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"Tell me again!" A small child ushers its mother in the car on their way home.

"This is the last time." She warns half-heartedly with a glance to the exulting kid. "The legend goes like this:

A musician and his wife lived in the area about two centuries ago.
She took care of the house and he sang on the streets,
their life was tedious but they loved each other to the moon and back.
Until that changed.
Nobody knows exactly what happened.
It might've been a homicide.
Or a double suicide.
Ever since the tragedy people come up,
saying they've seen the dead couple in the nearby forest.
For the next two hundred years,
a total of thirty murders has occured in that very same forest.
People blame it on the ghosts of the musician and his wife for the sake of a good story but you never know."

The child's eyelids droop in the backseat and its mother smiles, eyes back to the road ahead. Half an hour passes before they arrive at their destination. The mother wakes up its child and the little girl finds itself in a hurry to go back home. It jumps out of the car and slams the door closed before sprinting for the blue porch ahead. The mother glances at the forest behind the white house their family owns before locking the car and approaching her excited daughter.

"Go wash yourself," she advises gingerly as the child nods and heads inside. Tiredly, the woman greets her husband as she slips out of her coat and shoes. The moment she takes a seat on the couch downstairs is the moment she falls asleep. Her husband can only chuckle as he keeps reading his newspaper at the kitchen counter. In a minute, his daughter comes down the stairs, smiling from ear to ear.

"I think I forgot Anne in the backyard, can I go look for her?" The child questions and the man doesn't even need to ponder it - he's too tired to suggest going himself and his daughter isn't in any real danger as long as she's around. A nod is all the little girl receives before leaving through the backdoor and going to search for her doll. In less than five minutes, the backyard has been investigated thoroughly without a trace of the beloved belonging. The little girl sits on the ground and pouts as night loosely hangs its wings over the house her parents rest in. The moon is bright and the stars are shining, but the forest is looming threateningly over her side.

The child's gaze strays towards the forest mere feet away from where it stood when it hears the crunching of leaves under somebody's feet. The girl seeks the source and is met with the sight of a pale man with a finger to his lips and a hand holding her precious Anne by the stuffed arm. The man is wearing an outdated black suit and his ebony hair is ruffled by the light wind. He doesn't seem scary, the girl concludes, and when the male gestures for her to approach him she does.

A number of small steps later, she stands in front of the male's figure as he steps back and holds out his free hand to her. She eyes it for a bit before remembering her mother's told her not to talk to strangers. But they aren't talking. And he seems very kind. In the dark, his face is a hard sight to observe but she can see his eyes are bright and soft. Her little fingers take his. What shocks her is the coldness of his palm, but she has more important things to do than ponder the reason behind that.

The man starts leading her ahead into the forest slowly, a few ponderous steps at a time, and before she knows it they've stopped in the middle of a part where leaves were no longer crunching under their feet and a small glimpse of the moon can be found inbetween the crowns of the trees. The dim moonbeam falls on the man's face and the little girl holding his hand finds herself freezing at the sight of his sewn lips. He's too pale for it to be normal and the hollows of his cheeks are heavily exaggerated, as if he hasn't had a proper meal in years. There are big circles under his narrow eyes.

The girl looks more. His shoes are polished but there's blood along the lenght of his collar. A deep scar makes itself known round the entirety of his neck. His hands are slender but his nails have dirt under them. The girl doesn't flinch but she does tug on the male's fingers a bit, maybe as to tell him she considers his appearance odd in comparison to what she's used to. For some very strange reason she doesn't feel entirely scared.

After a minute of silent observation, the male slowly hands her the doll and lets go of her arm. The girl steps back and is about to run off before he gestures to her in a way she doesn't understand. Intrigued, she stays and tilts her head at him as to show him her puzzlement. When pointing at her that doesn't work he points to himself. His ear to be exact. The child tilts its head at him again. She asks him a question but he only keeps poiting at his left ear. Maybe he can't hear her, she concludes innocently, clutching Anne to her chest and stepping closer to the male with the sewn lips.

Then he does something different. The finger pointing to his ear moves down a slashes a single line in front of his neck, aligned with the scar already present. And then he points at the girl staring up at him in confusion. She doesn't understand what he's trying to tell her but maybe it's just time to get out of here. Where did they come from again? She looks around but nothing looks familiar and all is dark.

"Will you show me the way back home?" A small question rings politely, but the male stands still and his eyes pierce her. She is suddenly scared. She takes a step back, he takes one forward, eyes wide and hand reaching out to her. The girl jumps when a third person makes himself present at the scene.

"Don't touch her!" A feminine voice exclaims loudly, making the male freeze and the little girl look to the side. A short female stands there with her (h/c) hair let down and her (e/c) hues glaring ahead. She's dressed in old-fashioned pants and a snow-white button-up shirt. The male in front of the child seems to stiffen - his hand goes back to his side and his lips visibly purse. The woman approaches them and looks at the child before standing in front of it defensively, as if the male is going to do something to either of them.

"Are you okay?" She inquires in a hushed melodic voice as the girl nods. The woman starts backing away from the seemingly harmless though creepy man, taking the girl with herself. He steps back himself, soon hiding behind a nearby tree trunk and observing the conversation that starts between the two females.

"Who was that?" The girl asks as the woman stands in front of her, bright and lively. There's something dark at the side of her neck but it's hard to tell, maybe it's just the collar of her shirt.

"He's dangerous." She explains simply, not moving an inch.

"He didn't attack us." The kid justifies stubbornly, glancing around for the male they were discussing.

"That's because I'm here." She speaks slowly and softly, like she's at home and nothing can possibly hurt her. The girl is taken aback but doesn't mind the soothing presence. The woman is crouching in front of her and at the next sound of crunching leaves and howling wind, the child drops its doll to the ground.

"How do you stop him by being here?" The kid asks as the (h/c)-haired female leans down to grab the doll off the dirty ground. The moon has moved a bit and is now shining in the woman's face - it's oval and smooth. Her features seem ethereal. She hands the kid its toy and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear, and that's when the little girl sees it - the woman doesn't have an ear. The dark thing at the side of her neck is blood and it's coming from the hole her ear is supposed to be at. A scar similar to the male's adorns her frail neck.

"Well, I personally think husbands ought to listen to their wives." The woman's words are sweet and there is a big smile on her lips as she hands the little girl her doll. "After all, sometimes they're the ones putting food on the table."

The girl has little time to scream as the big (e/c) eyes turn black from pupil to sclera and the big smile turns into two rows of sharp yellow teeth. And before her vocal chords can react, the teeth are coming very close to her face, so close she can no longer see anything. Maybe if more time has been given to her she will have understood the male was actually warning her about his wife, the woman with the bright smile and one ear.

At once, the car is parked and the child's eyes open. Its mother is shocked at the amount of fear on its face once she looks in the backseat but no explanation is being delivered to her.

And in the forest behind their white house, a pale musician with a sewn mouth and a smiling woman with one ear peek from behind a thick tree trunk. Anne, the rag doll, lays feet from them and they exchange glances, after which the woman's smile widens. A conclusion is reached - the prey has come home just in time for dinner.