Chapter Five: Early Grave

The scraggly undead nurse and a few other people of the undead dragged a struggling and screaming Ladia through a corridor of total darkness. Ladia knew no terror quite like what she was experiencing right now in her life, nor did she ever think her fear would reach such heights as she was pulled through the dark by living corpses to an unknown place and for an unknown fate. 

Dayleen moves cautiously towards the manor, a tremendous fear periodically planting her in place, preventing her from continuing on and overpowering her drive to save her sister. Ultimately, her will overpowered her fear and she forced herself back to the front porch of the manor where no one was heard or seen except for the sound of music. Dayleen puts her back against the wall by the door and listens. A distorted womans voice echoed inside, singing an unfamiliar song. She could hear crackling in the voice of the woman suggesting that the music was probably coming from an old gramophone. The eeriness of this womans voice from a time in the past made her hesitate and doubt her courage to go back inside. With her knife gripped tightly in her hand, Dayleen decided that it may be a better course of action to find an alternate entrance as whoever those people were could be anticipating her return through the front door which was still partly open. 

Dayleen turns to the east where a few hundred yards away stood a cluster of empty house-like structures. Upon looking at these structures, Dayleen noticed that the morning sun was finally starting to come up, but she couldn't wait any longer. She made her way around the side of the manor and hurries down a dirt path towards the back. She slows down her jog when she realizes that the yard in the back was dotted with gravestones for hundreds of yards beyond. She soon found herself in a sort of maze, surrounded by neatly trimmed but dead hedges and flower beds, thin leafless trees, and gardening tools laying about. 

After a few minutes of running through this maze trying to find the back entrance to the manor, Dayleen started to panic. She started to feel like she was stuck in this maze and lost. She could feel the anger building inside at the fact that the more time she spent trying to get through this maze, the less likely she was to find her sister alive. Just when she had seemingly found an exit path, in her haste, she trips over something on the ground and crashes head first into a gravestone before tumbling into an open grave. Dayleen was unconscious and a stream of blood from the impact with the stone fell across her face. 

Unbeknownst to her at the time, the man in the moon face had been watching her the whole time from his office window of the second floor of the manor that overlooked the entire backyard and cemetery. He brings something to his mouth and speaks into it. 

"Nurse..." He says and short while after, the same nurse from earlier answered back. 

"Yes, Dr. Ziegmeyer?" she replies in a hoarse and raspy voice from the already distorted sound of the device they were communicating through. 

"One of the intruders has made its way into the garden. Bring it to me." 

"Of course, Dr. Ziegmeyer." A loud screech like nails on a chalkboard is heard coming from the device before it went silent. 

Downstairs, the nurse wheels out a bed, equipped with strappings for the insanely aggressive, through the halls of the manor which was still lush with the sound of the music playing through the unseen gramophone. Back then, the singing was meant to calm the patients who were undergoing a psychotic episode or some other erratic behavior. When she made it to the back door, she pushes it open with her back and pulls the wheeled bed out into the garden. The morning was still very young, stars shined their brightest it seemed as the nurse wheeled through the maze and to Emma Ziegmeyer's grave where Dayleen laid unconscious. The nurse drags Dayleen out of the grave and lifts her onto the bed before wheeling her back to the manor, the pocket knife left behind in the grave. Surely, it was not the way Dayleen planned on getting back inside the manor. 

While the nurse wheeled Dayleen through the halls of the first floor, the man of the moon face, referred to by the nurse as Dr. Ziegmeyer, pushed through a door in his office and walks into a closet like space where he descended a spiral staircase. The cries of Ladia can be heard coming from the room below.