The nightly inhabitants of the house were playing cards in the dining room when they heard a creak on the stairs, breaking their focused silence.

“It can’t be…” The demon drawled.

“Oh dear, at this hour?” The ghost gasped.

“Quickly, we must hide!” The witch wailed.

The demon dove into the shadows of the tupperware cabinet. The ghost glided into the kitchen floor, now an invisible apparition. The witch whipped out her wand and, in the blink of an eye, became as transparent as the other two, watching the hall where a monster was entering.

“Waaaterr…” It rasped, terrible teeth glinting with metal and warning colors.

The creature shuddered slightly as it passed through the witch, a shaky hand reaching for the refrigerator door. It hissed as bright light turned its pupils to pinpoints, blindly reaching for the bottle of clear liquid and some other containers of food.

The way the monster ate was ravenous and illogical, even for its daytime standards. After gulping down the entire bottle of water and lazily throwing the container in a rough estimate of where the trash can was and missing by a lot, it prowled to an odd, box-like machine with its finds from the fridge. It added water and slid the unholy food choice, mac and cheese mixed with ramen and marshmallows, into the machine, carefully typing in a number.

After pressing start, the food began to turn about in the machine and cook. The witch saw the ghost quickly move out of the way as the monster sat on the floor.

“What is it?” The ghost mouthed to her.

The witch replied, “A human... you know, the daytime inhabitants? Only, this is the most dangerous kind: a teenager. My book of shadows says they tend to act in strange ways in the night...” She was proud to say that she had done plenty of research on the things that lived in the house when the sun was up.

A fast movement in the corner of her eye made her heart skip a beat. Looking back to the human, she realized that it had suddenly stopped the machine on its last second. Shifting back to slower, dazed movements, the human lumbered to the dining table.

A dreadful thought occurred to the witch at the same time she heard the monster mutter “wassallthishere”. She had left her tarot cards on the table!

Keeping up her invisibility spell, she tiptoed to the room to find... the monster making unusual noises as it picked up one of the cards. Laughter?

It had abandoned their food on the table and was focusing on stifling the snickers, practically doubled over. The witch looked over the human’s shoulder to see what the commotion was about.

There on the gold-painted card, was a skeleton brandishing a scythe over a field of bodies. ‘Number 13: Death’, it read.

“Mood,” the teenager kept repeating, pointing to the skeleton’s haunting grin. Taking a marker from a nearby desk, it drew a blue flame around one of the skeleton’s empty eyes. The human wheezed even harder, threatening to lose its midnight snack to an upturned stomach.

When it finally calmed down, the human finished its impulse-meal and carefully padded up the stairs, taking the tarot card with it.

“No, my favorite card!” The witch whisper-screamed when it left, her spell now unfocused in her anger.

“Do you wish for me to go retrieve it?” The demon reappeared, smiling his twisted smile. “I could give the boy night terrors until he is forced to return it…”

“Actually, I think that it was a girl human,” the witch cut him off. “The girls usually have longer hair than the boys-- but none of that matters.” She waved off the demon’s idea. “I can create a copy of the card for the next telling, and the human has already drawn on it.”

“What a horrible little thing,” the witch kept murmuring as wrappers and crumbs flew by them, into the waste bin they belonged in. “Can’t even pick up after itself.”

“Did I used to be like that? That nonsensical?” The ghost wondered aloud.

The demon was bored of their complaints, and knew that, with a blood-red sunrise greeting them, their time here was up. “Enough talk of it, tomorrow we will play games as always… human or no human present.”

Melting into the shadows once more, he said his farewells: “Bitter nightmares. Don’t let the humans bite.”

“Bitter ’mares,” the witch and ghost echoed, joining him in the darkness for the daytime folk to take over.

Today we are burying the ring for the third time. I don’t know how much longer I can take this. My crew looks at me with hollow gazes; they’ve been stuck with me and I’ve been stuck with them for...

Gods, let this be the last time.

The shovel in my hands holds the weight of the land. The soil beneath my bare feet is made of pins and shards. The sun is lava against my face. But the worst of all? The fiend hovering just a few inches from my face. It smiles—it always smiles—rotten gums and wretched teeth, a stagnant stench of mold emanating from its pores. It never leaves. It doesn’t move. It looms over me, shackled by invisible chains; the chains of my doom.

Gods, let this be the last time…

I dig up a hole large enough to bury a baby dragon. My palms are sticky, my face drenched. They all stare at me with glassy eyes only the dead should have. I don’t blame them. It is I who got them into this mess. I thought I could beat it. Curses, after all, are easily broken by those raised by a witch. I was wrong. So wrong. For the wealth of a lifetime, we were condemned in misery.

The soil is marked with blood from the battle of Athehorne. Hundreds lie beneath, bones turned to dust. This is what it wants. I just hope that this time the bloodshed will be enough. This land is considered the unholiest place of our known world. It should be enough. It has to be…

I finish up and drop the shovel. My heart is racing. Another try… Another decade of waiting… We are all bound to the curse, as am I to the shadow. Our punishment? To feel nothing but emptiness. Hunger that’s never satiated. Thirst that’s never quenched.

It’s been thirty years…

I kneel and place the ring in the middle as if it’s made of snowflakes. Now it’s my crew’s turn to do the deed… The entity smiles a little wider. It’s pleased…

My feet get covered, then my knees. Once the dirt reaches my waist I can no longer move. The hardest part are the shoulders. I’ve experienced it before but it doesn’t get easier… I wheeze and cough but the more I struggle, the more my tongue feels like sandpaper, the more my lungs feel on fire. The sounds become a muffled buzzing. I see and then I do not.

It’s all black now… It should be over soon. If I’m right, then this is my last breath.

Gods, let this be the last time…