I think my boss, Nick Webster, the owner of the Old Scratch Tavern, was murdered.

The official story is that Nick was drunk, lost his footing and fell off a cliff, but too many strange things happened in the months leading up to his death for me to believe it was an accident.

The thing is, Nick had been seeing the devil. For months he’d been telling anyone who’d listen that there was someone, or something, lurking out in the woods behind the bar. At first, everyone assumed he was just exaggerating, but there was no way he could be making up the creepy notes he was getting, or the dead animals on the doorstep, or the fires that kept flaring up near the building. Someone was
trying to scare him, maybe even scare him to death.

On the night he died, I’d just closed up when he came out of the office and said he’d finally figured it out. Before he could explain, he saw someone outside and ran off into the woods. My back was to the door, so I didn’t see anyone. By the time I turned around, both Nick and the devil were gone, and all that was left was a small fire burning outside. After I put it out, I waited for Nick, but he never came back.