**CHAPTER SIX

  “The Sickness Walking”**

  Snow fell in soft, deceptive silence the next morning, as if the night had not been split open by screams. Anna stepped onto her porch with the twins peering from behind her skirts, their faces pale and drawn. The air was sharp enough to cut. The whole village seemed to be holding its breath.

  Down the hill, a cluster of villagers gathered outside the Bauer cabin. Their voices were hushed, frantic. Someone wailed—a sound too raw to mistake. Anna tightened her grip on the railing.

  “It’s begun,” she whispered.

  She felt the twins tense at her back.

  Elder Dietrich emerged from the Bauer home, leaning heavily on his cane. His face was gray in the morning light, the lines around his mouth deeper, older. When he saw Anna watching, he beckoned her down with a slow wave.

  Anna told the twins to stay in the doorway and lock it. “I will call twice when I return.”

  Lena hesitated. “Mama… it’s still here. I can feel it.”

  Anna knelt, cupping her daughter’s face. “Feeling danger keeps us alive. But you stay inside. No matter what you hear.”

  Once the door closed and bolted behind her, Anna walked down the path, each step sinking deep into the fresh snow. The closer she came, the sharper the voices grew.

  “—he forced his way in—” “—blood on the walls—” “—the door splintered—” “—I told them not to open it—”

  Anna reached the crowd, pushing gently until Dietrich saw her and parted the group with a gesture.

  Inside the Bauer cabin, the air carried a wet, metallic scent. The table lay overturned, the lantern crushed beneath it. Long dark streaks marred the floorboards—drag marks, not footprints.

  Dietrich lowered his voice. “Three dead. The youngest girl missing.”

  Anna’s breath hitched. She closed her eyes, picturing Lukas and Lena, imagining the sound of a knock in the night.

  “Any sign of her?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” Dietrich said. “But we found tracks heading toward the ridge.”

  The word tracks didn’t mean footprints anymore.

  Anna looked around the cabin. Whatever had attacked them hadn’t moved like a living man. The streaks were too uneven, too smeared, as if the creature had moved by dragging its weight with hands that no longer understood what they were.

  “Did Hans do this?” Anna whispered.

  Dietrich looked down at his hands. They trembled slightly. “The Bauer boy saw his face. He said… it wasn’t right.”

  Anna closed her eyes. She had already known the answer.

  Around them, villagers shifted anxiously.

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  “We have to leave the valley,” Samuel Brunner said, his voice cracking. “Ride to Buckhannon. Bring help.”

  “With what roads?” another snapped. “Snow’s too deep. And if it spreads—”

  “It has spread,” Martha Bischof said sharply. “Look at what happened here.”

  A third villager stepped forward, pale and shaking. “My mother woke before dawn. She couldn’t stand. She said she felt cold inside her bones. Not freezing. Wrong.”

  People murmured.

  Then a voice broke through the crowd:

  “Two more took sick last night.”

  That froze everyone. Even the wind seemed to quiet.

  Dietrich cleared his throat. “We must gather the council.”

  “Council?” Samuel spat. “For what? Talking? We need action!”

  “We need order,” Dietrich said, slamming his cane down hard enough to send a thud through the floorboards. “This valley has kept us through harsher winters than this.”

  “This isn’t winter,” someone whispered. “This is death.”

  A silence fell.

  A thick, trembling one.

  Anna looked around—at the terrified faces, the trembling hands, the wide, disbelieving eyes—and felt the truth settle inside her like ice.

  Fear had entered Helvetia.

  And fear was beginning to replace reason.

  Dietrich’s voice softened. “This is not a sickness of the usual kind. It… changes the dead. Makes them walk. We must understand it if we intend to survive.”

  A gasp rippled through the room.

  “You’re saying this is curse,” someone muttered. “You’re saying this is blasphemy,” another hissed.

  “I am saying,” Dietrich replied, voice firm, “that our ancestors lit fires and rang bells for a reason. Some darknesses do not die easily.”

  Anna felt a shiver run through her, remembering Lena’s trembling voice:

  I heard him before he came.

  The villagers began to argue—some shouting to flee, others insisting on barricading homes, a few calling for a hunt to track the creature. Panic built in waves.

  Anna stepped back from the chaos, jaw tight.

  Dietrich caught her eye. “You saw something last night, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “Hans knocked on the Bauer door. Like he was still himself. But he wasn’t. Not anymore.”

  Dietrich closed his eyes. “God have mercy.”

  Anna leaned in. “Elder… how does this spread?”

  His expression told her he already feared the answer.

  “Blood,” he whispered. “And maybe breath.”

  Anna’s stomach dropped. “Anyone who was near him—”

  “Is already being watched,” he said grimly.

  Voices rose behind them.

  The Bauer boy began coughing.

  A wet, rattled cough.

  People stepped back from him, eyes widening in terror. The boy wiped his mouth, and his sleeve came away streaked with something darker than mucus.

  Dietrich cursed under his breath. “It’s fast.”

  Anna grabbed his arm. “We have to warn the families. Get them inside. No one in the streets after dusk.”

  “There won’t be enough time,” Dietrich said. “Not if more fall sick by nightfall.”

  Anna looked toward her cabin, where two small faces were pressed to the window, watching for her with wide frightened eyes.

  “Then we fight for the time we do have,” she said fiercely.

  Dietrich nodded once, his jaw set.

  The bell at the Fest hall tower began to ring—slow and deep, the note vibrating the snow.

  Villagers fell silent.

  That bell had only one meaning.

  Summon to council. Emergency. Threat upon the valley.

  The infection didn’t just exist anymore.

  It was spreading.

  And now the whole valley knew.