Story 1183: The Crawling Chant

The first time Jasper Crane heard the chant, he was kneeling by an unmarked grave.

The cemetery had always murmured, but this was different. The usual sighs of wind and whispers of the dead had given way to a rhythm—wet, slithering syllables echoing beneath the soil.

It started as a hum in his bones.

Then the ground… moved.

He stumbled back, dropping his spade as the earth cracked open like a yawning mouth. Dozens of skeletal fingers emerged, not clawing upward, but gently tapping the dirt in time with the sound.

Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap-tap. Pause.

It was a language.

A summons.

He should have run. Any sane man would.

But Jasper had never been sane—not since the worms in the graveyard began whispering dreams to him, not since he dug up the child’s coffin and found it empty, save for a mouth that spoke his name.

So instead, he listened.