A tale of terror by L.L. Hundal & Steve Miller. If you like it, consider checking out Shadow Stories and Moonlit & Other Stories -- anthologies with stories by them writing together and separately.
'Til Death
The cemetery gates had been locked for hours, but Veronica knew the gap in the fence behind the maintenance shed. She'd used it three times before—once to confirm the burial, once on what would have been their anniversary, and now tonight, when sleep proved impossible and the bourbon wasn't working anymore.
Her heels sank into the soft earth as she navigated between headstones, their shadows stretching long and skeletal under the half-moon. October had stripped most of the leaves from the oaks that lined the cemetery's eastern border, and their bare branches clawed at the sky like arthritic fingers. The air carried that particular autumn smell—decay and damp earth and something else, something that made her think of endings.
Robert's plot was in the newer section, where the grass hadn't fully established itself and the headstones still looked too clean, too new. She'd paid extra for the marble angel, though she couldn't say why. Perhaps because his mother had been there, watching with those red-rimmed eyes, silently accusing. Perhaps because appearances still mattered, even when you were standing over the grave of a man who was supposed to be gone.
She stood at the foot of the grave, swaying slightly. The bourbon was catching up with her now, warming her from the inside despite the October chill. Her black dress—the same one she'd worn to the funeral—clung to her curves, and she was suddenly, acutely aware of how alive she felt. How free.
"Hello, Robert." Her voice sounded strange in the silence, too loud and too intimate at once. "I know it's been a while. Nine months, two weeks, four days. Not that I'm counting."
A laugh escaped her, sharp and bitter. She pressed her hand to her mouth, but it bubbled out anyway, echoing off the surrounding headstones. As the echo died, she took a swig from the bourbon bottle she was clutching in her other hand.
"God, you'd hate this. Me standing here, drunk, talking to your corpse like we're having one of our little chats." She took a step closer, her heel catching on the edge of the grave marker. "You know what's funny? Sometimes I actually miss you. Not you-you, but... having someone there. Someone to cook for. Someone whose dry cleaning I had to pick up."
The wind picked up, rustling through the dead leaves scattered across the cemetery grounds. Veronica wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the alcohol in her system.
"But then I remember." Her voice dropped, hardening. "I remember the bruises I had to cover with makeup. The ribs you cracked when I overcooked the roast. The time you held my head underwater in the bathtub because I'd smiled at the waiter. The hospital visits I explained away as clumsiness, as accidents, as anything but what they were."
She crouched down, running her fingers over the engraved letters of his name. Robert James Holloway. Beloved Husband. The lie of it made her stomach turn.
"So no, Robert. I don't regret it. I don't regret finding that number in the back of that dive bar in Newark. I don't regret the meetings in parking garages, the cash withdrawals, the careful planning. And I definitely don't regret spending thirty thousand dollars—your thirty thousand dollars, from that account you thought I didn't know about—to have someone put a bullet through your skull."
The memory of that phone call still sent a thrill through her. It's done, the voice had said. Professional. Detached. She'd asked if it had been quick, and the voice had paused before answering. Quick enough. He didn't suffer.
Good, she'd thought. But not good enough.
"You know what would have made it perfect?" She stood, brushing dirt from her knees. "If it had been a woman. A hit-woman. Wouldn't that have been poetic? You, who always said women were weak, who said I was nothing without you, taken out by someone with tits and a trigger finger."
She laughed again, the sound carrying across the empty cemetery. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted, and she wondered if anyone could hear her. If anyone would care.
"The undertaker wanted to fix your face. Did you know that? He said he could make you presentable, that he could fill in the hole, use makeup and prosthetics. But I told him no." She smiled, remembering the man's shocked expression. "I told him to leave it. To let everyone see what you really were—a man with a hole where his brain should have been. Closed casket, Robert. You didn't even get a proper viewing."
The satisfaction of that moment still warmed her. His mother had wept, had begged to see her son one last time, but Veronica had been firm. The damage was too extensive, she'd said, her voice appropriately broken. You wouldn't want to remember him that way.
"I hope that hole is still there." She kicked at the grave marker, her heel leaving a scuff on the marble. "I hope it's with you wherever you are. I hope every time you look in a mirror—do they have mirrors in Hell?—you see it. That perfect, round reminder that you're not invincible. That you're not God. That you're just a dead man in a box."
The wind gusted harder, and Veronica stumbled slightly, catching herself on the angel statue. Its cold marble face stared down at her with blank eyes, and for a moment she felt a flicker of something that might have been shame. But no. She'd earned this. She'd earned her freedom, her life, her right to stand here and spit on his memory.
"You're probably in Hell right now." She straightened, smoothing down her dress. "I hope you are. I hope you're burning, Robert. I hope every day is agony. I hope you're surrounded by demons who do to you what you did to me, over and over, for eternity."
The thought made her bold. Made her reckless. She took another long pull from the bourbon bottle, letting the burn settle in her chest, fortifying her. Her fingers trembled slightly as she reached down, finding the hem of her dress.
This was it. This was the line. Once she crossed it, there was no taking it back—no pretending she was just a grieving widow, no hiding behind propriety or shock or the convenient amnesia of trauma. She'd be choosing to desecrate his grave, choosing to stand here naked and defiant in the dark. Choosing to reclaim what he'd tried to own.
She thought of his hands on her. His voice in her ear, whispering mine, always mine. She thought of the fear, the smallness he'd made her feel. And then she thought of that perfect, round hole in his skull, and something crystallized inside her—cold and sharp and absolutely certain.
She hurled the bourbon bottle at the headstone. It shattered against the granite with a satisfying crack, and she hiked her dress up around her thighs. The night air was cold against her skin, raising goosebumps along her legs.
"You remember these legs, Robert? You used to say they were your favorite part of me. That they were the reason you married me." Her voice dripped with venom. "Well, guess what?"
She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties—black lace, expensive, the kind he used to buy her before the honeymoon phase ended and the real Robert emerged. She slid them down slowly, deliberately, stepping out of them and holding them up in the moonlight.
"You'll never touch them again." She let the panties fall onto the grave, watching them settle against the fresh earth. "You'll never touch any of this again. And all those side-whores you thought I didn't know about? Jennifer from your office? That bartender at O'Malley's? The personal trainer you were fucking in our bed? They're done with you too. You're nothing now. Just bones and rot and that beautiful, perfect hole in your head."
She pulled her skirt higher, exposing herself to the night, to the grave, to the memory of the man who'd tried to own her. The gesture was crude, obscene, and absolutely liberating.
"This is mine now, Robert. My body. My life. My—"
A sound cut through her declaration. A scratching, scraping noise that seemed to come from beneath her feet. Veronica froze, her skirt still bunched around her waist.
But the sound came again, louder this time. Deliberate. And the earth on the grave—the fresh earth that had been smooth and undisturbed moments ago—seemed to shift. To bulge upward, as if something beneath was pushing against it.
"No." The word came out as a whisper. "No, that's not—that's not possible."
Run, her mind screamed. Run now.
But her legs wouldn't obey. She stood frozen, watching in horror as the grave continued to shift and buckle. Her panties, still lying on the disturbed earth, began to slide down the mound as the dirt beneath them gave way.
A hand burst through the surface.
Veronica screamed, the sound tearing from her throat raw and primal. The hand was gray, desiccated, the skin hanging loose on bones that looked too white in the moonlight. Dirt clung to it, falling away as the fingers flexed, curled, grasped at the air.
She stumbled backward, her heel catching on a root. She went down hard, her palms scraping against stone and earth, but she barely felt it. All she could see was that hand, now joined by another, both clawing at the earth, pulling, dragging something up from below.
"No, no, no, no—" The words tumbled from her lips as she scrambled to her feet, her dress still hiked up around her waist, her legs shaking so badly she could barely stand.
The thing—because it couldn't be Robert, it couldn't be, the dead didn't rise, the dead stayed buried—pulled itself further from the grave. Shoulders emerged, covered in the remnants of what had once been an expensive suit. The fabric was stained and rotting, hanging in tatters from a frame that was far too thin, far too angular to be human.
And then the head.
Veronica's scream died in her throat, replaced by a sound that was more animal than human. The face that emerged from the grave was Robert's face, but wrong, so terribly wrong. The skin had pulled tight against the skull, gray and mottled, the lips drawn back in a permanent grimace that exposed yellowed teeth. One eye was sunken, milky white, while the other socket was empty, just a dark hollow that seemed to stare at her anyway.
And the hole. The perfect, round hole in his temple, just above where his left ear had been. She could see through it, could see the dark cavity of his skull, could see things moving inside that she didn't want to identify.
The corpse pulled itself fully from the grave, dirt cascading off its body as it rose unsteadily to its feet. For one terrible moment it stood there, swaying, that empty eye socket fixed on her—and then its legs gave out. The thing collapsed forward onto the ground with a wet, heavy sound, and immediately began to crawl.
Not slowly. Not like something weak or dying.
It moved with a grinding, relentless speed that defied everything she understood about the world. Its arms pulled it forward, fingers digging into the earth, dragging its ruined body across the cemetery floor. The sound it made—the scrape of fabric against dirt, the crack of joints, the wet rasp of its breathing—was worse than any scream.
Veronica ran.
She didn't think, didn't plan, just turned and bolted through the cemetery, her heels sinking into the soft earth with every step. Behind her, she could hear it following—that grinding, dragging sound, getting closer, always closer, moving faster than anything crawling should be able to move.
This isn't happening, she thought wildly, dodging between headstones. This is the bourbon. This is a nightmare. This is—
She glanced back and immediately wished she hadn't. The thing that had been Robert was pulling itself across the ground with inhuman determination, its body pressed low to the earth, moving like some terrible insect. Its arms reached out toward her with each lurch forward, those gray fingers grasping, and she could see her panties clutched in one hand, the black lace stark against the dead flesh.
She screamed again and pushed herself harder, her lungs burning, her legs aching. The cemetery stretched out before her, suddenly vast and maze-like. Where was the parking lot? Where was the gap in the fence? Everything looked the same in the darkness—headstones and shadows and dead grass.
Left, she thought desperately. The parking lot is to the left.
She veered right instead, panic overriding logic, and found herself running deeper into the cemetery, toward the older section where the stones were weathered and crumbling and the trees grew thick and close. The ground was uneven here, treacherous, and her heel caught on something—a root, a stone, she didn't know—and she went sprawling.
She hit the ground hard, the impact driving the air from her lungs. For a moment she just lay there, gasping, tasting dirt and blood where she'd bitten her tongue. Then she heard it—that wet, dragging sound, getting closer. The scrape of dead hands pulling a dead body across the earth.
"No." She pushed herself up, ignoring the pain in her hands and knees, ignoring the way her dress had torn, exposing even more of her skin to the cold night air. "No, please, no."
She ran again, this time in the right direction. She could see the lights of the parking lot now, could see her car sitting alone under the single working streetlamp. So close. Just a little further.
The thing behind her moaned, a sound that was barely human, barely anything at all. But she heard words in it, or thought she did. Syllables that might have been her name.
"Ver...on...i...ca..."
"Shut up!" she screamed over her shoulder. "You're dead!"
She could see the gap in the fence now, could see freedom just beyond it. Her car keys were in her purse, which was—where was her purse? Had she brought it? She couldn't remember, couldn't think past the terror that had her in its grip.
Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.
She was going to make it. She was going to—
She dropped to her knees at the fence gap, already pushing herself through, when the hand shot out from ground level and locked around her ankle.
Veronica shrieked as she was yanked backward, dragged out of the gap, her body slamming against the earth. She kicked out wildly, her free foot connecting with something that gave with a wet, sickening sound. But the grip on her ankle didn't loosen. If anything, it tightened, those dead fingers digging into her flesh with strength that shouldn't have been possible.
She was dragged backward across the ground, her nails scrabbling at the earth, leaving furrows in the dirt. She twisted, looking back, and found the thing that had been her husband pressed against the ground beside her, its body stretched out along the earth, pinning her.
That hole in its head wept something dark and viscous. The empty eye socket seemed to bore into her, and the remaining eye—that milky, dead eye—held something that might have been recognition. Might have been rage.
Its mouth opened, the jaw working with a sound like grinding bone, and it spoke. The voice was hoarse, ruined, like gravel being dragged across concrete, but the words were clear enough.
"Remember... the pool..." Its face was inches from hers now, and she could smell it—rot and earth and something chemical from the embalming. "How you... couldn't breathe... how I held you... under..."
"No!" Veronica kicked again, her heel connecting with its shoulder. The joint gave with a crack, but the thing didn't release her. It just adjusted its grip, pulling itself closer along the ground. "Let me go! You're dead!"
"I know... where you go..." The corpse's head tilted, considering, its body still pressed flat against the earth. Its remaining eye fixed on hers with terrible clarity. "Every coffee shop... every friend's house... I always... knew..."
It reached toward her with its free hand, those gray fingers trailing up her exposed leg, over her thigh, higher. The touch was cold, so cold it burned, and Veronica felt bile rise in her throat.
She wrenched her body sideways with everything she had left, her ankle twisting in that cold grip. For a moment—just a moment—the corpse's hold faltered as its body shifted on the uneven ground. She felt the fingers loosen.
That was all she needed.
Veronica tore herself free and scrambled backward, her bare feet scraping against the cold earth. She didn't look back. She ran—past the headstones, past the angel monument, toward the gates that suddenly seemed impossibly far away. Her breath came in ragged gasps, her heart hammering so hard she thought it might burst in her chest.
She burst through the cemetery gates and into the parking lot, her keys already in her shaking hand. The car door slammed behind her, the lock clicked, and she fumbled the key into the ignition.
The engine roared to life. She peeled out of the lot, tires screaming against asphalt, and didn't stop until the cemetery was miles behind her.
But as she drove through the empty streets of the sleeping city, his words kept circling back, relentless as a predator. I know where you go. Every coffee shop. Every friend's house. She gripped the steering wheel tighter, her knuckles white, and tried to convince herself it was just the bourbon talking, just her own fear echoing in her skull.
Except it wasn't. Because he was right. He'd always known. He'd always been there—in the background of her life, watching, tracking, controlling. And now, impossibly, he still was.
She pulled into her apartment complex and sat in the car for a long time, engine off, hands still shaking. The parking lot was empty. The building was dark. Everything was normal.
Tomorrow she'd go to the coffee shop on Fifth Street. Her mother's house on Wednesday. The therapist's office on Thursday afternoon at two.
And he would know.
She'd killed him once. She'd buried him. She'd danced on his grave and poured bourbon on his headstone and reclaimed every piece of herself he'd tried to destroy.
But she would never escape him.
--
If you enjoyed that chilling bit of horror, you can find more from the same team of writers in Shadow Stories and Moonlit & Other Stories.
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