Story 1026: The Iron Grave Dancers

They came with the fog—figures cloaked in rusted iron and grave moss. No one saw their faces. No one ever did. But every time the bell at Hollowmeade Cemetery rang thirteen times past midnight, the villagers of Gallow’s Brook would lock their doors, douse their fires, and whisper prayers they barely remembered.

The Grave Dancers had returned.

They didn’t walk like people. Their limbs moved like ticking gears, stiff and snapping. Heavy chains clanged with every step. They carried no tools, only old-time lanterns burning green flame and sickles with edges like fractured bone. Their metal boots sunk into soil with a hiss, like the ground itself recoiled from them.

They danced around fresh graves—always the newest dead, never the old.

And when they did, the dead danced with them.

The villagers tried to fight once.