Page 100 of Love at First Fright

At its base, exactly as Thomas had described, a patch of bare earth stood out among the surrounding grass. Roughly six feet long. Two feet wide. And nearby, that small rock—definitely not a formal gravestone—covered in mossy grime. But I could just make out the M.D.

I hovered a few paces away as Bat dropped my hand to float closer. Without Bat’s ghostly magic, I expected Thomas to disappear from view, but he remained perfectly visible.

Right. We’d clearly just been holding hands for fun, then.

Heat crawled up my neck.

“Bones, but no ghost,” Bat said, circling the grave.

“Maybe she moved on,” I suggested.

Bat made a sceptical sound. “Violent deaths usually result in ghosts sticking around.”

Thomas nodded. “Lad’s right.”

What exactly had happened to Thomas? Drowning in a well didn’t sound very fun.

“Charlie, come here.”

I shuffled forward carefully, watching where I placed my feet in the gathering darkness.

“Can you feel that?” Bat asked.

“Feel what?”

Bat reached for my hand he just dropped and a joke about him being clingy started forming on the tip of my tongue—

I gasped.

A rush of something surged up from the grave. Profound, terrible wrongness, like touching rot.

The ground opened up beneath me.

Not physically. Worse than that. Something reached up through the bare earth and hooked into my chest, cold fingers curling around my ribs from the inside. My knees buckled. The world tilted sideways and I was falling, falling into dirt that wanted to swallow me whole.

Pressure crushed my lungs. Darkness bloomed at the corners of my eyes.

This was it. This was how I died. Dragged down into a grave that had been waiting, hungry, for hundreds of years. My mouth opened but nothing came out. No air. No sound. Just the terrible pull of the earth claiming what it thought it was owed.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t—

“Bat!” I managed to gasp out.

Hands grabbed my shoulders and yanked me backwards. We tumbled away from the grave in a tangle of limbs.

“You’re okay. You’re okay.” Bat’s voice, urgent and close to my ear. His arms wrapped around me, anchoring me to something that wasn’t the awful pull of that grave. “Just breathe.”

“See?” Thomas said. “Rotten earth. Good for nothing. Now, I need to go finish that well.”

He hobbled off into the darkness, leaving Bat and me sprawled on the grass several metres from the apple tree.

My heart couldn’t stop thundering. Sweat stuck my jumpsuit to my back despite the evening chill. Every breath felt like I had to remember how to do it—inhale, exhale, don’t think about dirt filling your lungs. “What the actual fuck was that? It was… it was like I was falling into the dirt!”

“I don’t know.” Bat himself sounded shaken, which wasn’t a good sign. He pulled me to my feet, tugging me further from the grave. “I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

But I wasn’t okay. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“Let’s get far away from it.”