Graveyard BlobIt was a typical graveyard once, standing alone on a small hill adjacent to a church that hasn't seen visitors to its moldy pews in nearly seven decades. It's a place casual visitors turn away from with an unconscious shudder, one where fresh flowers are seen only when they arrive on the breeze, blown there from a grove of flowering trees half a mile down the lane.
The names of the souls laid to rest there have all been forgotten.
Their resentment simmered down in the mud, an intangible heat that went unnoticed by all but the earthworms that learned to tunnel around particular spots in the earth. All that negative energy gradually gathered, white-hot molecules of a thousand lost souls congregating together.
The birth of the spirit known as Grieve.
His were a collection of memory fragments from a thousand lifetimes. He could taste the salt spray on the lips of a sailor, feel the caress of a lady's hand and taste the bitterness of betrayal as cold steel kissed his throat. He could remember all of these things but never experience them. The plane of his existence was limited to those few dozen tombstones where neglected corpses had been stacked for generations as burial grounds became scarce. He flitted from one stone to the next in a rage, causing pebbles to tumble and small puffs of earth to explode like grass-tipped fireworks at all hours of the day and night.
Natives of the town whispered over their mugs that the place was haunted. There had been incidents every time someone tried to cross that patch of ground. Tree roots snaring ankles to snap them like twigs. Ill winds that laid healthy young lads flat on their backs for weeks, stealing their wind and youthful looks. A young girl had even lost her life, stumbling into a half-unearthed grave and being crushed by the headstone that tumbled in after.
Grieve felt the presence of living creatures like a knife blade heated in fire. Birds that tried to roost in his tree fell to the ground with their feet in the air. Rodents were brought to a literal dead halt when they tried to burrow into once-sacred ground. The lonely tree was a stunted black ruin where once had stood a mighty oak.
Why shouldn't the living be punished? Grieve certainly had been, the one time he'd tried to leave the limits of his plane.
The desire to feel the cool kiss of a summer breeze was the temptress that finally worked his anger to the boiling point. He had done his best to shove beyond the ethereal boundary, setting off an earthquake with his scream when an old farmer's memories were removed from his collection forever, burned away and dissipated on that very breeze that had so taunted him. He had no physical body as a human would recognize, yet with every movement he could feel that part that had been seared away. It was like a missing tooth that left an annoying gap only this part of him could never grow back.
The medium arrived on a sultry summer day, her bag of tinctures, potions and other miscellaneous goods of the trade slung over one sun-darkened shoulder. She didn't believe in wearing creams to shield herself from nature any more than she believed she could fly. She always prepared her own food, she never drank anything stronger than black tea and on every full moon she would offer a mingled thimbleful of blood, sweat and spit to whatever local god had claimed the territory she was currently traveling.
An eccentric, they called her. She didn't mind. She'd been called worse.
She'd heard the stories of the haunted patch of ground. She'd been in a fishing village at the time, communicating with the spirit of a one-hundred-twelve-year-old grandmother who was thought to be the source of a recent drought. The poor old lady had been a sweetheart, readily guiding the medium to the true culprit.
The living will always look for someone to blame rather than admit to their own idiocy. A new well and a few lessons in responsible cattle raising and that little village was well on its way to recovery.
The medium could feel Grieve's presence long before she came near the graveyard's outer limit. So much pain compounded by neglect. It would take years to sort it all out, probably more years than she had left. She'd seen over seven hundred cycles of the moon and was no stumbling apprentice leaving her master's tent for the first time. She would have to work smart and take a few risks but first she needed to know her enemy better.
She sat cross-legged with her toes tantalizingly close to the borderline. Grieve huddled in the tombstone closest to the line, sending out waves of resentment and longing. The medium showed him images in her mind. She gave him the tiny oasis where she'd cut her teeth, the first spirit she ever successfully reached, segments of her memories spanning the long and lonely years. In turn, she sifted through Grieve's collected conscience, getting a feel for the farmers and soldiers and wandering priests that made up this complex collection of negative energy that had shaped one of the most hate-filled spirits she'd ever encountered.
There was a way for him to be free. She made him a promise; one she had every intention of trying to keep. It is impossible to lie on the ethereal plane. If she said she knew a way, there was at least a chance of success. Grieve was skeptical of her plan...but it was the only hint of hope he'd had in years. He would grudgingly allow her to cross the line...for one night only.
The night of the ritual was perfect. Clear sky, full moon and not a cloud in sight. The medium felt as if she'd stepped into an oven as she picked her way between the overgrown mounds with their crooked headstones. She took her usual tailor's seat between two massive roots of the dead tree and began to chant in a language that has since been lost to time.
Sweat dripped down her brow and she was gasping for breath as the final phrase left her lips. The sky was just merging from sullen gray to the rosy pink blush of dawn.
With a sound like distant thunder, the earth began to shake. One by one, the weather-worn tombstones were sinking into the earth, tearing Grieve apart as the enraged spirit unleashed a wail of terror. The medium's lined face was ashen. The cost of her mistake was her life. She'd known that going in and she would not try to run from the consequences of her actions.
The heat from the depths of the earth reached up to wrap around her frail body, devouring her life energy until nothing remained but a shrieking skeleton with a puff of white hair tied in a knot.
Only three tombstones remained above the soil, rotted teeth that would chew up and spit out any living thing that crossed what little boundary remained to Grieve's domain. He had been a fool to trust a human...any human. Had he not seen a thousand methods of death all involving human treachery? Did he not know better than any man alive what it was to be lured into false hope and then discarded in dire shape to suffer until the welcome sleep of death?
Only there would be no sleep for him. No sweet release. There was only pain and rage and bitter regret.
He huddled at the heart of the largest tombstone still standing, shunning the taunting warmth of the rising sun.
Story by 
Pureflower
