The Habitants of Murdering-Town

It is winter 1754 in His Majesty's Province of New York, and an urgent summons has come to Dereham Town from the German settlement of Leichtenberg to the northwest on the Spirit River. Judge Laerte von Mardure has sent word to his brother, Dereham Mayor Ulysse von Mardure that there have been an alarming number of deaths he has tried to keep quiet - none of them natural.

First, it was a half-dozen patients at the tuberculosis sanitarium in the nearby mountains, then the Mayor of Leichtenberg himself, then several tribespeople at a nearby Mohawk village. All the bodies have been drained of blood. It is suspected that a vampire is responsible - one who can crawl up walls and leap from roof to roof like some monstrous spider, and whose mocking laugh chills the blood.

Ulysse agrees to come, but asks Dereham apothecary and former frontier scout, Seth Athenor, to accompany him, knowing that if a supernatural menace involved, there is no better man to confront it.

The ordinary townsfolk suspect nothing, and the Christmas Garden is bright with festivities as they stroll and sing, dance and eat.

Not realizing that something else is hungry, too.

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