The Devil’s Pact of the Dry Tree

By the ‘Dry Tree’ in Waregem there once lived a small man with a black beard. He had dark eyes, into which no one dared look for longer than ten seconds. People believed he had made a pact with the devil.

One evening the gamekeeper saw a dark figure with a rooster under his arm slinking through the woods. He followed the figure to a crossroads where five roads met. There appeared a black gentleman with a pointed beard, who produced a piece of white parchment and plucked a feather from the wing of the black rooster. The little man bared his arm and signed the contract with his own blood. The gamekeeper fled and discovered that his hair had turned completely grey.

From that day the little man possessed a ‘gallows child’ that gave him special powers. On his neck one could see a red spot where he drew blood to feed the gallows child. One day a farmer was cursing because his horses could not budge a load of timber. The little man appeared, took the reins and the horses moved effortlessly.

At meals he always poured his first spoonful of porridge on the table and placed his first potato beside his plate — a sign only sorcerers made. He cured warts by rubbing them and made an organ play in the attic whenever he entered a tavern, causing the chairs to dance. Every customer fled the premises.

When the little man lay dying, a terrible storm broke out. The priest gathered a few brave men to keep vigil by the coffin. At midnight the dead man’s cat suddenly grew extremely restless. A loud bang shook the house and the cards the men had been playing with flew through the air. The wall clock and every bottle in the house shattered, while a threatening noise like the flapping of wings echoed through the rooms.

That night the priest came to bless the house. The next day the whole village whispered that the devil had come for the man’s soul at midnight. At the funeral the coffin was full of mice. And to this day the road by his house makes a detour — because people always walked past with a wide berth out of fear.