Invisible Traces · A Horror Story No. 16
Der Nachtmahr
Alex Moonn
She walks. She eats, sometimes. But she won't wake up.
Regensburg, Bavaria, 1847. Dr. Heinrich Voss, an alienist physician, believes madness is a broken mechanism, a clock whose gears can be studied and repaired. On a Thursday in October, the blacksmith Georg Brenner arrives carrying his wife in his arms. Marta walks, eats sometimes, but will not wake up, and at night she laughs a laugh that isn't hers. Every morning, three wine-dark bruises appear fresh over her sternum, in a perfect triangle. The hospital's oldest nurse has a word for it.
English edition, available on Amazon.
Read an excerpt
I examined Marta. Pupils responsive to light. Pulse regular. Reflexes present, though slow. Clinically, nothing wrong with her.
Clinically.
But when I looked deep into her eyes — those winter-gray eyes fixed on a point somewhere between me and the wall — I had the unsettling sensation that someone was in there, looking out.
Someone who was not Marta.
English edition, available on Amazon.
