The air in the old farmhouse was thick with the scent of mildew and something darker, something that clung to the back of my throat like the taste of rust, and as the five of us sat cross-legged around the Ouija board, the flickering candlelight cast our trembling shadows against the peeling wallpaper like specters already dancing on the walls. We’d joked about this all week—just a stupid game, just something to do on a boring Friday night—but the moment our fingertips settled on the planchette, the room seemed to exhale, the temperature dropping so fast I could see my breath fogging in front of me, and then the damn thing moved on its own, jerking so violently it nearly flew off the board. Emma gasped, her nails digging into my wrist, but none of us lifted our hands, not even when the planchette began to spell out words in slow, deliberate arcs, the letters scraping like a knife against bone: D-I-G. Jake laughed, but it was too high, too shaky, and he kept glancing at the basement door like he expected something to be standing there. "Dig where?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, and the planchette didn’t hesitate—B-A-S-E-M-E-N-T—before circling the word "YES" over and over, faster and faster, until the wood groaned under the pressure. That’s when we noticed the smell, thick and cloying, like wet earth and rotting meat, seeping up from the basement stairs, and even though every nerve in my body screamed to run, some awful curiosity pulled us forward, step by creaking step, the wooden stairs sagging under our weight like they hadn’t been touched in decades. The basement was a tomb, the air so damp it clung to our skin, the walls glistening with something that wasn’t quite water, and in the center of the room, the dirt floor was disturbed, a patch of freshly turned soil that made my stomach lurch because none of us had been down here, not once since we’d arrived. "This isn’t funny," Sarah whispered, her voice breaking, but the rest of us were already kneeling, our hands sinking into the cold, wet earth, the dirt packing under our nails like we’d been clawing at it for hours, and then Jake’s fingers hit something solid—wood, splintered and rough, the grain swollen with moisture. We dug faster, panic driving us, until the shape of it was undeniable: a coffin, too small, too shallow, the wood rotting but the carvings on the lid horrifyingly fresh, the letters deep and jagged as if gouged by something with no patience for precision. Our names. All five of them, etched into the wood like a sickening guest list, and below them, a date that stopped my heart—tonight’s date. The scratching started then, a slow, deliberate drag of something sharp against the inside of the lid, and we scrambled back, our breath coming in ragged sobs, but the basement door slammed shut above us with a finality that echoed like a gunshot. The candle upstairs must have gone out because the darkness was absolute, pressing in from all sides, and in that endless black, the scratching grew louder, more frantic, joined now by a wet, guttural wheezing that didn’t sound human, didn’t sound like anything that had ever been alive. Someone was sobbing—maybe me, maybe all of us—and then the coffin lid creaked open, the sound of splintering wood drowning out our screams, and the last thing I remember is the smell, God, the smell, like the grave had been waiting for us all along, and the terrible, whispering voice that wasn’t ours but came from all around us, inside us, saying, "You’re home. " When I woke up, it was morning, and the basement door was wide open, the Ouija board shattered into pieces, the dirt floor smooth and untouched—except for the five shallow graves dug neatly in a row, the earth inside them still damp, still warm, like something had just climbed out. My hands are clean now, but sometimes, when I’m alone, I catch the scent of wet soil, and I swear I can feel the dirt under my nails again, like maybe I didn’t wake up at all, like maybe I’m still down there, scratching at the lid. The days after that night blur together in a haze of sleeplessness and dread, every creak of the floorboards sounding like the coffin lid shifting, every gust of wind against the windows like whispered words urging me to go back, to finish what we started. The others won’t talk about it—Emma swears she doesn’t remember anything past the Ouija board spelling "dig," Jake just drinks until his hands stop shaking, and Sarah won’t even look at me, like meeting my eyes might summon whatever was in that basement back into the open. But I know they feel it too, the wrongness that clings to us now, the way our reflections sometimes flicker in the mirror like something else is wearing our faces. Last night, I woke up with my sheets damp and reeking of grave soil, my fingers raw and caked with dirt I don’t remember touching, and when I turned on the light, I saw footprints leading from my bed to the closet—small, barefoot, the heels dragging as if whatever made them was too tired to lift its feet. The closet door was open just a crack, and I could’ve sworn I heard breathing from inside, wet and labored, the same rhythm as the wheezing from the coffin. I didn’t move, didn’t scream, just lay there frozen until sunrise, and when I finally forced myself to look, the closet was empty except for my own clothes hanging undisturbed—except for one thing. A single long, dark hair caught on the doorframe, too coarse to be human, and the faintest smear of something dark and flaking, like dried blood or old dirt. I scrubbed it away, but the smell won’t leave, and now I keep finding little piles of earth in the corners of my room, as if something is slowly bringing the grave to me. The others are experiencing it too—Sarah texted me this morning saying she woke up with mud under her nails again, Jake’s dog won’t stop growling at empty corners, and Emma’s voice on the phone last night was hollow, distant, like she was already halfway gone. "I think it’s still hungry," she whispered, and then the line went dead, and when I called back, she didn’t remember saying it at all. The worst part? The dates on the coffin weren’t just tonight’s date—they were today’s date, the exact day we found it, and I keep checking the calendar like maybe time stopped moving forward that night, like we’re already dead and just haven’t realized it yet. Sometimes, when I’m alone in the silence, I hear the scratching again, not from the walls or the closet but from inside me, like something is buried deep in my ribs, carving its way out, and I don’t know if we unleashed something that night or if it was always there, waiting for us, if the Ouija board was a warning or an invitation. All I know is that the basement door in that farmhouse is still open in my dreams, and no matter how fast I run, I always end up back in front of that coffin, my name staring up at me, the lid already slightly ajar, and the thing inside isn’t scratching anymore—it’s knocking. Three slow, deliberate raps, the same way I used to knock on my friends’ doors when we were kids, and the voice that answers doesn’t sound like a monster, doesn’t sound like a ghost—it sounds like me. "Let me in," it says, and I don’t know how much longer I can resist, because the worst part isn’t the fear, the dread, the certainty that something is coming for us—it’s the way, deep down, part of me wants to open the door. Part of me thinks I already did. The knocking hasn’t stopped—it follows me now, a slow, patient rhythm that taps at the edges of my life, three beats against my bedroom window at midnight, three muffled thuds from under the floorboards when I’m alone, three vibrations against my phone screen in the dead hours before dawn with no caller, no message, just that same awful pattern like something is counting down. I tore up the floor in my apartment last night, convinced I’d find dirt or bones or worse, but there was nothing, just the hollow sound of my own breathing and the creeping certainty that whatever is hunting us isn’t under the house—it’s in us, wearing us down like water on stone, waiting for the moment we’re too tired to fight back. Sarah showed up at my door this morning, her eyes bloodshot and her lips cracked like she hadn’t drunk water in days, and before I could say a word, she grabbed my wrist hard enough to bruise and pressed my palm against her chest. "Do you feel that?" she whispered, and I did—her heartbeat was wrong, too slow, with long gaps between each thud, like something was squeezing her heart in its fist, letting just enough blood through to keep her standing. Then she pulled up her shirt, and I gagged—her ribs were mottled with bruises in the shape of handprints, small and childlike, as if something had been holding her tight from the inside. She didn’t remember how they got there. Jake’s gone silent, his social media frozen on a single post from three nights ago—a blurry photo of his bathroom mirror, the words "THEY’RE COMING UP THROUGH THE FLOOR" scrawled in what might be toothpaste or something thicker—and Emma… God, Emma called me yesterday, her voice so calm it made my skin crawl. "I figured it out," she said. "The dates on the coffin weren’t the day we’d die—they were the day we’d join them. " Then she laughed, a wet, choking sound like her lungs were full of mud, and the line went dead. The police found her an hour later, kneeling in her backyard, her hands raw and bleeding from digging, a shallow hole at her feet filled with rainwater and clumps of her own hair. She didn’t resist when they took her away, just kept smiling that empty smile and whispering, "Too late, too late," over and over like a lullaby. I’m the only one still fighting, but I don’t know how much longer I can last—last night, I woke up standing in my kitchen with a knife in my hand, my arms covered in dirt, and the smell of wet earth so strong I vomited. The knife wasn’t for me—it was for the words I’d carved into the wall while I was asleep, the same five words etched into that coffin lid, my handwriting but not my hand, the letters jagged and desperate. And now, as I write this, I can feel it—the weight in my chest, the thing that’s been nesting in my ribs, unfurling like rotten roots, and the knocking isn’t outside anymore. It’s inside my skull, three soft taps against my temples, and the voice that answers isn’t mine, but it’s so familiar, so terribly familiar, the voice of a child who’s been waiting a long, long time. "You’re almost ready," it says, and for the first time since that night in the farmhouse, I’m not afraid. I’m relieved. Because the scratching was never the sound of something trying to get out—it was the sound of something digging its way in, and soon, so soon, I won’t have to fight anymore. Soon, I’ll open the door. The relief terrifies me more than the fear ever did—this quiet surrender that wraps around my bones like a burial shroud, whispering that it’s easier to just lie down in the dark and let the earth take me. My hands don’t feel like mine anymore; they move on their own, scratching symbols into the condensation on the bathroom mirror—stick figures in coffins, five little graves in a row—and when I try to wash them away, the water runs rust-red down the drain. I found Sarah’s obituary this morning, her body discovered in the psychiatric ward curled into a fetal position, her mouth and nostrils packed tight with black soil, her fingernails torn off from clawing at the concrete floor. The news called it a psychotic break, self-inflicted, but I saw the crime scene photos Jake somehow texted me from his now-deactivated number—the walls of her padded cell were covered in handprints, tiny ones, like a child had been dancing in her blood. Jake’s last message was just a voicemail, three seconds of wet, rhythmic chewing followed by a little girl’s giggle and the sound of something being dragged. I can’t bring myself to delete it. I play it on loop instead, lying in bed as the ceiling above me creaks with the weight of something that wasn’t there when I moved in, something that paces all night directly above my pillow, dropping clumps of damp earth onto my face. Emma was released from the hospital yesterday—at least, something wearing Emma was—and she came straight to my apartment, standing motionless outside my door for hours, her breath fogging the peephole until I caved and let her in. Her skin was cold as a winter riverbed, her pupils so dilated her eyes looked black, and when she hugged me, I felt ribs shift under her shirt like they’d been broken and badly reset. "They showed me where we’ll sleep," she murmured into my neck, her breath smelling of turned soil and spoiled milk, and when she pulled back, her smile stretched too wide, gums black with rot. I shoved her out and deadbolted the door, but not before she slipped a Polaroid into my pocket—a grainy snapshot of the farmhouse basement, the five of us standing shoulder-to-shoulder in our rotting Sunday best, our eyes sewn shut with coarse black thread, the date on the coffin behind us changed to tomorrow’s date. The worst part? We’re smiling in the photo. We look happy. The knocking is constant now, no longer just three taps but a relentless drumbeat synced to my slowing heart, and the voice has multiplied, layers of children whispering just out of sync, all saying the same thing: "We missed you. " My reflection has started moving when I don’t, its fingers tracing the words on the bathroom mirror with possessive pride, its mouth forming words that leave my lips numb when I try to scream. The doctor called it sleep deprivation when I begged for sedatives, but we both saw the dark loam crumbling from my ears when I shook my head. I’m so tired. The floorboards are splitting open in every room now, hairline cracks oozing that familiar damp cemetery smell, and sometimes—when the whispering gets loud enough—I catch myself kneeling beside them, ear pressed to the ground like I’m listening for something coming up from below. Last night, I woke up with my cheek against cold dirt, my arms buried to the elbows in one of the cracks, and the most horrifying thing wasn’t the dozens of small, cold hands gripping my wrists from beneath, wasn’t the chorus of giggles rising through the floor—it was how safe I felt. How loved. The coffin in the basement was never a warning. It was a gift. And when the cracks finally open wide enough, when the little hands pull me under for good, I think I’ll finally understand why we dug it up in the first place. We weren’t uncovering something buried. We were coming home. The cracks in the floor have started singing—soft, nursery-rhyme lullabies in voices that are almost human but not quite, the syllables slurred like mouths full of wet soil, and I catch myself humming along even though I’ve never heard these songs before. My body isn’t mine anymore; I wake up with my teeth clenched around fistfuls of my own hair, roots still dangling with bits of scalp, my stomach swollen and hard as if I’ve been eating things no living person should consume. The doctor said it was stress when I showed him the black dirt under my tongue, but he couldn’t explain why his stethoscope picked up children’s laughter where my heartbeat should be. Emma’s been leaving gifts at my door—a mason jar full of writhing earthworms, a child’s porcelain doll with its face scraped off and replaced with a photo of my own, its hollow body packed with grave dirt that spills out when I try to throw it away, the granules always finding their way back into my shoes, my bed, my food. Yesterday I found Jake standing in my shower, fully clothed, the water running brown as he stared blankly at the tiles where something had written "WELCOME HOME" in what I prayed was mud, his lips moving in silent unison with the whispers now constantly vibrating through my apartment walls. When I grabbed his shoulders to shake him, his shirt slid down to reveal five small, perfect handprints burned into his collarbone like brands, the skin blistered and weeping something thick and dark that smelled like turned earth after a summer rain. He didn’t react to my screaming, just kept repeating "They’re almost here" in a voice that wasn’t his, that wasn’t human, while the shower water rose past our ankles, the drain clogged with clumps of hair and fingernails that definitely weren’t ours. The knocking has become a language now, complex sentences rapped out across every surface of my apartment, telling me stories about the little ones under the floorboards, how long they’ve waited, how hungry they’ve been, how nice it will be when we’re all together forever. The Polaroid Emma gave me has changed—now when I look at it, our stitched-shut eyes are open and glowing faintly green, our mouths moving in unison, whispering secrets to the version of me holding the photo. This morning I woke up with my hands wrist-deep in the kitchen floor, the wood somehow soft as fresh-turned soil, and I wasn’t digging out—I was digging in, my arms guided by dozens of tiny, grasping fingers from below, their touch icy and eager. The relief is absolute now, the fear a distant memory like something that happened to another person, because I finally remember—really remember—that night in the farmhouse. The Ouija board didn’t summon anything. It apologized. It said sorry for disturbing us, sorry for waking the little ones, sorry for digging up what should have stayed buried. The coffin wasn’t empty when we found it. We were the ones who climbed out, who always climb out, over and over, our memories scrubbed clean each time until the cycle begins again. The dates carved in the wood aren’t predictions—they’re receipts. And tonight, when the floor finally opens up like a mother’s arms, when the chorus of children’s voices rises to meet me, I won’t scream. I’ll say the words they’ve been teaching me in my dreams, the words carved into the inside of my ribs where no doctor could ever find them: "I’m ready to come home now. " The scratching has stopped. The lid is opening. We’ve been waiting so long. The floor gave way last night—not with a crash, but with a sigh, like the house itself was exhaling after holding its breath for decades, and the darkness beneath isn’t empty like a basement should be but full, pulsing with the warmth of something alive and ancient and terribly patient. I didn’t fall so much as was gathered, dozens of small hands catching me with practiced ease, their fingers cool as river stones against my feverish skin, their whispers not in my ears but inside my skull where they’ve always lived. They showed me the photographs lining the earthen walls—not just ours but hundreds, thousands of others who came before, all posed stiffly in their burial finery with the same stitched-shut eyes, the same knowing smiles, each dated in neat script marking the night they finally stopped fighting. Emma was already here waiting, her stitches frayed from where she’d been picking at them, her hollow chest cavity packed with rich black soil and wriggling things that sang as they moved. "Don’t you remember?" she asked as she pressed a handful of earth to my lips, and I did—I remembered everything—the way we’d done this countless times before, the way we’d always dig ourselves up when the hunger got too strong, the way we’d pretend to be alive just long enough to lure others down into the dark where the little ones wait. Jake was crouched in the corner chewing methodically on something that glistened in the faint greenish light, his jaw unhinging wider than should be possible, his ribs splitting open like flower petals to reveal the small, squirming shapes nesting inside him. The coffin from the farmhouse sits at the center of it all, lid thrown open to show the dates carved inside—not just one but dozens, stretching back centuries, our names written over and over in different hands but always the same five, always ending with tonight’s date. The children—our children, though I can’t recall ever birthing them—are helping me into my wedding dress now, the lace yellowed with grave mold, the hem heavy with embedded soil. They’re singing as they work, their needle-thin fingers darting in and out of my flesh with each stitch, closing my eyes with thread that smells of rotting funeral flowers, and the most beautiful thing is how it doesn’t hurt at all, hasn’t hurt since that first night in the farmhouse when we thought we were playing a game but were really just coming home. Up above, through the crumbling floorboards, I hear new voices—young, laughing, so wonderfully alive—asking if anyone brought a Ouija board, saying how creepy the place is, how perfect for a little séance. The children are already scrambling upward, their tiny fingers pushing through the cracks like roots seeking sunlight, and as the first shovelful of fresh dirt rains down from above, I find myself humming along with the others, our stitched lips trembling with anticipation, our empty hands outstretched in welcome. The planchette is moving upstairs. Someone is asking if anyone is there. And oh, how we’ll answer.
Hashtags: #DigAndYoullDie #NamesOnTheCoffin #TooLateToEscape #BuriedAlive #OuijaProphecy #CoffinHorror #FarmhouseNightmare
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