The Graveyard Novel Novels & Stories

It had been a decade since we were married. I led a group of men to excavate Jackie's first love's grave. Everyone around us praised him for being a loyal man. He never forgot his first love though she'd already died ten years ago. He'd go to the cemetery and celebrate her birthday all by himself every year. Yvonne's name was always at the top of his contact list. I was not angry at all. Instead, I was glad I married someone so loyal.

From the helicopter, I watched Alfred race to the crash site, clutching the fallen license plate, crying out, "Helen, Ruby..." It did not take long for the internet to explode with news of Ruby and I dying in that fiery wreck. I held my sleeping Ruby tight, put away my phone, and whispered, "This is it, Alfred. We're done for good." Alfred was haunted, thinking it was all some nightmare. He would slap himself, pinch his skin, and even jab himself with a knife, desperate to snap out of it. However, the pain, sharp and undeniable, kept telling him the brutal truth.

I'm sure the money we're going to get from your life insurance policy is going to be more than enough to buy formula for our baby! Darkness surged before my eyes. It felt as if the whole world collapsed in that instant. Just as the very last inch of my heart froze, Zachary's doting voice slipped in again, "I get you're happy, but be careful, alright? Don't upset the baby." The last thread holding me upright snapped. I had no strength left to move forward. My body collapsed limply into the snow. Just as my consciousness slipped into the darkness, an anxious voice burst out, "Zachary! Why hasn't Sophie come back yet?!"

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.

“Isabel Norret.” Without stopping to think, I stretched my hand out above the grave. True, a woman had died there, and it was a bad death, in hate and agony. That was a haunted place. That was how graveyards could awaken—when the pain of those who lay in the consecrated soil became too much for the ground to bear. And if the thrall who had consecrated that land cared more about his belly than his debt, everything would happen even faster. And the horror would start. Well, it would be a horror for humans. I didn’t really care.

Jose lay awake staring at the ceiling. He slipped out of bed and checked his phone in the bathroom. One message from an unknown number. A photo of Elias's grave at night, dirt freshly turned. Then another, right behind it. Camille's old number. I did what you were too weak to do. Jose's stomach dropped through the floor. He wanted to throw the phone. He wanted to crawl back into bed and fuck Camille again until his brain went quiet. He wanted to drive to the cemetery right now and dig until he knew for certain.

It’s the sound of doors locked from the inside. Instead, he asks, "What are you drawing?" Nova tilts the notebook to show him. It’s a sketch of the graveyard—but different. The trees are more twisted, the gravestones cracked and half-buried. In the background, shadows with hollow eyes watch from behind the trunks. "That’s... pretty grim," Atlas says. "It’s honest. This place feels like that to me. Like there’s more dead than living, even outside the graveyard." He can’t argue with that.

“You never looked at other men, never. I thought that meant you truly felt something for me, but you had been hurt and were afraid to love again.” Miah could see the first of the many headstones standing like silent sentinels of the dead in the graveyard. It was a beautiful place really, ancient, a place where it was believed the sacred and the damned had to be kept apart. One side of the burial grounds was sanctified, blessed with holy water, while the other was for those who had lived lives of sin and debauchery, criminals and murderers. It was now being torn up, the dead removed to the new cemetery away from the middle of the city. The machines hadn’t yet reached the area where they walke

I reached for the bouquet wrapped in soft brown paper—white lilies and blue forget-me-nots, flowers I’d never given him in life. “Wait here,” I murmured, already stepping out. Thaddeus gave a respectful nod and stayed by the car. The path was uneven, the weeds tall and unbothered. This wasn’t one of those polished, garden-like cemeteries with polished marble and trimmed lawns. This was… neglected. Old. A graveyard where even the dead were forgotten. It made me mad because Flynn deserved way better. He was wealthy, hard working, and reputable, only for Lyra to reduce him to nothing even in death.

"Now be quiet and follow our men." *** With the chaos that happened, Nathalia's grave was not finished. It was half-filled. Wasted flowers scented the grounds. Shovels lie useless. Chairs scrambled in the area. A forlorn sight for the most feared woman in society. As the rest of the people squandered for their lives, one man remains. The oldest friend. Three other men came. They picked the shovels as the old man orders. Slowly, they packed the unfilled grave.