Chapter 6: The Empty Grave

Chapter 6: The Empty Grave

The shadow under the door was a black, silent blade poised at Maxwell’s throat. He stood frozen, the brittle parchment containing Hermann Blatzer’s final, damning words clutched in his hand. Every creak of the old inn, every howl of the blizzard outside, seemed to be holding its breath, waiting. He could feel the presence on the other side of the door—a patient, predatory stillness that was infinitely more terrifying than a direct threat. It was Elsbeth. He knew it with a certainty that chilled him more than the ghost’s touch. She wasn't trying to get in. She was just letting him know that she knew. She was reminding him that every wall in this place had ears, and that his discovery was not a secret, but a leash she had just allowed him to find.

He didn't move for what felt like an eternity. He simply stared at the unmoving shadow, his heart a frantic, trapped bird beating against the icy cage of his ribs. Then, as silently as it had appeared, the shadow withdrew. The thin crack of light beneath the door returned. There were no footsteps, no rustle of clothing. She was simply… gone.

The release of tension was so abrupt it made him dizzy. He stumbled back and sank onto the edge of his bed, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. He was a mouse in a maze, and the cat was enjoying the game. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn't wait for her to decide the game was over. The hidden addendum had changed everything. It wasn't just his life at stake anymore; it was his sanity. He was caught in a web of murder and necromancy, and the only truth he had was scribbled on this piece of fragile parchment.

But an academic’s mind, even one shattered by terror, craves proof. He had the motive—the hidden will. He had the means—poison. He had witnessed the horrifying result—the reanimated corpse. But one piece felt wrong, a dissonant note in their monstrous symphony. The villagers. Their somber, funereal performance. If this was all a greedy, secretive plot, why the public charade? Why pretend to mourn a man they murdered? Why go through the motions of a burial?

Unless they didn't.

The thought struck him with the force of a physical blow. The ritual was for awakening. Not for burial. They were two separate events. A desperate, irrational need for confirmation seized him. He had to know. He had to see it with his own eyes. Driven by a volatile cocktail of fear and a scholar's obsessive need for empirical evidence, Maxwell knew what he had to do. He had to find Hermann Blatzer's grave.

He waited, listening to the screaming wind, until he was reasonably sure no one was lurking in the halls. He pulled on his coat, gloves, and scarf, the meager protection feeling like tissue paper against the storm’s fury. Slipping the addendum into his inner pocket, he cracked open his door. The hallway was empty, lit only by a single, guttering lamp at the far end. He moved with a stealth he didn't know he possessed, each creak of a floorboard a thunderclap in his own ears.

The main room was deserted, the embers in the hearth now a dull, greyish pink. He slipped the heavy iron bolt on the main door as silently as he could and stepped out into the maelstrom.

The blizzard hit him like a solid wall. The wind tore the breath from his lungs and blinded him with a horizontal torrent of ice and snow. The relative silence of his room was replaced by a deafening, disorienting roar. For a moment, he was lost, a man drowning in an ocean of white. Then, through a momentary lull in the swirling snow, he saw it: the dark, skeletal finger of the village church steeple, pointing a silent accusation at the tumultuous sky. Cemeteries were always near churches. He had his landmark.

He plunged into the storm, head down, one hand held up to shield his glasses. The village square, which had felt so unnervingly quiet upon his arrival, was now a place of profound violence. The wind scoured the buildings, piling snow into monstrous, shifting drifts. It was a battle for every step. The cold was a physical pain, and the invisible Mark on his chest flared, the deep chill there resonating with the elemental fury of the blizzard.

He finally reached the low stone wall and the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery. The gate was frozen shut, sealed with a thick coat of ice. He had to put his shoulder into it, grunting with effort until it broke free with a tortured shriek of metal.

The graveyard was a landscape of surreal, white humps. The old headstones were buried, their inscriptions hidden, their identities erased by the storm. It was a field of anonymous dead. But Maxwell wasn't looking for an old grave. He was looking for a new one.

He began to search, stumbling through drifts that were now well past his knees. And then he saw it. Near the back wall, under the skeletal branches of an ancient oak, was a mound that was different from the others. The snow here was disturbed, shallower, the shape beneath it too stark, too fresh. It was a rectangle of freshly turned earth.

As he drew closer, he noticed a faint, violet luminescence clinging to the disturbed soil, an aura visible only to his cursed eyes. It was the same sickly glow he’d seen on the documents, the same spectral stain of Hermann Blatzer’s influence. The Mark on his chest pulsed with a cold, insistent thrum. This was the place.

There was no headstone, only a crude wooden cross thrust into the head of the mound. Driven by a frantic urgency, Maxwell fell to his knees beside it. He clawed at the thin layer of snow, his gloved fingers quickly becoming numb. He hit the frozen earth beneath, his nails scraping against icy clumps of dirt. It was like digging at stone. He tore off his gloves, ignoring the biting cold, and scraped and scrabbled with his bare hands, the pain a distant, unimportant signal. He had to know what was under here. He had to see the lie.

He dug for what felt like an hour, his fingers raw and bleeding, his body shaking with cold and exertion. He was digging his own grave as much as uncovering another’s. Finally, his scrabbling fingers broke through the last layer of frozen soil. He expected to hit the hard, unyielding wood of a coffin lid.

Instead, his hand plunged into empty, freezing air.

He stopped, panting, his breath pluming around him. He widened the hole, frantically pulling away clods of earth until the opening was large enough to see into. He peered down into the darkness he had created.

It was a perfectly dug, man-sized hole. And it was empty.

There was no coffin. No body. No sign that anything had ever been placed within it. It was a hollow, gaping lie carved into the frozen earth.

The full, horrifying truth crashed down upon him, colder and more brutal than the blizzard itself. They hadn't buried him. Of course they hadn't. Why would they go to the trouble of reanimating a corpse only to stick it in the ground? The funeral, the grave, the entire public display of mourning—it was all a meticulous, calculated deception for any prying eyes, for the possibility of an outsider like him.

The body was not in the ground. It was still somewhere in the village. A walking, animated corpse, a puppet for a vengeful, murdered spirit, hidden away like a dirty secret. And the villagers—Elsbeth, her sons, all of them—they knew exactly where it was. They were its keepers.

Maxwell scrambled back from the empty grave, falling into a snowdrift. He stared back at the distant, flickering lights of the Gasthof, the warm glow that had once promised sanctuary. Now, he saw the village for what it truly was. It wasn't a community. It was a tomb. And he was locked inside with the wandering dead.