As the Dark Closes In

Sina and I unrolled our sleeping bags on October 31st, 2013, a few hours before midnight. It was cold and dark, despite what the forecast had been, but we had come prepared with extra blankets, sweaters, and hot cocoa in a little travel cup.

It was Sina’s brother who had dared us to spend the night here, in the graveyard. I was glad I agreed; it beat trick-or-treating by a lot, especially since everyone was selling candy for lower prices anyways. Sitting there, talking with my best friend, the leaves falling around us as the temperature gradually fell… it was amazing.

The clock tower struck midnight, and we turned off the flashlights on our phones. I lay down and looked at the moonlight shining on the gravestones, illuminating the names. 

“Hey, I dare you to balance on one of these without falling,” I told Sina. “I’ll take a photo as proof that we did this.”

“Good call. Okay, which dead guy’s memorial am I gonna balance on?” We both laughed at the sheer darkness of that statement before she finally decided on someone named Natas Reverof. His grave looked pretty sturdy.

The wind whistled in my ear as Sina struck a pose and I snapped a picture. The flash shined off of the gravestones nearby, and shined in Sina’s eyes. 

It shined off of a figure on the path.

“Is someone there?” I called, turning on the flashlight on my phone and shining it on the path. But there was no response. No person. Nothing.

“I think it was just a trick of the light,” Sina said with a smile, standing on one foot. “Or can you see ghosts now? I can see the headlines now: ‘Mei the Ghost Whisperer.’” I shot her a glare that I hoped she could see despite the growing darkness. I looked up, watching as a cloud covered up more and more of the moon. I shivered.

Sina hopped off of the gravestone, and I decided to take a selfie to prove I did this, too. Sina’s the type of person that would probably claim that she was here on her own, and if I didn’t have proof, I’d lose my share of the bet.

I kneeled next to the memorial and pressed a button on my phone. The camera flipped around, and I saw my shadow in the background. It was creepy; the phone looked like a knife in my hand, and my body looked like a man hunched over instead of a fourteen-year-old girl taking a picture. 

It looked like the figure I thought I saw on the path.

My mind silently whispered for me to run, but I shook my head and took the photo. The flash went off directly in my eyes, and I flinched. My eyes flew shut, and I felt something brush my neck. I opened my eyes, whirling around.

But there was nothing.

“It’s a ghooost!!!” Sina taunted.

“Oh, shut up!” I took a deep breath. It was probably a leaf, or a bug, or maybe even just the wind. I took the photo again, forcing my eyes to stay open.

I looked at the images. Sina’s face was almost impossible to see; she was silhouetted in the moonlight, even though I could have sworn the flash had been on. I swiped to the selfie and saw the same problem.

“Hey, am I going crazy, or did I use flash when I took those photos?”

Silence. I clicked off my phone.

“Sina?”

The wind whistled louder and I felt a raindrop on my head. It was dark, dark enough that I could barely see.

“Sina, c’mon, this isn’t funny.” I tapped my phone, but instead of turning on, I saw the ‘no battery’ screen. “It was at seventy percent… Sina, is your phone working? I can’t see a thing out here.”

I shivered as another gust of wind blew by and rain began to fall. I walked back to the sleeping bags and felt around for the hot cocoa.

“Okay,” I whispered as I found the cup, my fingers freezing in the cold night air. “I’m fine. This is real life, Sina’s playing a trick on you, it’s just cold, this is all okay.” For the first time, I longed for the moment where Sina jumped out of the shadows and laughed at her cruel joke. “You’re going to be fine, Mei.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” my voice echoed as the dark became even more unbearable. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Wh-- who’s there?!?”

Silence. I frantically tapped my phone screen, desperate for light of any kind. I looked up at the sky, but there was no moon to be seen. The clouds had completely covered it up, and all of the street lights were out.

“Sina, I’m going to drink all of the hot cocoa..!” I said. Sina would kill for hot cocoa any day; if that didn’t make her respond, nothing would.

“Mei?” I heard behind me. I whirled around, but only saw Natas Reverof’s grave. The rain began to pour harder and harder.

“Sina! What have you done with Sina?!?” My phone suddenly clicked on and showed the selfie; but the lighting was different. I was able to see my face, and the words on the grave… but the words shifted into a different order. A reversed order.

I saw what Natas Reverof really said before my phone clicked off for the last time.

I ran, so scared that I couldn’t even scream. I didn’t know where Sina was, but me yelling wasn’t going to bring her back. Tears rolled down my face as it dawned on me that one of my best friends was most likely dead… and I was most likely about to die.

It was so dark that I tripped over everything from loose bricks on the path to entire gravestones, but I made it to the fence. The exit.

I scrambled up the fence, but slipped on the rain-slick bars of the metal. My hands were so cold and numb, they couldn’t grip onto anything.

“I’m going to die,” I realized.

“Fine, fine, fine,” the voice insisted. But it wasn’t an echo. It was a different voice than mine, dark and raspy.

“Hello?!?”

“You’re going to be fine.”

And the last thing I felt was a hand on my shoulder.