Sisyphean Attempts at Self-Improvement

The Witching Time

The cemetery gates closed at dusk, but Harold's work had just begun.

He pushed his wheelbarrow along the gravel path, tools rattling with each step. Twenty-three years he'd been the groundskeeper at St. Catherine's, and he knew every headstone, every tree, every shadow that stretched across the graves when the moon was full.

Tonight felt different.

Harold checked his watch. 11:47 PM. He had to finish filling the Morrison plot before midnight. The family would arrive at dawn for the service, and everything needed to be perfect.

The hole yawned before him, six feet of carefully measured depth. Harold lowered himself down with practiced ease, smoothing the corners with his spade. The earth smelled wrong tonight. Not the usual mixture of soil and grass, but something sweeter. Something sickly.

He heard the church bells chime midnight as he climbed out.

That's when he noticed the other holes.

Three of them, scattered across Section B: fresh, deep, empty.

Harold had dug no other graves this week.

He approached the nearest one, shining his flashlight down into the darkness. The walls were rough, clawed rather than cut. Soil was scattered everywhere, as if something had torn its way up from below rather than being dug from above.

A sound made him turn.

Mrs. Morrison stood by her husband's grave, still wearing the hospital gown she'd been buried in three days ago.

"Evening, Harold."

Her voice came out wrong, like air being forced through damaged pipes. Soil fell from her mouth as she spoke.

"Mrs. Morrison?" Harold's flashlight trembled.

"He was so lonely down there. Kept calling for me." She tilted her head, vertebrae cracking. "So I came back. We all did."

More figures emerged from the shadows. Harold recognized them all. Recent burials from the past month. The Hendricks boy who'd drowned. Mr. Chen from the nursing home. Little Amy Summers, still clutching the teddy bear they'd buried with her.

"You can't be here," Harold whispered.

"But it's the witching hour," Amy said in a sing-song voice. "Don't you know what happens when churchyards yawn?"

The ground beneath Harold's feet shifted. Softened. His work boots began to sink.

"We're not the only ones who came up," Mrs. Morrison explained as Harold sank to his knees. "Hell itself breathes out at midnight. It comes up through the graves, through the cracks, through any hole that leads down deep enough."

Harold tried to pull free, but the earth held him like quicksand. No, not quicksand. Hands. Dozens of hands reaching up from below, grasping, pulling.

"You've been such a good caretaker," Mrs. Morrison said as Harold sank to his waist. "Always making sure we're comfortable. Now it's our turn to take care of you."

The last thing Harold saw before the earth swallowed him was Amy Summers waving her teddy bear goodbye.

The next morning, the Morrison family found everything perfectly prepared. The grave was filled, the flowers arranged, the grass neatly trimmed.

They never noticed the fresh mound in Section B, or how the earth there seemed to breathe.


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506 words

PROMPT: “Tis now the very witching time of night, when churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out contagion to this world.” — from Hamlet

Written for ""13" - 2025 Edition"