The Devil Makes A Claim

Only his initials survive, time has taken the rest of the man now only known as W.E.. Being somewhat of a thug, a drunkard and a regular brawler he was not a man many people looked forward to bumping into. He once spat in the face of the village parson and punched him, and when a parish clerk unwisely interfered, W.E. beat the hapless clerk severely.
Rumours in the Welsh village were that this brutish man had sold his soul to evil, and he was proud of the many wicked deeds he committed. In fact he revelled in them, believing it great to hold such terror over people. Villagers always imagined W.E.'s end would be violent and shocking and they were not wrong.
One evening the bully disappeared. His house was checked but nothing. The next morning a search was made of the area and a body was discovered on the edge of a river. W.E. had been found and it was a cruel sight. An obvious struggle had occurred between the drunkard and someone (something?) unknown, and it was evident that the fight had started some distance away from the river.
The dead mans footprints showed that he had dug his heels in deep into the earth as if to resist his attacker who was seemingly intent on dragging him to the water.
Indeed as the search party continued to take in what they had found, they realised that W.E. had put up a desperate struggle.


A Hell Of A Fighter

There was an oak tree near the river and one of its boughs had its bark peeled right off. It was clear that the towns reprobate had clung to this bough for dear life until it had snapped because he still clutched it in his death. But the most violent part of the attack had taken place closer to the murky river water. There the body had been dragged underneath roots of trees and pulled through a hole barely big enough for a fox to slip through let alone a grown man. That crushing force extinguished the life of W.E..
But what of his assailant? Could it be that the towns infamous brawler had picked a fight with someone more fierce than himself? Footprints were found all over the grisly scene, however they all belonged to the wretched corpse. No evidence of there being another person could be seen. Not a thing.
Due to this and the fact the dead man had led a cruel, evil life, people in the town believed that W.E.'s final fight had been against something he had no hope of beating and that his murderer was no man but the Devil himself.