The Dead of Night

The Night is quiet and nothing stirs, yet alone you're not in a way you can't give words. Nothing to be seen yet something you feel, if existence is being then surely this can't be real?

The cemetery was dark and misty, it was a cold and bitter night; midnight to be exact. This obscure and neglected place sat unobserved and unloved, its entombed occupants lying lonely beneath the freezing mounds of earth, whilst all the while in the surrounding land beyond, the living slumbered contentedly and ignorantly in their warm beds.

Not a sound was to be heard, save for the wind singing a haunting chorus across the night sky as leaves were scattered across the air in an almost balletic fashion.
This place was empty of life these days, a dwelling only for the dead, with it’s occupants having slipped this mortal coil so long ago now that all who had remembered and mourned their absence from the warm light of day had long since joined them here in the cold dark of perpetual night. Those who had tended the grounds, the graves and the gardens having long since joined and become a part of them.

Yet somehow, empty though it appeared, lonely though it stood and absent of living breathing organisms as it undoubtedly was, this place still felt occupied. It was of course in a sense very much occupied, with myriad ever diminishing remains of lives that had been and were no more. Yet somehow in this somber atmosphere, a presence dwelled. This unperceived malignancy sat both everywhere and nowhere at once in this shrine of the deceased. Had a living soul been there to feel it, their blood would have chilled and their flesh crept icily as they detected the abstract awareness floating ominously on the air around them.

There were no footsteps to be heard here, no sounds of life at all. No laughter, no breath drew either in or out, no human beings touched hands or lips, nor did they engage in conversation or exchange a gaze. Love not even a memory, interaction an impossibility. This was a joyless place of emptiness, a vacuum in which nothing perceivably existed and yet something indefinable sat.


It was at that moment that for the first time in what might as well have been a vast eternity, something happened here that had anyone been around to witness it would have certainly been considered unexpected; things changed. The thickness of the heavy fog was penetrated by the headlights of a car, the vehicle entering this domain of the forgotten, appearing incongruous, anachronistic even; it did not belong in this place. Nor did its occupant.

The door of the vehicle opened slowly, perhaps hesitantly as out stepped a man. The male was tall, dark, he wore a long black overcoat and leather gloves. He had ventured to this gothic underworld for a grizzly purpose and had done so to profit from the anonymity and disinterest that this place could afford to offer him.

This man was not really a man at all, he was a monster. Not a monster as in a fairytale or children’s story, this individual was an all too real monster of the waking world; a killer. A hunter who preyed upon innocent lives and took them only for his own gratification. A monster masquerading as a man and doing it very effectively. Walking innocently and unthreateningly in the commonplace mundanity of daylight and then later, stalking and hunting his prey under the concealing curtian of darkness in the safety of the night.

The hunter felt good and accomplished, his blood still pumped keenly through his body his heart still raced, for tonight had been a good one for sport. As he stood here in the misty cold, a wolfish grin played upon his lips as he recalled the final moments of his latest lamb to the slaughter. The incumbent recipient of his cold and dispassionate kiss.

Little had she known, this latest goal attained, that the hunter had been observing her life for many weeks. The hunter had been studying her patterns of behavior, learning of her habits and tendencies, her aspects of being and how they could be exploited to further his recreational hobbies...

The prey had never known what hit her earlier this evening as he had waited for her near the local bus stop, as she left her late night piano class. The poor little creature so naive and alone in the dark of night, so ignorant and unaware of the beasts and dangers that lurked in its shadow.

He had savaged her in an instant, snuffing her out like a pitiful candle caught in the fury of a hurricane, as he snatched the light from her being in a visceral and violent moment of desperation and evil.

As the hunter opened the boot of his car and began to unload its contents, he felt no guilt he reflected. After all, he reasoned to himself, would a lion feel guilt when capturing his prey if it had ventured into his domain? Of course not, a hunter hunts, prey is to the slaughter and it is fair game should it allow itself to be. He saw this latest victim as nothing more profound that this. She had been foolish while he had remained sly, she had been remiss whilst he had remained keen. She had not considered the perils of the night and so the night had taken her. He was the night and her loss had been to his gain, her ignorance had been his bliss.

The hunter heaved the body bag containing the carcass of his latest project from the car and threw it the unforgiving frozen ground with a casual contempt. He had been past this graveyard many times on his daily travels and noted how neglected it was, how many of the gravestones had begun to collapse into the earth as the grounds around them grew ever more out of control. It was perfect. Just the resting place that this foolish piece of meat deserved and a perfect place in which to dispose of what was left of her.

A shovel was the next item produced from the hunters bag of tricks. He would now open up the earth and deposit this unfortunate creature within it, leaving her to be enveloped in obscurity, secreted here under mounds of forgotten earth, it would be a perfect end to a perfect day.

A sound, the hunter felt sure he’d just heard a sound. An odd one, not one he’d been expecting, it was a shuffling noise, something moving fitfully but he wasn’t sure where it had originated from. He cast his gaze across the land about him but it was shrouded in a cloak of mist populated only with the various shapes of headstones and monuments to the departed. The hunter dismissed what he had heard as his imagination being influenced by his atmospheric surroundings, it was time to dig.

It didn’t matter much to the hunter where he left the bag and its contents, this place was after all uncared for and populated by nothing but those who were living no longer. He crossed to the middle of the yard dragging the bag behind him across the ground.

The spot had been chosen, the digging commenced.

Time passed and the hunter grew weary from his arduous task, it was however now complete, the hole in the ground which was to be the final resting place of this female had been formed and designated. Those who loved her could not come to mourn her, they wouldn’t know where to go to do so, only he would know. He liked this, this was good.

Hurling the bag into the earth, he began hastily piling mounds of dirt back upon it, he was keen to be gone from this place. An ever increasing sense of dread had gradually crept into being and was forming an ever tightening grip upon him. It was a feeling to which the hunter was not accustomed and one he did not like. More used was he to causing such a feeling in others, rather than experiencing it within his own self.

He was ready to go now, the task was at an end.

The hunter began the walk back to his vehicle, the mist had grown thicker now, denser, it almost seemed somehow beyond natural; in fact, he could barely make out his surroundings at this point, all was merely ghostly outlines. Still, he had left the headlights of he car on, he needed only to follow the light to leave this place safely and so he did just that.

However, as he waked cautiously through the murky vista towards the increasingly veiled light, this hunter felt like a hunter no longer. For the first time in his existence, this man, this monster felt like prey. The hunter had become the hunted and he felt cold...

In the shafts of light, shambolic shadows lumbered absurdly towards him. He might have called the silhouettes that of people at first, expect that their ragged description and unearthly movements made that conclusion one that was not possible to reach.

There was only one of them at first, then there were two, before two rapidly became three, three progressed frantically to four and so the multiplication continued; like flies emerging from a piece of rotting meat.

The number of the wraiths now ubiquitous in the hunters midst grew and grew and intensified and swelled, until the hunter could look in no direction without seeing the grim outlines of these terrifying figures. He was surrounded and most assuredly and undeniably alone no longer.

The hunter felt fear and terror, as the figures grew closer he was able to see them clearer at the very same moment wishing that he had not. Yet try as he might, he could not bring himself to close his eyes from the macabre spectacle now bearing down upon him.

Their skin or what remained of it, hung from the bones like tatters of an old sheet. What had once been their clothing now bore no such resemblance to any garment of any kind, rotted and torn, the rags were cast in abstract fashion across the ghoulish physiques such as they were or had once been. This was a legion of the dead, it was as clear to him on this dark and foreboding night as would be brightest sunlight.

As they tore into his flesh and began to consume parts of him, he felt nothing; it was he supposed probably the shock. Instead it was surprisingly, absurdly even that his mind began to wander. His thoughts returned to earlier observations of predators and prey of fair game and ignorance and bliss. He thought of the young woman whose life he had ended earlier this evening, thought of her fear and pleading terror now matched by his own. Thought of how after the deed had been callously done, he had placed what remained of her in this shrine of the lost and now he would soon be joining her here.

He thought as the last vestiges of life and self awareness began to disappear from what was left, that he himself had ventured carelessly and without consideration into the night. He had thought himself the very embodiment of that same night and yet all the while the night had hunted him.

Now the night was eating him.

So consumed had he been with violating the sanctity of life that he had never considered respect for the sanctity of the dead. It was a mistake he was bound never to repeat, as indeed was every other mistake, choice or decision he had ever made. It was to be his very last and now the hunter would hunt and haunt the night no more.

…..

The cemetery was hazy and misty, it was a cold and bitter morn. Beams of sunlight began to shine through the clouds, slowly illuminating the forgotten graves, their shadows cast upon the ground. This obscure and neglected place sat unobserved and unloved, its entombed occupants lying lonely beneath the freezing mounds of earth, whilst all the while in the surrounding land beyond, the living yawned into life as they began to stir in their warm beds. Ready to wake and venture beyond their resting places into the sweet unyielding promise of a brand new day.

A day in the light of the land of the living.

Author's Note

Thank you very much for reading, all reviews gratefully welcomed and appreciated.

Reviews

[Relic]

I think this is an interesting horror story and an enjoyable read. I would pay a little more attention to the show don't tell method in parts.

For instance, you open with telling:
The cemetery was dark and misty, it was a cold and bitter night; midnight to be exact. This obscure and neglected place sat unobserved and unloved, its entombed occupants lying lonely beneath the freezing mounds of earth, whilst all the while in the surrounding land beyond, the living slumbered contentedly and ignorantly in their warm beds.


Try showing a little more. For instance:
Like some morbid, unearthly presence, that disperses itself before forming into being, mist diffused slowly but thickly across the face of each weathered-worn tombstone that has occupied this obscure and neglected burial ground for a century.

It's long-dead occupants lie submerged in worm-ridden graves embedded with frost. Whilst outside the perimeters, people sleep comfortably in beds, enfolded in warm, soft quilts, unaware the midnight hour displays in blood-red on the digital clocks.

There were one or two typos but overall, not a bad story at all for that kind of genre. Keep writing.

[Brett Pritchard]

Thanks for the review I'm always grateful to receive constructive feedback. However speaking as a writer and one already in print, I have my own idioim and voice already and so had I written any of the stuff you've written it wouldn't be in my voice it would be in yours, and to be honest I find the descriptions you're using a little bit too well worn and cliche. I'm a believer in suggestions and implications and the impact they can have as well depicting scenes with descriptive language. I don't like to be so obvious. However, that's not to say I'm right or wrong, your approach is just as sound and I'm sure you have great success with it also. As for typos; well they happen don't they? Thanks for reviewing!

[Relic]

Oh no, my friend. For instance does NOT mean copy what I just wrote. It was only an example.

As far as being cliche, with all due respect, is a cemetery filled with mist and ghouls that come back to kill not cliche to begin with?

[Brett Pritchard]

Tuche to the cliche! 😆👍 Yeah I mean I haven't written anything in a while so this was meant as an exercise to warm up the engine a little. I started with a familiar setting and then saw where it took me know what I mean? Check out some of my other work and you'll see some genuinely original and fairly off the wall at times abstract content. I promise. Anyway you show a good nature and once again thank for taking the time to review my work friend. Go in peace. ✌️

[Relic]

Thanks, Brett. When time permits, I'll take a look. 😊