The Cursed Cemetery

“Whispers from Black Hollow”

No one buried their dead in Black Hollow Cemetery anymore.

The iron gates had rusted shut decades ago. The paths were overgrown with thorny vines, the mausoleums cracked and weather-worn. It lay on the edge of a forgotten town called Ashmere, a place that had been slowly bleeding people since the early 1900s.

But the cemetery remained.

Always watching.

And sometimes… still whispering.

Chapter 1: The Return

Clara Bell hadn’t been back to Ashmere since she was ten. Her parents had fled in the night, after her uncle’s mysterious death in 1996. She never really knew why they left—only that they never spoke of Ashmere again.

But when her mother passed away in the fall of 2023, Clara found something curious in her belongings: a rusted iron key, engraved with the name “Black Hollow,” and a handwritten note that read:

“Do not return. If you do—never stay past sundown.”

Clara should’ve burned the key.

Instead, she drove six hours north to see what her family had tried to forget.

Chapter 2: Black Hollow

Ashmere was half-ghost town, half-tourist bait—gas station antiques, coffee shops with names like The Rusty Bean, and just enough urban legends to sell postcards.

Clara asked about Black Hollow at the diner. The waitress froze mid-pour.

“Where’d you hear that name?”

“It’s… family history. I think my uncle was buried there.”

“No one’s buried there,” the waitress muttered, eyes wide. “Not anymore.”

Clara found the cemetery behind an old church, hidden in a grove of leaning pines. The air was colder there. Wrong somehow. The wrought-iron gate creaked open at her touch, though it should’ve been sealed shut.

Beyond the gate, time had unraveled. Gravestones crumbled. Trees twisted like they were trying to claw out of the earth. And somewhere in the distance… a bell rang.

But there was no bell tower.

Only graves.

And silence.

Chapter 3: The Bell Grave

Clara found her uncle’s headstone near the back. The name read:

EDMUND BELL
1972 – 1996
He Knows What He Shouldn’t.

She frowned.

Behind his grave was a small, sunken plot surrounded by a fence of black iron spikes. No stone. No name. Just that same bell-shaped insignia, rusted into the gate. And lying on the ground—half-buried in dead leaves—was a broken music box.

Clara picked it up.

It clicked once.

And began to play.

A slow, wheezing lullaby.

That’s when she heard it.

A whisper.

From beneath the earth.

“You shouldn’t have come…”

Chapter 4: The Unearthed

The sky darkened too fast, clouds curling in like ash. Clara backed away, stumbling over gnarled roots. The trees groaned. The wind carried voices—faint, pleading, furious.

Graves began to breathe.

The earth pulsed. Soil cracked open, and skeletal fingers clawed toward the surface—not fresh, but ancient, brittle and blackened with time.

She turned to run.

But the gate was gone.

Not just closed—vanished. Behind her was only more cemetery. More graves. And the whispers grew louder.

“We were never laid to rest…”

“He promised salvation…”

“He lied…”

Clara fled toward the mausoleum on the hill—the only structure still standing tall. Its stone doors were ajar, just enough to squeeze through.

Inside, everything changed.

Chapter 5: The Truth of the Hollow

The mausoleum wasn’t hollow—it was deep. Stairs spiraled down into blackness. Clara descended, drawn by something older than fear. At the bottom was a massive circular chamber, carved with symbols—twisting, unreadable, alive.

In the center: a stone altar.

Upon it: a book made of stitched leather and bone.

The pages were filled with rituals—dark ones. Summoning rites, resurrection ceremonies, pacts written in blood. One name appeared over and over:

EDMUND BELL

Her uncle.

She flipped to the last page, and there it was—her name.

Clara.

The page was blank, save for a single line scratched in with crimson ink:

“You are the last offering.”

Behind her, the stairs crumbled. The walls moaned.

And the spirits came.

Chapter 6: The Last Light

Clara screamed, but no one heard.

The spirits swarmed her—hands cold as the grave, mouths whispering centuries of suffering. She saw their deaths. Their betrayals. How her uncle had used forbidden rites to trap souls inside the cemetery, offering them to a being called “The Hollow King” in exchange for eternal life.

But he failed the final rite.

And the King turned on him.

Trapped him here. With them. Forever.

Now the spirits were desperate. They needed release.

And Clara—his blood, his kin—was the key.

She held the music box to her chest.

And made a choice.

Chapter 7: The Burning

With trembling fingers, Clara opened the book and read the release rite backward—a gamble. If she was wrong, she’d unleash the Hollow King himself.

But the ground shook.

The mausoleum walls cracked.

A scream rose from the graves—not of pain, but freedom. The souls fled upward in a storm of silver light, spiraling into the night sky.

The cemetery burned—not with fire, but with purification. Trees melted into light. Gravestones cracked and wept dust. The iron fence exploded in a ring of sparks.

And from the altar, a figure rose—smoking, screaming.

Edmund.

“No! You’ve ruined it! You’ve—”

Clara stepped forward and whispered the final words.

“Ashes to ashes. Dust to you.”

And her uncle was no more.

Epilogue: The Hollow Remains

The cemetery is gone now—nothing but an empty field near Ashmere.

But Clara knows better.

She still hears the music box at night.

Still dreams of cold hands and whispering earth.

Because curses don’t disappear.

They wait.

For the next key.

For the next name.

For someone like you…

who doesn’t know when to stop digging.

Would you like a continuation—maybe Clara returning years later, or someone else finding that music box? Or perhaps a prequel, set during Edmund’s rise?