A trickle of gray smoke rose from two village chimneys. As they got closer it seemed more and more strange that the other houses were empty, or that the women hadn't lit the fire, at least to make dinner. The rigors of the season especially forced the very young and the elderly not to stray too far from a source of heat, at dusk.
The suspicion grew uneasy as they passed the barn, the first building you met when you got off the Vespas. The wooden door was unhinged: it lay on the ground, among mud and splinters.
Alan walked over. Like everyone, he knew the owner of the barn, Moris Webber. He tried to call the portly farmer, his wife, and the children Petra and Bart. The only sound was that of the goats behind him. Inside, a hurricane had passed: even if there had been someone in the chaos of open bales of hay, carts, and fallen beams, they would not have seen him.
A few steps further it was even worse. They realized that not a door was left closed in the village. A nearby window had been shattered, and pieces of glass scattered across the street. Red drops were drying on the sharp points. The drinking trough was perhaps the only thing left standing, with the fountain of the bear always prodigal to spit out fresh water.
The wind hissed. In a moment Alan, Rolf, and Hildemar separated, dashing towards their respective houses. Whatever had happened, they feared it had overwhelmed their families as well.
"Stay close to me, little girls. You too, Gobel. " Johan removed the bundle from his shoulders, putting his hand on the long handle of the ax he carried at his side. The world was silent, absorbed or suspended, as if timeless.
"What happened, Johan?" Katia asked naively. She hugged his little sister, who, despite the growing tension, had not yet begun to cry.
The mustachioed woodcutter waved her to silence. Step by step he tried to get a better look at the narrow streets of the village. The smell of meat hung in the air.
"Come. But stay behind me. "
The window frames of some houses bore the blows of hatchets like scars, and rivulets of blood snaked along with the wounds of the shelters. Johan gradually ordered the young people to wait, while he closed the doors as they passed. He did not want to force the little ones to observe such a massacre of mutilated and mangled bodies by savage hands. Everywhere he could not stop his gaze without seeing living flesh torn to shreds.
An intense cry broke the stillness, the desperate cry of a man in tears. Katia was frightened. So was Gobel, who could only express his terror with a mute expression. He continued to observe the world like a waiting mouse, unable from birth to utter a word, but full of unfathomable thoughts that were reflected in his attentive eyes.
Johan advanced anyway, slowly, brandishing the lumberjack ax with both hands. He found Hildemar kneeling in the buildings beyond the tavern. He was holding a woman's body in his arms, and he was crying, crying like a desperate child.
"They're dead" he managed to say between sobs. "They are all dead!"
Johan looked at the body of Anne, Hildemar's wife. Her belly swollen from pregnancy had been monstrously opened. The face was half disfigured and covered with blood and fresh scabs. She had been killed with a few brutal blows.
"I'm sorry for your wife." Johan had no one waiting for him by the hearth, neither parents nor family. He had always been alone, considered strange by the villagers, but basically a good man. Although a massacre had just been perpetrated, he had no one to cry to.
"But what happened?" shouted Hildemar, full of anger. His brother Gobel stepped forward, awed by his sister-in-law's corpse. "Who did this?"
When Alan and Rolf reappeared, they discovered that the other families had also been murdered. The Kaiser boys were white in the face. They had no desire to talk. Inside, part of them had died.
Before the light was completely gone they decided together to take shelter in the inn, where the fire must have been lit before all the mayhem happened. Katia, Isik, and Gobel were left at the tables, with a piece of bread to eat and some blankets to protect themselves from the cold. They locked them in, to make sure that anyone who had perpetrated the insane act could not show up to them suddenly. Johan, Alan, Rolf and Hildemar beat the village together, armed, inch by inch.