Chapter Sixteen: The Bells Will Toll Day one; midnight
Looking around the cemetery, Corporal Lenart finds herself to be in a whole different section from where the mausoleum is. The ghosts have all returned to their graves. She stands there in the narrow row of gravestones. Looking down at one end of the row, shows it to lead only to a wall. The other direction, leading to a small gate, leaving the cemetery.
She loks down, to find that the manhole she just came out from has disappeared, vanished from existance. The wind blows for a moment, and a skeletal hand comes reaching over the top of a grave. Corporal Lenart jumps back from the sight of it, then just looks at it, curiously.
The hand remains there, clutching the top of the grave. She looks down at the grave and notices that the death date on it for the four people listed is the same, and there's two rectangular spaces underneath the four names. At the top of the tombstone is the family name, 'Preston.'
"Geez, the whole family must've died on the same day." She mutters to herself. Suddenly, another hand appears on top of the grave beside this one. On this gravestone must be hundreds of names, all carved into the stone, unprofessionally. The names are scattered all over, and are barely legible. All of the names seem to be different though. None of them look like they have similar names, or any relevance to each other at all.
When Corporal Lenart looks up from the tombstone, she finds a woman to be standing beside her, just looking at her. The woman's presence startles her enough to make her jump backand almost lose balance. It's the woman that she had seen earlier, with the trench coat and blonde hair. The stitching that held her eyes and mouth closed before has been removed, and she just stands there looking at Corporal Lenart, with an expressionless face. A voice calls out from the woman, but her mouth lacks movement.
"You have no idea ... what it's like," she pauses a moment, just looking at her, "to have a drunken father try to rape you, then get killed right in front of you. To have your own father's blood thrown at you." She takes a step forward, and her eyes become a little bit tensed. "I got through it. I dragged myself forward. I managed onward, but things turn sour when your mother is wanted. You have no idea what it's like to go through all of that, then barely manage to keep going, then no matter how hard you fight, you cannot resist death." She now looks quite angry, but still not moving very much.
Corporal Lenart stnads up straight. "I understand now. I finally understand what's going on." She takes on an assertively relieved look.
"Then you know what must happen." Corporal Lenart nods.
Suddenly the woman there brings out a smile and turns. She stands there a moment, smiling, then vanishes, fading into thin air. Corporal Lenart stands there a moment, thinking. She steps forward, and continue, leading her out through the smaller gate from the cemetery.
She comes out into the forest again. Up ahead, is a path. Following the path, Corporal Lenart comes to a lake side, where a small dock is. She looks out at the misty water. In the distance, she can see what looks like an island. Looking higher, there's some strange shapes in the sky. She looks down at the dock's side. A small rowboat floats there, motionless from the lack of waves. She steps into the boat and picks up the two oars, to start rowing herself out towards the island.