The Setting
The Beast lived in the woods, the villagers knew that, The Beast would kill anyone who wandered too far and too deep, the villagers knew that too. There were safe paths, if you skirted the edges of the thick underbrush and were tucked away inside when dusk fell, but even then someone's brother or cousin had heard of a traveler gone missing in the brightest day (smears of blood on the leaves and branches bent back with his thrashing). It was best to avoid the woods altogether, if one could.
Karen's brother had been taken by The Beast when they were on the cusp of adulthood, or so it had been told. It was certainly true that both of them had snuck out of the house, dodging chores and taking a hobo's pack of food (the pack consisted of apples, bread, cheese, and was made with their mother's second-best tablecloth) with them into the woods. It was also true that Karen had come back alone and bloodied, hysterical, missing both her mother's tablecloth and her brother. When she was calmed enough to speak and her wounds were dressed, she told of a monster with glowing-red eyes and her brother's screams. The village could not muster enough men for a hunting party or our story might have ended there; instead, it truly began in the summer of her 23rd birthday.
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Still unmarried, fair though she was, Karen's parents blamed her lack of suitors on back luck - surviving an attack by The Beast would have made her a hero as a boy, but as a girl there were whispers of unsavory things, of witchcraft. That she spent all of her time reading and none of it socializing did nothing to disprove these rumors.
It was then to little surprise, and much dismay, that Karen's mother found her bed empty one warm summer morning. The note on her pillow simply read, "I can no longer bear it, I must be rid of The Beast". Missing from the kitchen were several apples, bread, cheese, her father's flintlock pistol, and her mother's third-best tablecloth. Her parents wept, but no hunting party was forthcoming that day either. The Page household had lost both of its children to the woods, and to The Beast.