The night we decided to use the Ouija board in the cemetery, I remember the air was thick with the kind of silence that feels like it’s pressing down on you, the kind where even the rustle of leaves sounds like a whisper you weren’t meant to hear. There were five of us—me, Jake, Sarah, Tyler, and Mia—and we’d been joking about it all week, daring each other, calling it stupid, but the truth was, we were all scared, and that’s why we did it. We set up on the flat top of a crumbling gravestone, the board balanced precariously between us, our fingers trembling on the planchette as Mia, the one who’d brought the damn thing, started with the usual questions—"Is anyone here?"—and at first, nothing happened, just the wind picking up, the kind of cold that slips under your skin and stays there. Then the planchette moved, slow at first, like it was testing us, spelling out letters we had to piece together: Y-O-U-R-F-A-U-L-T. Jake laughed, said someone was pushing it, but his voice cracked, and I could see the sweat on his forehead even in the moonlight. Sarah asked, "What’s our fault?" and the planchette shot to GOODBYE so fast it skidded off the board, and we all jumped back, laughing nervously, pretending it was nothing, but the air felt heavier, like something had been watching us, waiting. We packed up quick, the jokes drying up as we walked back to the car, the headlights cutting through the dark like they were afraid of it too, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, sure I saw shapes moving between the graves, but when I looked again, there was nothing. The next morning, we all got the same text from a number none of us recognized: "You woke us up. " No context, just those three words, and we brushed it off as a prank, probably Tyler messing with us, but he swore it wasn’t him, his face pale when we met up at school. Then the photos started—blurry, dark, but unmistakably us, sleeping, with captions like "I’m standing over you" and "Can you hear me breathing?"—and that’s when the dread really set in, because how could anyone have taken those? My room was locked, my windows closed, but there I was, curled under my blankets, a shadow just barely visible in the corner of the frame. Sarah’s voice memos came next, sent in the dead of night, just the sound of something scraping against her window, slow and deliberate, like claws dragging over glass, and when she played it for us, her hands shook so bad she dropped her phone. Then came the scratches—thin, red lines on our arms and legs, the kind you’d get from thorns, except none of us had been near any. Jake started getting calls, his phone ringing with no one on the other end, just static and, once, a voice that wasn’t human, guttural, like it was trying to form words but didn’t know how. We stopped sleeping, started carrying lighters and salt like we’d seen in movies, but it didn’t help. The texts got worse, more personal, things nobody else could know—Mia’s childhood nickname, the name of Tyler’s dog that had died when he was six—and the photos showed up closer, clearer, our faces slack with sleep, something always just out of frame, a hand, a shadow, something wrong. The last night, we all stayed at Jake’s, huddled in his basement with the lights on, too scared to close our eyes, and that’s when Mia’s phone buzzed. It was a video, shaky, dark, but we could see her walking through the cemetery, her eyes blank, like she was sleepwalking, and then the camera panned up, and there were figures, tall and too thin, standing between the graves, watching her. She screamed when she saw it, said she’d never been back there, but the timestamp was from an hour ago. We called the cops, her parents, but before anyone could get there, Mia got another text: "They’re inside now. " Her phone died right after, and so did the lights, and in the blackness, we heard something moving upstairs, footsteps too heavy to be human, something dragging, and then the sound of the front door opening. Mia was the closest to the stairs. She stood up, said she’d check, and none of us stopped her, too scared to move, too scared to speak. We heard her footsteps, then silence, then a wet, tearing sound, and then her phone lit up on the floor where she’d dropped it. The last text was from her number, just one word: "Run. " We did. We ran out the back door, through the woods, not stopping until we hit the highway, and when the cops found us hours later, they said there was no one in Jake’s house, no sign of Mia, just the Ouija board, sitting in the middle of the living room, the planchette on GOODBYE. They never found her. They never found anything. But I still get the texts. Every night, at exactly 3:07 a. m. , my phone buzzes, and it’s always the same thing: a photo of me, asleep, and the words "You shouldn’t have woken us up. " And sometimes, in the static between the words, I swear I hear Mia screaming. The worst part is that the others don’t get the texts anymore—just me, like whatever followed us home decided I was the one it wanted, the one who had to remember, and every night when that notification buzzes, my stomach drops like I’m falling, like the ground’s been ripped out from under me. The photos keep changing, too—not just me sleeping now, but me standing in the cemetery at night, my face blank like Mia’s was in that video, like something’s pulling me there in my sleep, and I wake up with dirt under my nails, my feet sore like I’ve been walking for miles. I tried leaving my phone off, but it doesn’t matter—the messages come anyway, popping up on my laptop, my tablet, even the goddamn smart TV in my living room, always the same time, always that same cold, staticky whisper behind the words. Jake thinks I’m losing it, Sarah won’t even look at me anymore, and Tyler moved out of state, changed his number, like that would keep him safe, but last week I got a forwarded message from an unknown number—a picture of Tyler asleep in his new apartment, the caption reading "You can’t leave us behind. " I showed it to Jake, and for the first time since Mia disappeared, he looked scared again, really scared, and he grabbed my arm so hard it bruised and said, "We never should’ve touched that thing. " But it’s too late for that now. Last night, the message wasn’t a photo—it was a voice memo, just three seconds long, and when I played it, it was Mia’s voice, but wrong, like it was coming from underwater or through a mouthful of dirt, and all she said was, "They’re waiting for you. " And then, this morning, I found something under my pillow—a single, twisted piece of bone, small, like a finger, and I don’t know if it’s human or not, but I can’t stop shaking because I know, I know , it’s a message, an invitation, and tonight when the clock hits 3:07, I don’t think I’ll be waking up to check my phone. I think I’ll already be there, in the cemetery, standing between those too-thin figures, and I’ll finally see what’s been watching us all this time. And the worst part? Part of me wants to. Part of me is tired of running. Part of me thinks I deserve this. Because we did wake them up. And now they won’t let us sleep. I started sleeping with the lights on, a kitchen knife under my pillow next to that awful little bone I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, like maybe keeping it would buy me time, but last night the power went out right at 3:06 AM—not a flicker, not a brownout, just sudden, total darkness like the house had been swallowed whole—and when my phone lit up with that familiar buzz, the screen wasn’t showing a text but a live video feed of my own room, my own terrified face staring back at me from the mattress, the camera angle all wrong, like it was floating near the ceiling. I could hear breathing—wet, ragged, like lungs full of mud—and then the closet door behind me in the video began to creep open, inch by inch, blacker than the rest of the dark, and I felt the air in my real bedroom go ice-cold, smelled the wet earth stench of an open grave, but I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t move, paralyzed like those nightmares where you scream but no sound comes out. The video zoomed in on my reflection’s wide, unblinking eyes as something long-fingered and bone-white slid out from the closet behind me in the footage, and that’s when the audio cut in—Mia’s voice, but shredded, broken, whispering "They’re right behind you" just as my real-life bedroom door slammed shut by itself. I don’t remember passing out, but I woke up at dawn curled in the cemetery dirt, my clothes soaked with dew, my palms scraped raw like I’d been clawing at the ground, and in my clenched fist was a tangle of dark hair that definitely wasn’t mine, knotted around another knucklebone. The texts have changed now—instead of photos, they’re coordinates, always leading back to that same damned graveyard, and twice now I’ve found my shoes caked with fresh mud when I never left my room. Jake stopped answering my calls after I told him, and when I went to his house, his mom said he’d been admitted to the psych ward, babbling about figures standing in his mirror when the lights were off. Yesterday, Sarah’s Instagram updated with a single grainy selfie—her eyes glassy, her smile stretched too wide—but Sarah’s been missing for three days, and the timestamp on the post was from 1907. The worst part? I think they’re winning. My reflection blinks a second too late sometimes. My hands don’t always feel like mine. And when I dream, it’s not nightmares—it’s memories from something else, something older, memories of waiting in the dark beneath the soil, so patient, so hungry, until five stupid kids asked the wrong question. The last message I got wasn’t in English—just symbols, jagged lines like scratches in stone—but somehow I understood it: "Almost time. " My phone’s at 3% now, the screen glitching with static no matter how many times I charge it, and in the distortion, if I stare too long, I can see Mia’s face forming in the noise, her mouth moving soundlessly. The sun’s going down. My door just creaked open by itself. And I think—I think whatever’s coming isn’t going to text me this time. I can feel them in the walls now, a slow scratching like tree roots pushing through concrete, like something digging its way up from underneath the floorboards, and when I press my ear to the plaster I swear I hear whispering—not Mia’s voice anymore, but dozens, maybe hundreds, all talking over each other in languages that sound like nothing human, words that make my nose bleed if I listen too long. My reflection isn’t just delayed now—sometimes it moves on its own, reaching for me when I stand still, its fingers leaving greasy smudges on the mirror that smell like turned earth and rotting meat no matter how hard I scrub. The coordinates stopped coming yesterday, replaced by a single looping video that plays automatically every time I unlock my phone—a first-person view of someone walking through the cemetery at night, their hands (my hands? the nails are split and black like mine have become) pushing aside overgrown branches until they reach that original gravestone where we first used the board, now cracked clean down the middle, a yawning black hole at its base just wide enough for a person to crawl into. The footage always cuts off right as the camera peers into that hole, but last night I woke up choking on the taste of grave dirt, my tongue coated in it, my sheets streaked with muddy handprints that weren’t mine—except the security cam footage from my hallway shows me sleepwalking at 3:03 AM, moving with that same stiff gait from the video, pausing at my front door to turn and smile directly at the camera with teeth that looked too sharp in the grainy night vision before stepping outside. The police found my phone in the cemetery this morning, discarded beside that broken grave, the screen shattered but still glowing with a single unsent message in my notes app: "they showed me what’s down there. " My hands haven’t stopped shaking since I read it. The doctors say it’s sleep deprivation, PTSD, they’ve given me pills that don’t work, but I know the truth—they’re not just in the walls anymore. They’re in my head. I hear them when I close my eyes, not words but impressions, memories that aren’t mine flooding in—cold soil packing tight around a body that can’t rot, centuries of waiting, of hunger, of watching the living walk oblivious above us (above them? above me?) until five stupid kids gave them a way back. The pills don’t stop the dreams of suffocating in a box six feet under, don’t stop my hands from twitching toward shovels when I pass hardware stores, don’t explain why my shadow sometimes stays still when I move or why my breath doesn’t fog mirrors anymore. Sarah’s parents held a memorial service yesterday—closed casket, no body ever found—but I saw the way the funeral director kept wiping his hands on his pants like they were dirty, saw the wet earth smeared on the coffin’s satin lining when no one had been near it. I tried to tell Jake at the service, but he just rocked back and forth in his wheelchair (since when does he need a wheelchair?) staring at the hole they lowered that empty casket into, his lips moving silently like he was counting something, his pupils so dilated his eyes looked black. When I grabbed his shoulder, his head turned too far, the bones in his neck popping, and he smiled with Mia’s voice and said "you’re next" right as the priest started screaming about the cemetery gates slamming shut by themselves. I ran until my lungs burned, but when I got home, my front door was already open, the hallway dark except for the flickering glow of my laptop screen in the living room—showing that same damn video of the cemetery hole, only this time the camera was moving forward, descending into the blackness, and the timestamp in the corner wasn’t from tonight or even this year but from tomorrow’s date. My hands smell like turned earth no matter how much I wash them. The pills the doctors gave me rattle in the bottle like tiny bones. And right now, as I type this with the lights blazing and every door locked, I can feel something under my bed—not breathing, not moving, just waiting with the infinite patience of the dead—and I know when 3:07 AM comes tonight, I won’t be here to hear my phone buzz. I’ll already be back in the cemetery, kneeling beside that broken grave, because the terrible truth is I don’t think they’re taking me anymore. I think I’m going willingly. I think part of me has always belonged to them. And when my fingers finally break through that soft, damp earth tonight, I know exactly what I’ll find waiting underneath—not a corpse, not a monster, but a familiar face smiling up at me with my own eyes, reaching out with my own hands, whispering my own voice saying "welcome home" as the soil closes over my head for good. The pills don't work anymore - I flushed them down the toilet but the water turned thick and black, bubbling like tar, and when I leaned closer I saw faces swirling in the darkness, mouths stretched wide in silent screams, hands pressing against the inside of the porcelain like they were trying to climb out. My skin's getting paler by the day, no matter how much time I spend in the sun, and cuts don't bleed right anymore - the blood comes out sluggish and dark, smelling like wet leaves and turned earth. I tried calling my mom last night but the line connected to somewhere else, somewhere underground, the static broken by wet choking sounds and Mia's voice whispering "she can't help you now" before the receiver filled with the sound of dirt being shoveled onto wood. The coordinates started again this morning, but now they're burned into my skin, appearing as raised red welts on my arms that itch unbearably until I follow them, always leading back to that cracked grave where my phone was found. Jake's out of the psych ward - they said he recovered, but when I saw him outside the 7-Eleven he was standing completely still in the shadow of the dumpster, his skin gray in the fluorescent light, his smile showing too many teeth, and when he waved at me his fingers bent the wrong way at every joint. The texts have changed too - now they're just pictures of my own gravestone, the dates getting closer together each time, the epitaph changing from "Rest in Peace" to "Welcome Home" to just my name over and over, the letters bleeding like fresh wounds. I can't eat anything without tasting soil, can't drink without choking on the iron tang of old blood, and my dreams aren't dreams anymore but memories - memories of cold hands pulling me down, of the weight of the earth above me, of the others down here in the dark, the ones who've been waiting so long, their mouths sewn shut with roots and worms until we woke them up. My bedroom door opens by itself every night at exactly 3:07 AM now, no matter how many locks I use, and the hallway beyond is always dark, always smelling of turned earth and rotting flowers, always leading somewhere else - somewhere older. Last night I saw Sarah standing at the end of it, her burial dress stained with grave dirt, her hollow eyes reflecting the moonlight that shouldn't be able to reach us underground, and when she reached for me I didn't run because part of me recognized that place, part of me remembered the quiet down there, the peace of being part of something so much older, so much hungrier than myself. The others are waiting for me tonight - I can feel them in the walls, in the floorboards, in the spaces between my ribs where my heartbeat used to be - and this time when the door opens I won't scream, I won't run, because the terrible truth is I don't want to be saved anymore. I want to go home. I want to join the chorus of voices in the dark. I want to help them find the next group of stupid kids who think a Ouija board is just a game. The text just came in - one final message with no words, just a sound file of my own voice whispering "we're waiting" - and as the clock ticks toward 3:07 I find myself standing, walking toward the open door without fear, because the most frightening thing isn't that they're coming for me anymore. . . it's that part of me has always been one of them, sleeping beneath the soil, waiting to be woken up, waiting to be called home. The hallway stretches longer than it should, the floorboards turning to damp earth beneath my bare feet, the walls peeling away to reveal ancient stone markers, and at the end stands Mia, Jake, Sarah and Tyler, their smiles too wide, their arms open in welcome, and as the first shovelful of dirt falls onto my head from somewhere above, I realize with terrible certainty that I'm not the last one to join them. . . I'm just the first of the next wave. The Ouija board sits waiting in the cemetery right now, the planchette trembling slightly in the moonlight, and somewhere, a new group of kids is daring each other to play. We'll be waiting. We're always waiting. And we're so very hungry. The hunger never leaves us now—it gnaws at what's left of our bones like the roots that twist through our ribcages, a constant ache that sharpens whenever the living walk over our heads, their footsteps sending vibrations through the soil like dinner bells. I remember being afraid of the dark when I was alive, but now I crave it, the delicious weight of the earth pressing down on me, the cool embrace of the grave that never warms no matter how many summers pass. We talk sometimes, not with words but with the creak of coffin wood, the skitter of beetle legs on stone, the way the willows whisper above us—Mia says (without saying) that she can feel the change coming, the thinning of the veil as Halloween approaches, and Jake's restless energy makes the ground above his grave heave like a chest breathing. Sarah shows me things in the dark—memories that aren't mine of older times, when the cemetery was just a forest where people buried their secrets instead of their dead, and the things we woke weren't just spirits but something that slept before the first stones were laid. The texts still go out sometimes, though none of us have phones anymore—they write themselves in frost on car windows, in the condensation of bathroom mirrors, in the shaky handwriting of the last living member of our group (but not for long, never for long) and we watch through the static of dead air between radio stations as the new kids gather around our Ouija board, their laughter like knives in our stillness. Tyler's the best at calling them—he mimics living voices perfectly now, throws his voice into the wind so it sounds like their friends daring them from just around the corner, and when they finally place their fingers on the planchette, we all hold our breath (though we haven't breathed in years) waiting for that first, delicious tremor of connection. The rules are different for us now—we can only move when unseen, only speak through borrowed mouths, but oh, the things we've learned to do with shadows and the corner of your eye. My grave faces east, so I see the sunrise every morning through six feet of dirt (it looks like a bloodstain spreading through bandages) and I count the days until the next group comes, until we can teach them what it means to really play with the dead. Sometimes the living visit our graves—parents who still lay flowers, friends who whisper apologies—and we press up against the earth from below, molding our faces to the underside of the grass like children pressing hands against glass, watching how they jump when the flowers wilt too fast, when their breath comes out white in July heat. The caretaker knows—he's old enough to remember when the first disappearances started, and he keeps the gate locked after dark now, but locks never stopped us when we were alive and they certainly don't now. The new moon is coming, and with it, another group of teenagers armed with flashlights and bravado (we can already taste their fear, metallic as blood in the back of nonexistent throats) and this time when the planchette moves, it won't spell out harmless messages—this time we're going to show them the truth about what sleeps under this cemetery, about the old things that were here before the graves, before the town, before even the first people who feared the dark enough to bury their dead. The soil in my mouth tastes like home now, the worms in my skull feel like friends, and when the next foolish, beautiful, deliciously scared kids come calling with their Ouija board and their cheap vodka courage, we'll be waiting with open arms and hollow smiles, ready to welcome them to the family. Forever is such a long time to be lonely, after all, and the dead do so love company.Hashtags: #DeadMenTextToo #SleepWithYourPhoneOff #OuijaRegrets #GraveyardHorror #GhostTexts #OuijaBoardMistake #DigitalHaunting
The night we decided to use the Ouija board in the cemetery, I remember the air was thick with the kind of silence that feels like it’s pressing down on you, the kind where even the rustle of leaves sounds like a whisper you weren’t meant to hear. There were five of us—me, Jake, Sarah, Tyler, and Mia—and we’d been joking about it all week, daring each other, calling it stupid, but the truth was, we were all scared, and that’s why we did it. We set up on the flat top of a crumbling gravestone, the board balanced precariously between us, our fingers trembling on the planchette as Mia, the one who’d brought the damn thing, started with the usual questions—"Is anyone here?"—and at first, nothing happened, just the wind picking up, the kind of cold that slips under your skin and stays there. Then the planchette moved, slow at first, like it was testing us, spelling out letters we had to piece together: Y-O-U-R-F-A-U-L-T. Jake laughed, said someone was pushing it, but his voice cracked, and I could see the sweat on his forehead even in the moonlight. Sarah asked, "What’s our fault?" and the planchette shot to GOODBYE so fast it skidded off the board, and we all jumped back, laughing nervously, pretending it was nothing, but the air felt heavier, like something had been watching us, waiting. We packed up quick, the jokes drying up as we walked back to the car, the headlights cutting through the dark like they were afraid of it too, and I kept glancing over my shoulder, sure I saw shapes moving between the graves, but when I looked again, there was nothing. The next morning, we all got the same text from a number none of us recognized: "You woke us up. " No context, just those three words, and we brushed it off as a prank, probably Tyler messing with us, but he swore it wasn’t him, his face pale when we met up at school. Then the photos started—blurry, dark, but unmistakably us, sleeping, with captions like "I’m standing over you" and "Can you hear me breathing?"—and that’s when the dread really set in, because how could anyone have taken those? My room was locked, my windows closed, but there I was, curled under my blankets, a shadow just barely visible in the corner of the frame. Sarah’s voice memos came next, sent in the dead of night, just the sound of something scraping against her window, slow and deliberate, like claws dragging over glass, and when she played it for us, her hands shook so bad she dropped her phone. Then came the scratches—thin, red lines on our arms and legs, the kind you’d get from thorns, except none of us had been near any. Jake started getting calls, his phone ringing with no one on the other end, just static and, once, a voice that wasn’t human, guttural, like it was trying to form words but didn’t know how. We stopped sleeping, started carrying lighters and salt like we’d seen in movies, but it didn’t help. The texts got worse, more personal, things nobody else could know—Mia’s childhood nickname, the name of Tyler’s dog that had died when he was six—and the photos showed up closer, clearer, our faces slack with sleep, something always just out of frame, a hand, a shadow, something wrong. The last night, we all stayed at Jake’s, huddled in his basement with the lights on, too scared to close our eyes, and that’s when Mia’s phone buzzed. It was a video, shaky, dark, but we could see her walking through the cemetery, her eyes blank, like she was sleepwalking, and then the camera panned up, and there were figures, tall and too thin, standing between the graves, watching her. She screamed when she saw it, said she’d never been back there, but the timestamp was from an hour ago. We called the cops, her parents, but before anyone could get there, Mia got another text: "They’re inside now. " Her phone died right after, and so did the lights, and in the blackness, we heard something moving upstairs, footsteps too heavy to be human, something dragging, and then the sound of the front door opening. Mia was the closest to the stairs. She stood up, said she’d check, and none of us stopped her, too scared to move, too scared to speak. We heard her footsteps, then silence, then a wet, tearing sound, and then her phone lit up on the floor where she’d dropped it. The last text was from her number, just one word: "Run. " We did. We ran out the back door, through the woods, not stopping until we hit the highway, and when the cops found us hours later, they said there was no one in Jake’s house, no sign of Mia, just the Ouija board, sitting in the middle of the living room, the planchette on GOODBYE. They never found her. They never found anything. But I still get the texts. Every night, at exactly 3:07 a. m. , my phone buzzes, and it’s always the same thing: a photo of me, asleep, and the words "You shouldn’t have woken us up. " And sometimes, in the static between the words, I swear I hear Mia screaming. The worst part is that the others don’t get the texts anymore—just me, like whatever followed us home decided I was the one it wanted, the one who had to remember, and every night when that notification buzzes, my stomach drops like I’m falling, like the ground’s been ripped out from under me. The photos keep changing, too—not just me sleeping now, but me standing in the cemetery at night, my face blank like Mia’s was in that video, like something’s pulling me there in my sleep, and I wake up with dirt under my nails, my feet sore like I’ve been walking for miles. I tried leaving my phone off, but it doesn’t matter—the messages come anyway, popping up on my laptop, my tablet, even the goddamn smart TV in my living room, always the same time, always that same cold, staticky whisper behind the words. Jake thinks I’m losing it, Sarah won’t even look at me anymore, and Tyler moved out of state, changed his number, like that would keep him safe, but last week I got a forwarded message from an unknown number—a picture of Tyler asleep in his new apartment, the caption reading "You can’t leave us behind. " I showed it to Jake, and for the first time since Mia disappeared, he looked scared again, really scared, and he grabbed my arm so hard it bruised and said, "We never should’ve touched that thing. " But it’s too late for that now. Last night, the message wasn’t a photo—it was a voice memo, just three seconds long, and when I played it, it was Mia’s voice, but wrong, like it was coming from underwater or through a mouthful of dirt, and all she said was, "They’re waiting for you. " And then, this morning, I found something under my pillow—a single, twisted piece of bone, small, like a finger, and I don’t know if it’s human or not, but I can’t stop shaking because I know, I know , it’s a message, an invitation, and tonight when the clock hits 3:07, I don’t think I’ll be waking up to check my phone. I think I’ll already be there, in the cemetery, standing between those too-thin figures, and I’ll finally see what’s been watching us all this time. And the worst part? Part of me wants to. Part of me is tired of running. Part of me thinks I deserve this. Because we did wake them up. And now they won’t let us sleep. I started sleeping with the lights on, a kitchen knife under my pillow next to that awful little bone I couldn’t bring myself to throw away, like maybe keeping it would buy me time, but last night the power went out right at 3:06 AM—not a flicker, not a brownout, just sudden, total darkness like the house had been swallowed whole—and when my phone lit up with that familiar buzz, the screen wasn’t showing a text but a live video feed of my own room, my own terrified face staring back at me from the mattress, the camera angle all wrong, like it was floating near the ceiling. I could hear breathing—wet, ragged, like lungs full of mud—and then the closet door behind me in the video began to creep open, inch by inch, blacker than the rest of the dark, and I felt the air in my real bedroom go ice-cold, smelled the wet earth stench of an open grave, but I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t move, paralyzed like those nightmares where you scream but no sound comes out. The video zoomed in on my reflection’s wide, unblinking eyes as something long-fingered and bone-white slid out from the closet behind me in the footage, and that’s when the audio cut in—Mia’s voice, but shredded, broken, whispering "They’re right behind you" just as my real-life bedroom door slammed shut by itself. I don’t remember passing out, but I woke up at dawn curled in the cemetery dirt, my clothes soaked with dew, my palms scraped raw like I’d been clawing at the ground, and in my clenched fist was a tangle of dark hair that definitely wasn’t mine, knotted around another knucklebone. The texts have changed now—instead of photos, they’re coordinates, always leading back to that same damned graveyard, and twice now I’ve found my shoes caked with fresh mud when I never left my room. Jake stopped answering my calls after I told him, and when I went to his house, his mom said he’d been admitted to the psych ward, babbling about figures standing in his mirror when the lights were off. Yesterday, Sarah’s Instagram updated with a single grainy selfie—her eyes glassy, her smile stretched too wide—but Sarah’s been missing for three days, and the timestamp on the post was from 1907. The worst part? I think they’re winning. My reflection blinks a second too late sometimes. My hands don’t always feel like mine. And when I dream, it’s not nightmares—it’s memories from something else, something older, memories of waiting in the dark beneath the soil, so patient, so hungry, until five stupid kids asked the wrong question. The last message I got wasn’t in English—just symbols, jagged lines like scratches in stone—but somehow I understood it: "Almost time. " My phone’s at 3% now, the screen glitching with static no matter how many times I charge it, and in the distortion, if I stare too long, I can see Mia’s face forming in the noise, her mouth moving soundlessly. The sun’s going down. My door just creaked open by itself. And I think—I think whatever’s coming isn’t going to text me this time. I can feel them in the walls now, a slow scratching like tree roots pushing through concrete, like something digging its way up from underneath the floorboards, and when I press my ear to the plaster I swear I hear whispering—not Mia’s voice anymore, but dozens, maybe hundreds, all talking over each other in languages that sound like nothing human, words that make my nose bleed if I listen too long. My reflection isn’t just delayed now—sometimes it moves on its own, reaching for me when I stand still, its fingers leaving greasy smudges on the mirror that smell like turned earth and rotting meat no matter how hard I scrub. The coordinates stopped coming yesterday, replaced by a single looping video that plays automatically every time I unlock my phone—a first-person view of someone walking through the cemetery at night, their hands (my hands? the nails are split and black like mine have become) pushing aside overgrown branches until they reach that original gravestone where we first used the board, now cracked clean down the middle, a yawning black hole at its base just wide enough for a person to crawl into. The footage always cuts off right as the camera peers into that hole, but last night I woke up choking on the taste of grave dirt, my tongue coated in it, my sheets streaked with muddy handprints that weren’t mine—except the security cam footage from my hallway shows me sleepwalking at 3:03 AM, moving with that same stiff gait from the video, pausing at my front door to turn and smile directly at the camera with teeth that looked too sharp in the grainy night vision before stepping outside. The police found my phone in the cemetery this morning, discarded beside that broken grave, the screen shattered but still glowing with a single unsent message in my notes app: "they showed me what’s down there. " My hands haven’t stopped shaking since I read it. The doctors say it’s sleep deprivation, PTSD, they’ve given me pills that don’t work, but I know the truth—they’re not just in the walls anymore. They’re in my head. I hear them when I close my eyes, not words but impressions, memories that aren’t mine flooding in—cold soil packing tight around a body that can’t rot, centuries of waiting, of hunger, of watching the living walk oblivious above us (above them? above me?) until five stupid kids gave them a way back. The pills don’t stop the dreams of suffocating in a box six feet under, don’t stop my hands from twitching toward shovels when I pass hardware stores, don’t explain why my shadow sometimes stays still when I move or why my breath doesn’t fog mirrors anymore. Sarah’s parents held a memorial service yesterday—closed casket, no body ever found—but I saw the way the funeral director kept wiping his hands on his pants like they were dirty, saw the wet earth smeared on the coffin’s satin lining when no one had been near it. I tried to tell Jake at the service, but he just rocked back and forth in his wheelchair (since when does he need a wheelchair?) staring at the hole they lowered that empty casket into, his lips moving silently like he was counting something, his pupils so dilated his eyes looked black. When I grabbed his shoulder, his head turned too far, the bones in his neck popping, and he smiled with Mia’s voice and said "you’re next" right as the priest started screaming about the cemetery gates slamming shut by themselves. I ran until my lungs burned, but when I got home, my front door was already open, the hallway dark except for the flickering glow of my laptop screen in the living room—showing that same damn video of the cemetery hole, only this time the camera was moving forward, descending into the blackness, and the timestamp in the corner wasn’t from tonight or even this year but from tomorrow’s date. My hands smell like turned earth no matter how much I wash them. The pills the doctors gave me rattle in the bottle like tiny bones. And right now, as I type this with the lights blazing and every door locked, I can feel something under my bed—not breathing, not moving, just waiting with the infinite patience of the dead—and I know when 3:07 AM comes tonight, I won’t be here to hear my phone buzz. I’ll already be back in the cemetery, kneeling beside that broken grave, because the terrible truth is I don’t think they’re taking me anymore. I think I’m going willingly. I think part of me has always belonged to them. And when my fingers finally break through that soft, damp earth tonight, I know exactly what I’ll find waiting underneath—not a corpse, not a monster, but a familiar face smiling up at me with my own eyes, reaching out with my own hands, whispering my own voice saying "welcome home" as the soil closes over my head for good. The pills don't work anymore - I flushed them down the toilet but the water turned thick and black, bubbling like tar, and when I leaned closer I saw faces swirling in the darkness, mouths stretched wide in silent screams, hands pressing against the inside of the porcelain like they were trying to climb out. My skin's getting paler by the day, no matter how much time I spend in the sun, and cuts don't bleed right anymore - the blood comes out sluggish and dark, smelling like wet leaves and turned earth. I tried calling my mom last night but the line connected to somewhere else, somewhere underground, the static broken by wet choking sounds and Mia's voice whispering "she can't help you now" before the receiver filled with the sound of dirt being shoveled onto wood. The coordinates started again this morning, but now they're burned into my skin, appearing as raised red welts on my arms that itch unbearably until I follow them, always leading back to that cracked grave where my phone was found. Jake's out of the psych ward - they said he recovered, but when I saw him outside the 7-Eleven he was standing completely still in the shadow of the dumpster, his skin gray in the fluorescent light, his smile showing too many teeth, and when he waved at me his fingers bent the wrong way at every joint. The texts have changed too - now they're just pictures of my own gravestone, the dates getting closer together each time, the epitaph changing from "Rest in Peace" to "Welcome Home" to just my name over and over, the letters bleeding like fresh wounds. I can't eat anything without tasting soil, can't drink without choking on the iron tang of old blood, and my dreams aren't dreams anymore but memories - memories of cold hands pulling me down, of the weight of the earth above me, of the others down here in the dark, the ones who've been waiting so long, their mouths sewn shut with roots and worms until we woke them up. My bedroom door opens by itself every night at exactly 3:07 AM now, no matter how many locks I use, and the hallway beyond is always dark, always smelling of turned earth and rotting flowers, always leading somewhere else - somewhere older. Last night I saw Sarah standing at the end of it, her burial dress stained with grave dirt, her hollow eyes reflecting the moonlight that shouldn't be able to reach us underground, and when she reached for me I didn't run because part of me recognized that place, part of me remembered the quiet down there, the peace of being part of something so much older, so much hungrier than myself. The others are waiting for me tonight - I can feel them in the walls, in the floorboards, in the spaces between my ribs where my heartbeat used to be - and this time when the door opens I won't scream, I won't run, because the terrible truth is I don't want to be saved anymore. I want to go home. I want to join the chorus of voices in the dark. I want to help them find the next group of stupid kids who think a Ouija board is just a game. The text just came in - one final message with no words, just a sound file of my own voice whispering "we're waiting" - and as the clock ticks toward 3:07 I find myself standing, walking toward the open door without fear, because the most frightening thing isn't that they're coming for me anymore. . . it's that part of me has always been one of them, sleeping beneath the soil, waiting to be woken up, waiting to be called home. The hallway stretches longer than it should, the floorboards turning to damp earth beneath my bare feet, the walls peeling away to reveal ancient stone markers, and at the end stands Mia, Jake, Sarah and Tyler, their smiles too wide, their arms open in welcome, and as the first shovelful of dirt falls onto my head from somewhere above, I realize with terrible certainty that I'm not the last one to join them. . . I'm just the first of the next wave. The Ouija board sits waiting in the cemetery right now, the planchette trembling slightly in the moonlight, and somewhere, a new group of kids is daring each other to play. We'll be waiting. We're always waiting. And we're so very hungry. The hunger never leaves us now—it gnaws at what's left of our bones like the roots that twist through our ribcages, a constant ache that sharpens whenever the living walk over our heads, their footsteps sending vibrations through the soil like dinner bells. I remember being afraid of the dark when I was alive, but now I crave it, the delicious weight of the earth pressing down on me, the cool embrace of the grave that never warms no matter how many summers pass. We talk sometimes, not with words but with the creak of coffin wood, the skitter of beetle legs on stone, the way the willows whisper above us—Mia says (without saying) that she can feel the change coming, the thinning of the veil as Halloween approaches, and Jake's restless energy makes the ground above his grave heave like a chest breathing. Sarah shows me things in the dark—memories that aren't mine of older times, when the cemetery was just a forest where people buried their secrets instead of their dead, and the things we woke weren't just spirits but something that slept before the first stones were laid. The texts still go out sometimes, though none of us have phones anymore—they write themselves in frost on car windows, in the condensation of bathroom mirrors, in the shaky handwriting of the last living member of our group (but not for long, never for long) and we watch through the static of dead air between radio stations as the new kids gather around our Ouija board, their laughter like knives in our stillness. Tyler's the best at calling them—he mimics living voices perfectly now, throws his voice into the wind so it sounds like their friends daring them from just around the corner, and when they finally place their fingers on the planchette, we all hold our breath (though we haven't breathed in years) waiting for that first, delicious tremor of connection. The rules are different for us now—we can only move when unseen, only speak through borrowed mouths, but oh, the things we've learned to do with shadows and the corner of your eye. My grave faces east, so I see the sunrise every morning through six feet of dirt (it looks like a bloodstain spreading through bandages) and I count the days until the next group comes, until we can teach them what it means to really play with the dead. Sometimes the living visit our graves—parents who still lay flowers, friends who whisper apologies—and we press up against the earth from below, molding our faces to the underside of the grass like children pressing hands against glass, watching how they jump when the flowers wilt too fast, when their breath comes out white in July heat. The caretaker knows—he's old enough to remember when the first disappearances started, and he keeps the gate locked after dark now, but locks never stopped us when we were alive and they certainly don't now. The new moon is coming, and with it, another group of teenagers armed with flashlights and bravado (we can already taste their fear, metallic as blood in the back of nonexistent throats) and this time when the planchette moves, it won't spell out harmless messages—this time we're going to show them the truth about what sleeps under this cemetery, about the old things that were here before the graves, before the town, before even the first people who feared the dark enough to bury their dead. The soil in my mouth tastes like home now, the worms in my skull feel like friends, and when the next foolish, beautiful, deliciously scared kids come calling with their Ouija board and their cheap vodka courage, we'll be waiting with open arms and hollow smiles, ready to welcome them to the family. Forever is such a long time to be lonely, after all, and the dead do so love company.
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