The Accursed

Oozing from the shaft overhead, a giant serpent hovered above the babies, forked tongue darting, darting, darting... As the sun sank over the isolated community, lengthening the shadows of ancient trees outside Thornwald Hospital, the huge reptile that some people called the Devil Snake stirred in its murky inner sanctum. As hunger consumed it with an urgency no power on Earth could stop, it slithered toward a newborn infant, its hideous, scaly body uncoiling, writhing and swelling along its full muscular length, its eyes unblinking, its fangs exposed, its tongue flicking eagerly, ravenous for its next victim... The assassin left no tracks, made not a sound, and only the dark night bore mute witness to the fiendish terror that had taken hold of the quiet community and its inhabitants—a terror as old as humankind...