A heavy mist clung to the graveyard, curling around the leaning tombstones like spectral fingers. Your lantern barely pierced the gloom, its golden glow swallowed by the endless sea of darkness ahead.
You had taken a dare to come here.
The others had laughed, swearing up and down that this graveyard was haunted—not just haunted, but cursed. They spoke in hushed voices of a zombie monster man, a thing that wandered the grounds, lurking in the dark, watching.
Your breath misted in the frigid air as you pressed on. The trees stretched above you like skeletal arms, their bare branches rattling in the wind. Then you saw them.
Figures, pale and weightless, shifting in the fog. Some flickered like candle flames in a storm, others drifted aimlessly, eyes sunken, empty, locked onto me.
You spun on your heel, lantern swinging wildly in your grip, and bolted. The ground was uneven, littered with roots and shattered tombstones, but terror propelled me forward—
Until something caught your foot.
You hit the ground hard. The lantern tumbled from your grasp, rolling across the damp earth, its light casting wild shadows. You gasped, struggling to push myself up, but the ghosts were already closing in.
A hollow giggle echoed through the graveyard.
Then came another sound. Not a growl, not a snarl, but a low, rattling sigh.
Something moved behind me, slow and deliberate. A shadow, tall and misshapen, loomed over you. The ghosts froze for a moment before shrieking as something swiped at them—long, bony fingers cutting through their forms like a stern hand waving away a group of misbehaving children.
They giggled. Laughed. Like mischievous pranksters caught red-handed.
Then, just as quickly as they came, they scattered, vanishing into the mist.
Standing before you was him.
The zombie monster man.
His breath was a rattling wheeze as he slowly extended a hand toward me. His fingers twitched, the movements stiff. And yet, within his milky white eyes were... kindness?
"Y’alright there, kid?"