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I’ve always thought the worst days are the ones you don’t see coming.
On those days that you let the anxieties find you, let them help you to spiral into panic, imagining every disaster — those days, you’re prepared for something to go wrong.
It’s the quiet days that blindside you, the ones where it’s safe and happy, and no one even considers a worst case scenario. That’s when it hits you the hardest. The difference between a situation you’re prepared for, and one you never saw coming.
Like a fire: If you're expecting one, you’ve got the extinguisher ready. You know what to grab, how to get your family out. But if you’re not, the best you can do is get out of the house and watch it burn.
#
The graveyard was never locked. The solar lights, planted there decades ago, still flickered stubbornly to life each night, a patchy, dutiful kind of glow, like the town itself was keeping one lazy, half-closed eye on us. Watching.
They lit our way just enough that we wouldn’t trip over the stones, and not enough to show us anything we didn’t want to see.
James had joked once about the irony of dying in a graveyard. It was, all things considered, safe.
It was also our shortcut home from Millie’s, safer than the main road, fewer cars, and it came without the risk of patrolling adults ready to cast their judgement and call our parents about underage drinking. Most parties happened at Millie’s because her dad had never been one of those adults, always cool with us drinking and unbothered by thirty drunk teenagers in his living room, as long as we cleaned up our mess and as long as we got home safe.
He’d drop us off at the gate, on the way to steer some of the others into his car, and tell us to watch our footing, and we’d stumble along the well-worn path, laughing. We were used to it, had done it enough times that we no longer whispered about ghosts, enough times that we knew the names of the people that lined the path, and enough times that we could recognise when new gravestones appeared.
The warmth of the summer day had faded by the time we left, and I had stolen Micha’s jacket to go over my thin dress despite his complaints. He’d slung an arm around my shoulder, laughing, told me he wanted it back, and I think I’d told him that it looked better on me. Regardless, we wandered through the stones, slowly, and nowhere near in a straight line — Jess was the only one who was approaching sober, and even she was wobbling.
James was ahead of us, I remember, mimicking someone else who had been at the party to make the rest of us laugh, drunk on Millie’s dad’s cheap beer. The others were with me, a little behind him, Jess and me with our heels dangling from our fingers, carefree and unbothered.
It was Amy who noticed them first. She’d developed a habit of saying hi to the new gravestones that appeared, introducing us and telling them that we meant no harm. It sounds weird, but that was just Amy, always looking to make new friends, even after they were dead.
The rest of us went along with it, regardless.
She dragged Micha off the path with her when she saw them in what had previously been an open patch of grass, crouching down so she could read their names.
“Weird,” Jess had said as the rest of us followed them, “they all look really old.”
And maybe we should have listened to that. Maybe we should have agreed that it was weird, and come back the next morning when we would actually be able to see them. Because she was right: they were old, weathered and moss-grown in a way that new ones shouldn’t have been. But we were young, drunk, and complacent after too many times of nothing happening, and none of us stopped before we made the biggest mistake of our lives.
#
It’s an astonishingly clear memory in my mind, even with the influence of the alcohol. Thinking back, I can remember Amy and Micha squabbling as they tried to get a phone torch on the writing. I can remember the warmth of Jess’ arm as we leant on each other, both of us laughing at James’ unhelpful commentary. And I can remember Amy’s triumphant huff as they finally sorted out the brightness and angled the light correctly, the way she shoved lightly at Micha before she read them out.
“Alright! Hello… Jessica… Balta... Mor— Morgrove?”
Jess snorted and gave her a shove, nearly overbalancing me as well.
“Not funny.”
But Amy didn’t laugh, and the expression on her face when she turned back to us — eyes wide and too bright, accompanied by fast breaths sucked between her slightly parted lips — cut through our laughter.
Jess stepped forward, grabbed the torch, and read it herself.
Standing slightly back from the group, I felt the coolness of the night hit me all at once, like ice spreading over my skin.
“Oh my God,” she said. “That’s... that’s my birthday. That’s my full name.”
“When does it say you’ll die?” The laughter had left James’ voice, he had pulled away from the stone, no longer touching it, even as he leant over to try and see.
“Uh, April. 28th. This year.”
There was a pause.
Micha swallowed audibly. “That’s a week today.”
“Yeah.”
For a moment, all I could hear was the sound of blood rushing in my ears, could only see the way the moonlight illuminated Amy’s paler than normal face.
I think I was the one to ask what the others said, even if we all kind of knew by that point: five stones, five of us, and Jess’ name on the first one? It wasn’t a hard connection to make. And we made it.
Amy’s date of death gave her until the end of October; James’ said July with no day; Micha’s was the 15th of September; and mine? Mine was different, giving me seven years, exact to the day, while the others only had months.
“Weird,” Micha said, trying to laugh, though his voice cracked halfway through.
“Should we… should we get out of here?”
“Yeah,” Jess said quickly. Her voice was thin, tight. No one argued.
“They’re not real,” Amy muttered, as if saying it out loud might make it true. “They can’t be.”
The walk back was a blur. I remember the silence more than anything, the feeling that each of us was holding our breath, like we were all afraid the wrong word might summon something. We stayed close, arms brushing, but the comfort was gone. Every rustle made us flinch. We didn’t speak.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I dropped my keys twice before I could even get the door open. I didn’t care — I just needed to be inside, behind walls, under blankets, somewhere the outside couldn’t reach me.
In my unnerved state, I forgot about the mirror. My mother had left it leaning against the hallway wall that morning, still waiting for a place to live. I tripped on the step, fell into the house and through the mirror. It cracked under my weight, shattered like spun sugar, and left glass scattered across the floor; I had to tiptoe through the mess, bleeding and breathless.
My mum was furious the next morning. Said I’d better buy her a new one before I left the house again. I barely heard her.
In the light of day, I was desperate to get back and see if the stones were still there.
#
Amy was already there when I arrived, on her knees in front of an empty patch of grass. James and Micha joined us soon after, confirming with their confusion what we had already noticed.
There were no stones.
There was not even any evidence left to suggest that there had ever been five stones.
The grass was untouched, not even our footsteps from the night before could be seen.
And Jess never joined us.
We found her, later on, lounging in her garden, shades on and a glass of ice water beside her. The epitome of peace.
“Hey!” she said, tipping her shades up to grin at us, “I was wondering when you guys would brave the sun, those hangovers must be pretty bad, huh?”
None of us had hangovers, we realised at that point, but their absence hadn’t even registered with everything else that was happening.
“Yeah…” Micha said, sinking down onto the grass beside her, “last night was pretty weird, huh?”
Jess remembered the party in perfect detail; remembered the start of the walk through the graveyard, including James’ mockery of whoever it had been, but she didn’t remember the gravestones.
She didn’t remember how scared she had been when faced with her own name.
With fewer answers and more questions, the four of us returned to the graveyard.
“She doesn’t remember.” Amy said, staring down at the still-untouched patch of grass.
“How can she not remember?”
“And the stones are gone.” Micha said, ignoring her question. He had one hand tangled in his hair and the other tugged at the bottom of his t-shirt, as if he could pull the answers out of the universe that way.
James scuffed at the grass with his foot. “Maybe it was a prank?”
We all looked at him. No one said anything, but he could read the disbelief in our faces.
“A really cruel, and unusual prank, but…”
“Then why doesn’t she remember?”
He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t, none of us did, but the date on Jess’ stone had been burned into our memories, branded in a way that couldn’t heal, and our only option was to wait and see if the 28th of April did bring the death it promised.
#
I’d love to remember everything we did that day, to dissect it and see if we did save her from something, but the truth is that most of it remains a painful blank.
Jess had wanted to go shopping, and we’d been too scared to deny her anything. I think she took advantage of that, even if she didn’t know why, made Micha carry her bag with a laugh, and we trailed her around the shops, feeling a little lighter with every one that we survived.
Lunch was fine. Not poisoned. Not contaminated.
There was nothing weird in the shops, and by the time we left, I think the four of us were starting to brush it off as a weird shared hallucination, a figment of our imaginations, and nothing to do with reality.
We were laughing when we came to the crossing.
It’s just outside the entrance to the mall, widely used, and it’s controlled by traffic lights. And we’d survived crossing it the first time, waited for our light to go green and crossed.
On the way back, we were almost fully across the road when a lorry seemed to appear out of nowhere. Hurtling down the road, well over the speed limit, and it didn’t stop for the red light.
Jess and Amy were the only ones still on the road, and she shoved Amy with a strength I didn’t know she possessed. Amy hit the ground, head first, and the lorry hit Jess, head on.
It kept going as well; went straight over her and left her crumpled like a broken doll.
As if she was a toy a child had thrown into the road and forgotten about.
We were all too shocked to even scream. Everything around us seemed to go silent for several long minutes — joining us in shock, or out of respect, I don’t know — and all I could hear was the blood rushing past my ears, and all I could see was that shadowy gravestone again, surrounded by the blood that was slowly pooling out from under her head.
Someone must have called an ambulance — it wasn’t one of us — and it arrived what seemed like seconds later. The paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene and loaded her up. Took her away.
The four of us were gently directed back into the nearest shop, given blankets to wrap around our shoulders, and told to wait until the police arrived. Sat there, shivering despite the warm day, and unable to get the image of her twisted body out of my mind, I didn’t think things could get any worse.
I was so, so wrong.
Amy never spoke again. She never even attempted to learn sign language, wouldn’t communicate anything other than yes or no. I think she blamed herself. For being the only one in the road with Jess, or maybe for being the one who made us stop to look at the stones in the first place, I don’t know.
The date on her gravestone might have been several months later, but we lost Amy as well that day.
#
The police promised to look into the driver, promised that they would find whoever it was and bring them to justice. But, later, when the four of us had huddled into Micha’s living room, curled up together on the couch, James admitted that he hadn’t seen anyone in the driver’s seat, despite it accelerating up a hill.
In the days afterwards, the discomfort seemed to settle over the whole town. The stoplights blinked out of time. The bakery forgot to unlock its door that morning.
The four of us stay inside.
#
I visited Micha at work on his date. He worked in a restaurant, had plans to work his way up the ranks to head chef, and was a pot washer to start out. He was the furthest away from the kitchen things, from the hot oil or the flames.
They kicked me out when the restaurant opened, despite my panicked pleas. I was only ten minutes down the road when the fire broke out.
He was the only one who didn’t escape.
I sat with his parents in the police station for the rest of the day. Answered the same questions over and over, and was finally told that he had been locked into the small office, from the outside.
Later, I would see the photos the firemen had taken after the fact, the ones that showed desperate scratches at the door, and the traces of blood where he had broken his nails in a desperate attempt to get out.
They promised again to find whoever was responsible and bring them to justice. But, I thought about the empty driver’s seat and wondered if there was actually anyone to find.
#
James drowned. He went missing, early September, never returned home after school, and they found his bloated body a week and a half later. It explained the lack of an exact date on his stone if nothing else.
Again, I was brought to the police station, but it was a different atmosphere. No longer questions about whether I had seen anything, now they were pointed: when was the last time you saw him? Do you know why he was near the river? Have you been down to the river recently? What were you doing on the day he disappeared?
Amy was subjected to the same questions, but they never got anything more out of her than a yes or a no.
The only insight I got into her mind after Jess’ death was the note she left me before she jumped off a bridge in the early hours of her stone’s date. I had already been on my way to her, desperate to prove that I could prevent at least one of them from dying.
She said she wanted to take matters into her own hands, didn’t want to spend the day cowering in fear.
I clutched that paper between my fingers until it ripped, sobbed under the unflinching gazes of policemen I now knew by name. And I told them, over and over, that I had no idea she was going to do this, that I had only been looking for her because I had a bad feeling.
She was buried with the other three, exactly where the stones had been that night.
I went to the funeral, and then I packed my bags and left. It seemed easier than tempting fate. It seemed easier than staying in a town that had already decided I was guilty.
#
But it’s been seven years now. Seven long, and lonely years, and I still hear the crack of the mirror when I close my eyes.
I’m back now, standing in front of gravestones that still do not look as weathered and old as they did that night.
The rest of the town has moved on — mostly, I can still feel eyes on me as I walk past people, can still hear their murmurs. They rebuilt the restaurant, sleek and sterile, as if Micha never screamed behind that office door. The flower shop still sells four white lilies in a bundle. The crosswalk lights still flicker when no one’s there.
They haven’t forgotten.
The barista gave me my drink on the house. I think she knows I’m not long for the loyalty card.
I’ve sold all my belongings, written my will, and I’ll sleep here tonight, curled up as close to them as I can get. All I have now are the clothes on my back, and Micha’s jacket. It lost his scent years ago, but it’s the one thing that I have left of them.
And if you’re the one to find my body, tomorrow morning, then bury me with them. Fill that final gap in the line of five and let me rest, finally.