Chapter 5: The Hunter's Bait

Chapter 5: The Hunter's Bait

The weight of Lola Elara’s revelation didn't just settle on Anya; it remade her. The grief she had carried for fifteen years was a dull, chronic ache. This new guilt was a shard of glass in her heart, twisting with every breath. She was no longer just the survivor. She was the cause, the unwitting herald who had called the darkness upon her own brother.

As she walked back through the sleeping town, the familiar streets seemed alien. The investigation was a sham, a modern ritual utterly useless against an ancient sickness in the land. Forensics, witness statements, police procedure—they were all children’s toys in the face of a creature that fed on memory itself. She wasn't an investigator anymore. Lola Elara’s words had given her a new, terrible purpose. She had to become a hunter.

She found Marco at the makeshift command post in the barangay hall, looking haggard under the buzzing fluorescent lights. He was on the phone, arguing with a superior officer about allocating more resources, his voice strained with the effort of trying to force a supernatural nightmare into a logical, procedural box.

When he hung up, he scrubbed a hand over his face. "They think we're dealing with a local cult. Some sickos who build things out of junk. They want us to start canvassing scrap yards." He looked at her, his eyes pleading for a return to sanity. "Find anything with the old woman?"

"Yes," Anya said, her voice devoid of its earlier panic, replaced by an unnerving, icy calm. "I found out how to draw it out."

Marco stared at her. "Draw what out, Anya? We don't even know what 'it' is."

"It's the Taga-Bakal," she said, using the name Lola Elara had spoken. It felt solid, real on her tongue. "And it's a predator. A territorial one. It’s drawn to turmoil. To strong emotions. Fear, grief, rage… it's a beacon for it."

"Anya, listen to yourself," he started, his voice gentle, worried. "You're exhausted. This place is messing with your head."

"It's already messed with my head, Marco. It did it fifteen years ago," she countered, her gaze sharp and intense. "The seventh statue wasn't just a trophy. It was a challenge. It was marking its territory and showing us what it collects. I'm going to give it something new to collect. Something it remembers."

Her plan, when she laid it out, was so far outside the bounds of police work that Marco could only stare at her in stunned silence. It was reckless, pagan, and sounded like a descent into madness. She was going to build her own effigy, a beacon of memory and emotion so powerful the creature wouldn't be able to ignore it.

"No," he said flatly. "Absolutely not. You are not going back into that field to play witch doctor. We wait for backup. We do this by the book."

"There is no book for this!" Anya’s voice cracked, the icy composure finally breaking. "Don't you understand? It’s a hunter. It outsmarted us. It knows we're here. While you're waiting for your book, it could be taking another child. Or it could decide it's tired of waiting. This is the only way."

She didn’t wait for his approval. She left him standing under the fluorescent lights, a man of logic marooned on an island of primordial fear.

Her father’s house, where she’d grown up, had been empty for years, a dusty relic of a life she’d abandoned. It took her ten minutes to jimmy the lock on the back door. Inside, the air was stale, thick with the ghosts of unspoken words. In a rotting wooden chest at the foot of her parents' bed, she found what she was looking for: a small box of her father's old effects. Among the faded photographs and service commendations was his first police badge, issued by the San Isidro municipality. It was heavy, the silver plating tarnished to a dull, leaden grey, the embossed crest worn smooth with time.

It was an object supercharged with history. A symbol of the law that had failed to protect his own son, of the silence he had kept, of the profession Anya had chosen in a desperate attempt to right his wrongs. It was a nexus of duty, failure, and grief. It was perfect.

As dusk began to bleed across the sky, bringing with it the oppressive humidity that promised a storm, she returned to the clearing. The seventh statue stood waiting, a dark sentinel in the fading light. Ignoring it, Anya began to work. With frantic, purposeful movements, she gathered fallen branches and strong vines, lashing them together. She took the faded shawl she’d worn for the drive from the city and draped it over the stick frame, creating the crude silhouette of a small girl. An effigy of herself at eight years old.

Finally, she took out the tarnished badge. With a piece of wire, she fastened it to the statue's chest, right where its heart should be. An offering. A challenge. Here I am, the gesture screamed into the oppressive silence. The one who got away. The beacon that called you then. I’m calling you now.

The sky had turned a bruised purple-grey. The wind began to pick up, no longer whispering through the cogon grass but hissing, a sound full of menace. The first fat drops of rain began to fall.

A light flickered at the edge of the field. It was Marco. He hadn't left. He stood by the path, his service pistol drawn, his face illuminated in the intermittent beam of his flashlight, a silent, disapproving guardian. He wouldn't participate in her madness, but he wouldn't abandon her to it, either.

"Stay there!" Anya called out over the rising wind. "Keep your light on the path! Watch our backs!"

He gave a sharp nod, his form a small bastion of defiant reason against the encroaching chaos.

Anya retreated to the edge of the clearing, crouching behind a thick clump of grass, her own weapon cold and heavy in her hand. Her focus narrowed, becoming a laser beam pointed at the two statues—the monster's and her own. The rain came harder now, plastering her hair to her face, blurring the world into a wash of grey and green. The wind howled, carrying with it the scent of wet earth, ozone, and something else… faint, but unmistakable.

The acrid tang of rust.

It's working, she thought, a thrill of terror and vindication shooting through her. It's coming. Her knuckles were white on the grip of her gun. Her entire being was focused forward, waiting for the clink and scrape of metal, for the grotesque form to emerge from the grass and claim the bait she had so carefully prepared.

A brilliant fork of lightning split the sky, illuminating the clearing in a stark, momentary flash. The two statues stood like opposing kings on a chessboard. The world plunged back into darkness, the thunder rolling a split second later, a deafening crack that shook the very ground.

She held her breath, straining her ears over the storm's fury. She was ready.

Then, a sound cut through the roar of the wind and rain.

It wasn't the scrape of metal from in front of her.

It was a voice from behind her. From the edge of the field. From where Marco stood guard.

"ANYA!"

His voice was a raw shout of surprise and alarm. It was followed by a sickening, wet crunch and the sound of his heavy flashlight clattering to the muddy ground.

And then, a scream.

It wasn't a shout of anger or a cry of pain. It was a high, piercing shriek of pure, unadulterated terror, a sound no human throat was meant to make. A sound of a man seeing the face of the impossible just before it took him.

The scream was cut short.

In the sudden, ringing silence that followed, Anya’s blood turned to ice. She spun around, her eyes wide with horror, staring into the darkness where her partner had been. The bait hadn't been the statue. The offering hadn’t been the badge. The bait had been her. Her obsessive focus, her ritual, her challenge—all of it had been a grand diversion. And while the hunter stared at the lure, the true monster had circled around in the dark and taken the only thing she had left to lose.