It was the stories that I’ve heard based on that small town of Distomo in Greece that made me visit and try to investigate, and see for myself. If I am not mistaken, I was out in a pub, with my dear mate Jack Fletcher when I was first informed of the rumors about that town.
He said that after the slaughter perpetrated by the Nazis back in 1944, the whole town and the areas around it were covered by a fog, which you cannot see, an invisible poison, that made everyone staying in the town for long enough to slowly fall into depression, turn crazy, or even, disappear.
As a man of science, myself, having worked as a doctor for a long twenty years now, I recall laughing with his statements thinking it was another joke of his. After all, it just doesn’t make sense. His claims seemed bizarre, how could a town be “haunted” by its past to such a great extent, and even if that is indeed true, how can the visitors be affected as well?
After he explained that he was serious and talked about various reports of people he knew who either visited or lived in the village, I was really curious, and for a moment I actually wondered if something really was wrong about that strange little town.
After a considerable amount of research and pulling every string I had in Greece, from some old friends to some distant relatives I found something that made me even more curious. That little town on its own had a lot of users of illegal substances, a lot of suicides and a lot of disappearances almost twice as much as five of the neighboring towns combined. Although that was an interesting story, and it sounded like something out of a fantasy novel, a kind that I used to find exceptionally intriguing, the more time I wasted trying to find out more about that bizarre little town, the more work I had piling up, waiting for me.
After a week of doing the best, I could, I still didn’t have any leads. I couldn’t find anything wrong about that town. Although small, it is pretty lovely, the beautiful little houses, the traditional shops, and all that nature, what could explain all those horrors such as the use of substances, the suicides, the disappearances, it just, didn’t make sense. After a week of research to no avail, I decided to finally give up, and stop wondering about what could be happening in that town, although deep inside me I knew, I had to find an explanation.
About a year after the incident, I was informed that an old colleague of mine from Greece was diagnosed with a stage three brain tumor and I went to visit him, on his last days on earth. After he passed away, as I were planning my return to England, I remembered about that town, that bedazzled me not so long ago, and I decided to finally go investigate. I wasn’t really expecting to find something, I just wanted to finally get those silly thoughts out of my head, just to finally be sure that it was just an ordinary little town after all.
I asked some men on the airport for directions to that town, and they told me that I would probably need to rent a car, since it was a two-hour drive from the airport, and since cars there are rare and there are no cabs in that almost forgotten town, a car would indeed be useful. I rented a cheap car from the first company I found and then, it all began.
I made three stops on the way there, one to drink a quick cup of tea and get a cold water and two to refill the car with gas. Although I am quite used to the temperate climate of England and I thought I could perhaps resist the heat, it was harder than I anticipated. Renting the cheapest car available wasn’t the brightest idea, because ten minutes into the trip I made the sudden realization that the AC wasn’t working, or at least wasn’t strong enough, and combined with the fact that I needed to stop two times for gas, and filling it to the maximum both of the times, costing more than a good car would per hour, made me regret my actions.
After finally arriving to the village, covered in sweat and a bit of tea that I managed to spill all over my shirt, I parked my car and headed to the closest home I could see. It was a lovely home, with a garden, but it was painted in grey with black stripes on it. I knocked on the door, but there was no reply. For a brief moment I saw someone staring at me from the second-floor window, but he went back into hiding when he realized I could see him.
Most of the houses that I tried knocking on had a similar response, with some having the owners come out, swear a bit, slam the door on me and go away. I’m not an expert in Greek, I tried to learn the language when I was younger, got fairly good at it, but I had kind of given up on it the past years, so I was too rusty to be able to communicate. After getting rejected in the eleventh house, I started to lose hope.
I could indeed see the fact that everyone there was hostile, especially to strangers like me, but nothing supernatural or crazy about it. After ten more minutes of walking, I reached the heart of the town. A church, three cafes, various little stores, a small hotel, and some more houses.
I saw some old folks drinking coffee and talking in one of the cafes, a butcher sitting outside his store listening to the radio and two kids running around playing. Although it surely wasn’t what you may call a happy city and I wouldn’t really describe it as cheerful, it wasn’t what I was expecting. It seemed more like a ghost town if anything else.
First, I made a stop at the hotel, and to be honest, the receptionists were pretty happy to see me. Their English where not perfect, but we managed to communicate. The room was fairly small and it was really quite dirty. I can’t imagine how you can keep such a small place so filthy, but I wasn’t really expecting much more.
I wasted what remained of my first day cleaning the apartment, and trying to fix an old broken fan, the only instrument I had to help cool me down. I soon realized that it would be really hard trying to take interviews or even communicate with the villagers with my very limited Greek, so I asked the receptionist if there was anyone else in the town with a fair knowledge of both Greek and English. She told me that the only person that could help me with that was the man working in the museum.
I didn’t even know there was a museum, there wasn’t a sign pointing to any museum, and no one had told me about that before. I asked for directions, and headed right to the one place where I would be able to talk someone who fully understood me. I was about ten minutes away on foot, near the “borders” of the village, next to a beautiful looking forest. I soon arrived and knocked on the door.
To my surprise, this time the door opened fairly quickly, in contrast to every other time I tried to talk to someone in this village, and before me I saw an old man. He was really tall, at about two meters, he was overwhelming skinny, so much so that I thought I could see his bones, based on that and on his face, he looked more than ninety years old, but yet, he seemed pretty healthy. He had a fair amount of hair; blue eyes and he was smiling from cheek to cheek.
He wasn’t using a walking cane and was standing normally, without using something to keep himself steady. I was just looking him up and down for about fifteen seconds, until I finally snapped and introduced myself. He responded back to me in almost fluent English, with a strange half Greek accent.
For some reason I don’t recall his name, although I’m pretty sure that he mentioned it a couple of times already. He invited me inside for a cup of orangeade, a traditional Greek drink, probably to cool me down, after all, the temperature had surpassed forty degrees Celsius and I probably looked like I was about to pass out.
He told me that the museum was closed, and that it would open again the next day, but he happened to be fixing a broken light bulb so I was lucky to actually get to him that day. He seemed very curious on why I visited the village and was insisting on hearing my story, so I more or less told him everything, until now. He seemed really intrigued by the story, but he admitted that he had heard a lot of similar rumors before.
I tried asking him whether he knew anything about the disappearances, the drugs, or the men who reportedly turned insane, but he said that he wasn’t aware of anything weird or suspicious. I stayed there for a while and then I returned back to the hotel to sleep the night away and rest, because I was planning on returning home, the following day.
The next morning I visited the museum once more, to thank that good old man for his help yesterday, but this time, he didn’t open the door. I waited for about five minutes, until I decided to finally leave. Right when I turned my back, disappointed as I wasted all this time and resources trying to solve a none existent mystery, I heard a scream coming from the museum. I kicked the old door down, and rushed, to see if my newly met friend was in danger but what I saw in front of me at the door made me lose my mind.
There he was, standing, gladly looking at me, with the same wide smile like yesterday, only this time, there was a loud screaming coming from the back of the museum. He invited me in again, and although I knew it was a bad idea to go in, I went in, purely out of curiosity to see what it made that noise and also hoping to be able to help whatever was such in great pain. We sat in a dark room, with a small lamp right in the center, like the last time.
I tried looking around me but I couldn’t see anything. The lack of windows combined with the small light source placed with mathematical precision right in the middle of the room, made me able to only see the old mans face. We just sat there, I knew something was off, he could probably sense it, he probably knew, but he wasn’t speaking. He wasn’t speaking at all. The more I looked into his eyes, the more sinister his smile became.
I finally asked. “Is everything ok? I heard some screaming and I was worried about your health. I am a doctor you know”. He just continued to stare into my eyes. “Well doctor” he grunted back at me “since you are so smart, you probably already know what is wrong here”. I jumped back a bit, I tried to break eye contact and looked around in panic, but once again, I could see anything. Only his face. His smile. We sat there, staring at each other, for at least five minutes. Then, he finally spoke.
“The S-S killed everyone they found. They raped and killed all the women and the girls. They killed the boys and the men. My brother was five at the time, FIVE. Only a bunch of us managed to hide, only a bunch survived. The slaughter continued for three days; the whole town can still hear their screams. We prayed to God for it to stop. We continuously prayed for two entire days, but it just didn’t. On the third day I could only hear their screams.
I couldn’t see what happened, we were all hiding in this buildings’ very attic but I can still hear the screams in my ears. The third day we didn’t pray, to God. Some soldier managed to climb up to the attic, but before he could scream for backup, my father managed to knock him unconscious. I was only ten at the time. We knew our god wasn’t going to save us. So, we prayed to the devil. We prayed, and we sacrificed that Nazi prick.
He was still alive, we cut him limb from limb. When the ritual finished, he was in too many pieces for us to count, but at least, we had some food for the rest of the day. Suddenly, we heard some screams, this time, screams of the Germans, we waited for another half an hour, and then we ran outside, and we say them, the hounds. There were five wolves, three meters tall each, and on one of them, there was a rider, dressed in black, drenched in blood.
My father went to talk to him. I don’t know what he told him, but what I do know is that my father, sits to this day in the back of the museum, unable to speak or write, the only thing he ever says is that our savior needs blood, and that our god is cruel. After the incident, there was nothing left in the village but us, the survivors that hid, and hundreds of bodies on the floor, of Nazis or other fellow Greeks, dead, their blood drenched by this very soil”
I was too stunned to speak. I was waiting, hoping for him to say that this was all a joke, a pretty extreme one perhaps. After three minutes had passed, I quickly told him that I had to leave, to catch my plane, but he offered to show me what happened in the back room. I refused; I was too afraid to even think about what went on in there but instead I requested to ask some more questions first. I asked him if the whole village knew about this, and if that was the reason why they were like that.
No, he replied, “when our lord came that day, on the holy wolf, and saved us, some clouds appeared above our town, the clouds that lowered day by day until they were consumed by this very soil.” I started to think that this was some kind of game, or attraction at the museum, like a haunted house, to perhaps promote tourism on the village, but before I had the chance to say anything, he grabbed my hand, and walked me to the back, through a heavy steel door.
There it was.
Standing above the dismembered body of a child, the beast. I examined the room quickly, trying to look for a back door a way out. All I could see, were the rotting remains of a man, sitting on a chair, a dismembered child Infront of it, still breathing, but not screaming anymore. On our right, there was their “god” leaning over the child, laughing and talking in what sounded like, Latin.
That monster, I don’t have the strength to describe it, in all its horrors, but I can still hear his voice, his laughs, echoing in my head. The old man tapped me on the shoulder. “Come on, do me a favor, end its life” and he pointed to the child. At that point I must have blacked out. I can still remember the beast.
That abomination.
Why God, why create something like that, in the first place, why in the hell would you let it roam these cursed lands? I woke up back at the hotel. I went and asked the receptionist how I got there. I was found knocked out, in a river, near the town, some men carried me there after they found a receipt in my back pocket, which thankfully was still dry. What happened the day before was all a blur, but what I still can’t recall, is how this very dagger ended up in my backpack.
It was drenched in blood, but the blood seemed old, I would say more than a decade, yet, the dagger still stinks like a slowly rotting corpse. No one believes me. Am I going mad? Am I going insane? I can sense it, it’s coming, I can hear it calling my name. I remember. I know. I am NOT INSANE. I KNOW.