Graveyard Tales Novels & Stories

Half-buried in weeds. I turned, walked back to the car, and popped the trunk. A sledgehammer sat inside. Gift from a renovation company. Ribbon still tied on. Bright. Almost a joke. I grabbed it, walked back, and stopped in front of the headstone. Taking a breath, I tightened my grip around the cold metal. Then I swung. All in. Smashed it down. Crash. The sound ripped through the empty grounds. Bang. Again. And again. Until it was nothing but broken rubble.

"It thrives on the 'Broken'! It thinks we're just more scrap!" Leo realized that in the Graveyard of Ideas, the only thing that mattered was Certainty of Purpose. "Meilin, give me the Void-Resonance!" Leo commanded. He didn't use the blade to strike. He used it as an antenna. He projected the one thing the Graveyard lacked: A Finished Story. He broadcasted the 110 chapters of their survival—the pain of the Blackout, the heat of the A****n, the cold of the Moon, and the triumph of the Triple-World Merge. He showed the Scavenger that they weren't a "Draft." They were a Result.

The night tastes like blood. It stains the air, thick and metallic, clinging to my tongue no matter how many times I swallow. Bodies lie everywhere: wolves, vampires, and witches, all broken, torn, and twisted at angles no living thing should bend. This isn’t a battlefield anymore. It’s a graveyard. I move from person to person, checking pulses, forcing my hands to stay steady even though they won’t stop shaking. My dress or what’s left of it, is stiff with blood and dirt.

Like we were under a thousand invisible eyes. “There’s something wrong here,” Sophia murmured once. Eden just nodded. “We’re being observed. But not followed.” That didn’t make me feel better. We reached the graveyard just as the violet moon broke through the mist. It was massive. It stretched in every direction. There were dark tombstones with glowing runes, crumbling statues of old wolf-headed warriors. I saw bones bleached white by time and scattered across the earth like the Dead had been clawing their way out. The place reeked of sacredness.

The sound is unbearable—a symphony of breaking glass mixed with voices that bleed into one another until I can't tell where one Selene ends and another begins. My feet leave the ground. We all rise, pulled by invisible threads toward something that shouldn't exist—a place I've only heard whispered about in the darkest corners of lunar prophecy. “The Throat of Echoes.’ The legendary graveyard where broken selves go to scream their final truths before silence swallows them whole.

"Do it!" I hurl it into the Bloom's heart. The explosion is silent, brilliant. The lattice shatters, echoes disintegrating. Lira shrieks, her scales peeling. "You'll doom us all!" The ground collapses. The Bloom's roots drag us down. --- **The Garden of Graves** We land in a cemetery of timelines. Tombstones stretch endlessly, each marked with a name I know: **EDEN. VEYRA. KAEL. HUNTER.** At the center stands a mausoleum, its doors carved with the spiral-and-thorns.

At least far more interesting than the story I heard yesterday at the antique auction, is this one, I thought. I became uneasy when he described how two werewolves broke their fated mate promise and unleashed a terrible calamity. The narrative was too visceral and realistic. Every time I hear the story, it seems to tighten my heart, so I don't want to listen to it anymore. It felt odd, as though I had also lived through the same narrative. She continued, "And it all began with the Grimoire." "Grimoire?" I asked, intrigued. This Grimoire seemed to be at the center of all the odd occurrences.

Until now. Shifting into drive, I hit the gas a little harder than intended. Gravel tumbles underneath the tires, keeping me from moving for a second before the Volvo takes off. I manage to turn around, easing up on the gas and finally hitting pavement to pass the cemetery gates. It's still pitch black outside but I'm beyond positive it shouldn't be. I've been gone for hours. This is insane. Nothing makes sense. The Watchman. My dead brother-at least I think it's him-back from the dead.

“You think I am old? Age is just a number. I still believe I am young. You never know, I might even outlive you.” Shiva’s face tensed a little. He looked down, avoiding the old man’s eyes. They stepped out of the store, filled with their own thoughts, and ambled in opposite directions towards their homes. Shiva carried a short-stories collection in his backpack from the shop. Mr. Ben had told him he could take any book from the shop to read. He planned to read it to his sister at night. She loved stories, especially those with happy endings. She loved to imagine herself as a character in those stories and live the happy lives vicariously. This was the only pleasure Shiva could give her – for

Be sure to check out our website for future Tales from The Lake volumes. Flowers in a Dumpster by Mark Allan Gunnells—The world is full of beauty and mystery. In these 17 tales, Gunnells will take you on a journey through landscapes of light and darkness, rapture and agony, hope and fear. Let Gunnells guide you through these landscapes where magnificence and decay co-exist side by side. Come pick a bouquet from these Flowers in a Dumpster.