Chapter 7: A Child's Drawing

Chapter 7: A Child's Drawing

Getting back into the inn was a nightmare of fumbling, frozen fingers and sheer, animal panic. Maxwell’s hands, raw and bleeding from his frantic digging in the empty grave, were clumsy clubs of numb flesh. He finally managed the heavy iron bolt, stumbling back inside and collapsing against the door, the roaring of the blizzard a suddenly muffled beast. He stood there for a long moment, shivering uncontrollably, a ghost of snow and ice in the heart of the Gasthof, the terrible knowledge of the empty grave a cancer growing in his gut.

He couldn't go back to his room. The memory of Elsbeth’s shadow under the door had transformed it from a flimsy sanctuary into a monitored cell. He was trapped in this building, but staying still felt like accepting death. He needed answers. He needed a weapon, a weakness, anything that wasn't written on a piece of cursed parchment. Driven by a desperate, feral energy, he pushed himself away from the door and crept into the common room.

The space was dark, silent save for the groaning of the inn’s old timbers and the hiss of the wind at the windows. The fire in the great stone hearth had dwindled to a bed of sullen, glowing embers, casting the room in a shifting, devilish light. The long wooden tables were empty, the chairs pushed in, the entire scene holding a breath of anticipation. The air was thick with the lingering scents of stale beer, woodsmoke, and something else—that cloying, waxy smell of rosemary from the ritual. It clung to everything.

He moved through the shadows, his senses screaming. The invisible Mark on his chest was a cold, active thing, a supernatural divining rod that hummed with a low, anxious energy. His new, horrifying perception was on full display. Faint, violet auras clung to the room like spectral dust. A soft glow on the handle of a beer stein that one of Blatzer’s sons had likely used, a brighter shimmer on the ledger sitting on the check-in counter, a faint trace on the floor where he had stood before being led to the hall. It was a map of the conspiracy, and he was the only one who could read it.

His search was aimless at first, a frantic hunt for anything out of place. He ran his fingers over dusty shelves, peered behind the heavy bar, his gaze darting into every shadowed corner. He was looking for a hidden compartment, a misplaced journal, any clue that Hermann’s paranoid scribblings might have hinted at.

It was behind the bar, on a large, cluttered corkboard half-hidden by a rack of dusty schnapps bottles, that he found it. The board was a mundane collage of village life: a faded schedule for a bus that was likely snowed in for the season, a yellowed newspaper clipping, a few tattered postcards. And pinned amongst them, drawn on cheap, lined paper with colored pencils, was a child's drawing.

The violet glow emanating from it was subtle, almost imperceptible, but the Mark on his chest flared with a sharp, insistent cold that made him gasp. It was a beacon.

He reached out a trembling hand and carefully removed the thumbtack, pulling the drawing free. He held it up to the dying glow of the embers. The art was crude, the stick figures rendered with the charming ineptitude of a young child. But the scene it depicted was one of pure, unadulterated horror.

There was the great oak table. On it lay a stick figure with X’s for eyes. Surrounding the table was a circle of other figures, their faces simple, happy smiles that were grotesquely at odds with the event. He could even make out a taller female figure with wild green hair—Elsbeth.

But it was the center of the drawing that seized all of Maxwell’s attention. The figure on the table was sitting up. Its eyes were no longer X's but wide, glowing circles of yellow crayon. And its stiff, stick-like arm was outstretched.

It wasn't lunging. It wasn't attacking.

In its hand, it held a large, crudely drawn golden key. And it was handing this key to another figure, one who stood apart from the smiling villagers. This figure wore glasses, drawn as two large squares on its face, and clutched a book. Above this figure, written in shaky, childish block letters, was a single German word: DER SCHREIBER.

The Scribe.

The air rushed from Maxwell’s lungs. The pieces of the puzzle, scattered and terrifying, slammed together in his mind with the force of a physical impact.

Rule 4: You are the Scribe. You Must Turn the Lock.

The words from the mimeographed sheet. It hadn't been a metaphor.

“They believe the spirit… will be forced to reveal the location of my true will.”

The words from Hermann’s hidden addendum. It wasn't about violence; it was about retrieval.

And now, this drawing. A child’s innocent, terrifyingly accurate depiction of the ritual’s true purpose. The awakened man wasn't attacking the Scribe. He was giving him the key.

He hadn’t been chosen at random. The advertisement for a translator specializing in archaic dialects, the ludicrously high pay, his isolation—it was all a calculated, deliberate lure. They didn't just need a translator; they needed a Scribe. A specific, ritualistic role. His voice, his understanding of the old words, made him the conduit. The ritual was designed to force Hermann’s vengeful spirit to communicate, to use Maxwell as a medium, a spiritual pointer to guide them to whatever he had hidden before they murdered him.

The ghost’s lunge, its touch, hadn't been an act of aggression against him. It had been the transfer. The branding. The ghost had been following the rules, passing the key to the Scribe, just as the ritual demanded. The Blatzers had panicked because their reanimated father had broken the other rule—speaking his name, marking him so obviously. The family’s plan had worked, but the ghost had added its own vengeful twist.

He was no longer just a witness to a crime. He was the central component of its resolution. A living, breathing Ouija board. His goal had been simple survival, a desperate flight into the blizzard. But the drawing revealed the futility of that hope. He couldn’t run from this. He was the key. To them, he was a tool for finding their inheritance. To the ghost, he was a vessel for enacting its justice.

Maxwell sank to the floor behind the bar, the child's drawing clutched in his numb hand. The blizzard howled outside, a perfect symphony for his own internal chaos. He finally understood his place in this nightmare. He wasn't an observer who had stumbled into the wrong village. He was an unwilling player, cast in a lead role without ever seeing the script, and the curtain had just gone up on the second act. Survival was no longer about escaping Steinwald; it was about navigating the impossible chasm between a family of murderers and the vengeful ghost they had created.