A Figure of Darkness

by Vaggelis
(Athens, Greece)

The man with the hood as we saw him when he stood up.

Well, this is an entirely true event that fortunately didn't happen to me. Believe or not, I'm not the person that likes to make up stories just to scare someone, I just consider it childish.

Well, I was with my friend George and we were sitting on a bench near our village's church. We were talking about different things when all of a sudden, he told me that he wanted me to know something. Obviously, I asked him what was that. So he started to tell me a story about him and his girlfriend. Well, it starts like this.

He and his girlfriend were having a night walk in a forest far away from the village. They were walking alone in that silent Tuesday night, when eventually they found themselves back at the road. Suddenly, they came across a man with a black robe and a hood. The strange man was sitting in the middle of the road, at about five to six meters away from George and despite his girlfriend's efforts to persuade him to run away immediately, finally they walked closer to him to see him clearly.

The man did not seem to have a face at all. It was a dark void that had no eyes, no nose, no mouth, nothing but a black nothingness. At that time, George had already wet his pants but for a reason, he couldn't spell even a single word. All of a sudden, the man stood up, staring to them and asked George for a cigarette (?!).

George knew that he had only one cigarette in his left pocket that saved for last but that time was different. For some reason, he felt that the only way they could leave was to give the cigarette to the man with the hood and so he did. Then, George and his girl left the road and returned to the village.

The next morning, George woke up early because he wanted to go to the church to share his experience with our village's priest. To his biggest surprise, the priest told him that there was an old myth about Satan or a similar demon that appears before people and always asks them for something that is always the last something they have with them. If they do give it to him, then he leaves them alone but if not, then that person will get badly sick after a while or even die. He told George that back then, an Angel of God himself helped him to make the right choice, otherwise things may have been worse.

After their conversation, George thanked and said goodbye to the priest and left. He told me that he was so afraid that he never visited that forest again.