The agent occasionally peeks into the file. Apparently, he was comparing my current testimony with what is in the file. I didn't mind and continued talking. I finished after more than an hour and was still wondering if I had forgotten something. Actually, I had deliberately left something out. An event that affected me personally.
"That's it," I concluded, but after a brief hesitation I added, "I didn't mention the name of my classmate from next door who disappeared without a trace. We called her Heli. It was after her disappearance that high officials of the regime at the time contacted Moscow with the intention of asking for help. Agents and various defense forces from the Soviet Union and also our police officers organized a big action - a hunt for the striga. But I have no idea how this military operation turned out. Firstly, the operation itself was secret and secondly, I was too young to understand it at the time, so I do not know the outcome. The adults I have heard talking about it have said that the operation did not go as expected and was not successful. Whatever the outcome was, I would like to know it."
When I finished describing the events, the agents just closed my file and stood to aleave.
"So thank you very much for your cooperation and for your time. You have done a great deal to resolve this matter. We will keep you informed if things move forward. Don't be alarmed if we appear here again. Either us or someone else from us. We regard you as a collaborator, since you have already had direct experience with the object of our interest. Although we don't yet know who or what it is, it's early days. But your description of the events concerning the striga, or ohava as you called it in your childhood, will certainly help us."
They left and I sat on the bed for a while. I remembered the horror I had experienced and Helen. I went through old albums and found black and white photos from elementary school. But I didn't find Helen there. She didn't go to our class. It was only this time, after all these years, that I realized I had no memory of her. She remained in my memory as I used to see her standing with her classmates in the hallway. But when I imagined how Helen had ended, I felt anger, bitterness, mentally cursing that vile striga for taking her away from me. I don't know or want to imagine what she did to Helen. Poor little Heli. If the striga came my way today, I wouldn't control myself, and despite her indestructibility, I would at the very least roll her over with something or impale her with a wooden stake like a vampire. Whatever she is, I hate her. Maybe even for letting me live. She could have taken me for Heli, at least I would have died with her. It's too late now. For me and for her. No one's gonna help anybody anymore. Except... ...an idea came to me... ...the only way to get revenge on Striga. But how?! When not even the Soviet defence forces could do it with a tank at their backs. How could I alone do any justice and at the same time take revenge on the abominable Striga. Now it seems impossible. Maybe not even fatal. After all, no one knows how the operation carried out in collaboration with Moscow ended.
After less than a month, the agents showed up at my house again and proposed cooperation. They wanted me to lead them on the trail of the abomination and they would try to catch it. They already had some clues as to where, according to old records, she might be approximately. They picked out some spots in the woods above our town, out of the tourist zone. The area in question is pretty rough, dense forest with bad terrain. The plan they worked out was quite interesting, except that I was to go first as a decoy. So I hesitated and took one more day to think about it. I debated for a long time whether to go for it. Maybe it was high time to end the striga once and for all, so that we could finally live happily ever after. That's because even in the last ten years, several children from our town and surrounding areas have disappeared, although it has continued to be kept secret, the information not reaching the public. An old file from the time of the former socialist regime made the current agents aware of the whole situation in our town and led them on the trail. And I was to be an important part of the search. I was supposed to cooperate with the police, because for some unknown reason the striga had left me alive. I often wondered what had put her off. Why did she suddenly drop me on the couch, then disappear and not focus on me anymore? Even the previous Secret Service agents didn't want to believe me that this was how it went down, because if the striga had claimed a child, surely it had disappeared without a trace. It didn't happen that any but me survived her visit. These agents didn't like my story much either, but it was up to them see that they are determined to prepare a plan for a police operation aimed at eliminating a beast that murders people.
Although I was quite hesitant at first, I eventually agreed to play my part in the upcoming operation. Several times I had to report to the police station in the city, where the agents and I discussed the course of action over and over again. At the end of the month, preparations began to be made for the technical support of the whole team and we rehearsed the different roles of each member.
January was extremely cold and a lot of snow fell. At the beginning of the month, we went with police agents to inspect the terrain in the woods above our town. Entering the forest was very problematic. We were often up to our knees in snow. We waded through it with difficulty, falling through it or falling on our backsides, looking ridiculously like baby animals just learning to walk. As we walked through the almost impassable stretches between the trees, we were whipped around by twigs or our clothes caught on them. Occasionally in the distance we could hear the hissing, baying or howling of some forest animals. According to the map, there should be a small cave in this area, if it can be called that, or rather a small cavity in the rock. The cave does not yet have a name, nor is it captured in the existing list of caves.
This time, however, we didn't go deeper into the woods. We just wanted to find out what section we could go to and from where we had to tread on our own. After a partial tour of the terrain, we headed back to town. At the police station we warmed up with hot tea, once again familiarized ourselves with the plan of the whole event and looked at the map. It was decided that the search operation would start the next day at six o'clock in the evening. Everything was planned with the assumption that the striga would show up. I returned home to rest after a hard day in the cold weather, when we were full of uncertainty and worry about whether our plan would succeed. I fell asleep on the couch in the living room. I dreamt that the striga came into my room again, grabbed me by the neck and strangled me. She had an inhuman face and without mercy, she picked me up in the air again and then dropped me back on the couch. The other parts of my dream dissolved into space-time, a dimension unknown to us.
I spent the next day at home mentally preparing for the evening's action. I alternated between different feelings, from uncertainty and anxiety, through fear and nervousness, to determination to achieve the impossible. As I was aware that previous searches and efforts to destroy the beast had turned out to be a fiasco, it didn't give me much hope that I would be the one to find and defeat it, albeit with the support of the special police unit that was supposed to be always at my back. There was really no telling how this was all going to turn out.
At four o'clock in the afternoon the agents came to me. We knew what the procedure was and who had what to do. I was given a walkie-talkie in my kit and we still arranged some signs in case the striga appeared prematurely. Everything was prepared down to the last detail. We took an all-terrain vehicle to the spot we had scouted out the day before. In the rear-view mirror I saw that three armoured cars had pulled up behind us. Apparently the commander of the whole action came out of one of them. He was dressed in an all-black uniform with a bulletproof vest. He took a pair of binoculars in his hand and peered into the distance. I figured he had it adjusted for night vision. On the road through the woods he could see quite well, as the moon was shining and more snow was falling, thus clearing the way.