For roughly two months (in-game time), the patrons of Constantin's fishing lodge have received occasional visits from a particularly driven visitor.
Around that point in history, a green-haired archer first strode into the fishing lodge, commenting on the easy winter and asking directions to Mount Baratak before buying several bottles of barley beer and continuing on her way. On the following morning she staggered back to the fishing lodge, her breath still racing and her hair still toussled as if recovering from a long sprint, and her eyes wild with fear or panic in contrast to the cool and ethical "hunter's calm" which she had bore the prior day. After downing several bottles of tsuika and barley beer, she rented a room for the night. Thundering and scraping noises from upstairs suggested that the visitor was attempting to push furniture against the door and barricade herself inside her room, but the lodge's patrons and staff confronted the guest and stopped her from doing so.
The huntress returned to the bar after an entire day of restless slumber, identifying herself to Constantin as Viorica before apologizing for her previous actions and explaining that she had lost her way to Mount Baratak, instead happening across an abandoned fishing station further east along the northern shore of Lake Zarovich. To slake her curiosity she explored the interior of the old fishing station, where she had evidently unearthed a horrific laboratory somewhere beneath the humble exterior of the fishing station, a laboratory where some deranged soul in Lake Zarovich's history had conducted obscenely cruel experiments on living creatures--including people--and had crafted a number of grotesque abominations from these subjects. One product of such obscene science had been identified among the scattered notes as the Screeching Horror, a warped and towering fiend which continued to slumber in one of the titanic glass tanks as Viorica passed. But at some point, as Viorica explored the cells where previous abominations had been caged, the Screeching Horror broke free from its tank and stalked the intruder, tracking her by scent as it searched the prison cells where she took to hiding from the monster.
At an opportune moment, the Screeching Horror poked its snout too far into the cell where Viorica crouched in hiding behind a clump of debris; the huntress then darted past the creature and out of the cell, and by her account a long and panicked cat-and-mouse chase ensued as the Screeching Horror pursued Viorica through the ruined laboratory, through the abandoned fishing lodge and among the trees, hills and bluffs of the surrounding countryside. Eventually the Screeching Horror tired and abandoned the chase, and the huntress raced all the way back to Constantin's lodge in hope of finding greater safety from the beast should it resume the pursuit.
Since that night, the green-maned ranger has returned to Constantin's lodge from time to time, asking the patrons and the staff if any have seen the Screeching Horror--as she described it--or have heard rumors of the monster's whereabouts. Viorica has expressed fears that the Horror is still loose somewhere in Barovia or the neighboring domains and that her intrusion into the laboratory somehow awoke the Horror from its chemical stupor, thus making her responsible for the existence of one more predatory monster in the world. Clearly her intention is to find the Screeching Horror and put it down before it can cause anymore harm--and she admits that she will continue to have difficulty sleeping until this is done. But in fatalistic fashion she acknowledges that victory over the monster is anything but a certainty, that her vengeful pursuit of the Screeching Horror could very well be her last hunt. But Viorica continues after the abomination all the same.
Viorica has described the Screeching Horror as being a slightly larger and more evolved variety of the common hook horror, a monster possessed of great cunning, a superbly keen sense of smell and an intelligence approaching that of human quality; whether or not the creature can speak or otherwise communicate remains unknown. The Screeching Horror possesses the typical hook claws and chitinous hide yet, unlike its siblings, is capable of pursuing fleeing prey for miles and is capable of leaping well over thirty yards in a single bound. How much of these descriptives is fact--and how much is frightened exaggeration--is a matter left to speculation, but the ranger Viorica invites anyone who knows of the Screeching Horror's roamings to confer with her as soon as possible.