My trip to Slovakia was a last-ditch effort to save the band. I had hoped that in the forests beneath the Tatra Mountains there would be some ethereal source of inspiration that would kick-start my creativity and help me to keep The Warriors of Perun together. I came out here looking for lyrics but instead I found something else.
Instead, I found the village where people scream at the setting sun.
I love the band, being on stage with Thuy-Anh and Gustave is an indescribable feeling, but as I lay here curled up in the darkness searching for the slightest hint of a phone signal, I can’t help but to wish I stayed at home.
Do not go searching for the village where people scream at the setting sun. Some questions are not meant to be answered, some mysteries demand to remain unexplained. Heed the warnings of the locals and stick to the tourist friendly hiking trails.
If you do somehow stumble through the forest and end up in the village where every sunset is met with the harrowing screams of creatures beyond our comprehension – Run.
Run for your life and hope that the slick skinned monsters that dwell within the village haven’t noticed your presence yet. Whatever you do, don’t make the same mistake I did.
Do not accept their invitation to supper.
Even though the tables downstairs were filled up with all sorts of smoked cheeses and crispy bacon the whole lodge still smelled like a fish-market. Having my nose assaulted by the stench of a rotting sea while being in the middle of a landlocked country didn’t help my hangover but the fatty food The Goral Inn was serving for breakfast definitely did.
All of the lard and potatoes that make up traditional Slovakian cuisine serve as a hefty counterbalance to the raw fire that is Slovakian liquor. By the time I had finished my second helping of bacon topped halušky last night’s drinking seemed like a distant memory. I was an aspirin tablet away from becoming a regular human being. As my headache started to clear the mystery of the enigmatic village hidden somewhere in those green valleys beckoned to me.
“Sour milk?” The bartender-turned-waiter asked. He still had the same dirty towel draped around his neck as he had the night prior, but this time, instead of a bottle of pálenka he was holding a jug filled with frothy white liquid. For a split second the lodge didn’t smell like fish anymore. It smelled worse. My hangover tickled my stomach.
“No thank you. I’ll stick to coffee.”
His cheery eyes dimmed, as if me refusing to drink spoiled milk was an insult to his culture rather than an attempt to spare my digestive system a horrible evening. But the longer he looked at me the more I realized that he wasn’t unhappy about the milk, there was something else bothering him.
“You are the one who asked about the village last night,” he said.
“Yes, and you refused to answer my questions so I am going out to find answers on my own.”
“You are making a mistake young man, some questions are not meant to be answered and some places are not meant to be found. If you value the life that God has given you, stay away from that village. Nothing good will come of it.”
His warnings fell on deaf ears. Even as the remnants of a jagged hangover bounced around my head I knew one thing for certain – finding that village would bring me a boon of poetry that would stop my band from breaking up.
I thanked the man for his concern but assured him that I knew what I was doing. After wiping up my plate with some bread and chugging down another cup of instant coffee I set out into the forest.
The plan was simple; I would make my way towards the spot where I had met the strange girl. From there I would search the forest for the village. People didn’t usually nap in forests unless they live nearby and the screams of the villagers were loud enough to suggest that the mysterious ritual couldn’t have been taking place far off.
The forest was filled with blueberry bushes and slabs of moss that were nearly identical to the ones that I had met the girl by but my memories of seeing the forest shake with the force of the thunderous screams were vivid enough to help me walk with confidence. I wasn’t worried about getting lost. Outside of the images that were scorched into my memory there was another indicator that I could use to find the spot where I had witnessed the screaming – the phone signal.
When I had left Prague I promised myself I would only use my phone for note taking. All of those messages and news updates and analytics on our social media profiles were sapping away at my creative potential while I was in Prague, I figured that cutting them out while I was in the mountains would help me foster a calm mind that would eventually give birth to good lyrics. Yet as I made my way through the forest towards the one spot where I could catch the slightest hint of a phone signal I started to reconsider my ban on the outside world.
The idea to leave Prague came to me with such force that I had completely neglected to tell anyone about my trip. Not answering anyone’s messages for two weeks would give me that air of an unreachable artist that I so craved but the idea of something happening that required my immediate attention not being addressed for two weeks churned my stomach.
I would just check my texts real quick. Maybe I’d look at the analytics as well, just in case The Warriors of Perun had stumbled into the good graces of the algorithm and we had become famous overnight. If there were hundreds of new fans I wanted to be there to like their comments and urge them to tell their friends about the band.
I stood in the same exact spot where I stood the day before and took out my phone. One bar of service. My phone was reaching out to the world beyond the mountains. I took a big puff of my vape and waited for the flurry of notifications to come in.
Nothing happened.
I took another hit, filling the fresh mountain air with the scent of strawberry cheesecake but by the time the silky smoke dissipated nothing changed. I thumbed my way around every messaging app I had to make sure I was actually online.
I was. No one was messaging me.
I scrolled my way over to the band’s social media. Zero shares, zero likes, zero comments, zero plays. Our music was streaming out on the World Wide Web but no one was listening.
We just finished another show. The past month worth of gigs had been pretty bad, but this one was an absolute disaster. We got on stage two hours later than we were meant to on account of the booker getting into a fist fight, high pitched waves of feedback cut through every song like a dull knife and halfway through our set a shirtless man rushed the stage, stole my microphone and sang a little diddy about how Epstein didn’t kill himself.
The crowd clapped for him. They didn’t clap for us.
The only people in the audience that engaged with our music were the guy rolling on molly who screamed the wrong words during every chorus and the cheery looking girl who sat at the back of the bar.
Aneta Vašková, I knew her from the occasional four in the morning music jams that I’d inevitably end up at whenever I was drinking. She was listening to the band in which I was the lead singer but I don’t think she noticed me. She kept her eyes closed. Aneta was too busy beating out the heartbeat of the monstrous tune that Gustave was slamming out on his drum kit.
My head echoed with advice from meditation apps. I forced myself back into the present moment. I was standing in the middle of a forest, preparing myself for a journey into a mysterious village. I was doing something adventurous and daring for my art. There was no time for intrusive thoughts.
I took another puff of my vape hoping for the sweetness to wash out the memories of that awful night. It didn’t. My mouth filled with a dirty taste of burning cotton. The vape had run out of juice and in my eagerness to go find the people who scream at the setting sun I forgot to refill it.
It might have been my realization that I would have to make due without my nicotine dispenser, but suddenly the forest felt much more oppressive. The happy birds that chirped the afternoon away the day prior were replaced with the shrieks of agitated crows that flew above me through the treetop. Thick clouds blotted out the sun. It was going to rain. And I couldn’t ease my mind with nicotine.
Yet every creative journey requires the crossing of uncomfortable valleys. I knew that somewhere out there I could find inspiration. After updating my status to tell people I was out in the woods being a poet I put away my phone and set out deeper into the forest. I was starting to get cold in my t-shirt but a warm, optimistic fire was burning in my belly.
Going on a journey through the sickly green,
Really hung-over, need my nicotine,
Then, after thirty minutes of walking I ended up back at the same blueberry bush. Or at least I thought I did, that small sliver of phone signal that I had found there before was gone. I figured that maybe it was a different bush so I just kept on walking but fifteen minutes later I was right back where I started.
My poor sense of direction had finally caught up with me. I was lost in the woods. And out there, in the distant valleys, thunder started to rumble.
The molly man had bought Thuy-Anh’s affection with a baggie from his wallet. The two of them were caught in a drug-fueled lover’s embrace a couple of steps from the bathroom.
I was sitting at the bar nursing a flat beer trying to pretend I wasn’t the guy who had nervously walked off stage an hour ago. The faces of everyone at the bar were downright hostile and I kept on worrying someone was going to break a glass over my head, but I couldn’t leave.
As soon as we finished playing Aneta immediately snared Gustave into a conversation. The two just kept on going at it, excitedly talking about something that was muffled out by the drunkenness of the bar. Gustave barely helped with packing up the gear and by the time Thuy-Anh met her new friend I was alone for the job. The whole way through, Gustave and Aneta chatted away at the bar.
I sat there, watching them, trying not to be obvious. There was some hope in me that maybe the two were just trying to sleep together, but it faded with every minute of their animated conversation. This wasn’t the talk of two horny people trying to bang, this was the passionate exchange of two artists deciding to have a baby.
It started to rain. At first the raindrops were negligible, they even felt good on my sticky, hung-over skin, but by the time I reached the same blueberry bush for the third time the water came down in heavy, cold chunks. The valley echoed with thunder. I could hear the crackling of lightning in the distance.
Memories of VCRs from the 90s teaching me about thunderstorm safety reeled through my head. I wasn’t meant to stand under a tree. Easier said than done in a forest.
Out of habit I took a deep hit of my vape. My mouth and throat got punched by another wave of burnt cotton. I had no water to wash out the taste.
I was lost in the forest during a thunderstorm, out of supplies and massively hung-over.
Despair started to climb up the back of my throat but I did my best to recall every single motivational post I had ever seen on reddit. This was all a part of the process. I was the master of my own destiny. This situation could be controlled.
It was raining and I had a bad taste in my mouth. I stuck out my tongue and let the fresh water cleanse me of my mistakes.
Thunder in the sky and I’m drinking rain,
Lost in the woods like a-ARGH Fuck! Hail!
Shards of ice came down like an artillery barrage. I tried to hide under a tree but a crackling thunderclap scared me off.
She took out a pair of headphones. She was playing Gustave her music.
My bare arms sustained most of the pelts but I could feel the hail growing harder, growing bigger.
His eyes were closed. He was tapping the table.
More thunder. More hail. More rain. More pain.
They were going to run away together. Gustave and Aneta were going to start their own band.
I got down onto the forest dirt and curled myself up into a ball.
This was the end of The Warriors of Perun.
I screamed.
It came out of me like a wave of projectile vomit. My voice chords burned raw, my nails dug into my hands, something that had been festering in me for a long time was clawing its way out.
The moment stretched into eternity – Me, a searing, screaming pain traveling through my body in the darkness of my shut eyes. I don’t know how long I howled in the forest but by the time my voice had given up I was back on my feet. The rain was gone. Birds were chirping off in the distance.
I opened my eyes.
“Hello.”
I fell down into the slush of mud and sticks. In front of me stood a little boy dressed in steamboat suspenders. He looked just like any other eight-year-old boy you’d find in a Slovakian Sunday church crowd with one exception – Across his forehead, barely covered by his blonde locks, there was a dark, green festering wound. It looked like a hoof print.
“Sup?” I whispered in shock.
“My name is Samko! What’s your name?” He asked with the pep of chocolate milk commercial.
“Robert.” I tried not to look at that horrible scar, but I couldn’t help myself.
“Hello Robert! You look quite lost, and maybe hungry, yes, you look hungry! My family is about to have supper and we own a map! Maybe you would like to join us?”
Severe head-trauma aside, the kid’s offer of food and a way back home sounded heavenly. Maybe it was some sort of a sign, maybe this little helpful kid was sent down from the cosmos to help me get back home, maybe the experience in the thunderstorm could weave itself into a song and I’d manage to keep the band alive for just a little longer. I was about to accept his invitation but then another thought struck me.
Yes, the kid was definitely a sign, but maybe he was there to get me further from home and closer to that eldritch well of inspiration I was searching for.
“Samko, do you know anything about the village where people scream at the setting sun?”
“Ha-Ha! No,” he said, “But I do know about having you over for supper and making sure you don’t die in the woods!”
The kid made a strong argument. I got up and agreed to come over for supper. He grabbed my hand as if I was the child and led me through the forest to a meadow. His hands were freakishly soft.
Little boy’s soft hand,
His scar I don’t understand,
But maybe he’ll help me save my band,
As we walked through the meadow a hot afternoon sun dried my clothes. Not a single cloud in the sky, it was as if there never was a storm at all. The heavens were starting to turn a calm shade of orange as the brightest star traveled east. Everything was going to be fine.
Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off the kid’s scar.
There was something so odd about the dark green hue of the wound. The mark looked bad, hell, it looked fatal, but Samko moved with the confidence of a toddler who had never scraped his knee. I needed to know.
“Hey, uh, Samko, the scar you have on your forehead. How’d you get that?”
The kid shot me a wide smile. It wasn’t until then that I realized that he was missing a couple of his front teeth.
“One of the neighbor’s cows went loose,” Samko said.
“Does it… hurt?” I heard myself ask.
“Not anymore,” he replied. “Ah! Look, we’re here!”
The village was just like any other village you would find in Slovakia. Groups of small wooden cottages lined a single rural road; fields and barns and vegetable gardens stemmed out from the humble community out towards the dark forest.
The place was peaceful. Someone was sharpening a scythe, a quiet song flowed out from one of the cottage windows, a general feeling of tranquility hung around the whole settlement. Yet when Samko and me passed by one of the barns that sat on the edge of the village a cry of panic echoed through the valley.
Whatever livestock was inside of that rickety structure was seized with a sudden, indescribable terror.
“You like animals Robert?” Samko asked casually. He was barely audible over the shrieking of the pigs.
“Uh, sure. Used to have a dog.”
“Good!” He smiled his incomplete grin, “Animals don’t like me very much. It makes living on a farm difficult. Maybe you can help me feed the chickens sometime. Oh! There’s my dad!”
He was a mountain of a man. Even past the drab suit you could see the body of someone who had worked the land his entire life. A jagged scar of dark jade lined the right side of his face as if someone had knocked off a piece of the man’s jaw.
“Poppa! I found a man in the woods! I have invited him over for supper.”
Samko’s father’s eyes betrayed no emotion. He simply grunted, turned around and walked over to the chicken coop that was attached to the woodshed in their yard.
The birds seemed to be anxious at his approach and the closer he got the more they let their anxiety be known. The chicken that Samko’s father pulled out of the coop let out sounds so shrill I had to cover my ears.
The man in the suit had no compassion for the writhing bird. He carried the live animal as if it was a lifeless log of wood across the yard, pressed it in my arms, took a step back and watched.
Its tiny heart beat against my fingers, its beady eyes searched for a means of escape, but the chicken had calmed. I held the terrified bird in my hands as the man in the gray suit silently judged me.
“He likes animals,” Samko whispered.
The man smiled. His teeth were as sparse as his sons. “I can see that! Welcome to our humble village, stranger. Put away the bird and come taste my woman’s cooking!”
She was the only member of the family that didn’t have obvious scars on her face but what she lacked in gruesomeness she made up for in the general unease she inspired.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something wrong with her. As I watched her transfer the bowls of sauerkraut and potatoes from the stove to the table I searched her face for the source of the discomfort that I was feeling. She prepared the table in complete silence and moved with the sluggish steps of a lobotomy patient but there was something else off about her.
Her eyes. You wouldn’t notice it at first glance, but the more I looked at her pupils the more I noticed the fading, milky quality behind them.
“You are lucky that my Samko has found you! Not everyone is as fortunate as you are, misguided hikers disappear in this valley all the time.” The man in the suit had become much more amicable after the chicken incident, he was all gapped smiles now. “Veruna! Get the man a glass of milk so that he can enjoy his dinner properly!”
Without a word the woman got up from the table, went to the other room and emerged with a glass of sour milk. The hangover that I had forgotten made itself known as I saw the drink.
“Could I possibly ask for a glass of water? I’m not a sour milk type of guy.”
The man’s eyes grew cold. But then, as if he had caught a glimpse of his own stony expression he smiled again. “Of course, of course. What sort of host would I be if I couldn’t bring water to a thirsty guest.”
He got up and walked into the other room. His wife and child sat in silence with tight-lipped smiles on their faces.
“Here! A glass of water!” He bellowed with good cheer as he emerged from the other room, “Drink up, enjoy the food and get ready for a good, long rest. It is dangerous to travel through these woods after sundown, but come morning we will take you back home so you can sing praises of our hospitality.”
I took the glass of water and raised it to my lips.
I watched Thuy-Anh study the contents of her glass as if she was a detective trying to solve a murder case. The owner of the bar had given us complimentary Cuba Libres to ease the sting of a canceled show. The audience was nonexistent and our drummer had bailed last minute because he was ‘busy’.
I sipped on my charity but Thuy-Anh kept on studying hers.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Checking for powder. A gal can never be too careful,” she replied, “All sorts of creepy dudes out there.”
It was a passing though, a glimpse of an irrelevant memory, but it still pulled my eyes towards the top of the drink.
I froze.
Remnants of white dust floated on the surface of the water, there were small chunks of a crushed up pills resting at the bottom of my glass.
“I hate to be rude,” I said, trying to stop my voice from shaking, “But before I eat I always like to take a couple of puffs from my pipe. Would you mind if I popped outside for a quick second?”
His scarred face turned to cold stone. If he made an effort to hide behind a smile it wasn’t a good one.
“Of course,” the man in the gray suit hissed through his remaining teeth, “Just make sure you don’t stay out too long. Wouldn’t want the food to go cold.”
Another helping of burnt cotton I was too stupid to anticipate. I did my best to hold back my coughs as I peered behind the window and watched the family. They just sat there, completely void of emotion, waiting for me to come back.
They were waiting to drug me.
I knew I couldn’t go back to that house. Whatever charade we were playing was already wearing thin. But I also knew that I couldn’t go back and mindlessly trudge through the forest – I had barely made it out during the daytime. Trying to find my way back to the Goral Inn under the cover of darkness would be the end of me.
I sat there, crouched behind the cottage window stuck in the same loop of indecisiveness that had plagued me so many times before during more trivial parts of my life. Was I going to risk my life out in the woods or let myself be drugged by the strange, scarred family?
I desperately hoped that a stroke of genius would produce an infallible plan for me to survive the night, but before my lackluster intellect could come up with an escape route I was spurred into improvisation.
Samko’s chair creaked as he pushed himself away from the table. He walked out of the dining room. The front door opened.
“Robert!”
My lizard brain took control. I ducked past the window and hid in the woodshed. Curled up among the darkness of the logs I hoped that Samko would just get hungry and go back inside. But he didn’t.
“Robert!” His childish voice was getting closer. A flurry of clucking anxiety exploded out of the chicken coop as his footsteps squished through the mud. Luckily, the birds quieted down; Samko had walked past the woodshed and out towards the forest.
“Robert!” His voice stung with the sadness of a child who has just been abandoned by his only playmate. I watched Samko through a gap in the woodshed and for a split second I wondered whether I was overreacting. The kid didn’t look dangerous; he looked lonely. As he stood alone beneath the slowly reddening sky an ember of empathy started up in the back of my throat.
It was quickly snuffed out.
“Robert!” He yelled my name again, but this time his voice was draped in a tenor that sounded nothing like a child. The sounds that came out of his mouth echoed with a dangerous, inhuman energy.
“ROBERT!” There was growing frustration behind his calls.
“ROBEEEEERRRRTTT!” Samko stomped his little feet and let out a cry so dark, so savage, so deafening that it seemed as if the whole universe had shifted on its axis. Sawdust rained down on me from the ceiling of the woodshed as I watched the little boy’s true form reveal itself.
Bits of flesh peeled themselves off from the back of his head like wet wallpaper. His pale skin hung out from behind his steamboat suspenders like straw on a poorly made scarecrow. Beneath his human shell Samko was covered in slick, jet-black scales.
The chickens became anxious again. The muddy backyard sounded off with another set of footsteps. Heavier footsteps. The man in the gray suit lumbered his way next to his son and looked out towards the forest.
“ROBERT!” He screamed, in the same infernal tone. A piece of skin popped off from his bulging neck. The dark scales that rested under his flesh throbbed with a primal rage.
“ROBERT!” The man in the suit howled out into the woods again. No Robert emerged. Samko’s father let out a low, angry hiss and then pelted his son across the back of his head.
As soon as his mammoth hand delivered the blow its skin rumpled up and slid off like a moist glove. Beneath the skin of his human hands Samko’s father had been hiding dark claws. At the end of each of his razor sharp fingers there was a bright light that shined with the color of the setting sun.
Samko’s father wrapped his eldritch appendage around his son’s shoulder and led him out towards the edge of the wood. Soon other villagers emerged and joined the misshapen father and son in the clearing.
Soon I realized that I was in the village where people scream at the setting sun.
The roaring screams that I had heard the day prior were nothing compared to the earth-shaking force of seeing the ritual up close. The universe shook at its core, it threatened to crack beneath the sheer volume of the deafening yells that the villagers let loose at the reddening sky.
When it was all over, when the world outside was plunged into darkness and those ghastly howls had finally ceased, I was happy to be alive. I thought it was all over. I thought that all I had to do was hide out in the woodshed until daybreak and then run as fast and as far as I could with a promise never return to this horrid place again.
Then the lights appeared.
Bobbing bulbs of crimson danced in the darkness like burning fireflies. They were moving back towards the village, towards my woodshed. They all moved with a single rallying cry –
“ROBERT!”
They were looking for me.
This whole trip has been a horrible mistake. I hoped to come to Slovakia to find a source of inspiration to keep The Warriors of Perun afloat, but I don’t think I’ll be writing any songs about this trip.
I don’t think I’ll be writing any songs ever again.
I don’t think I’ll make it through the night.
The chickens are growing more agitated by the minute. The horrible creatures that are calling my name are getting closer. Those red, glowing orbs that float through the darkness like sluggish fireworks keep on getting bigger. It’s just a matter of time until they find me.
If I somehow manage to find a sliver of signal, a tiny bit of internet for me to get out my last words before the creatures who scream at the setting sun tear me apart with their bright-tipped claws, please pass on my final words.
Tell Gustave that my dying wish was for him to not start a band with Aneta Vašková.