I am a traveler. For as long as I have been capable of leaving my home and going out into the world to experience its wonders, I have done so. Over the years I have witnessed a great many wondrous things and survived numerous adventures in strange faraway lands. As much as I appreciate these experiences, they do not always supply the most interesting memories of a journey.
   When people ask what I like most to bring back with me from my travels, I tell them that I am always searching for stories. Others may be more interested in gathering up trinkets of gold or silver or ivory carved into intricate little figures, but to me a good story is just as precious. Have you ever taken the time to analyze the various myths and folk tales that make up the roots of the world’s great cultures? I believe that the more of these stories we hear, the more we will begin to understand ourselves. Sometimes the messages they speak to us are not pleasant to hear.
   One story that will always stand out in my memory was delivered to me by an old man living in a village that I visited briefly during my travels. The exact location of this place has faded from my memory over the years, but the delivery of the story and its uniquely sad and haunting message are impressed upon my brain as strongly now as they were on the day I heard it.    
   My companions and I had stopped to rest in a large village, and we had been told of a smaller village up ahead that refused to accommodate travelers overnight as a result of some local legend that promised terrible things would happen to outsiders who stayed too long. The others began to plan a route that would take us around this place, but I convinced them to set aside a day before we moved on to visit the village and learn more about the legend.
   I left early one morning with a few of the other men to go and trade for some supplies in the smaller village. We were told that the villagers were friendly enough about most things, as long as you didn’t ask to stay for the night. When we got there I discovered that they didn’t have much in the way of a central marketplace, but there were plenty of people to barter with and talk to. After each trade had been completed and we had engaged in some casual conversation, I would try to bring up the subject of the legend. They were all very uncomfortable with talking about it, and refused to say anything to me after I mentioned it. We stayed for as long as possible, but soon the first signs of darkness started to show and we had to load the supplies we had gathered onto the horses and go back the way we came.
   We had not made it far from the small village before we came across an old man returning from his work in the fields. I could see that he was tired, so I offered him a piece of fresh fruit and some bread left over from my lunch. He thanked me, and asked if there was anything he could do to repay my kindness. I asked him what he knew about the legend. The old man laughed, a dry but cheerful sound.

   “I don’t know why anyone would want to hear such a dreadful and depressing story.” He said to me.

   “I like listening to stories.” I told him.

   The answer seemed to satisfy him, and he proceeded to deliver the tale in a very enthusiastic manner that suggested that he had been waiting a long time for an opportunity to tell it.   

   Long ago, the land had been caught in the grip of two terrible things, each alone capable of bringing ruin to a great many lives but absolutely devastating when paired together. The first was a dreadful famine, which was felt across the land but particularly hard hitting in the region around where the small village stood. The second was a powerful and corrupt king, who ruled selfishly with no interest in protecting his subjects from the hardships they were facing. The king, afraid for his own supply of food, sent out soldiers to gather up whatever was left in the land and bring it back to feed himself and his army.
   In the small village there was almost nothing left to eat, and the people began to die. Most were prepared to give up and accept their fate, until one desperate man made a suggestion that proved to be a lifesaver for all who remained. Despite the unpleasantness of what they now must do, the villagers experienced a renewed sense of hope and were determined to try to survive.
   They might have continued in this way until the famine ran its course and allowed them to resume their normal lives, if it were not for a group of soldiers sent by the king to collect a food tax from the village. The soldiers aggressively threatened the villagers and told them to hand over whatever they had. The frightened people complied and gave the king’s men some fresh meat, which they said had come from the last few animals they had left for slaughter. Seeing that the meat would not last the trip back to the king’s palace, the soldiers decided to eat it all themselves. Hungry and tired from their long journey, they set up camp near the village and cooked the meat for supper. All were in a good mood and enjoying themselves, until one of the men begin to complain that something about the meat did not taste quite right. The others thought about it, and many agreed that the situation seemed suspicious. They could not quite agree on just what type of meat it was that they had been given. Feeling a growing sense of apprehension, the soldiers returned to the village.
   Under the application of more threats, the villagers confessed what the soldiers had already come to suspect. They had been given human flesh to eat. Driven to desperation by hunger, the villagers had turned to the bodies of those who had already succumbed to the famine as a source of food. The revelation drove the soldiers into a blind rage. Disgusted by the villager’s actions, they decided to destroy the place. The soldiers looted the homes of the villagers and then set them on fire. They killed anyone they could get their hands on, but many escaped into the woods beyond the village. The soldiers did not pursue them.
   After the soldiers left the survivors worked together to rebuild the village. Their suffering was extreme, and some lost the will to live. By the time the famine had begun to lift only the strongest and most tenacious remained.
   Just as things looked like they were getting better, something strange and mysterious happened. In the night, under the light of the moon, people saw a ghastly figure stalking through the woods near the village. Those who saw it swore that it looked like the skeleton of a dog or wolf, walking about with white bones gleaming in the moonlight. A few had the courage to approach it for a closer look, and brought back even more details of its horrible appearance.
   The creature was all made up of bones, with only a few pieces of flesh still attached. It had no eyes or ears, and appeared to have so sense of sight or hearing. It did have a nose, though, and could be seen constantly sniffing about as it moved through the forest. The creature’s pale gray, dry looking tongue hung limply between the two sides of the exposed jaw. Even more grotesquely, an esophagus ran from the back of the jaw and attached to a stomach still held within the ribcage. A green acidic looking substance constantly dribbled out of a hole where the intestines should have been.
   As ferocious as the creature looked, it did not seem interested in attacking people. Not long after it was first seen in the woods it migrated to the local cemetery. It seemed to be attracted to the fresh graves of recent burials, though it had a difficult time with digging them up. Over time the creature appeared to be getting more frustrated. The people who came to watch it each night noticed that it spent more time sniffing the air and less time hanging around the graves. Soon it began to move toward anybody who was nearby, and the people became too frightened to go out and see it anymore.        
   The villagers held a meeting to decide what to do about the creature. They were afraid that its hunger would eventually bring it into the village, but no one was brave enough to volunteer to try and kill it. Finally someone proposed a solution that satisfied them all. Instead of burying their dead in the earth, they would leave them out for the creature to feed on.
   On that night, some of the young men were selected to carry out the first experiment. They took the body of a person who had recently died and had not yet been buried, and placed it in the cemetery. They waited nearby, terrified but determined to bring back the news of what happened to the village. Soon after it became dark the creature appeared, materializing out of a cloud of white mist in the middle of the cemetery. Immediately it held its nose high, sniffing deeply at the cold air. It quickly located the body and began to feed on it. As the young men watched in horror, chunks of bloody meat began to plop softly onto the earth from the hole in the creature’s stomach. Too frightened to stay any longer, they fled the cemetery and returned to their homes.
   The next day villagers met again, and the young men told them what they had seen. They returned to the cemetery to examine what was left of the body. Most of the flesh was gone, and the bones looked as if they had been thoroughly gnawed upon. Not far from the body there were several large puddles of what looked like blood mixed in with the muddy earth. On closer inspection the puddles appeared to have traces of flesh dissolved in them, though few cared to look that close.
   As frightening as the discovery was, the villagers decided to have someone stay again that night to observe the creature’s behavior. The report they received the next day proved to be unexpected, but pleasantly surprising. The creature appeared to have reverted back to its original behavior, and now spent its time wandering about the cemetery and sniffing at the graves.
   The decision was then made that, from that point on, one person would be posted as a watch over the cemetery every night to look for changes in the creature’s behavior. The villagers didn’t know how dangerous it would become if it got to be too hungry, but they didn’t plan to find out the hard way.
   The first few months went very well. Every time the creature began to show too much interest in the watchman the villagers made sure to put out a corpse for it that night. If no one had died recently, they discovered that the body of a large animal would also satisfy it. Since the watchmen often reported the creature returning to bodies for several nights in a row to pick at them, they waited until they were stripped to bare bones before giving them a proper burial. With the famine already becoming a memory and the creature seemingly under control, it looked as if life would return to something at least approaching normal. The chance to return to a peaceful life may have been ruined on one warm spring morning however, if it were not for a rather unusual coincidence.   
   That morning some women who had gone down to draw water from a well that had been dug near the cemetery witnessed a terrifying thing approaching along the path that led into the little village. A group of soldiers, small but well armed and on horseback, was passing by. Frightened by their memories of the cruelty of such men, the women hid themselves nearby and watched, hoping they had not been sent to molest the village again.
   As the soldiers reached the cemetery the women saw one of them break from his position and speak to the general who was leading them. They were just close enough to hear them talk, and to their dismay the man was describing the events surrounding the attack that had been made on the village earlier. He was one of the men who had accidentally consumed the cannibal meal and burned the village in his fury, and he suggested to the general that they should take the time to make sure the villagers remembered that message.

   “Surely such an act of godless barbarism,” he said, “has corrupted the minds of the people so deeply that they are beyond saving.”

   The general appeared to be listening thoughtfully, but he reminded the soldier that they were on a very busy schedule. Eventually the soldier convinced him to lead a surprise attack on the village, and they started to go up the path that led past the cemetery.
   They had not gone far before something unusual caught their eyes. Nearby, in the cemetery, was a body lying next to a freshly dug grave. According to the headstone the man had died only a few days previously, but for some reason he had been left out exposed to the elements instead of being placed in the earth where he belonged. Scavenging animals appeared to have visited the body and it looked as if they had already eaten away at most of the flesh. The soldier who had been to the village before was disgusted by the sight, and said that it was further evidence of the unholy mindset of the people. The general, however, saw things differently.

   “Is it not obvious to you?” he told the man. “The message you sent them did indeed sink in. They gave up their evil ways, but are still frightened of what you may do to them if you return. They have left this out as a message to you should you ever pass by this way again. Never again shall they taste of the flesh of their fellow man. They would rather leave it out for the scavenging beasts, and will then place it in the earth where only worms may have it. Come now, we have more important things to do.”  

   Though the soldier was unpleased with the general’s decision, he was not about to question his authority. The relieved women watched as the general led his men back in the direction they had come, off to attend to his important business with the king. When they returned and spread the good news to the rest of the village, the people were overjoyed with relief. This was the first time that any of them had thought that the hungry skeletal monster could bring anything good to their lives, but it would not be the last.
   Over the years the people continued to observe the creature in effort to learn as much about it as possible. Since it did not seem particularly dangerous most of the time, they had decided that trying to understand it would be safer that seeing what would happen if someone tried to kill it. And after all, just how would one go about killing something that seemed to be a living skeleton that could appear and disappear into the misty air at will? By appeasing the creature with a steady supply of bodies to feed on, the villagers could be sure of keeping it satisfied with leaving the living alone. It was much more interested in things that were already dead, with one notable exception.
   Not long after the village was spared a second attack from the soldiers, it had its first welcome visitor. The man was a traveling merchant, and he stopped by the village one day to trade his merchandise with the people and also find a place to rest for the night. A generous family offered him a warm meal and a room, which he gladly took. They felt that an outsider would be frightened to hear about the strange creature that appeared in the cemetery each night, so they did not mention it to him.
   Late that night the people in the house were awoken from their sleep by a loud scratching sound, as if claws were being drawn across the walls outside. This sound moved about from place to place, as if whatever it was were testing for any weak points where it could enter. Thankful that the only windows in the house were very small, the residents sat frozen in their beds and waited, listening.
   The merchant was awake and listening to the sound in his room too. At first he was merely curious about what it could be, but he soon grew alarmed as the sound stopped and began to intensify into a frenzied racket. Frightened, he took a quick peek out of the window. Illuminated by the light of the moon, he could see the skeletal creature digging furiously at the other side of the wall. At this point the poor soul lost his mind and ran screaming through the house, bursting out the front door and racing to where he had left his horse tied up so that he could get out of this place as soon as possible. The scratching sound stopped immediately. The family inside heard a brief scream, and then all was silent.
   The scene that was discovered the next morning outside the house was very similar to the ones the people saw in the cemetery, though a bit messier and with obvious signs of struggle taking place. They decided that the only way to deal with this was to take a practical approach. The tattered body of the merchant was moved into the cemetery, where the creature could pick it clean over the next few nights. He was then buried in an unmarked grave, and no one ever mentioned the incident again in the presence of outsiders. It was time for another meeting.
   According to the watchmen the creature had recently fed and had not been exhibiting its usual hungry behavior. On the night that the merchant came to stay, however, things were very different. As soon as it materialized in the cemetery, the creature held its head high and sniffed deeply at the air. It then turned in the direction of the village and sped off much faster then the watchmen could follow. By the time they located it, it was already feasting on its prey. Since this was the first time the creature had ever harmed a living person the villagers felt confused and uneasy about what to do next.
   After much discussion, they found that the creature’s behavior showed a pattern after all. It normally had no interest in attacking the residents of the village, and ignored them when it smelled them. Anyone else, however, seemed to attract it like a beacon. Since they still had no idea of how to destroy it, they decided that the simplest way to avoid future accidents was to make sure that no outsiders stayed in the village overnight. For people who had recently suffered greatly at the hands of outsiders such as the soldiers of the evil king who was still in power, this was not a completely unwelcome conclusion. Some even thought of it as a sort of guardian, a secret weapon that could be unleashed upon their enemies come nightfall.
   One thing that the villagers could never agree on was just what the skeletal creature was, and what its origins were. Some believed that it was the ghost of a person who had died in the famine or been killed by the soldiers. That would certainly explain its apparent hatred of outsiders. Others thought that it was a demon sent by the Devil to remind them of the unholy things they had done during the famine to save their lives. Whatever the creature was, it was here to stay.
   The creature’s appearance in the cemetery each night continued on through the years. All remembrance of what the villagers had done faded way over time, except in the village itself. The little village came to be known as a very secluded place, resistant to the growth and change that happened in the country all around it. People knew that outsiders were never welcome to stay overnight or move there, but they were never told why. Travelers who passed through the area and spent the night camped out nearby would sometimes disappear. Even large groups of people vanished. The villagers never had anything to say about it. Eventually people learned to avoid the place like it had a plague over it, only visiting briefly to trade and making sure they did not have to be in the area at night. The villagers liked it that way.    

   When the old man completed his telling of the legend I felt a chill run down my spine. Never before had I heard of anything like it. It was now starting to get quite dark, and my men and I had a sudden urge to get moving as quickly as possible. A light wind blew through the cold air, rattling the bare branches of the trees together and making them sound like the clanking of bones. I thanked the old man for his story, and asked him one last thing before we turned and hurried back along the path that in a few miles would take us to the larger village where the rest of our party was staying.
  
   “Why did you tell us this story, when everyone else seemed interested in keeping it a secret?” I asked him.

   “I like telling stories.” He said to me.

   A smile crossed his wrinkled face, and I thought I detected a hint of mischief in his eyes. I had no time to question him further though, as I was too nervous to think of doing anything else but spurring my horse forward to take me far away from this strange place.