Finnish Line

To whoever finds this letter, If you are reading this, it means I have failed to reach the Finnish border near Lieksa, and my enemies have found me. I have taken the time to write down my experience so we might be properly prepared for what evil lay waiting in the depths of the USSR.
My name was Wilhelm Frederich von Gehweg, born in 1922 in Duseldorf to the von Gehweg mason family. I became a member of the 6. Armee under Generalfeldmarschall Paulus in 1941 and joined the summer campaign a year later. As all at home will by now have realised, the 6th have failed the Reich.
As of writing this it has been two months since the ostarbeiters surrounded our unit at Stalingrad in operation Uran. I must, shamefully, admit that I have deserted the Wehrmacht. When the Ostarbeiters began closing in on our position I made a run for it together with an Ungarn named József Bárd. We managed to avoid most Ivans throughout the destroyed streets of Stalingrad and made our way north to our allies in Finland to re-join the Wehrmacht. We tried avoiding the heart of the USSR by traveling through Kologrivski Forest in the Kostroma Oblast, east of Moscow and eventually enter Finland through Lieksa.
In retrospect, we should have stayed with the 6. Armee and died like man. If there are any gods in this forsaken world, Jósef and I surely must have angered him with our cowardice and treachery to the Reich. Avoiding the Ivans was easy enough, we travelled by night and slept in the safety of caves by day. We took took turns keeping guard, keeping our gewehrs ready for when any forest Slavs found our hiding spot.
I have to admit that the first thirteen hundred kilometres of our journey could almost be described as peaceful, aside from the occasional elderly ostarbeiter we had to cull in the name of staying hidden from the eastern flock. There was nothing in that sea of mundanity which could have prepared us for the things that found us on that faithful night. It started with a scream coming from deep inside the woods. It was like the bugling of a group of elk, but deeper and heavier. Their screams were putting József on edge, but I wrote it off as the call of some rare unknown species of elk that must be native to these corrupted lands and went back to sleep. It was when we heard the same screams the night after that I began to become nervous myself, and when we inspected the snow that morning we only saw human footprints.
The next night while making our way through the forest he suddenly spotted two strange flames in the distance, Jósef whispered to me to take cover and we hid ourselves behind a fallen oak. I protested, saying the old Ungarn was jumping at shadows, but he swore up and down that he saw it. We peeked at our enemy, but saw nothing but dark woods and moonlit snow. We left our little hiding spot and travelled forward. A little bit later we once again began hearing bugling, and then we heard the crack of a twig. We ran until we found a hut, climbed in through the window sill, and silenced the swine sleeping in their sty before they could give us away.
For the next two days we thankfully didn't hear anything. We reached the shores of lake Onega where we sneaked our way into a small fishing village. There we commandeered a small row boat from one of the jetties. Jósef was on rowing duty, while I had the gewehr ready incase any patrols came across us on the water. Jósef, who was facing the coast suddenly let out a scream unfitting of a soldier of any army. He jumped at me to grab my gewehr without saying a word. I thought he had finally gone mad from the red stain laying over these lands and fought back for my own life. The gun went of and the town behind us awoke. I looked over him to see what to prepare myself for, and that was when I saw it. Seven humanish shapes, wearing the skulls of great stags and having some baleful fire in their eye sockets. I yelled at Jósef to row for by heaven and earth, and we safely escaped the swarm of Ivans sailing onto the waters to investigate the stray gunshot. When we got onto the deeper waters of Onega we falsely believed ourselves finally safe from whatever was hunted us. Oh how wrong we were.
We made landfall in the forest of Solomennoye. Only six more days and we would have reached safety. On the second night of traveling through that treacherous landscape we once again hear that damned bugle. Jósef's nerves, on acount of the Ungarn Aryan blood being sicker than that of ours, were shot to hell and back and he ran as if Freund Hein himself was after him. I tried running after him but when a man runs for his live no healthy man can keep up with him. After a while I heard Jósef screaming for his life, followed by the sound of something wet falling upon the snow. When I got close enough to see dear Jósef's corpse there was a large wild man hung over him. I charged at the man with my bayonet. My blade hit true. Yet the man barely reacted, and upon close inspection I saw that I had not hit flesh. No I hit a great collection of twisting branches, like some kind of briar bush. I withdrew my bayonet, and ran, leaving my compatriot behind. I didn't stop until dawn's light hit my face.
The next night I entered the town of Spasskaya Guba, and broke into the house of someone of the local commissar. Holding him at gunpoint, I demanded to know what it was that had been chasing me across their so called Union. I was lucky enough to have found the one commissar in all of Russia to have received a pre-school education and capable to converse in broken German. He told me that the things chasing me where called Leshonki, forest guardians protecting the forest against those who disgrace it with their presence. I yelled at him for filling my head with Fairy Tales, but he swore that is the only possible explanation of what I observed these last few weeks. I shot him for lying to me, although in all honesty in my heart I knew he was right. I do feel though that if the Leshonki really are protecting the forest from disgrace they should have welcomed us as liberators and never allowed their current neighbours from settling down.
I planned on travelled for three days without rest, hopping to throw the Leshonki off my trail before reaching the Finnish border. But each night their bugling seems to get closer and closer. Last night one got close enough to be seen in the light of the full moon. It was some kind of bestial man. What I believed to be simply a mask was actually its face, and two great horns grew from the Leshonki's brow. Their moss-covered legs bent like that of a deer, although they walk barefoot like primitive man. Their are large and muscular, although as I had observed earlier they were not flesh and blood but branch and lichen. It noticed me as well, and came charging at me. I managed to roll out of the way, but its claws caught and scratched my calves. I am less than a day's travel from the Finnish line, but I am afraid I might not make it. The leg has began to fester, as necrosis already sets in, and I feel my mind slowly slipping away from me. My hope is to make it across and to present my findings to the further himself, hoping my intel makes up for the shame desertion has put upon me. But if I do not, please bring my findings to the Thule-Gesellschaft so they can study this threat and prepare the Wehrmacht for any future invasions. Attached to this later is a picture I drew of the creature.
Glory to Germany! Hei... [The rest of the letter and the attached picture are drenched in blood and have been rendered unreadable.]