A Grave Mistake

This story will take you on a few turns before it lets you go. Beware those that enter here.

It seemed as if the heavens understood what was to happen that day.

  The earliest light of the morning was forced to peer through thick clouds, doing little to light the dank world below. The clouds smothered the sky with their bodies before wailing to the world and soaking the ground with their tears. People, soaked by the driving rain, scuttled into their houses like crabs leaving the streets as desolate rain slicked passages. The gloom seemed to assimilate everything it came in contact with, leaving everything worth looking at a mere shadow of what is was before.

I watched the world pass by me, as streaks of rain smeared along the car window. The buildings that were usually cheerful looked dark and empty, lacking the light and lustre that made them so appealing. I turned away from the window, letting my eyes mimic the raindrops that cascaded down the glass.

  I felt the car pull to a stop and I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with stale air before I opened the car door and reached for my umbrella. As I opened it all I could hear was the thrum of the membrane as it was beaten by the rain, filling my head with ambient noise. I closed the car door with a snap and turned to see a horde of black umbrella’s obscuring the faces of the people that I loved. We all stepped across the wet grass as it latched onto out shoes before we came to a stop in front of a large rectangular hole in the ground.

  Standing next to it was a small plump priest, taking care to make sure he remained under the umbrella that was being held for him. He bowed his head and everyone mimicked the motion, trying to ignore the rain as it beat at our umbrellas. He started to mumble a prayer that I was unfamiliar with and I looked down at the grass, watching as the blades greedily snatched up the droplets of water. The priests voice started to lull into a gentle thrum with the rain, and the only sensation that I could feel was the heavy sadness that was latched onto my chest. It had been there as long as I could remember, but the loss that I felt made it grow exponentially and I felt as if I were about to be crushed.

 

Then my phone rang.

 

I looked down at my pocket, first with horror as the loud annoying ring tone cut through the air like a knife. I grabbed the offending object and silenced the clamour, but when I looked up nobody seemed to have paid me any attention.

  The phone rang again, more insistently this time and I answered it speaking harshly.

  “What could you possibly want right at this moment? Who are you and how dare you call me right now?”

  The voice on the other end of the line was one that I faintly recognized, and it sent chills down my spine as he spoke.

  “I think I have every right to speak with you right now,” The voice said coolly. “Turn around so that we can have a proper conversation.”

  Instinctively, I turned on my heel and looked out through the driving rain, before my heart seized in my chest. I felt the phone slip from between my fingers and it fell to the ground without making a sound. The arm that was holding my umbrella went limp and fell off to the side, exposing me to the rain like a nerve. The rain lashed at my eyes, but I blinked it away feverishly, unable to believe that what I was seeing was true.

 

It was impossible.

 

Standing a few feet in front of me was my husband.

  The first emotion to rage through me was confusion, before it was swiftly replaced by a passionate joy. I hesitated for a moment, not able to move before I took a few broad steps and leapt into his arms. My hands clasped his face, feeling solid flesh beneath them and proving that he was not an apparition. A joyous laugh escaped my lips and I held him close, never wanting to be separated from him again. The world melted away behind me and my tears of sorrow were replaced with those of joy as I embraced him.

  I pulled back, looking deep into his eyes and hiccoughing. “How is this possible?” I asked letting my voice trail off into nothing. “You are.. You..”

  “Died?” He smiled returning her loving look. “Yes I did, but that doesn’t matter any more.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, unable to comprehend what he was saying.

  “The funeral that you came to today isn’t mine,” He said letting the realization kick in. “This funeral is yours.”

  I stopped dead, feeling the smile that dominated my face slowly slip from my cheeks. I stepped back, as if he had slapped me square in the face and I was reeling from the blow. My head spun and my chest brimmed with nausea as the world started to spin around me.

  “This can’t be happening,” I said, turning back to him and grabbing his shoulders. “You are lying to me!”

  “Would I ever lie to you my love?” He asked, and his eyes told me that what he said was true. Every word of it.

  I was dead.

  My mind heaved in turmoil for a few moments before one clear thought managed to bubble up to the surface. “Wait…” I said slowly, letting the pieces fall together in my mind, “If I am dead, then we can be together forever.”

  He looked at me sadly and clasped my hands, kissing the tips of my fingers. “I am sorry my love, but we can never be together again.” A single tear snaked down his cheek as he said this.

  I felt a small bead of horror start to form in my chest. My lips parted to ask the question I never wanted to hear the answer to, but I couldn’t bar the words from spilling out of my mouth.

  “Why not?” I whispered.

  “We can never be together, because you took your own life to be with me again,” He said, his voice breaking more with every word. What he said slammed into me like a freight train, making my legs wobble underneath me. He continued speaking, knowing how much his words were hurting me but unable to stop.

  “Because you took your own life, you have forsaken any chance you had of being with me. You have been doomed to an eternity of punishment and losing me again is the first part of it.” As he spoke the edges of his body started to mist, as if he were a shard of ice melting under a spotlight. My legs gave out underneath me and he knelt slowly next to me, grabbing my face and pulling me into a passionate kiss. Then he hung his head, as tears snaked down his cheeks before he stood.

  “Goodbye my love,” He choked, “I only wish that you could have waited.”

  Then a light blossomed from the centre of his chest and his body evaporated into thousands of beads of light that scattered into the air. A wail of pure broken emotion rose from my chest, and I clawed at the ground as tears poured from my eyes to join the raindrops on the ground. I felt as if a dagger of ice had been stabbed into my chest and I was becoming painfully numb from the inside out. The wail rose and fell in my chest, breaking every fibre of my being before trickling to a halt. I slumped to the ground, drained of any feeling other than despair as the rain pounded down on my body.

  I didn’t notice that the people under the umbrellas has started to move. As I lay face down in the grass, my body heaving with my sorrow, they all slowly turned and moved towards me, gathering in a circle around me. The only thing that alerted me to their presence was the sharp snap as one of them flicked their head off to the side. I looked up, so see the top parts of their faces obscured by their umbrellas, leaving their mouth exposed for me to see.

  As I looked up, their frowns started to turn up into smiles, before all of their faces were twisted with fiendish devilish grins. I watched as their teeth started to decay and rot, and their gums became putrid and yellow, supporting the dentures with spindly fibres. The umbrellas lifted, their black membranes wrenching into new forms before they latched onto their back as wings. Their arms elongated until their knuckles were dragging across the ground, their fingers stretched and hooked with yellow and cracked fingernails. Their eyes spun in their heads as they started to jerk about, as if they were all having seizures standing upright, and their mouths clacked loudly. They all twitched and jerked, as if their limbs were being pulled taught by strings before they all stopped as suddenly as they had started. Their heads lolled on their necks and their eyes, now deep rotted holes in their skulls, focused on me.

  That was the moment I chose to start screaming.

  Before I had the chance to move they all leapt forwards and latched onto my skin with their long fingers. Their heads darted towards me and their teeth caught my flesh before ripping it savagely. I screamed and thrashed about but they held me fast, feasting on me. Blood poured out of multiple wounds and one of them buried its hand into my abdomen before pulling out a handful of organs with a sickening wrench. The one disappeared in a flurry of snapping jaws as they fought over my innards like dogs.

  Then, they all froze as a rippling shudder started in the ground. Their fingers slacked and they let me fall to the grass as another thunderous roar erupted from the earth. I realized with a start that the sound was coming from the coffin that we had been gathered around and another rumble shook the ground as it started to vibrate. There was a loud wrench and the splintering of wood as a hand shot up out of the lid and clawed at the casket.

  The things that had attacked me all disappeared, leaving me alone with what was next to come. The casket rattled, as whatever was in it tried to escape and the exposed hand raked at it leaving long thick gouges in the wood. Then there was a deafening roar and a burst of light as the casket exploded outwards, hurtling me backwards and pelting me with flecks of dirt and wood.

  I raised one bloodied hand over my face in a pathetic attempt to ward off what was coming before a strong set of fingers closed about my throat. I choked and hacked as I was lifted off of the ground before I realized the true horror of what had grabbed a hold of me.

  All of her skin had been peeled away, leaving slicked muscle and patches of bloodied bone. Her eyes had been gouged out, leaving small shrunken orbs dotted with flecks of rendered flesh. She sneered at me, showing that her teeth had been torn out and replaced with large shards of glass, shoved painfully into her pulped gums. What was left of her hair was matted and torn and her body was covered with large wounds that leaked blood and bile. Even though she had been rendered unrecognisable, I could still see the features that made me realize who this person was.

  I was looking at myself.

  With an inhuman bellow she lifted me high off the ground before throwing me backwards. A scream escaped my lips as the world tumbled around me and it hit the ground hard. My vision vaulted and I rolled for a moment before the ground started to crumble underneath me. I clawed at the dirt as it fell away, leaving a large gaping hole and nothing beneath me but air. I screamed as I started to plummet, tumbling head over heels into a thick darkness that lashed at me from every angle.

  The air started to burn and the world turned deep red as I fell through the fire and it seared away my flesh. There is no way to describe the unimaginable pain I felt, as the fire burned me to the core. My skin popped and sizzled, filling my nose with its stench and my lungs with the fumes.

  The ground hit me hard and rolled me over once before I could even register the pain of the impact. I looked at my hands, and my fingers were twisted and black, my flesh melted to the bone. My body bucked and thrashed, unable to cope with the agony what I was suffering before something latched onto my face and held me still.

  I looked up to see a pair of claws, red hot with heat glowing before my eyes. My mind flicked for a moment back to the version of me that I had seen, and terror seized my pain wracked heart. The claws were meant for my eyes, and I was about to lose my sight for the rest of eternity.

  With a jolt I sat up in my bed, my sheets twisting about my feet as I moved. Air hitched in my chest, making it burn and hard to breathe as my mind reeled with what I has just seen. A wail escaped my lips and my hands flew to my face to ward off the imagined claws that were about to pluck out my eyes.

  I started to shiver, as terror ran in waves throughout my body and my eyes scoured the room searching for any threat. When I saw nothing, I forced myself to breathe, sucking in the air no matter how much it pained my chest. Slowly all of my muscles started to unwind and the tension in my limbs started to ebb. I chuckled nervously as I looked around the room one last time, chiding myself for being so foolish.

  “It was only a dream,” I whispered, shivering as I realized how real it all had seemed. I could still feel the faint tugging of teeth on my flesh and I shuddered, not wanting to sleep any more. I turned my head to look out the window and I was greeted my lines of rain as they ran down the glass. Reaching over to my side table, I flicked on the lamp filling my room with the warm glow and willing away the darkness.

  I swung my feet over the side of the bed and slid them into my slippers before I grabbed my housecoat. I wanted nothing less than to go back to sleep, so perhaps reading a book would help me calm my nerves a little. Before I stood I grabbed my cell phone to check what time it was, and when the screen illuminated my heart skipped a beat in my chest. As my veins started to fill with ice, I stared at the screen, unable to tear my eyes away.

 

I had one missed call.

Author's Note

I personally really like this story, but I am always willing to listen to constructive criticism.

Reviews

[Margo Seuss]

Wow! The images you paint in my head are so vivid!! You have a powerful and poetic way of portraying details. The fact that you used first person made this piece even more powerful, I think. It enabled the reader to get inside this poor woman's haunted mind. The mysterious tone of this story was what kept me engaged, as well as the shock factor involved with the gore. I also enjoyed the twist at the end with the phone call. Finally, I would like to commend you on the cleverness associtated with the word play in your title, 'Grave Mistake.' I shall continue to read your work!

[Darkimmortal]

Thank you so much for your kind words!! I really appreciate the feedback. :)