glass of cheap bourbon and looked at her.
“So you mean to tell me this...thing killed my Maria because it wanted to rape her?”. I felt a shaking feeling grip me while tears treated to burst fourth.
“Yes”

“Well how the hell did the cops not say anything? Or the medical staff at the hospital!! For feths sake you mean to tell me a werewolf did this! If a seven feet wolf man is running around out there you think they would not tell us!”

“Because they don’t want to let the public know the things that we fear as a kids are real, and that they are powerless to defend the common Joe against it”

“And you don’t think this sounds somewhat crazy! Or far fetched? Lets say I believe you and I want to get this bastard. How would I track or let alone put down a rabid thing like that.”

“Well what you think, with a high power rifle. Cold steel and dogs.”

At some point I think my mind just gave out, between seeing Maria again on those crystal clear pictures and this hard as nails woman sitting in the ragged chair telling me monsters where real, I think I passed our or that my brain just decided this was more than it could handle at that time.
When I woke it was well past morning, and a cold sun cast rays of sun light in through eh window on my bed room. Somewhat groggy I sat up and looked around, cursing under my breath and I stumbled out of bed realizing I was still in the cloths I had worn last night. The smell of cheap booze and tobacco assailed my nostrils as I walked into the living room.
Slumping down on the sofa I noticed the envelope and a note. It said the following.
“The offer still stands, if you want. I will be in town for two more days, come find me at the dinner down the road.
Yours sincerely Evelyn.”

I sat there looking at the sad apartment that had become my dwelling since that gruesome night. A thousand thoughts swirled in my mind at once. Then the images begun to pass me by.
I got up and went to my bath, throwing cold water in my face and changing cloths I looked one last time in the mirror. The man looking back seemed a stranger to me, gone was the clean shaved face and well kept hair. Instead a unshaven and somewhat less than well tended face looked back, red eyes and skin showing the signs of a rather unhealthy diet of mostly alcohol and tobacco.
I closed the door and locked it, I walked down the stairs and knocked on the door of my land lords apartment.
To miss Anita I must have looked like a lost case, but she never mentioned whenever I meet her.
“Miss thanks for putting up with me, but you wont have to do it any more now.” I said and handed her the remaing part of my rent plus the keys. She looked puzzled at this before it set in
“Oh Jonas you moving?”

“No miss, I’m leaving town. I got things to settle of sorts.”

“I see well god bless you and safe travels.” she finished and gave me a hug, now why a woman like that wanted to hug a man like myself eluded me for a few weeks. Until I realized that just because you may loose faith in humanity other don’t.
I found Evelyn where the note said she would be, dressed in a hooded sweater and washed out denims and a pair of cowboy boots on her feet she looked like a different woman than last night.
I noticed she was sporting a mean bruise on her right hand and that she seemed as weary as I looked.
“ Well look who showed up, guess you should lay of the bourbon, I prefer beer myself.”
Sitting down opposite her I rested my hands on the dinner table and shook my head. I felt unsure of what to say but she beat me to it.
“You don’t need to say anything. If its any comfort I know it all to well.”
looking into her face I nodded, I had figured that much out.
“I want that bastard dead! And I want it to pay for the thing it did. No mater what it may take!”
she nodded and begun to gather the maps, notebooks and what not that she had layed out on the table.

We walked out into the biting cold wind of that February day, the sky was a battleship grey with the promise of snow. Her car was a massive GM truck with a beige paint. It awoke with a low rumble and the motor idled for a few minutes.
“I take it you are in for the kill so to speak” she said and pointed to the rifle case I had packed in the back. I simply nodded and not sure where to put my hands lit myself a smoke.
When I think back now on those words we shared it makes me shiver, how easy it was for me to cut what ties I had to the rest of society and become one of those people you see at roadside dinners. Who sits buried in maps and looking like hell. Most folks think us noting more than that kinda folks you don’t want to meet in a dark alley, when in fact. We are the things that keep you safe should you meet us in said alley.
I buried Evelyn near the border to Montana, she died while holding my hand and with her dogs by her side. But so did our prey.
I have strayed of the normal path of man, and taken up the vigil. To watch over those who can not stand up to the darkness that lurks, I will do so until the day that death claims me and I go to whatever rest awaits men and women like me.

That's a nice change of pace, Trondheim. Really quite evocative. Good work, fella!

Well thanks, I figured after a few sessions of the game who name this story has borrowed from. I quite enjoyed making this story I must say

As said above nice change and read.

I agree with Necroagogo, this story is really evocative. Excellently written.

Thank you all for the kind words, would of this sort be welcomed?

Sure, why not.

proof you can is above. Sorry but limited to just over a thousand characters on my phone.

Did you say more of this story is to come?

Sorry about the two posts, il move them tomorrow into my own thread, apollozies.

I have to agree with the above, great job mate!

No problem, I life to share with those a equal mind

Looks good. Just ask if you want some harsh criticism, overall it was great though there's one or two things you could tidy up.
The story was good for a first chapter, but it could do with either being expanded upon or having a plot twist added.

But overall, great!