The spectral town glistened until clouds again enveloped it with the rightful darkness of night. The Grossbarts did not pause, and when they finally deposited Ennio on the ground outside the tavern fresh snow further shadowed them. When neither guard opened the door they forced it as they had before and dragged the comatose Ennio beside the fire. Alphonse’s snoring stopped when Manfried kicked him off his chair and began shouting in his face.

“Where’s your man?” said Manfried.

“Shit-sipping bastard,” Alphonse slurred.

“Right!” Manfried began pummeling him until Hegel dragged him off.

“Need all the swords we got if that thing comes back,” Hegel advised.

“What you did to Ennio?” Alphonse crawled to the driver and shook his shoulders. Ennio immediately awoke screaming and clawing at Alphonse’s face. The injured man’s bloodshot eyes registered Manfried advancing and he immediately went still.

“Demon,” Manfried said, and Hegel did not argue.

“What?” said Alphonse, squinting at the Brothers.

“A demon from the pit!” Hegel exploded. “Somethin from Hell, that sink through your stony pate? A goddamn fiend!”

“What?” Alphonse repeated.

“Pestilence,” Manfried proclaimed, pacing the room and pulling his beard. “Had the rot in’em. Came out. Demons and plague, Mary preserve us!”

“Plague?” Alphonse blanched and Ennio moaned.

“Shut your holes, damn you!” Hegel yelled, hurling a chair against the wall.

“Brother,” Manfried hissed in Grossbartese. “Need to keep our calm if we’s gonna get shy a here and over to the sandy lands. Calm.”

“Calm?” Hegel forsook their private lingo. “Calm! Got us a demon after us! Not some manti-what or beastly-man, but a real demon! You seen it!”

“Yeah, I seen.” Manfried shuddered. “Maybe it stayed up on the hill.”

“Rot! I seen it! It’s comin! The witch’s curse, Manfried, the witch’s curse!” Hegel raged, the foreigners cowering on the floor.

“Faith!” Manfried shouted.

“Balls!” responded Hegel, smashing a table with his sword.

“She’s watchin over us!”

“Damn right! Got us a hex gonna last til we die!”

“No, you twat, Mary!” said Manfried. “We live and die by the will a the Virgin! We die when She wills it, not fore! Faith, damn your beard, faith!”

“Faith?” Hegel panted.

“Faith,” Manfried sighed, having almost convinced himself. “You know what we gotta do.”

“Kill us a demon. For real.”

“Mary bless us, we will. Better to just get shy a this place without settin eyes on it again. Now where’s that ignorant cunt you was with?” Manfried demanded of Alphonse.

They found Giacomo facedown in the hallway, near the rear door. He had drowned in a shallow puddle of snowmelt, the water barely covering his nose and mouth. The three mobile men convened in the hall, and after Alphonse told his fractured tale all three glanced at the cloth obscuring the woman’s room.

Manfried ripped the partisan down. “What you gotta say?”

The most beautiful woman the repulsive graverobber had ever spied looked up, her supple body partially draped in dirty blankets. Hegel and Alphonse tried to peer around Manfried but his square shoulders filled the narrow doorway. Her pale thigh shone like the moon, and going on the glorious contours of the cloth he doubted she wore anything beneath her covers. She smiled mischievously, black hair glistening down her side, and Manfried suddenly felt compelled to apologize; for what, he knew not. Before he could speak she raised a finger to her dark lips, and they all heard a rapping on the front door.

Hegel and Alphonse rushed back to the main room, and Manfried sorrowfully followed, promising his eyes they would soon take her in again. She smelled different from any woman he had met, and despite the urgency with which Hegel and Alphonse ran to the door he could not tear his mind from her. The night’s events were near-forgotten, and his sharp ears were dull to the shouting all around him.

“Manfried!” Hegel barked in his face.

“Eh?” Manfried tried to clear his thoughts.

“It’s here!” Hegel’s eyes bulged, alarmed at his brother’s nonchalance.

“Faith.” Manfried smiled dreamily, then shook off her phantom. “Shut it, all a yous!”

The room fell gravely still save for Ennio, who moaned beside the hearth with a bottle clutched in both hands. The knocking did not come again, but something snuffled at the bottom of the door, blowing snow in through the crack. The Grossbarts advanced, the drunken Alphonse following them with rushlight and sword. They stood there for a moment, then Manfried spurred himself into action.

“What you want?” shouted Manfried.

“Let me in,” a voice pleaded.

“Why?” asked Manfried.

“Warmth. Christian succor. I’ll not harm you, I swear.”

“Yeah, and who is you and where you come from?” asked Manfried.

“I’m Volker, I live on the edge of town. I’ve been hiding, please let me in.”

“Oh, rot, you’s that same meckin demon!” Hegel shouted.

“Demon? Demon!” The man beat on the door. “Then let me in, for the love of the Christ babe! My soul’s in danger, and if it takes mine then yours is damned for not saving me!”

“Maybe open the door and look?” Alphonse turned from Grossbart to Grossbart.

“I ain’t gonna dignify that with a response cept to say by my ma’s foul mound, how thick’re you?” said Manfried, and then raised his voice. “Give us a private discussion, Volker!”

“Hurry!”

Manfried retreated to the center of the room, Hegel and Alphonse in tow. “Listen,” he told his brother in their familial language, “it’s tryin to trick its way in, might imply it’s too weak to bust the door. We wait it out til cockcrow, it’ll turn to dust in the sun.”

“You sure a that?” asked Hegel.

“What you say?” Alphonse’s distress grew with each development, and a council he could not decipher sat poorly with him. The twin glares emasculated his tongue, though, and he went to Ennio’s corner to try and calm him. Alphonse’s booze-soaked brain could not comprehend much, and he took another pull from Ennio’s bottle.

“Demons can’t bide daylight, any child’ll tell you,” Manfried insisted.

“What about that demon in the woods? He seemed to prefer it,” said Hegel.

“Now you was the one insistin that weren’t no demon.”

“Witch told me it used to be a man. You wanna hinge your soul on a witch’s word or a child’s tale?” Hegel glanced at the door. “Should a drawn a circle in the snow round the tavern, that would a done it.”

“How’s that different from my so-called superstition?” Manfried demanded.

“Cause it’s fact, as our uncle told us.”

“So you’s gonna believe that road-apple? Sides, if that’s the case we can draw circles round us on the floor in here.”

“Stop him!” Ennio wailed, and the Grossbarts saw Alphonse crouched by the front door, his ear pressed to the wood.

Manfried and Hegel both went for him but before they took three steps the crazed man tossed back the board latching the door. The door blew inward, snow swirling around the manically laughing Alphonse. A silhouette loomed behind him in the doorway, stopping the Grossbarts’ feet and Ennio’s scream.

“Seeing this, Grossbarts?” Alphonse cackled. “Think you kill my cousin and live? Think you kill me? I have its word!”

Alphonse’s left eye sprang from its socket in a spray of blood. His jaw hung loose and the mess of his brains spilled from it, the entire back of his head caved in. He dropped dead on the floor in front of his assailant.

The hog from the cemetery stepped into the room on its hind legs, chunks of Alphonse’s skull and hair stuck to its left front hoof. Its black eyes shone and it casually kicked the door shut behind it. The Grossbarts were no longer strangers to sanity-stealing horrors, yet the comparatively simple sight of an animal walking like a man stunned them immobile. Not Ennio, who crawled toward the hallway, refusing to look at whatever had entered the tavern.