Graveyard

“Disturb the soil of the shallow graves. Let loose the dead. There is no rest for the wicked. Dig your way out of your rotten graves, my long-forgotten comrades. Take your revenge against the descendants of your murderers. They live here, still…carrying the shame of their forefathers.”

“Hey! You! What are you doing here?” yelled a middle-aged man, running frantically between the graves. He stopped and shone a flashlight at the hooded figure standing there. The figure didn’t move. The cloak wrapped around his neck and head was too large to discern whether it was even a person standing there, staring at the stone graves. The wind picked up its pace, giving the cloaked figure an even more supernatural look.

“I should have been buried here, long ago. I should have died, right here. Instead, I suffered through the ages, visiting these graves, back when they were simple stick burial sites. Then, they were turned into elaborate tombstones, as if that was some kind of honor. It wasn’t. It was a reburial, designed to hide the truth.” The hooded figure removed his cloak, causing the middle-aged man to take a few steps back.

“Look, mister. I’m just the groundskeeper. I started working here a few weeks ago,” said Mr. Donald Marshall, a fifty-four-year-old cemetery worker. He’d worked in cemeteries practically his entire life, ever since his father had kicked him out of the house at the age of seventeen. He scrunched his face at the sight of the ancient man standing in front of him. He looked like a crooked owl without feathers, standing tall, well beyond seven feet. He didn’t show it though. His back was so crooked that it shaved off almost an entire foot of height.

“I know who you are, Donald. I know who all of you are.” The ancient man’s spine and joints cracked as he stretched, revealing his full height. Donald dropped his flashlight and ran for his life. The ancient man’s jaw dropped, so far that it looked as though it was going to separate from his skull. His whitened eyes rolled back into his head, and he let out a moan, that was carried by the wind. In fact, his moan appeared to have spawned the wind, heavy and unnatural. The wind spoke of life and death. It spoke of nothing at all…an emptiness that normal mortals could not bear, without plunging down a spiral of depression and agony.

The graves rumbled and the tombstones cracked and shattered. The earth disturbed itself, turning the graves inside out, through nature’s regurgitation…spitting out those who should never have been buried there. Their skeletons littered the churning soil like an archaeologist’s wet dream.

“What your predecessors didn’t tell you, is that this used to be a mass grave…of sin. What will rise is that which was created on that terrible night,” said the ancient man. His voice travelled with the wind, straight into Donald’s ear, causing the poor groundskeeper to whip around with terror. The ancient man’s voice seemed as though it had come from right beside Donald.

The bones reanimated themselves through clicks and clacks, into a terrible, hunched abomination. It looked like a planet with rings of arms and legs. At the very top, like an unholy crown, there was a circle of skulls. Their empty eye sockets peered around with anger, pent-up through the ages. Donald murmured a prayer to Jesus beneath his breath. You couldn’t see it, but somehow, Donald knew that the skulls were smiling a terrible smile. They were ready to carry out their revenge, with absolutely nothing to lose.