The Dead Man’s Engine

It began on a Tuesday, during the last gasp of autumn. I was with my cousin, Lena, at her father’s house out in the farmlands. Her stepmother, Marta, was a quiet woman with a knowing look, the kind who kept her secrets in the pantry with the canned goods. At a little past ten, she came into the living room where we were watching reruns, and said, ‘Would you two like to visit the old Lutheran cemetery? I need to pay my respects.’ We should have said no. We didn’t.

Marta drove a new electric sedan, all sleek lines and a touchscreen console that hummed softly. She said she wanted to visit a grave on the outskirts of town, near the abandoned quarry. We passed three cemeteries before we reached it, each gate more rusted than the last. Finally, Marta turned onto a dirt lane, headlights carving through the mist. That’s when Lena pointed to the rearview mirror. ‘There’s a car behind us.’

A black pickup truck with tinted windows had been trailing us since we left the highway. Marta sped up, turned down a side road, then another, until we were winding through cornfields. The pickup vanished. ‘Lost them,’ Marta said, but her voice was thin. We looped back to the cemetery and pulled through the iron gates. The place was overgrown, headstones tilting like broken teeth. In the newest section, a single grave was open, a mound of dirt covered with a plastic tarp.

We got out, the cold air thick with the smell of turned earth. Marta kneeled at a headstone a few rows over, murmuring to herself. Lena and I walked toward the fresh grave, drawn by a strange curiosity. The name on the marker was ‘Elias Thorne,’ and the dates showed he died just three days ago. There were no flowers, only a small, wind-up music box resting on the dirt. I picked it up, wound the key, and it played a broken lullaby. That’s when Lena grabbed my arm. ‘Look.’

On the hill above the graveyard, a figure stood silhouetted against the moon. It was too tall, too thin, with arms that hung past its knees. It didn’t move, just watched. Marta rose, her face pale. ‘We’re leaving.’ She hurried us to the car, the engine humming to life as she pressed the start button. But the moment she shifted into reverse, the car died. The dashboard went dark, then a message pulsed: ‘Power connection failure.’

Marta cursed, hitting the start button again. Nothing. The windows fogged from our breath. Then, the sound came—a high-pitched whine, like a chainsaw revving in the distance, but growing closer. It wasn’t motorized; it was a scream, drawn out and metallic. The car’s lights flickered, and the touchscreen lit up with a message in red: ‘BATTERY DRAIN DETECTED.’

Lena screamed. The figure on the hill was now at the gate, still too distant to see clearly, but it moved with a shuddering gait, as if its joints were misaligned. The chainsaw whine resolved into a grinding, and I realized it was not a chainsaw—it was the sound of the earth itself, the grave groaning. Marta clawed at the door handle, but it wouldn’t open. The car’s locks clicked shut.

Through the windshield, I saw the dirt on the fresh grave begin to shift, the plastic tarp bulging upward. The music box in my hand started playing on its own, the lullaby faster, warped. The car shook, and the touchscreen flashed: ‘CHARGING INTERRUPTED. EMERGENCY POWER RESERVE 1%.’

Then the figure was right beside the car, leaning down to peer inside. Its face was a featureless void, but I felt its gaze on me. It raised a hand, and the glass of the driver’s side window spiderwebbed, but didn’t break. Marta grabbed my arm, her nails digging in. ‘Remember his name,’ she hissed. ‘Elias. He’s come for his heart.’

I looked at the name on the grave, then at the dying screen. The car gave a final shudder, and every light went out. The silence that followed was absolute—no wind, no insects, no sound of the creature outside. We were trapped, the three of us, as the music box wound down, and the darkness pressed in from all sides. And in that darkness, I heard a voice, clear as a bell, from the back seat: ‘You shouldn’t have come to my resting place.’