#73: Spooky Season #12 (Ghost Stories)


Prompt: graveyard, cursed, spell

A cursed graveyard traps the souls of everyone buried within and, on Halloween, they are summoned into physical form by a necromancer's spell.


The graveyard is a small, decrepit plot of space. A single acre, overgrown, choked with weeds, and surrounded by what was once a wrought iron fence but is now a mis-matched collection of broken, bent, and weathered metal bars strewn all around the area. Many have been stolen and others buried, consumed by the grounds they'd once protected. What few tombstones remain are unmarked chunks of rock worn smooth by the sands of time and half-sunk into the ground.

Once, it was bigger, better maintained, and located right on the outskirts of the nearest small town. It wasn't exactly well regarded; only the poor and the unwanted were buried in its grounds; but for years it was a subject of pity rather than ridicule or fear.

Then the unthinkable happened.

One night at the height of summer, a trio of teenagers snuck into the silent graveyard to smoke and drink away from the prying eyes of their parents.

In the morning, the groundskeeper found what was left of them strewn across the grounds. They were barely recognizable and it took days for the police to gather and remove their remains. There was no sign of what, exactly, had happened; the bodies were in too mutilated a state to even know what killed them; but it was clear someone or something lurked in the graveyard.

After that, the town drew away from the graveyard. It was already on the outskirts, but the few people that lived close to its walls moved away, claiming they could hear the screams of the dying teens on the breeze and that foul spirits haunted their homes. Exactly six months after the murders, on the winter solstice, the entire town could hear the sounds moaning in the cold wind. The malicious aura that came to define the graveyard seeped outwards until there was a circular area bigger than a mile that the townspeople refused to enter and instead left for nature to reclaim.

Now, a century later, the graveyard is all alone. The town has relocated, for the most part, and forgotten the awful deeds that happened within its barred walls and the hauntings that came after.

However, those inside the graveyard have never forgotten.


"Starrk, C'mon! It's Halloween!"

"I'm coming, Lily."

Starrk grumbles, turning over in the confines of his grave and trying to bury his ghostly head beneath his arms. It's a poorly thought out move because it instantly brings him face to face with the empty eye sockets and grinning jaw that one belonged to his skull. The dirty white bone is enough to make him recoil with a grunt of disgust and phase out of the ground that's pressing down on – and through – him.

"There you are!" Lilynette yips and ambushes him from behind. He allows himself to be caught instead of phasing through her and his hands automatically come to rest on her shoulders. They're cold, insubstantial, and half translucent, but he can touch her as easily as if she were flesh and blood. His hands are the same half-there shade of blue as her body and when he squints, he can see the scrubby grass through them.

"Yep. Here I am." His words are completely monotone as he looks up at the dark night sky and around at the rest of the graveyard. There are other faint figures crawling out of the ground, some of them lunging towards and away from each other aggressively and others listlessly wandering the area, paying no notice to the tall weeds and iron spikes that pass through their insubstantial bodies. The sky overhead is dark with only a sliver of a crescent moon shining down on them, but the stars are shining brightly and the sky is clear of clouds. It would be a pretty night, if not for the ghosts.

"Are you paying attention to me?!" Lilynette howls then reels back and punches him in the arm, hard, and Starrk looks down at her with a raised eyebrow.

She's…well. She's in once piece, mostly. Her head's…not as gory as it could be, given how she died, and her eyes are bright and alert, glowing in the dark. In life, she'd been an orphaned eleven-year-old girl who was struck and killed by a speeding carriage late one night. With no one to pay her burial fees, she'd been placed in the cursed graveyard along with the rest of the misfits.

Starrk's been in the graveyard much longer than Lilynette; he was actually one of the first people interred, though he doesn't look it. He'd gotten on the wrong side of a bar fight and taken a shot to save his life…only to find that the man he killed in self-defense was well-connected in the community. Starrk had been shot by a bystander before he could even defend himself and few mourned his passing. His chest is still a mess where the bullet exited his body, but it's faded and blue just like every other part of him, so that diminishes the horror.

Lilynette doesn't even look at it, just glares at him irritably.

"C'mon, Starrk! It doesn't take that long to wake up. Especially tonight!"

"Halloween, you said?" He grumbles but nods at her to lead and she takes off through the weeds like a jackrabbit. He follows at a slightly more sedate pace as she yells back.

"Yeah! And there are people here!"

"…What?" In two steps and a phasing of energy, Starrk is at her side. "What do you mean, 'people'?"

"There!"

She points down towards what was once the gate to the cemetery and Starrk's eyes widen in surprise. There are indeed three flesh and blood people there, all men and all wearing dark robes. On the ground in front of them, there's a circle drawn in something that smells foul and a board covered in printed letters. There's something about them, about the whole setup, that feels…familiar.

Starrk was just an immaterial spirit, resting in peace, when those kids were killed on the cemetery grounds, but the innocent blood spilled over his grave had called him back. He'd heard the last of them fall, felt the dark magic take hold of the cemetery, and seen what was left when the moon was still high in the sky, before the living humans arrived. He didn't know exactly what happened, but he knew down to his bones what it felt like.

These three humans remind him of that night. When the first man sets a third device, a little arrow-shaped planchet with a window in the center, on top of the board, Starrk's very being vibrates in warning.

Before he can herd Lilynette back the way they came, the man in the middle steps up to the board, the hem of his robe just touching the edge of the circle, and calls out, voice ringing as clear as a bell through the grounds.

"Hello. My name is Sosuke Aizen. Are there any restless spirits here?"

Driven by a compulsion he does not understand, Starrk is forced to step forward rather than away.


Eh. Not so happy with this one, either. Maybe because my inspiration just wasn't there.

Anyhow...

two days left!

Thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed!