das Dorf in den Bergen

Although further from the fray than Hilda, the vantage of the schloss’s windows affords her a view of the whole village.

Three lurching figures are staggering along the high road, lunging at any who come near them. Their unnatural gait confirms they are undead , as indeed the villagers are screaming. Some locals look out from windows and watch with terror. A few brave individuals— she sees the intrepid woodcutter and a pair of carp fishermen—are belaying the creatures with axes and pitchforks. One monster has been battered to its knees.

Approaching through the gravestones, Hilda takes in the scene. Two skeletal creatures, wound in filthy rags, stalk in the street like the bogeymen of children’s nightmares! Although their shreds of clothes are brown-black with rot, their skulls show clean white in the dancing lantern light.

A third creature has been downed by the village defenders, hewn in two by the woodcutter’s axe. But Hilda sees that three villagers kneel, bleeding profusely from their scratched faces..

As she shouts, one of the horrors turns to leer at Hilda. But she returns its eyeless gaze and remains unshaken…

Suddenly, the skeletal figure is jerked aside, as though struck by an invisible hammer. Von Schwarzenwolff’s shot strikes home, smashing its frame completely.

Encouraged, the defenders close in on the last of the monsters…

The pfarrer’s gaze is caught by something hovering in the darkness near the church steeple. High up in the darkness, an oval object is quivering in the night air. Cunimund gets the impression that the thing remains airborne due to the intense fluttering of small but powerful lateral wings. Sensing his gaze, the bizarre object darts immediately out of sight!

von Schwarzenwolff intervenes in time to save one of the villager’s badly scratched eyes. But he realises he must take the three victims to the schloss and his medical equipment to complete the task of cleansing their filthy wounds…

Leopold the school master bends over the monsters’ broken remains and notices they are utterly sodden. Their rotten clothes have mouldered for long in the muddy bottom of the lake. They have decomposed too far to be recognisable, but Leopold guesses from what is left of their attire that they were lake fisherman.

As he watches, a fish wriggles from one of the skeleton’s rib-cages!

"Ach weh! These horrid corpses have walked from the bottom of the Windigersee, our own lake. They are our own drowned! Perhaps Von Schwarzenwolff’s gift will allow us to identify them…"

But in the meantime, it is the living that need the noble’s attention. The three victims are led to the schloss and the facilities in Von Schwarzenwolff’s study.

The schloss is a small but still impressive mansion house set on the slope above the village. The tiny palace is a semi-ruin. A few rooms have been restored to their former elegance, including the great hall and Von Schwarzenwolff’s private chambers. But much of the sprawling building is derelict, sealed off pending a change in the family’s fortunes.

The victims, Leopold, the Pfarrer, Frau Bauer and Von Schwarzenwolff file into the study.

The butler rushes into the room.

"Mein Herr, beware. Downstairs, in the dissection room, something… very strange…"

Down a steep flight of stairs from the study, Von Schwarzenwolff’s dissection room looks much as he left it. Poor Simon is still laid out on a slab, with instruments and notes laid beside him. But Simon’s head is missing!