Beyond the Grave by Fallon Parker

[mad_docs_of_lit]

I write this journal in the hope that someone may find it and heed the warning it contains. I fear, however, that upon your reading these words I will already be dead.


My tale begins in Dapfen, Swabia - in a small village with a smaller population. I was travelling through the region whilst compiling travel journals for publication in Paris, and necessity dictated that we stay for a few nights in the hamlet whilst awaiting transport to the next area.

I stayed at a kindly widow’s house near the outskirts along with my assistant Laurent. Her name was Gretchen, and despite her lowly means she insisted on feeding us to the point of bursting with her rustic cooking. She told us how both her sons had moved out to set up homes of their own many years ago and she missed cooking for healthy young men. Not wanting to offend her, we ate what we could, though there was more spiced sausage than we were able to handle.

Despite the widow’s cheery disposition, there seemed to be a distinct air of solemnity in the village that we could not quite determine the root of. It was the height of summer, the animals were fat in their pastures, there was more than enough food for everyone and the midsummer festival that was customary in the region was mere days away. In fact, Laurent suggested we prolong our stay in the hamlet to join in the festivities. I was less inclined, but I suspected his interest in staying was partly due to the fact he’d taken a shine to one of the young ladies from the neighbouring house to Gretchen’s.

On the second evening of our stay in Dapfen, Laurent and I had finished supper and were preparing for bed in our cosy room in Gretchen’s cottage. Whilst folding my breeches and laying them on a chair, the most terrifying shriek tore through the stillness of the night. Laurent’s eyes, huge with fright, snapped to meet mine as we froze on the spot.

“What in God’s name is that?” Laurent whispered to me.

I was about to reply when we heard the noise again. A long, drawn out cry – bone-chilling and guttural. Creeping to the window, I peered as best I could through the shutter’s slats into the darkness. The hamlet had no streetlamps or braziers; I might as well have stared into a vat of tar.

As one often does when faced with unknown terrors in the night, we did as any person would do – we climbed deep into our beds, shut our eyes tight and prayed for the swift dawn.

When we awoke, Laurent leapt from his blankets and threw open the shutters, scouring the place for any evidence of the night’s horrible calls. “They’re just going about their business,” Laurent noted incredulously. I thought this odd, as in areas such as this in rural Eastern Europe, such things were paramount causes of fear and suspicion amongst villagers. But no; glum and solemn as they were, they showed no panic such as ‘civilised’ men like us were lowered to in the night.

We sat down to breakfast with Gretchen as she cheerfully heaped food onto our plates, and as she mentioned nothing of the night’s events we chose not to broach the subject with the kind old lady, not wanting to frighten hep. It was likely that she slept through the entire thing.

“So are you going to stay around for the festivities?” Gretchen asked. “I do so hope that you will.”

Laurent smiled cheerily at her. “We might well do; we’re not due in our next location for a few more days. I’m sure it will be all right.” He stuffed away a forkful of pork sausage. I knew the reason he wanted to stay, of course.

Speaking of which, as soon as breakfast was over, he rose from the table and feigned a casual stretch. “You know, I might just go over to see Liesel,” for that was his interest’s name, “to see what she makes of that fuss last night.”

I smiled wryly at him. “All right. I’m going to take a walk around outside for a bit; catch the air.”

We left the house together and I watched him head over to the girl’s house, wondering what pretence he would offer her parents in order to see her. Strolling off in the opposite direction, I took a more careful look at the expressions worn by the locals. None of them were talking, though many stood or walked in groups. That same air of solemnity covered the place like a shroud. Was the demonic shrieking in the night the cause of their malaise? Their faces looked strained, burdened. It was at this point I decided that there was something very wrong with this village. I wanted quite badly to see Laurent just for the normality. Ever-cheerful Gretchen seemed like the next best option, so with a great sense of unease I returned to her little thatched house.

I returned to find Laurent sitting on the low stone wall surrounding the house, his head in his hands. I ran over to him.

“Laurent? What’s wrong?”

He looked up at me, his face creased with worry. His blonde hair was tousled from his gripping hands burrowing in it. “Liesel’s gone. She’s just – gone. I asked her father where she’d gone to, but he simply slammed the door in my face. But her mother… I caught sight of her face just once – she was crying. Sobbing her heart out.”

I sat next to Laurent on the wall. “What can this mean? Where could she have gone to?”

Laurent looked at me with his steely blue gaze. “You know damn well where. That screaming last night? It must have been her. She’s dead, I know it! And these damn villagers are keeping it a secret.”

I stared at my feet, shocked at the idea, but at the same time gripped by the possibility that it could be true. But why on earth would they keep such a secret? Did they really know what happened last night?

I needed some answers. It was at this point that Gretchen stepped carefully out of her door and hobbled over to where we sat. “My dears,” she said happily. “I’m glad you’re here, I thought you’d gone for a stroll. I need you to do a favour for an old woman. You see that house over there, by the paddock? Mrs. Knopfell lives there. She has some eggs for me this morning, would you be so kind as to collect them for me?”

Laurent smiled at her, despite his distress. “Of course. We’ll go right away.”

Gretchen smiled at us, showing off her three good teeth. “Thank you, my dears.” She went back into the house.

I stood up first, made sure Gretchen was safely inside, and hissed to Laurent “This is the perfect opportunity to get some answers. While we get the eggs from this woman, ask about Liesel and her family. We might get some light shed on this yet.”

Laurent stood. With a resolute nod to me, he marched off toward Mrs. Knopfell’s house with me close behind.

The woman that answered the door, presumably Mrs. Knopfell, was a plump dumpling of a woman with a pink, shiny face. Her little blue eyes peered suspiciously at us from behind her door.

“Yes?”

“Mrs. Knopfell?” She nodded. “Hello, we’re here to collect some eggs for old Gretchen.” Laurent offered her his charming smile. Despite this, the woman’s face did not soften as most women’s did.

She did, however, let us in. “Wait in the kitchen while I get the eggs.”

As the woman began putting eggs from a bowl into a weaved basket, Laurent took the opportunity. “Mrs. Knopfell, can you tell me anything about Liesel, from across the way?”

Her eyes stabbed sharply again in his direction. “Liesel Braun? What you want to know about her for?” She snapped, but one could see in her already the burning desire for gossip. It was the downside of the small, close-knit village community. Everybody was in everybody’s business.

Laurent was quick on his feet. “Oh, it’s just – we heard an odd thing, and we wondered if you know anything about her. You seem the knowledgeable sort.”

Laurent had found the woman’s weakness on the second attempt – where charm failed, flattery prevailed.

“Well, if anybody knows anything about anybody here, it’s me,” she agreed, looking smug. “Liesel Braun – little slut if you ask me. Always flirting with strange folk passing through.”

Laurent ignored my pointed glance. “Do go on, please.”

“Well, last week she fell out with your old Gretchen something awful. Calling her for everything. Old Gretchen was nearly in tears – we were all quite displeased with her, let me tell you. Gretchen’s been a standing pillar of this community since I was a girl.”

“Why on earth would she do that?”

“Ohh, I don’t know. Stupid little bitch. Kept claiming that Gretchen was cursing her and giving her pimples.”

Laurent and I looked at each other. The woman went on.

“I might say it’s a fine thing you two are doing for Gretchen, looking after her like this. Shame you can’t stay with her; she’s been very lonely since her boys were killed.”

Laurent started. “Killed? I thought they’d moved away?”

Mrs. Knopfell sighed. “No. Poor lads were taken by disease, must have been twenty years ago. The poor thing must have convinced herself they’d just moved away to spare herself from the maddening grief, poor thing. That’s likely why she offered to take you lads in; must remind her of Tomas and Hans.”

I shook my head sadly. The fact that Gretchen always spoke so fondly of her sons, as if she’d seen them only the other day, somehow made it sadder. Attached as we’d grown to Gretchen, it angered me slightly that Liesel had bullied the old woman so. But now Liesel had gone. It seemed a bit of a coincidence that this had happened so shortly after her argument with Gretchen. It was also tempting to believe that the solemn air in the village had something to do with this whole thing. Perhaps, in a misguided act of protectiveness toward the old woman, one of the villagers had done something with Liesel, taken her away somewhere? But on a deeper level, that didn’t seem to make sense either. Where would they take her, and why? Surely no one in the village would murder a young girl for something so minor as a catty remark. And from what Laurent told me, her parents knew something that we didn’t. Her father had simply told him Liesel had gone. But her mother had been crying.

There seemed to be nothing more that we could tease from Mrs. Knopfell, who stuffed the basket of eggs into my hands and shooed me out of the door, reminding me to be extra kind with Gretchen now that was armed with my new knowledge, and not to bring up her sons lest I upset the old woman. Promising that we would not mention them, we left and returned briskly to Gretchen’s house.

The day passed without further event, and as much as Laurent and I conjectured in our room into the small hours, we could not fathom an answer to our little riddle.

“We’re leaving soon anyway, we might as well set our minds to other things,” Laurent sighed as he settled into his blankets. There was a sadness in his eye that told just how much he’d liked this Liesel girl. He knew he’d likely never see her again now, alive or not.

Nodding my agreement, I settled too and we were soon in the land of dreams.

I awoke the next morning after a terrible dream. I dreamt that grey, skeletal clawed hands slithered from underneath my blankets and seized at my throat, rotting flesh stinking as they pressed under my nostrils, the stench of the grave overpowering my senses. “You’d best leave well alone,” a whispery, scratchy voice had hissed unpleasantly in my ear, over and over, although I saw no face – only those horrible, gripping hands. I sat up in bed with a shout, feeling sweat cool as it beaded upon my face and neck. I looked over to Laurent and saw him awake, yet sitting almost catatonic upon his bed.

“You dreamt it too, didn’t you,” he whispered to me. His hands were white as they clutched the blanket. Keeping contact with his eyes, I nodded slowly, watching his face descend further into a look of terror.

“What’s going on here, Laurent?” I whispered to him.

He shook his head, his lips a thin white line. “I’m not sure that I want to know.”

I was most relieved to see the cheerful, wizened face of Gretchen come into the room, carrying a bundle of clothes.

“Oh good gracious, I forgot to knock! Forgive a silly old woman. I’m so used to just walking into Tomas and Hans’ room that I forget myself sometimes. I’ve washed some of your clothes for you; here they are, all nice and clean.” She stooped as she placed the clothes on the pine chest of drawers in the corner. “I’m just starting breakfast, dears. She smiled at us, but her expression drained as she looked at our faces. “Good heavens, what’s the matter, boys?”

Laurent looked away, rubbing at his face with the back of his hand. “Nothing, nothing – just had a bad dream, that’s all,” he said quickly.

Gretchen raised her wrinkled brows. “What, the both of you?” she looked from one of us to the other.

I opened my mouth then closed it again. I didn’t know what to say to her. Thankfully, Gretchen herself changed the subject.

“Come now, breakfast time. A good bellyful in the morning makes you forget bad dreams. Come.” With that, she bustled out of the room.

During breakfast, when it was finally ready, Laurent did something that was completely unprecedented, and I almost choked on my food when he did. He suddenly asked Gretchen: “Where has Liesel Braun gone, do you know?”

I stared at my plate, wondering what answer he would get.

“Oh, that nasty girl. I expect she’ll be wandering the graveyard by night, now.”

Her answer completely threw me. I was not expecting anything of that sort to come from anyone, least of all Gretchen. “What do you mean?” Laurent asked.

“There is a tradition here, that those who die when in the grip of bad blood will become Nachzehrer, and rise from the grave to wander at night and devour the living.” She said this so calmly as she cut at her boiled egg with her knife that I was completely stunned.

Laurent stared at her in shock for perhaps a minute as she quite calmly continued to eat. Finally, he said, “Liesel is dead?”

“Oh, ja,” Gretchen said quite conversationally. “These things often happen to bad people when their bad deeds catch up with them. It is not surprising, really.”

I sat back in my chair – my mind reeled with conflict. I was a rational, sceptical man of science. This nonsense from these backwater villages in Eastern Europe would be scoffed at without hesitation if it were not for the fact that I found myself right in the middle of one. All those reports in the newspapers from places like Poland and Romania, of evidence of the undead… they couldn’t possibly be true. But here, people truly believed these stories. To them, it happened.

“Gretchen, what had Liesel done that was so bad?” I asked her softly.

“Trust me,” Gretchen said conspiratorially, leaning over the plate of hard bread to speak to me. “That girl – was a bad egg.” With that, she took a bite of food and said no more on the matter.

Laurent and I spent the rest of the day in our room, not wanting to involve ourselves in this madness any more. The villagers could keep their damn festival; we wanted nothing more than to be gone from the horrid place. All this small-minded superstition and the dark nights were beginning to lay the seeds of doubt even in our modern, rational minds. We were writers, journalists, men of the world – we could not afford to let such superstitious rot infect our brains.

So we spent the day packing our things, preparing our papers and scribbling ideas for our journals, never leaving the house, and hoping our final night in Dapfen would be an uneventful one.

How wrong we were.

About an hour after we had turned in, I was just beginning to doze off when I heard a curious scratching noise. I stiffened immediately, my eyes opening wide in the dark. There it was, again. But this time, it was coming from inside the house.

Terror, as it often does, froze me to the spot and I found myself unable to move for the longest time before I finally plucked up the courage to leap from my bed and shake Laurent awake.

“What, what?” He asked irritably, sleep muffling his voice.

“Shh, listen!” I hissed. We both became silent, and listened so hard we began to think we heard noises that weren’t there. My heart pounded in my chest. We held like that for perhaps forty seconds, until we heard the scratching again – accompanied this time by a scraping and a few clunks, moving closer to our door. We stared at it, terrified, as we heard a bizarre snuffling sound from just behind the wood. In a rare moment of mental acuity and bravery, I rushed forward, grabbed a nearby wooden chair and jammed it underneath the handle just as the occupant of the hallway tried the door. I stumbled backwards onto Laurent’s bed, almost demented with terror, as I watched the door handle being wrenched angrily to no avail. After several jerked attempts to open the door, the thing in the hallway shuffled away again and we heard the sound growing fainter and fainter until at last it was gone.

I suddenly became aware of Laurent’s hands gripping my arm; he was weeping in terror. I could not blame him. I held his shoulder to comfort him. “It’s gone, it’s gone,” I whispered to him. But he was inconsolable.

“We’re going to die,” He almost wailed, but I bade him be quiet.

“No we’re not, don’t be ridiculous!” I whispered harshly to him. “And stop that noise, in case whatever it was comes back.”

Laurent’s eyes suddenly widened, tear-stained as they were, and he tightened his grip on me. “Gretchen! What if it’s taken Gretchen? We have to help her!”

I cursed under my breath. He was right. Once the thing had discovered we weren’t easy prey, it’s natural he’d go for the person that was. A frail old lady would have no chance.

We screwed up our courage. It is amazing, the feats one can achieve, when faced with crisis. Before we removed the chair from the door, we each armed ourselves with whatever was near to hand. I found an ornate letter-opener in one of the drawers, and Laurent snapped a leg from the other chair in the room. With a nod to each other, I slowly and quietly removed the chair barricading the door and we crept out into the black, silent hallway. Our footsteps creaked ominously on the wooden boards, and it was then I realised that our mysterious invader had made no such noise on the floor, apart from that strange shuffling. As time went on we were made ever more certain that we were dealing with something quite inhuman.

We burst into Gretchen’s room, weapons raised against the creature in case it lingered still. We were most relieved to see that it did not.

But neither did Gretchen.

“Oh Lord, where is she?” Laurent cried, searching the room in vain, despite knowing quite well that she was gone. “First Liesel, and now Gretchen…”

I held my hands to my face in despair. What did we do now? Where on Earth could it have taken her?

Then, Gretchen’s words from breakfast that morning rang in my mind: ‘I expect she’ll be wandering the graveyard by night, now.’ It suddenly made sense. Nachzehrer. They wander abroad at night, feasting on the living.

“Laurent, we have to go to the graveyard,” I said urgently. His head snapped to look at me, horrified.

“What?”

“We may still be able to save Gretchen, but we have to hurry! Bring your weapon.” I hurried out of the door and bounded down the hall towards the front door, fear for the moment outrun by urgency. I heard Laurent running close behind, and silently thanked the stars for his company. I’m not sure I could have done this alone.

We ran through the darkness towards the graveyard, not quite knowing how we found our way in the blackness, but we eventually arrived and to our shock saw a small lantern a few hundred yards into the rows of graves. We heard the voice of a woman, crying and pleading.

We crept closer, making out two figures standing near the lantern. One of them was sagging to the ground, pleading with the other.

“Please, have mercy!”

“We have to save Gretchen!” Laurent whispered to me as we crept amongst the shadows cast by the huge, crumbling tombstones.

As we neared the scene, however, it became clear that the figure pleading on the muddy ground was not Gretchen at all.

It was Liesel.

“Liesel!” Laurent cried before I could stop him, standing up and revealing himself.

“Get down, you stupid man!” I yanked hard at his bedjacket, but he did not heed me.

Liesel had initially stared at Laurent in shock for a moment, but then wailed and hid her face in her hands. Laurent began to run over to her, and I had no choice but to follow him – I saw as I got closer that I knew the second figure, as well.

“What are you doing out so late, my dears?” Gretchen asked us, her wrinkled face cheerful. “You’ll ruin your handsome good looks, with all these sleepless nights.”

“Gretchen – what’s going on?” I demanded, still clinging to the threads of hope that all was well. I looked around me, there was a shallow, open grave beside the lantern. It read, “Liesel Braun”.

“What have you done?” Laurent moaned, clutching his head in his hands. “Liesel, what has happened to you?”

Liesel simply continued to weep, and refused to let anyone see her face in the lamplight. Her white dress was covered in earth and filth.

“Don’t ask questions of the dead, foolish boy,” Gretchen suddenly snapped, her face now showing a livid anger that truly frightened me. She pointed a bony finger at him. You should never have gotten involved with this one. I told you she was a bad egg.” She turned to look at me. “I’ve just come to visit my boys, and I noticed this one prowling around. I’ve a mind to put an end to her once and for all. She’s spoiling the sport for my lads.”

“What do you mean, Gretchen? Your boys are dead! They died twenty years ago!” I shouted finally, breaking my silence on that subject.

“I know that, you idiot,” she snapped. “Why do you think I brought them back from the dead? Like this stupid mare,” Gretchen kicked the sobbing Liesel. Suddenly, Laurent let out a piercing scream. I looked at him quickly, and then at what was terrifying him so badly – Liesel had raised her face. Her flesh was rotting away and great clumps of her hair had fallen out, and there was shocking red blood smeared all over the exposed gums and teeth of her lipless mouth. One of her eyeballs protruded abnormally, as if a build-up of rotting flesh behind it was slowly forcing it to squeeze out from its socket.

I felt vomit rise in my throat and I retched at the sight of her, stumbling backwards as I lost control of my feet and my legs turned to jelly.

Gretchen gave a cackle of delight at our foolish, terrified stumbling and then looked behind us, her smile widening even more. I dared not turn around, for I heard again the terrible scratching and shuffling that had frightened us so whilst in our room.

“You’re awake at last, my darlings.” Gretchen looked at Laurent and I in turn. “I’m honoured to introduce you to my darling sons, Tomas and Hans. Say hello.”

We turned at last, trembling to our very cores, and the sight which befell our eyes was a vision of hell itself. There stood the two brothers, evil red eyes glinting maliciously in the lantern’s deep orange glow, pure evil emanating from within their grotesque, rotted, hairless heads. The pair of them stood naked and putrefied, brown and rotting still, their skin too long interred to retain the fleshy fullness of Liesel’s recently-dead body. Their noses were long rotted off, as well as their eyelids and lips, and only twisted little lumps of greyish brown flesh remained of their ears. On one of them especially patches of white skull shone in the moonlight, peering out from beneath their bald, flaking scalps. Their limbs were skeletally thin and twisted with decay; writhing worms were poking out from bore-holes in the thin flesh still covering their stinking intestines.

Laurent screamed and screamed, drowning out the weeping of Liesel, and I retched again as the stench from their bodies hit me in a powerful wave.

“My sweet little boys,” Gretchen said to them fondly, tears in her eyes. “Come to mother, she’s missed you so.”

I was deep in a maelstrom of terror and revulsion, as the two monstrosities shambled over to their mother. I realised then what made the curious sound that they made whilst walking. The scratching, scraping noise was that of the very bones protruding from their leathery, rotted feet.

I lurched in terror as a hand grasped the back of my shirt and hauled me to my feet, but I realised it was Laurent. “Run!” He yelled to me, and we took off from that cemetery faster than we had run in our entire lives. But where could we go? We were in the middle of nowhere! I thought of perhaps banging on the doors of the other villagers, calling for help, but I realised that I didn’t trust any of them. What of how the entire village had covered up Liesel’s death, and how everyone looked kindly upon Gretchen as a pillar of the community? She was raising these monsters!

And now that we knew this, she’d never let us live. I was certain of it. The only thing we could think of was to go back to the cottage and barricade ourselves in until morning. We knew one thing about the Nachzehrer; it could only walk abroad in the darkness. The sun was its enemy. So we ran into Gretchen’s cottage, panic moving us as we heaved wardrobes, dressers, chairs and tables against all the doors and windows, and now we wait in the darkness, praying to any God or Saint we may have believed in as children, to see us safely into the arms of the sun once more.

Now we while away the hours until dawn, praying that they will not find a way inside. I write this journal to calm my mind, and to document this horror, in the hope someone finds it and burns this village to the ground. I can hear them now, trying to break down the door. I do not hold much hope. God save us all.



Copyright

Fallon Parker

"Beyond the Grave"

© 2009, Fallon Parker
Self Published
mad.docs.of.lit[at]gmail.com