Everyone was getting them, the letters. They'd appear in the mailboxes of the people in the small village, one by one, until even the smallest of children were given letters that made them and their mothers cry.

No one knew who was writing them, but they were cruel. They were the writings of the devil, something that no one would wish upon their greatest blood enemy.

This was a written epidemic, and the village people could not escape it. They stared at their mailboxes for days on end, waiting for the mysterious man who would put those satanic letters there.

No one put them there, but they appeared, every day.

Some days it was aimed at the mothers, other days, the fathers. If you just had a baby, he, too, was not free of the torture.

No one wanted to open their mailboxes, but every day they did, and every day they read the horrendous letters.

Then, one day, a traveler passed through. No one seemed to occupy the village. It was a ghost town.

Prying through the windows of each house he passed, he saw the same thing in every single one.

The traveler left as fast as he came. He told no one about the village. It was a devil-worship place, and it was forbidden to speak of the devil.

And there wasn't anyone to tell, at least not in that village, because they had all killed themselves years before. Now all that remains are the rotten bones, still laying there, holding their children and dogs.

Some even still held those letters in their relaxed hands.