It was a rainy day when we were moving from our town to Prague. I remember it as if it were today. The gloomy November weather did not add to our mood and although it was rainy, it was quite warm and there was no unpleasant wind. The apartment in an older apartment building had a nostalgic feel. It exuded nothing of what the people before us had experienced in it. Prague has great demands on a person, and fortunately here at home in our city there is already the opportunity to work in the same company as there, as they have opened their office here. Routine paperwork can be handled the same way wherever one lives and wherever one goes. But something strange is always happening here, something that happened in the old days of socialism. Children are disappearing under mysterious circumstances - both the very young and the slightly older ones, aged nine to ten, about the age of fourth-graders in elementary school. I remember, as I do today, that when we as classmates were coming home from school, we had to walk in groups of at least six or more. Even pupils from the upper grades had to follow such strict instructions. The children were threatened by some kind of beast, which always sought out the lonely pupils, after whom the earth seemed to have fallen forever. The Public Security (PS) was constantly patrolling the schools in the morning when the children arrived and also in the afternoon at a designated time, going round all the schools and kindergartens. Some necessary measures were put in place, such as a strict ban on going out with children after 10 pm, as the risk of a beast attack was particularly high in the evening and night. If anyone violated this regulation and left the house, it was at his own risk.
However, not much has changed between then and now. From time to time, a search is announced for another missing child from our town, but usually without successfully solving the case. There's no end to it... that abomination must have come from hell itself. No one has any idea what has happened and continues to happen to the abducted children. Insiders mostly talk about some sort of striga that unexpectedly flies in from above, like a bat swooping down from the night sky, about to hunt, and then circling in some space in which it has registered that it will succeed. Some people describe a woman dressed in a white and blue dress, others think she looks like a princess. Some people claim that the being appeared quite close to them and watched them. She is even said to have tried to say something to some of them. But it failed to form a single intelligible word. All that could be heard was a hiss, a grunt or a sort of faint squeak. Many claim that the apparition cannot speak human language.
A few decades have passed and it's still not stopping. Many of the inhabitants have got used to the suffering and do not even contradict the various regulations that are constantly changing. They honestly walk their children to and from school every morning and afternoon. On a few occasions in the past, police squads have also ventured into the nearby forests above the town, most of the time it has been an organised and planned intervention, but occasionally they have reacted defiantly to a given situation without any preparedness whatsoever.
Some of the policemen never returned, especially if they decided to act on their own. Nobody knows what happened to them. And that's why few will muster the courage to go looking for this "princess of death."
Life in our city slowly drags on like a summer sleigh ride. Childless couples live carefree, but those who have their offspring, they live in perpetual uncertainty and fear. But no one has yet come up with a realistic and meaningful plan to eradicate the bloodthirsty beast once and for all. The children, too, seem to have gotten used to the idea that strange occurrences are part of their lives, and they often play during the day by imitating the beast and making squeaky noises. People believed that during the day children were safer and basically nothing bad could happen to them. Our housing estate was overcrowded and there were plenty of children.
When it got dark in the evening, we often played in the corridors of the apartment block, chasing each other up the high staircase and running up to the eleventh floor. At the very top, where the engine room was located, we quietly watched the night world from high above, waiting for the striga to appear. It was enough that occasionally something would fly past the window, even if it was a night bird, and we would cry out in fear every time. It was our favourite night-time pastime in almost every block of flats in our housing estate. However, the fun ended every time we learned that one of our friends or a friend of ours, even from another part of our town, had disappeared. Then we didn't have the courage to go to the top of the staircase to the engine room. We were depressed by what had happened.
Even at home, our parents kept telling us not to linger by the window in our room in the evening. From Monday to Friday, still on the radio at seven o'clock in the evening, the announcer announced in a child's voice (so that we children would understand the gravity of the situation) where and in what part of the city one of our peers had just disappeared. VB kept patrolling among the apartment blocks with the beacons on, so that the striga would not dare to come near our dwellings. At first, the responsible leaders of our country tried with all their might to conceal what was happening in our city from the whole socialist bloc, especially the Soviet Union. On the one hand, so as not to create panic, on the other hand, it would have been a forced anti-publicity for the leadership in Moscow, which would certainly have been used in the Western world, and on the other hand, such pro-Western things were not allowed to happen in a socialist country, because life there was supposed to be an example for the whole world. But our city suffered because it lived for a long time under the terror of an unpredictable and cruel beast (an abomination in some people's eyes, but a beautiful woman in others'). Apart from our town, there has not been a single report of what is happening here anywhere else.
On one day they announced a curfew on the school's public address system first thing in the morning after school started. We knew immediately that something had happened again. Helenka, a pupil from the third B class, did not show up for school. And I adored her. I often watched her standing in the corridor in front of the classroom talking to her classmates.
Helenka was a blonde to white-haired girl with clear blue eyes and expressive lips. She was still dressed in her pioneer uniform, as we all were. Her blue skirt matched her white sneakers and her red scarf was always tied perfectly around her neck. Her nickname was Heli. I wondered if she tied the scarf herself every morning or if her mother helped her with it. The most pleasant memory of her that is etched in my mind has to do with the moment I stood leaning against the wall, my hand tapping on the radiator, because that was the first time she noticed me and smiled at me. The last time I remember her was when she came out of our class teacher's office carrying a small pot into the classroom. Meticulously groomed as always, a devoted pioneer, a member of the Socialist Youth Union. On the day she didn't make it to school, the principal and the teachers went through each classroom personally and counted the students. He wanted to to see if anyone else is missing. Around lunchtime we were allowed to come out of the classrooms for a break and walk around the school corridors. The honking of VB cars could be heard around the school. They didn't find a single trace of the missing Helen. After that day, I vowed that one day I would find that monster and count all the damage she had done. And for Heli's disappearance, I will murder her and throw her into the river that runs through our town. I guess that's the desire a lot of us had, to fight for justice and put down the striga.
After Helen's disappearance, the government ordered our city closed. For the first time, special police and defence forces came from the USSR to help.