The Graveyard Game

We were driving back from a late Halloween party, the kind where the adults drink too much cider and the kids eat enough candy to fuel a small country. My sister Lena was in the passenger seat, fiddling with her phone, while my mother, Ruth, drove. In the back, strapped into his car seat, was my two-year-old nephew, Toby. He was usually quiet, humming to himself or watching the streetlights blur past. But as we hit a stretch of rural road, he started to squirm and point at the window.

‘There, Nanny, there!’ he said, his voice urgent. We were passing a small, ill-kept cemetery, its iron gate rusted and leaning. The headstones were crooked, like rotten teeth. My mother pulled over without a word, muttering about a dead zone and needing to turn off her phone. She always got nervous about technology in creepy places. I watched her fumble with her phone, but my eyes were on Toby. He had twisted in his seat, his face pressed to the glass, staring at the cemetery with an intensity that made my skin prickle.

‘Mama, look! The babies!’ he said, pointing a chubby finger toward a cluster of weathered stones near a dead oak tree. My blood ran cold. I saw nothing but graves. ‘Babies? What babies, sweetie?’ Lena asked, her voice strained. Toby ignored her. He started to wiggle, trying to unbuckle his seatbelt. ‘Let me out! They want to play!’ His voice rose to a whine. My mother turned, her face pale. ‘Toby, no, we’re not getting out.’ But he was already clawing at the door handle, his little body straining against the belt.

‘They’re coming! Come on, come play with me!’ he shouted, his eyes wide and fixed on something we couldn’t see. He started to wave, as if greeting someone. ‘Hi! Hi! Come here!’ I felt a cold knot in my stomach. I looked at my mother, and her face was a mask of fear. She reached back and grabbed Toby’s arm, her grip tight. ‘Toby, stop it! There’s no one there!’ she said, her voice shaking.

But Toby’s face changed. The excitement faded, replaced by a strange, flat calm. He turned his head slowly and looked at us, his blue eyes seeming to stare right through us. ‘Over there,’ he said, his voice low and clear. He pointed with his other hand, at the far corner of the graveyard. I followed his tiny finger and froze. It was pointing directly at my grandmother’s grave, the one with the ornate angel statue. Grandmother had passed two years ago, and I hadn’t been back here since.

The air in the car seemed to drop ten degrees. I could hear my own heartbeat. Toby lowered his arm and looked at me, and then at Lena, and then at my mother. He smiled, but it was not a child’s smile. It was the smile of someone who knows a secret. ‘He’s here,’ Toby said. ‘PJ said to say hi.’

My stomach lurched. PJ was the nickname my grandmother had for my brother, Toby’s father. PJ had died six months ago, in a motorcycle accident. No one had called him PJ since she was alive. We never used that name, not even in memory. My mother gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. Lena’s face went white. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and a wave of primal fear washed over me.

Toby giggled, a sound that was too high and too sharp. ‘He wants to play, too,’ he said. ‘He says the babies are lonely. He says we should come and sit with them.’ He reached for the door handle again, his little fingers wrapping around it. My mother lunged, pressing the child lock. The click echoed in the silence. Toby looked at the locked door, then back at us, and for a moment, his face was that of a stranger, ancient and knowing.

‘You can’t keep them waiting,’ he said, and then his eyes rolled back in his head, and he slumped against his car seat, fast asleep.

We never spoke of it again. We drove straight home in silence, the only sound Toby’s soft breathing. But I know now that some graves are not content to hold the dead. And some children see things we’ve long forgotten. The graveyard still stands on that lonely road, but I’ll never drive past it again. Not on Halloween, not ever. Because I know what waits there, in the dark, waiting for a child to come out and play.