England, West Coast
Devonshire, Dartmoor
Unknown place - Somewhere in the woods

5 November 1898, 10:18 p.m.

The dead bodies pelted down on them like a shower of hail. The ravens' bodies were enough to cause dull pain when they abruptly hit somewhere on their bodies. Where before the sharp beaks had pecked at his eyes and his hands, the bloody and torn open wounds burned. To protect his eyesight, Benjamin had inevitably had to pull his arm across his face.

His hair was ransacked and a deep claw mark stretched across his cheek and chin. Although his hands were bleeding and had also been torn open by claws, he still clutched the revolver tightly. His warm blood smeared the grip.

Now he expelled the held air and tried to size up the situation. In his first reflex, Ben wanted to step protectively toward Kyle again. But to his horror, he had disappeared. He stared, then his head flew back and forth searching. The ravens were gone, the lanterns too, and there was no trace of Kyle or the threat in the shadows. The loud cawing had stopped, the wild flapping of wings had disappeared and the stifling, oppressive silence had returned, broken only by his heartbeat.

"KYLE!" Benjamin's dark bass surged into the silence. But no response rang out. There was no movement to be noticed or heard anywhere in the darkness. There were only the black trunks and the leaves swaying in the wind on barren branches. Benjamin fought down the ever-rising unease as his heart sank into his pants.

Last time he had just been able to save Crowford from death. What if he was too late this time? Likewise, Ben wouldn't have stood a chance against the mighty wolf alone. How was he supposed to defend himself against these terrors without the mage? Ben's thoughts flickered like a candle in a storm. He did not cope well with being alone. Dark memories reached for his legs, reminding him of the skirmish in the sand. Nervously, he rubbed his revolvers.

There was no way he could panic now. Still, the memory of what had happened forced bitter bile into his mouth and made his fingers grow cold. The muscles on the man's jaw tightened and made the angular chin harden. Benjamin brushed his hair out of his forehead and looked around with narrowed eyes. It took a while for his vision to adjust sufficiently to the darkness without light.

He was obviously no longer in the same place where the ravens had attacked him and Crowford. Here, the rows of trees were no longer so dense and hardly carried any leaves in their gnarled branch forks. The foliage at his feet covered the forest floor like a vast carpet almost without gaps everywhere. The dead leaves formed heaps of hills and only in a few places did grass peep out. But even that seemed stunted as if it had withered despite the constant moisture from rain and bog. Wisps of mist drifted across the ground like ghostly figures and a strangely stuffy, heavy smell was in the air, which Benjamin did not know how to interpret.

A dark sound, a humming or melodious whispering, came from one direction. Cold tingles rolled down his spine and dissipated in his belly. Ben slid his finger back in front of the trigger of his gun and set his steps with deliberation. Leaves slid aside and crackled under his weight as he crept forward. His heartbeat galloped in his chest and the pressure steadily increased. Distant drums to a guard march that in all its perfection was never more than a charade. Cold panic rose slowly and inexorably within him. It took all his concentration and strength to quell it. As if someone were putting a noose around his heart and pulling it tighter with every step he took toward the voice.

Ben's fingers holding his weapon began to tremble slightly. Mud oozed out from under leaves. He let his footsteps sink into small puddles, then he reached solid ground again under his boots. The watery chill jolted him awake and made him fix his gaze back on his surroundings, his hands closing tighter around his weapon. Leafless branches clawed at his coat as if to hold him back and warn him not to take another step. Then he ducked past a bush.

Unexpectedly, the white veils of mist opened up in front of him, revealing a hollow not ten meters away. As if the ground there had simply collapsed and part of the tunnels of hell had been exposed, caves in dark rock suddenly opened up beneath the layers of foliage and earth. Only gnarled roots and scattered moss and lichen covered the rock, otherwise, neither bushes nor plants grew there, making the rock walls look bare and grey. 

Black holes stared out of the gloom like the eyes of a spider and sent a cold shiver down his spine. Mist flowed like water around the hollow and crept billowing into its depths, where the long swathes groped their way into the misshapen entrances. A gently sloping hillside led down into the hollow. There in the darkness, before the ground dropped rapidly, stood a figure cloaked in black. Low humming sounded from that direction.

"Der Mond ist aufgegangen
Die goldnen Sternlein prangen
Am Himmel hell und klar:
Der Wald steht schwarz und schweiget,
Und aus den Wiesen steiget
Der weiße Nebel wunderbar."(*)

A melody that sounded familiar to him. Was it a nursery rhyme? It gave him goosebumps all over his body. That eerie feeling that abandoned buildings and empty corridors with crumbling plaster on the walls gave him. When you walked past a battered doll and had the impression of being stared at by dead eyes.

Ben now raised the revolver with both hands stretched out from him towards the enemy. A dancing glow flickered over the figure's head like a red feather. The raven-black fabric seemed to waft around a long, slender silhouette as if it were underwater instead of on the solid ground. Or as if invisible fingertips plucked at the fabric, only to let it sink again with a sigh.

Ben squinted his eyes and tried to make out more. He shifted closer behind the cover of a tree, crouched behind a bush of numerous branches, and peered between the withering leaves. He had to get closer. Heart pounding, half crouching, he stepped out of cover. But as he took another step, a small twig suddenly cracked noisily under his boot.

The figure fell silent in its soft singsong and an eerie silence settled over the place. Not even the wind dared to whisper. And then...

"Quiet." an oil-soaked voice purred admonishingly. There was something velvety black about the sound that made all the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Like a kitten purring at a little mouse before snapping its neck. Ben instinctively took half a step back. Then the man turned in front of him and Ben's blood froze in his veins. "We don't want to wake her, do we? I just let her fall asleep." The sinister creature murmured.

Icy fear surged through the seasoned soldier's veins. It cracked the mask of stone like raw ice and Ben took further steps back. What stood there was definitely not human. The figure was long and towered over Ben by more than a head. It was scrawny and wrapped in what looked like a long black cloak, but its form always seemed to breathe in a bizarre way, abruptly dissolving into dark smoke in places. The obsidian-like hair - if it could be called such - shimmered like pointed, sharp-edged shards of glass or jagged thorns above an inhumanly long bridge of the nose. The cheekbones stood high and were angular. The cheeks themselves were sunken, like a dead man's, and followed the bony curve of the jaw.

Now Ben also finally realized that it was indeed a feather that danced at the head of the figure. Like a red, winding river, it burst up from the sharp-edged hair. It bent and twisted, almost as if it were alive. A black quill faded into glowing red, glowing slightly in the dim darkness of the night. As if glowing earth, instead of coals, was eating away at the quill. So that was what Crowford, himself, and also Victor had seen.

In one arm of the Black Man, as if she weighed no more than a snowflake, lay little Annabeth. Half curled up, her head rested against the man's shoulder. Her curls had come loose from their braids and now fell wild and disheveled around her features. Her nightgown was dirty to the waist, her legs full of mud splashes and small scratches. But otherwise, at first glance, she seemed unharmed. The little breast rose and fell into firm slumber.

"Let go of the child at once!" barked Benjamin, without responding to or obeying the words of this figure of terror. As the elongated almond eyes of inky blackness with red-hot pupils settled on Ben, the narrow lips pulled apart into a wide grin of darkest nightmares. It bared rows of yellowish, sharp-edged fangs reminiscent of a shark and Ben tightened his grip on the weapon. Leisurely now, the man lowered his arm. Fabric rustled as he laid the little girl almost gently on the leaf-covered forest floor.

An amused, almost curious, yet at the same time thoroughly spiteful flash, lay in the sharp-edged features of this figure as it now rose to its full height again. He drew his arms together behind his back, where the spindly fingers ending in black claws made a sickening cracking sound as he opened and closed his hands.

"WHAT the hell are you?!" groaned Benjamin, aiming the barrel of his revolver directly at his counterpart's chest.

"What am I?" The black figure dropped his head onto his own shoulder. The contorted grin widened even more, so that it stretched beyond the confines of a normal mouth, almost to the ears. At the corners of the mouth, between the lips, skins stretched, making the mouth look strange and obscure. 

It reminded Benjamin of a snake or a crocodile. 

Neither triggered a pleasant feeling in him.   

German Lullaby for Kids, in English it means: 

"The moon has risen

The golden stars are shining

Bright and clear in the sky

The forest stands black and silent,

And from the meadows rises

The white mist rises wonderfully. "