Graveyard of Flame

Graveyard Of Flames

           Tonight is Halloween, and it’s the perfect time to get up to spooky nonsense. Tonight, me and my friend are staying the night in an old graveyard. This graveyard has been in our town for hundreds of years, maybe thousands, and it’s incredibly ominous. So, we decided it would be cool to sleep there tonight. We had prepared snacks to eat and were planning to make a campfire and tell ghost stories. The fire started out well, and we were just getting the marshmallows out when something strange happened.

           The fire started to swirl around very slowly, so slow that we barely noticed it. At first me and my friend thought it was just the wind changing direction, but then the wind stopped. The swirling flames began to bounce up and down and were sparking a lot more than normal. Just as quickly as it started, it stopped. We both breathed out a sigh of relief and went back to roasting marshmallows.

           A few hours later, we were setting up the tent, when I heard some strange noises. It sounded like someone was whispering just our of earshot. Nervous, I asked my friend if he had heard the noise, but he hadn’t, so I went back to setting the tent up. However, the whispering noise kept going, and I thought I was going crazy until my friend asked why I was whispering.

           “So you do hear it!” I exclaimed. “I thought I was going crazy.”

           We decided to go investigate. At this point it was getting dark, so we had our flashlights out. Behind the cemetery, there is a creepy forest with a bunch of dead trees, which seemed like a place where creepy whispers would come from, so we decided to buddy up and go in. We looked for the noise for about an hour and couldn’t find anything, so we went back to the camp.

           After a long period of saying nothing and roasting marshmallows, my friend started to tell a ghost story about a haunted castle.

           “A long time ago, there was a kingdom where the king was cruel and treated the citizens like trash. The people of the kingdom understandably hated the king and were starting to form riots and trying to break into the castle. Eventually, a peasant made it into the castle and assassinated the king. The spirit of the king wanted revenge and possessed the entire castle and caused it to walk. He used the castle to stomp on all the peasants who had overthrown him.”

           As he finished, the fire started to flare up again. We both jumped back and hid behind the tombstones. The fire seemed to form a humanoid shape. It looked like a man with a long, unruly beard. He was horribly thin and was missing an arm. He looked around, pointed in our general direction, and fell back into the fire. It was a good 30 minutes before any of us went to check it out. When we arrived at the campfire, it had died down to a normal height, and was no longer sparking. We decided to put it out and go into the tents.

           Falling asleep was impossible after that last ominous encounter, so we decided to sit outside and guard the tent. The graveyard was about fifty times scarier at night, and the creaking of the tree branches didn’t help at all. At one point, the ground seemed to rumble under us like a mini earthquake, but it stopped pretty quickly. It was starting to be unbearable to stay in the graveyard, so me and my friends talked it out, and decided that we should go home.

           We packed up all of our stuff and began to walk towards the gate of the graveyard. We started to walk out, but the cemetary had other plans. The gate shrieked closed, and we couldn’t open it. The ground started rumbling again, but this time it was different. It sounded like... laughter. All of the sudden, the ground in front of the tombstones began to fall into itself and created gaping holes in front of the headstones. The holes were completely empty, no coffins or anything. At this point we were both running around franticly out of pure terror and couldn’t make sense of anything. The holes began to glow an evil-looking orange and smoke started to come out of them. The laughter started to get louder, and I found myself unable to move my legs. Looking down, I saw that my legs were being covered in thick, green vines. I tried to free myself, but I couldn’t get a good grip on the vines.

           The laughter was now incredibly loud, and I heard a sharp snap from the direction of the forest. I looked up, and my heart stopped. There, standing at the edge of the forest, was a flaming man with a long beard. His laughter was deep, guttural and evil-sounding and he was holding an axe in his flame-ridden hand.

           Looking around, I saw that my friend was also trapped in a snare of vines. The glowing from the empty graves grew brighter, and the smoke began to thicken. The flaming man began to limp towards us, dragging the axe along the ground. Where the axe touched, the ground began to burn a horrible blue flame. Frantically struggling with the vines, I managed to free one of my legs, and used it to kick and stomp on the other vines, which didn’t help much. I was lucky that the flaming guy was limping, or I would have been dead at this point. At last, I managed to get my other leg free, but was horrified to see that the flaming man had already reached my friend. With a violent swipe of his axe, he cut off my friend’s left arm. The axe was so hot, the wound sealed immediately, but my friend was still in incredible pain. The vines released him, and I rushed to help him. The man started to make his way over to me, so I grabbed a water bottle out of my backpack and splashed the man, but the flames were so hot that the water evaporated immediately. I started heading towards the gate, dragging my friend behind me. When I tried to climb it, it suddenly became burning to the touch, and I fell off. We needed to find a key.

           I decided to split up and hide my friend, while I looked for the key to the cemetery. My friend had gone unconscious, so I  hid him behind a tombstone. I started to look for the key, which would be difficult because I had to avoid an angry flaming ghost and open graves that were continually producing a brighter glow and more smoke. In the middle of the cemetery, there is a small shrine to an old mayor, so I decided to check there first. Looking at the ghost, I saw that he was still moving incredibly slowly. I made my way towards the shrine and checked it. On the table, there was a box that was made out of some shiny metal. I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. After some trial and error, I decided that there was no way to open it, and that I should see what happens if we throw it into a grave. The box was kind of light, so it wasn’t that difficult to lift it. As I threw it into the open grave, the ground began to rumble, and the box shot back out. This time, however, it looked way weaker, and some of the finish had melted away to say ‘Emergencies only’. I tried opening the box again, but it didn’t budge. Frustrated, I kicked it, and I heard a sharp clang. I looked at where I had kicked the box and saw that it had a dent in it. I began to kick it wildly, and after a while, it opened. Inside were a pair of leather gloves. Great.

           I looked back at the ghost and saw that he was heading towards my friend’s hiding spot. I put the gloves on and, in a moment of extreme stupidity, ran at the ghost. He whirled around and swung his axe. He missed, and I pushed him with all my strength into a grave. He let out a demonic screech, and the ground began to rumble again and the graves began to close. The smoke and flames receded, and the vines shrank away. I looked at the gloves in awe. They weren’t even singed. I ran back to where my now one-armed friend lay and carried him to the gate, which had unlocked. I rushed to the hospital as fast as humanly possible and sent him to the emergency room. I fell asleep in the waiting room and woke up the next day thinking it was all a horrible nightmare. Until my friend came back out of the emergency room with a prosthetic arm, of course.