Behind the Tombstone

The old tombstone was beginning to crumble, but it looked like as good a site as any to set up. Aidan and Mark set the recorder on the ground between them and scanned the darkened cemetery with their flashlights. There wasn't a sign of a caretaker, and they hadn't really expected to see one given the dilapidated state of the graveyard.

"Turn it on and let's begin" Aidan said. Mark flipped the recorder switch on, and Aidan's questioning began.

"Is there anyone with us tonight?" Nothing filled the silence except a slight scritch-scritch from somewhere behind the stone. Unperturbed, Aidan asked the next question.

"Can you tell us your name?" Again, the only sound was a scritch-scritch.

"Can you show yourself?" As before, just a scritch-scritch from behind the stone.

"Are you afraid of us?", asked Aidan. This time there was no scritch-scritch, but the atmosphere suddenly seem thick and malevolent. Neither young man noticed the towering dark shadow that rose from behind the tombstone until it was too late. The darkness swooped down and engulfed them until neither one could see the other, and just as suddenly, Aidan, Mark and the black shadow vanished into the ground.

The next morning when the old caretaker showed up, he found the recorder laying on the ground in front of the tombstone. He turned it on, and in the silence that followed each of Aidan's questions, you could now hear the following replies.

"Yes...I am always here."

"My name is never spoken by your kind, but it is very old."

"I'll show myself, but it is the last thing you'll ever see..."

"You are mine!"

The caretaker quietly pocketed the recorder, looking around to assure himself he was truly alone. He took the only evidence that anyone had been at the stone and tossed it in the pile with the rest back at the tool shed.