Chapter 477

The mist clung to the ancient stones of the Friedhof Ohlsdorf, each tombstone a silent sentinel in the oppressive fog. A chilling dampness saturated the air, the kind that burrowed into bone, refusing to leave.

It was a familiar scene for Detective Klaus Richter, yet tonight, the graveyard felt different, heavier. The missing person cases, all linked by this location, each story a morbid repetition of vanished souls within the seemingly endless cemetery, were starting to gnaw at him.

The first one had been Herr Müller, an elderly man known for his solitary walks. His walking stick was found by the mausoleum, standing like a petrified reminder.

Then it was young Greta, the artist, her easel still propped against a weeping angel statue, canvas left blank, untouched by the final strokes of her brush. And now, Herr Schmidt, a watchmaker, gone as well, leaving behind only a scattered pile of gears at the base of an oak tree near the oldest part of the burial grounds.

Klaus walked among the markers, their weathered surfaces obscured by the clinging mist. Each name, each date, was a silent whisper of lives concluded, or in some recent instances, lives interrupted and suddenly absent.

The only sound that could penetrate was the drip, drip, drip, of moisture from the cypress branches. He ran a hand across a cold, damp headstone, its carvings barely discernible through the condensation.

These were not ordinary disappearances. His phone buzzed in his pocket, a vibration that seemed jarring in the surrounding silence.

It was his partner, Lena, checking on his progress, "Any updates, Klaus?" her voice sounded through the phone's speaker. "Anything at all?"

Her words sounded tired. Klaus sighed into the receiver.

"Nothing. The mist's too thick. It's playing with the light."

"The headstones look like teeth, each one pointing out and waiting." The light from his flashlight created dancing pools on the gravestones that resembled teeth rising and receding with each slight sweep.

"I feel…watched, Lena." He finished.

She attempted to reassure him, "That is probably just the cemetery messing with your head. We are all stressed, you know?"

A strange static sound passed through the line then it was gone. "Just try and be observant of any differences that could signal to any changes," she finished and then was gone.

Klaus clicked off the call, feeling a wave of isolation. He hated these night watches.

Alone in a field of the dead and missing, he felt increasingly aware of the oppressive quiet. There was a wrongness about the air, like the calm before a storm but the opposite direction.

The feeling became heavy on his skin and made him want to curl up. Klaus pulled up his coat and carried on down one of the main walkways of the immense burial grounds.

He started by methodically retracing Herr Schmidt's likely route through the burial ground, past grand monuments of the wealthy to the more modest plots. Klaus stopped when he noticed a peculiar change in the earth near the base of an ancient yew tree.

The grass there appeared a shade duller than the rest of the surroundings, almost as if something was trying to seep up from the ground and drain the land. He crouched to inspect closer.

Klaus gently probed the soil with his gloved fingers. It felt loose, unnaturally so.

And cold, despite the humidity that wrapped all else in a blanket of warmth. His hands worked slowly with care, revealing that it wasn't that the land was loose, but instead as though the topsoil had shifted recently.

There was also a strange lack of the earth's damp odor; instead, the space emitted a dry, dusty smell. He found himself looking closer at the dirt, peering through his eye glass in a search of anything abnormal.

He suddenly realized how exposed he was out in the open. The mist was no cover, just an oppressive mask of grey that prevented anyone seeing anything from a far distance.

The feeling was like he was standing in an empty stage while unseen spectators peered. He pushed some soil further back.

A dark, gaping hole opened in the dirt beneath the disturbed patch of grass. Klaus held his breath.

It wasn't the work of animals; there were no scratch marks, and the edges of the hole were smooth as if cut out with a blade. He reached in with his hand and felt, but before he could feel a depth, he was yanked into the hole with great speed and malice.

It happened too quickly to form a thought and within moments he landed harshly upon a solid and unyielding stone floor. His flashlight had survived the sudden movement and its light, though unstable and flickering from the harsh impact, did a good enough job to see his surroundings.

Klaus pulled himself to his feet. The tunnel, was tall and narrow, and he could feel a damp chill and odor, now heavily present, rising out of it.

There was a very strange scent he was not sure how to name. Klaus had never felt such heavy fear and confusion at one time.

He pulled out his weapon with one hand, while the other clutched the flashlight close to his chest. The darkness of the surrounding space pressed against him like the hands of a submerged corpse reaching for him in the deep sea.

Klaus knew he had to move on before more happened to him but there was such a pull to remain stationary and contemplate his present. He started moving forward.

It was then he saw that the space was not quite so isolated or silent. The sound that had pulled from the depths seemed to increase with every step.

An unearthly moaning came from what he assumed must have been further down the tunnel he had unwillingly walked through. Klaus suddenly started moving at an increasing speed that would have astonished him if not for his immediate terror and the increasing call of that otherworldly cry.

The moan would get louder, but never clarify its source, he would turn with light flashing through the low and long tunnel, but there was never anyone there, or something… there would never be anything in particular. The tunnel began to branch off and become almost a maze.

He could hear that his movements began to form a heavy and deliberate rhythm of breath and boot that resonated in the long dark tunnel. It sounded out of time to him and felt as if each step made him walk slower not faster to get away.

Every wrong turn would take him down further into the earth and the sound started to increase with every misplaced decision. At some point the moaning broke out and split into screams, but not ones from the earth above or even that which can be explained by reality.

There were words woven into this sound now, but they could not be processed nor should anyone hope to decipher them for their ill purpose was present within them. It started to increase like a maddened wail from a hell dimension as he ran and made turn after turn trying to move forward into what he could have only thought at that time was oblivion.

He burst out into a large chamber, the floor slick and cold like he had found himself back inside the morgue, and he could feel something slithering around his shoes, and in some horrible way he knew the origins of these slithering shapes before they finally coalesced into his eyes sight, "Oh my god…" was the only thing he could muster in the light of his discovery. His flashlight was caught on what was to be dozens of disfigured, fleshy figures and the chamber's walls.

Each one, though disfigured, had eyes which reflected and pulsed within Klaus's beam and looked directly to him. They reached up their distorted limbs and seemed to begin some kind of sick, wretched prayer as the screams he had heard only seconds earlier, echoed off the walls at the sudden visual stimulus.

He did not want to know where these people were coming from. The only goal was forward, further and further from the grotesque masses of…whatever this horror could possibly be.

Klaus began backing towards one side of the wall while the praying shapes came at him like leaches looking for some fresh blood source. There were tears forming in the corners of his eyes and the taste of terror, bitter and thick.

Klaus backed too hard. With a thud his head was on some metal structure set within the cold, stone wall and just moments after impact, he knew he would not get back out of this pit.

His sight seemed to twist and stretch before him and from it came images of himself slowly turning into this strange hell spawn, and just like all the other people in this pit, Klaus now understood why no one left. In an instant a blinding flash of light enveloped everything and an intense warmth started to grow upon the area where he had slammed his head and with all his sight being stolen he looked and the strange shape was there over him as if ready for the next piece to go into its own body.

Klaus felt himself begin to slowly come apart as if every aspect of his being was pulled by thousands of tiny little pieces all looking to create a whole, not a new form of Klaus but a better part for themselves and whatever purpose their new creation will one day be for. The cold, damp air now smelled rich and warm with blood, and everything fell silent except the distant calls that grew quieter.

He finally heard them; they were like the cries of newly formed creatures finding a home in hell. A new body built by many, for who would not leave that terrible grave after seeing this hell.

Klaus realized that soon he would have this purpose too.