The snow flurries had just started coming down when Becker entered The Schlecter Tavern on the northwest side of Bondorff. Bondorff is a sleepy town deep in the southwest reaches of The Black Forest in southwest Germany. There were only two men seated inside the tavern. The man furthest from the entrance swayed on a stool at the far side of the bar. Becker determined that this man was at the end of a wild ride of fortune that had graced the fellow with a generous ability to ride this stool upright. So he turned to the man with the dark beard and the faded gray tunic that sat at a table just inside the entrance. 

      "Bist du der Mann vom Nachrictenbrett?"

       -" Are you the man from the message board?" Becker asked, knowing that it must be so.

     "Ja. Ich bin Karl." The stranger introduced himself without extending his hand.

     The men continued in their native tongue. 

     Becker began, "Well what is it that you've asked me here for?" He'd spent the last four hours journeying this deep into the forest and it was a place he wasn't quite fond of.

       "You know what I want to talk about, don't you, freund? You asked plenty of questions about the bottom of that hill due north of this very tavern. Why is that?"

        Becker didn't like the smug tone that Karl confronted him with, yet he explained himself. "I had a fuckin hell of an experience near a creek bed just on this side of those seven cottages. You know the ones in the horseshoe pattern?"

        "Of course I know the cottages. And of course you had an experience there." The bartender brought Karl another beer and he made sure the fellow was back out of earshot before he continued. "You'd be the fifth I've heard say the same."

      With this the smug nature of Karl's dialect eased up as if he was debating on how he should continue, but he gulped down half of the stein and pressed on.

      I've  heard the stories. And I listen quietly and I've never mentioned my own. Not to a soul!"

     - "Was it the man without a face?" asked Becker.

     Huh? No! I don't know who the hell it was. He looked like he was about 16 years old. When I reached the creek bed, he was on the opposite side. He held a compound bow. And by the time I realized he was there, he had drawn it on me."

       - "Dear God! What did you do?"

       "I fell to the earth and I prayed. I layed there with my face to the ground and pissed on myself and prayed." Karl had been talking frantically, but now, once again, he seemed reluctant to continue.

     So Becker urged him on. "Well, what the fuck happened, Karl? Go on."

        "I would've certainly heard the man release the string of his bow, or even recoil it to let his arrow down. I faced the ground in silence. But when death didn't come I looked up and the boy was nowhere to be found."

       -"Aw, hell, a local boy playing a foul joke on you, huh, freund?"

       "Nein! Not quite, Becker. You see? There's a few details I have failed to relay to you thusfar. The kid wore an S.S uniform. Like the ones I remember when I was a kid. Hell, almost 60 years ago. The uniform looked almost new. Except for three holes in the kid's shirt just above his left hip. They gleamed in between the rays of the sun and the refelection of the snow."

       -"I see," said Becker, with not the faintest sound of surprise in his voice. "And the others?"

       "They all had similar stories of strangers evading them. One man, was a neighbor of mine. He swore that he came upon a man on the path due north of here. The man hissed at him and cursed him and began to run towards the creek. He says he chased the man to a clearing burning with anger and a drunk spirit, yet when he reached the clearing, he only found a huge silver stag. The stag trampled him and left him in the hospital with collapsed lungs. He was somehow able to tell me the story, though it took all that he had. He succumbed to his wounds the next night. That was years before my experience. Hell, I didnt believe what Horace told me! Thought he had been knocked into a Looney Toon." 

   Karl slugged back the rest of his beer before he yelled at the barkeep for another. When the barkeep was back out of earshot he looked at Becker solemnly. 

        "You say you saw a man with no face. What do you mean? He just didnt have any features where his face should be?

      -No, Karl. I wish that is what I had meant."

     The beer was working on Karl and he was in no condition to sit idly by during a dramatic internal struggle that Becker seemed to be fighting with.

      "Did the thing terrorize you!?" he impatiently blurted out. He was loud enough now, the bartender showed them more interest as he inched his way closer, while wiping down the bar. What a strange question. 

      Becker replied in a hushed tone as to set an example for Karl to follow. 

      -"Only in every dream I ever have anymore. But no. It didn't even let on if was aware of my presence until I'd crept up about 30 or 40 feet from it. Then he turned, and I knew I was in hell. Right here on earth."

      Karl couldn't contain himself. "What did you do? What happened, Becker.?"

        The bartender didnt even pretend to not be paying attention anymore. He faced the men with his head cocked slightly so as to get a bit of leverage with his good ear.

      -"I called out to it. When the thing turned toward me its face was a twisted knot of burnt flesh. Its jaw was gone. There was a hole halfway through the back of its neck. It couldn't even hold his head upright."

      "Dear God!" Karl let out after a loud gasp. 

      -"Was no God in the forest that day. It May be so that God does not operate near that creek bed. 

       "What in the hell happened from there? How long ago was this"

    - "This all happened about three months ago. I woke up several minutes later. I was almost a quarter mile from where I met that thing. I was by the creek bed. I walked around lost for almost an hour, my mind reeling and stopping, overloaded to the point of shutting down."

       "Goddam, man! That is wild!" was the only thing Karl could muster as his brain began to spin too. The dark beer and the dark tale were laying a hell of a combo punch on him. 

       -"When I finally found my path back, I reached in my trouser pocket for a cigarette and I found this in my pocket." Becker produced a silver pocketwatch on a chain from his jacket pocket. The thing had developed the dark spots of aging silver often adorns after many years of neglect.

     Karl bent over and looked at the silver watch. The two men's heads were almost touching as they stared at the relic. Karl could barely make out an engraving on it and he read it aloud. 

     "T.S. Schneider? Huh? Who the hell is that?"

     -"The watch belonged to my father. That was his name. He died when I was in my early twenties. Influenza. My brother took this watch off of him after he passed."

    Karl looked like a man that had so many questions he might need to regroup and finish the discussion a different day. But he managed,"How'd you end up with the watch?"

       -"I am not quite sure how I ended up with the watch that day. My brother was supposedly buried with it seven years ago. After his wife left him, he took to drinking real bad. I found him by that creek bed. He had shot his face off behind the end of a few pints."

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