A Day in the Life: The Nachzehrer
The Chewing
Silence in the graveyard. Then, a sound. Scritch. Scritch. Crunch. It comes from six feet underground.
The Nachzehrer is awake, lying in its coffin. Its eyes are open, staring at the wooden lid—milky and blind to the dark. It is hungry, but it cannot leave the grave. Not yet. So it eats what is there.
It brings its hand to its mouth and bites its own funeral shroud. The linen is old and tastes of dust. It chews. It swallows. This is the magic. This is the curse. As it eats the shroud, its family in the village begins to sicken. Every thread it swallows drains a breath from its living brother. Every rip of the cloth puts a fever in its sister’s brow.
It chews faster, gnawing on its own fingers. It does not feel pain. It feels only a hollow, echoing need to consume.
The Church Bell
Deep in the earth, the vibration of the church bell ringing noon reaches him. It pauses. The bell tolls for a funeral. His brother has died. The consumption worked.
The Nachzehrer smiles in the dark. Its gums are receding, making the teeth look long and yellow. It waits, feeling the vibrations of spades hitting the earth nearby—a new neighbor, fresh soil.
The Pig
The sun warms the ground above, and the Nachzehrer enters a torpor. It dreams.
It dreams it is a pig. In the old stories, the Nachzehrer sometimes takes the form of a sow trotting through the village streets. In the dream, it is running through the mud, smelling the garbage and the rot. It knocks over pails of milk and bites the ankles of children. It spreads the plague. The shadow of the pig passes over a house, and the people inside start coughing blood. It grunts in its sleep, the sound echoing in the coffin.
The Rising
Night falls, and the full moon pulls at the dead tide. The Nachzehrer is strong enough now. It has fed on its kin, and the shroud is gone.
It pushes. The coffin lid cracks. The earth above is loose. It claws its way up, breaking the surface to breathe the night air. It looks like a corpse that has been in the water too long—bloated, pale, its mouth stained with linen fibers.
It climbs onto a tombstone, perching like a gargoyle, and looks at the church tower. It crawls up the tower wall, sticking like a lizard, defying gravity. Reaching the bell, it grabs the clapper with its cold hand and rings it.
But it does not make a sound. It is a death knell that only the dying can hear. It rings it once for the baker. Twice for the priest. It laughs—a dry, rattling sound. The village sleeps, but the fever is spreading. The Nachzehrer has work to do.
