Chapter Two
When Fisher slowly regained consciousness the silence was absolute except for his frantic breathing, and he was still trapped in darkness so impenetrable that for a moment he doubted that he had truly opened his eyes. With difficulty he clenched and unclenched his half-frozen hands to stimulate his blood circulation until he was able to touch his face. Yes, his eyes were wide open, but try as he might he wasn't able to detect the faintest spark of light. Had that accursed escapee from the abysses of perdition robbed him of his sight, or was he already dead, forever trapped in a lonely, lightless hell?
Cold sweat drenched Fisher's body, and acid drops burned his blindly staring eyes while each wild beat of his ailing heart hurt like a dagger and an iron ring around his chest seemed to impair his breathing.
Heartbeat, breathing and pain, a sure sign of life as there'd ever been one, and despite the fierce ache Fisher almost sobbed with relief. Whatever had happened to him after he'd passed out he wasn't dead, and as long there was life there was hope. But if he wanted to stay sane he had to get out of this pitfall as soon as possible. Forcing down his terror the judge breathed in as deeply as his hurting chest allowed and started yelling for help.
Long minutes passed, and Fisher had already screamed himself hoarse and was fighting for breath, but no kind soul had come to his aid, and the old judge was close to despair again. Then his mood lightened in a heartbeat. An avid pipe smoker he always carried matches with him. Why hadn't he thought about that earlier?
Trembling with excitement Fisher groped for the pockets of his dressing gown, but instead of the familiar coarse fabric his shaking hands touched smooth, silky cloth that clung uncomfortably to his chill limbs. Instantly the faint spark of hope was extinguished and his restraint finally gave way to naked panic. Groaning Fisher tossed around like a man suffering from intolerable pain, but his writhing was stopped abruptly when his flailing arms hit an unknown barrier with a dull thud, a sound that sounded suspiciously like a knock on wood.
The judge froze and tried to pull himself together, groping for the obstacle with clenched teeth, just to find his mobility gravely restricted to a few inches on each side. When the acrid smell of his sweat mingled with fear the faint scent of rotting flowers the terrible realization dawned on him. He was trapped in a coffin, and the silky fabric was his shroud. He had been buried alive.
Appalled Fisher remembered the ghastly tales told in hushed voices about those doomed souls who had woken in their own coffin and their fruitless attempts to escape their underground prison while the vital oxygen was getting scarcer and scarcer. He'd always been scared to death by those stories, and now his worst fear had caught up with him.
In unspeakable terror the judge gasped like a drowning man, while the invisible steel band crushing his desperately pumping chest seemed to get tighter by the second and fiery circles danced before his eyes.
Something in Fisher's mind gave way, and all rationality perished in the mind crushing fear of a trapped animal and the purely instinctive fight for survival. With a grisly howl that should have never been wrested from a human throat he dug his fingernails into the coffin lid, vainly trying to claw his way back into the world of the living, but when Fisher pushed once again with the unnatural strength of a man driven to insanity by naked dread the lid suddenly gave way and slid to the floor with a resounding crash.
After having been confined in the dark for quite a while the judge had to squeeze his watering eyes shut as he greedily sucked stale air into his lungs. To his infinite relief Fisher realized that he was indeed in a coffin, but hadn't been buried yet. Moonlight flooded the little mortuary and shone on the wilting flowers and wreaths that had been scattered around his pompous black coffin in the wake of his lucky escape from his uncanny prison.
Fisher shivered in his thin robe, and his teeth were chattering, but at least his breathing had returned to normal, and the excruciating heartache had dulled to a tolerable level. Better not to think about the fate that would have been waiting for him if he had awakened from his coma a few hours later…
Carefully Fisher scrambled from his coffin and quickly flopped down on one of the wooden benches that were intended for the grieving relatives and friends of the deceased. His legs were shaking, he was dizzy and his heart was still beating irregularly. There was no point to wander about the cemetery in the middle of the night looking for help, and without a sliver of doubt he would never make it home on his own in his current condition, not to mention the unholy demons that roamed the dark, driven by their unquenchable hunger for human prey. No, he would bide his time and wait for the undertaker who would certainly appear at the break of dawn to start his daily work. The lazy bugger might be in for a heart attack of his own!
A hollow moan rudely interrupted Fisher's thoughts, a noise so eerie and unearthly that his hairs stood on end. The judge rose slowly, all senses alert, and let his eyes wander through the chill little chapel, his gaze warily scanning the shadows. What he really didn't need on top of his worries was a hungry demon haunting the cemetery.
Then the judge blinked, and his jaw dropped. Busy with his own troubles Fisher had completely failed to notice that he wasn't the only "customer" inside the morgue. A second coffin, far shabbier than his own pretentious last resting place, had been laid out on a little podium at the far end of the mortuary, and there could be no doubt that the horrid groan emitted from this receptacle that had apparently been hastily nailed together from some cheap plywood.
Fisher put his hand to his aching head and rubbed his forehead. What on this godforsaken planet was going on here? The judge was by no means a specialist in probability calculation, but even he knew that the odds of two pour souls struck with suspended animation laid out simultaneously in the same morgue weren't even worth mentioning.
Cautiously he approached the coffin with small, tentative steps, as if magnetically drawn to it against his will, but ready to jump back at any suspicious occurrence.
Fisher had almost reached the primitive wooden box when the lid was pushed aside ferociously and slid down to the stone floor with a vengeance. All senses on red alarm the judge flinched and prepared for a quick retreat, but the horrible sight that greeted him when the groaning inhabitant finally managed to struggle into a sitting position nailed him to the spot, and he couldn't bring his legs to move.
The thing swaying precariously inside its coffin might have been a human being with dreams, hopes and needs not long ago, but its body had been so horribly mutilated that Fisher couldn't even determine whether it had been a man or a woman. The left arm had been torn out at the shoulder joint, and of the face nothing but a red, pulpy mass interspersed with white bone splinters and sharp teeth remained, teeth that dominated a hungrily gaping maw.
The incredibly deformed, twisted body was mercifully covered by a coarse shroud, but there couldn't be a sliver of doubt that nobody could have survived those lethal injuries. Whatever this creature was, it had to be dead. Or undead.
Frozen with cold horror Fisher recalled a compassionate article in the Jaggonath Times, asking for donations on behalf of the bereaved poor relatives of a worker at one of Jaggonath's bigger furniture factories. The man had been pulled into one of the steam powered machines and had died of his injuries on the spot, leaving his wife and five children. As had to be expected the unfortunate accident had been a fine opportunity for the socialist rat pack that dared to call themselves journalists to start their usual ranting about inhuman working conditions and the exploitation of the poor.
A cold, clear certainty rushed through Fisher that right now he was an eye witness to the horrendous mishaps that the ill-fated combination of fae and technology could inflict on the human colonists on Erna, and when the monstrous thing moaned again and groped for him with its remaining arm he turned on the spot and ran.
Sobbing with horror the judge grabbed the door latch, waiting for cold, dead fingers on his shoulder blades, but to his heartfelt relief the door gave way. Stumbling outside he found himself in a well kept cemetery, the grave stones and imposing mausoleums of the affluent cold and still in the pale moonlight, silent memorials of his own mortality.
After having staggered away from the accursed morgue of horror for about fifty meters the torrent of adrenaline that had carried him on its wings subsided somehow, and Fisher had to take a break, leaning for support against an angel whose stony eyes watched impassively over the grave of a human being who had crumbled into dust long ago. Panting for dear life's sake his wide eyes were locked on the door of the little chapel. Maybe the monster was somehow confined to his coffin by its devastating deformities, maybe he had misinterpreted the situation or was hallucinating, maybe…
A distorted shadow darkened the moonlight lit entrance, and the zombie appeared, staggering haltingly on the splintered remains of his legs. The eyes of the undead were dull, bereft of any human expression, and his head lolled from side to side uncontrollably, but soulless and determined like the machine that had killed him he moved unwaveringly towards the judge, attracted by the smell of living, warm flesh.
Fisher very nearly choked on his own breath and turned again to flee, but had barely covered a few meters when suddenly a sharp jolt went through his right foot and he was brought down unceremoniously, hitting the soft, leaf-strewn soil with full force.
Cautiously the judge tried to get up, cursing his bleeding nose, his aching limb and the damned tree root that had tripped him at the worst possible moment. He could only hope that his ankle wasn't dislocated or sprained, and hobble on as quickly as possibly.
Fisher's desperate attempt to get going was instantly nipped in the bud, his right foot still firmly stuck in place. Daring a closer look he froze with horror. The presumed roots were long, bony fingers in fact, fingers that had dug their way unhesitatingly upwards through the moldy soil until they had left their lightless grave and clutched his ankle like a steel trap.
Screaming in fear Fisher tried to escape from the merciless hold, but now the very earth below him was moving restlessly, freeing unspeakable horror from its depths. Everywhere in the cemetery grave stones shook and teetered and bony fists and faces in all states of decay pushed through the moldering leaves when the dead left their lair to haunt the living.
In a last-ditch effort, his strength multiplied by the first vestiges of madness caused by sheer terror, Fisher at last managed to rip his ankle from its appalling cage, hearing old bones break with a sickening snap. Moving on all fours like an animal, blind with terror and babbling like a drunk, the judge instinctively tried to crawl away from the hungry living dead, but his flight was abruptly stopped by a pair of long, leather-clad legs that seemed to have made their unexpected entrance out of thin air, but could have very well have been anchored in the core of Erna itself, not yielding an inch under the impact.
Wondering what kind of new horror was lying in store for him Fisher gathered the last fading remnants of his wit and courage and glanced up at the figure that was blocking his path to survival. Completely baffled the old judge gasped and blinked, not quite believing his eyes for the third time that abominable night.
Towering over him stood a tall, lean man dressed in a strange mixture of modern attire and multi-layered silken robes that would have been perfect for a costume play set in the Revivalist period. The supple, evidently custom-made leather boots were impeccable despite the sticky mud and the rotting leaves, the midnight blue silk shirt and matching surcot that might have been all the rage a millennium ago, but seemed weirdly out of place now, absolutely clean and not marred by wrinkles or creases.
Despite these obvious anachronisms there was nothing ridiculous in the poise of the stranger who wore the robes from a bygone era and the sword in its embroidered sheath with a casual, consummate grace for which he would have been envied by each and every young dandy in Jaggonath. But it hadn't been the clothes that made the judge gasp in surprise.
Fisher had never been a religious man. He believed in provable, tangible facts, not in the despicable, superstitious nonsense the Church utilized to keep the dumb multitudes in check. But if he'd been one of the faithful he might have rejoiced that God had sent one of his angels to succor him from the fangs of death.
The young man whose mesmerizing silver eyes gazed down on him was breathtakingly beautiful in an androgynous, angelic way, his flawless ivory skin seemingly made from different stuff than Fisher's coarser one. The serene, delicate features were completely untouched by the mundane troubles of the mortal world, and the judge couldn't help but stare, feeling very much like a condemned soul that had awakened in heaven against all odds.
With effort the old judge managed to tear his eyes away from the ethereal apparition and risked a glance at his surroundings. The armada of rotting zombies had formed a loose circle around them, groaning and swaying back and forth, but none of them dared to cross an invisible line. Apparently even the undead feared one of God's messengers.
"Please, have mercy on me", Fisher rasped, digging his fingers into the black leather. "Whoever you are, help me, and I'll give you whatever you want. I'll go to church each Sunday, give money for the poor, if you just get me out of this hellish place."
"This hellish place?" the being whispered, and its smooth voice slid down Fisher's spine like a shard of ice. "What hell entails is beyond your mortal comprehension, Honorable. I've already been there. But you will see for yourself. So very soon."
Startled Fisher faced the stranger again, just to witness a fleeting look of terror and gut wrenching pain passing over the pale, ageless face, but when the creature's glittering eyes locked with his own they were filled with a cold, distant amusement that made the breath hitch inside his throat. Hands so much colder than winter's icy breath pried his death grip off the leather trousers effortlessly, and for the first time Fisher noticed that the body in front of him radiated no human warmth at all, but an unearthly chill that seemed to freeze the marrow inside his bones.
"But I really think we've wasted enough time with polite preliminaries. The night is getting old, and we have to get down to business. Shall we?"
The quiet voice was laced with deadly malevolence now, and to Fisher's naked horror the stranger was suddenly standing about five meters away, outside of the swaying, groaning ring of monstrosities hungering for his flesh, although the judge hadn't perceived any visible movement whatsoever.
"Dear God, who are you? Why are you doing this to me?"
"Who I am?" the stranger replied derisively. "Just make an educated guess, Honorable. But while my little, starved companions here tear you to shrieking pieces remember that I am no tool."
Without further ado the creature graced him with a pleasant smile and clapped its hands in gruesome mock invitation. "Time for dinner, my friends!"
In a blinding flash of dread Fisher realized who the mysterious stranger was, and half crazed with terror he tried to get to his feet, but the Hunter's malevolent will banned him to the spot, and he had to watch helplessly as the zombies approached him, slowly, but inescapably, like the heavy steps of doom.
Then they were upon him, and Fisher's bloodcurdling howls rose to unbearable heights as they tore him apart, limb from limb. The last thing he ever saw were those terrifying eyes ablaze with twisted pleasure, eyes that had darkened from pale silver to pitch black and were filled with an insatiable, demonic hunger, windows to the very hell they'd already witnessed.