Midnight in the Graveyard

It was a dark, still night, I was walking towards a pale tombstone, fervently hoping I was wrong. I saw something perched atop the tombstone. Straining my eyes in the semi-darkness, I saw the dull glint of sharp talons and a menacing, hooked beak. I was choked with a fear like an unearthly parasite, draining me of all logical thinking, but suddenly it took flight, and, releasing a breath I did not know I had been holding, I laughed out loud in relief. It had only been an owl.

Then I remembered why I was there. I froze. I looked at the tombstone as the clock tower nearby signaled midnight. I was right, but that meant… I ran as fast as I could away from the tombstone. I dared not look back for fear of what I might see, but as a hand as white as the tombstone clamped onto my shoulder, my curiosity became stronger than my fear and I looked. My scream would have been heard from many miles away, but it caught in my throat as I saw not one, but thousands of horrifying bodies. Their skin was missing in parts and their eye sockets were filled with maggots. Then I was through the gates, and, one by one they exploded as they left the graveyard.

I thought I was safe but their broken bodies were melting into one another, a hideous giant hunched over itself, its face a warped skull, upside down, its mouth fixed in an ugly grin. The owl flew by and this golem of death simply reached out and, and something came out of the owl and was sucked into a hole in the creatures hand. The thing was literally sucking the life out of the owl. The owl dropped from the sky sucked completely dry. The creature began to gesture towards the town. I could not let this happen, the entire town would die and it would be all my fault. I did the stupidest thing I could have done; I threw a stone at it. The stone went straight through the monster but it was enough to get its attention. It roared at me, then it crumbled, that small gesture of courage was all that was needed, and it fell to the ground, truly and permanently dead.