The man known only as Gravedigger was a shadow in the town’s memory. No one knew his real name. His face, hollow and weathered, was a roadmap of scars and wrinkles, a testament to years spent surviving the streets. He had once been a homeless drifter, a ghost in alleyways and underpasses, but now he had found a new kind of darkness.
The graveyard.
He appeared one cold autumn evening, looking for work. The cemetery caretaker, old Mr. Harkins, saw something unsettling in the man’s eyes—something broken—but he needed help. Digging graves wasn’t exactly a popular job, and the man was strong, silent, and willing. So, with a nod, Harkins handed him a shovel. From that day on, the Gravedigger became part of the graveyard.
Day after day, night after night, he worked in silence, digging holes and filling them, always with the same cold, mechanical precision. The townsfolk whispered about him, about where he’d come from. Some said he was dangerous, that he’d been in and out of prison before arriving here. Others claimed he’d been touched by madness during those years on the streets, seeing things in the dark that weren’t really there.
But no one ever asked him directly. No one dared.
One fog-choked night, Harkins found himself needing the Gravedigger’s services more than ever. There had been an accident—three deaths in a single day. The funeral was scheduled for the following morning, and the graves needed to be dug before sunrise.
Harkins approached the Gravedigger, who was leaning against his shovel near an old, crumbling mausoleum. His eyes, like two black pits, stared out into the misty expanse of the cemetery.
“Three tonight,” Harkins muttered, his voice strained. “They need to be ready by dawn.”
The Gravedigger nodded once and turned to his work without a word.
Harkins left, but unease crawled through him. There was something wrong about this night—the air was too still, the fog too thick. He hurried home, his mind heavy with a creeping sense of dread.
The Gravedigger worked through the night, his shovel cutting through the earth with a rhythmic scrape. As he dug the third grave, his shovel hit something hard. He knelt and brushed away the dirt, revealing a box—a small, ancient-looking wooden box. His heart thudded in his chest, though his face remained expressionless.
With surprising care, he pried it open.
Inside, something moved.
A whisper slithered from the box, crawling into his ears, cold and malevolent. The fog around him thickened, swirling unnaturally, pressing in on him. His hands trembled, for the first time in years. From the box, pale fingers, long and thin, began to stretch outward.
The Gravedigger’s eyes widened, but he didn’t scream. He never screamed. His breathing quickened as the fingers grew into arms, and then a face—gaunt, hollow, eyes black as the void—emerged from the box. It grinned, its teeth jagged and too many.
The whispers turned to screams, not from the creature, but from the ground itself, as the graves around him shuddered, dirt shifting, the dead stirring beneath.
The Gravedigger, for the first time in his life, dropped his shovel.
And the box, ancient and cursed, laughed.