Jimin pushed his way past a tree that was blocking his path, letting go of a branch that snapped backwards as it nearly hit Namjoon square in the face as he followed behind.

“Yah! Jimin - watch it,” scolded the older man, ducking as the leaves shook above his head.

“Sorry,” apologized Jimin without looking back.

The younger man was far too focused on the task in front of him, and Namjoon had to admit that it was difficult to find their way in the dark among the multiple, twisting paths of the gloomy cemetery. They passed by a particularly worn-down group of mossy gravestones, and Namjoon absentmindedly wondered if he and his friends were lost. As if to echo the young man’s thoughts, Jungkook emerged from the tangle of branches behind Namjoon, and set about questioning Jimin’s navigational skills.

“Hyung, are you sure you know where we’re going?” the youngest boy wondered.

“Uh, yes,” scoffed Jimin with an irritated laugh. “It’s just a little bit farther. Don’t worry, Kookie; I know what I’m doing.”

Namjoon couldn’t help but chuckle at Jimin’s self-assuredness. The graveyard was confusing, but even at night, it wasn’t particularly frightening. Namjoon thought that the scarier thing was that he had somehow allowed himself to get roped into spending a night in the old, abandoned cemetery with his two younger friends - especially when he had a perfectly comfortable, warm, and inviting bed waiting for him back at his apartment.

“Remind me again why I’m doing this?” asked Namjoon, crouching to examine one of the tombstones while the three young men were stopped.

“Because Jimin and I bet Jin that he couldn’t do more push-ups than both of us combined,” explained Jungkook. “But we lost, and the punishment was sleeping in the cemetery for an entire night.”

“That’s what this is all about?” chuckled Namjoon. “Push-ups? What are you guys - twelve?”

“Namjoon, I totally beat him last time,” defended Jimin with a small pout. “And if you were there, then you totally woulda been on our side - and that’s why you have to spend the night here with us, too.”

“Hyung, Jin totally let you win that time,” chortled Jungkook loudly. “We got tricked, you idiot.”

Jimin didn’t take too kindly to being teased, and he didn’t bother to collect the other two men before stomping away on the slightly moist ground.

“Hurry up, guys,” he ordered with a laugh. “Like I told you, we’re almost there.”

❧

After several more minutes of light walking - many of which Namjoon could swear were spent circling the exact same cluster of faded gravestones - the boys finally arrived at a large willow tree that stood in the center of the outdoor complex. There were a few errant graves that almost reached the weeping boughs of the tree, but the stone markers stayed mostly separate from the umbrella of leaves that gently swept just over the ground.

Namjoon plopped down on a bench made from a large piece of tree trunk that looked like it had once belonged to a dark-colored oak, and looked around at the stars that were partially blocked by the thin, gathered branches. He wasn’t feeling frightened at all by their admittedly morbid surroundings, but he’d seen Jimin jump on several occasions when Jungkook’s voice had cracked somewhat nervously just a little too close to the older man’s ear after they’d entered the cemetery. The walk to the tree seemed to create an air of worried tension in both of the two younger men, and Namjoon secretly suspected that the real reason they had asked him to come along was for protection from whatever angry spirits the two boys were worried about encountering.

But Namjoon, for one, was completely unfazed by the graves that encircled their haven beneath the tree. Beyond being slightly annoyed at the fact that he had been dragged along in the first place - most likely to listen to Jimin and Jungkook tell ghost stories in an empty cemetery - he wasn’t afraid at all of running into anything unusual.

“We should tell some scary stories,” suggested Jungkook giddily.

Right on schedule.

Namjoon opened his eyes, which had been closed, and swung his feet over the back of the log bench so that he was hanging upside down as he looked at his friends.

“What kind of stories do you know?” he ventured somewhat skeptically.

“Do you doubt my prowess as a professional scary story teller?!” teased Jungkook incredulously. “Namjoon, I am very offended.”

“Alright then, big guy. Let’s see what you’ve got,” challenged the cunning older man.

❧

Jungkook wove an elaborate tale of vengeful ghosts and star-crossed lovers - ending with the twist that the woman had been dead the entire time, and the spirits that had tormented the man throughout their affair were actually trying to warn him of his girlfriend’s plot to murder him with the same knife that she herself had been killed with.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” complained Jimin. “How would a ghost use a knife in the first place?”

“I dunno; she uses her ghostly powers to fling it at him without even touching it,” offered Jungkook. “Jeez, Jimin; use your imagination.”

“I’m not wasting my brain power on coming up with your own story’s details for you,” rebuttaled Jimin. “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

“I thought it was a pretty good story,” Namjoon chimed in. “At least it had an interesting ending.”

The oldest man had descended from his lazy perch on the bench made out of an old tree, and was now swirling his fingers through the leaves on the ground. He picked the dead foliage away from the fresh blades of grass, crushing the dry fibers between his slender fingers.

“Thank you, Namjoon,” said Jungkook dramatically. “Finally someone appreciates my genius.”

“Don’t get too cocky,” warned Namjoon. “Jimin is right, too; there were some glaring plot holes. Why did the ghost want to kill that poor guy in the first place? He never did anything to hurt her, did he?”

Jungkook shrugged.

“Sometimes ghosts just want to brutally murder people,” he sighed, apparently accepting this statement as another one of the unfortunate yet unavoidable facts of life. “It can’t be helped.”

“You’re really ing weird sometimes - you know that?” giggled Jimin.

“Yeah, but that’s what makes me fun to be around,” countered the younger man. “Besides, I totally did more push-ups than you when Jin and us were-”

Jungkook’s self praise was cut slightly short by a muffled rustling that came from the leaves to their left. Suddenly, the willow tree felt less like a protective blanket and more like an etheral prison, leaving the three men vulnerable to the torment of whatever was making noises in the brush.

“Did you guys hear that?” whispered Jungkook.

Namjoon certainly had, and the two pairs of wide eyes that reflected darkly back at him told him that both of his companions had, too. He swallowed noisily as he tried to compose himself, certain that there was nothing to be worried about.

“Probably just the wind,” he chuckled, trying to lighten the suddenly dark mood.

“You really think so?” squeaked Jimin.

It was Jungkook who nodded fervently in response, causing his messy mop of hair to bounce in the dim moonlight.

“That must be it,” the youngest agreed with forced relief. “It’s just the wind making a-”

❧

The youngest man was interrupted again by the same soft swish of branches coming from his side. It was coming from slightly more to their right now, but it sounded just as close as before. Namjoon felt the hair on his neck stand up, despite the fact that he was still telling himself there was absolutely nothing to worry about.

The three boys had taken no flashlights, as part of their punishment for losing the push-up bet was apparently forgoing all sources of light but the moon, which was luckily rather full and bright. It wasn’t enough to make out small details, though, and as they all looked toward the source of the noise, no one saw anything besides a few swaying branches - and those really could have been the result of a gentle breeze.

“Someone should go see what it is,” mumbled Jungkook quietly.

“Well, why don’t you?” prodded Jimin, the fear still evident in his eyes despite the inadequate lighting.

“Nobody has to check it out,” consoled Namjoon quickly. He had seen how large the youngest’s eyes widened when Jimin suggested that he investigate the source of the mysterious noise. “Let’s head out the other way just to be safe, and we can find somewhere else to sleep.”

“Hey, that’s no fun!” pestered Jimin. The initial shock had worn off by this point, and the young man was back in one of his taunting moods. “We can’t let Jungkook get off the hook that easily.”

Namjoon looked at the youngest man, who shifted uncomfortably as he struggled to decide if it was more preferable to be labeled a coward or get attacked by a likely disgruntled, possibly homicidal ghost. Wary of putting his friend in unnecessary danger - even if it was all only imaginary - Namjoon stood up and started moving in a direction away from the rustling leaves. Jungkook and Jimin followed after him, and before they knew it, all three men had burst out from beneath the cover of the tall willow and were moving swiftly across the lawn of the graveyard without looking back.

Namjoon found a new place to rest for the night, and sat down heavily on the grass. They were now at the base of a small hill, the top of which he could see was peppered with yet more ancient gravestones. There were bushes to Namjoon’s left and an open dirt road to his right, and he relaxed against the gentle slope of the grassy knoll before looking up at his two younger friends.

“I’m going to bed,” he informed them sternly. “Stay up and freak yourselves out if you want, but don’t bother me unless it’s an emergency.”

Jimin nodded, and Namjoon closed his eyes. The oldest man had calmed down considerably since leaving the rustling willow behind, and the crash from his adrenaline rush was making Namjoon incredibly sleepy. He figured it would be best to stay close to his friends just in case they needed something, but didn’t see any reason why he shouldn’t try to get some shut eye while they worked themselves up and talked about ghosts.

Namjoon felt his breathing slow as he drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

❧

He woke up some hours later with Jimin shaking his shoulders roughly.

“Namjoon, wake up,” begged Jimin.

The older man fluttered his eyelids wearily, mumbling incoherently as he looked up to see Jimin’s worried face, which was partially blocked out by the full, bright moon behind him. The backlighting effect made the younger man look more like a silhouette, and it was only when Namjoon sat all the way up and turned his friend’s face into the beam of moonlight that he truly saw the panic in Jimin’s eyes.

“What’s going on, Jimin?”

“It’s Kookie. He-”

Jimin was interrupted by yet another brushing noise; this one louder, and in the shrubs directly to their left.

“,” swore Jimin. “Come on; we gotta get out of here.”

He grabbed Namjoon’s hand and pulled the latter to his feet, dragging him away from their now-vacant spot on the hill. Namjoon looked all around, but didn’t see Jungkook anywhere as he and Jimin wove through grave markers and past small mounds of dirt, their path lined on either side by more bushes and grass.

“Jimin, where is Jungkook?” asked Namjoon again as he stopped short, almost pulling Jimin backwards when he did so.

“I… I don’t know,” admitted Jimin hastily. “After you had been asleep for a while, the noises started up again, and Jungkook said he wanted to check them out… So I let him go, but then he didn’t come back, and he hasn’t been here for, like, twenty minutes, and-”

“Okay, okay.” Namjoon cut off Jimin’s breathless sentence with a sharp wave of his hand. “So we need to find Kookie. I’m sure he’s just lost, and trying to find his way back. We should stick close to the hill where we just were so he has some idea of where to find us.”

At this suggestion, Jimin shook his head adamantly “no,” and Namjoon pressed him to elaborate.

“We can’t go back there, Namjoon,” argued Jimin. “Didn’t you hear that thing in the bushes?”

“Yeah; it was probably a ing squirrel or something,” speculated an angry Namjoon. “We’ve been getting freaked out over nothing the whole night.”

He turned to head back to where he had been sleeping only a few short moments ago, but Jimin hastily latched on to Namjoon’s left arm and pulled him farther in the other direction.

“We are not going back there,” he grunted.

Namjoon was quite a bit taller than Jimin, but the younger man more than made up for his height in strength. He dragged Namjoon backwards as the latter protested loudly, saying that it was more important to locate their missing friend than waste time avoiding some silly imaginary ghost. Only when they were safely hidden in a large rhododendron did Jimin finally let go and speak.

“It’s not a ghost,” muttered Jimin, his eyes shifting rapidly as he checked for signs of danger. “I saw… well, I don’t know what it was, but I saw something moving in the cemetery earlier. It was stumbling around between the gravestones. And it looked almost… lost.”

Namjoon’s eyes grew wide. He didn’t know whether to be more worried about the possibility that someone else was in the graveyard with them, or the potential negative implications it had on Jimin’s sanity if the younger man was just seeing things.

“I didn’t say anything earlier, ’cause I thought maybe it was just a shadow, y’know?” continued Jimin shakily. “But I saw it again just now when we were running. Someone was walking around all hunched over.”

❧

Jimin’s voice was coming out breathy and fast, but Namjoon still didn’t know if he believed the young man. He was sure that Jimin had seen something, but part of him wanted to believe that it was nothing more than a trick of the light; a random shadow amplified by Jimin’s tendency to jump to conclusions, and fed by his overactive imagination.

“Jimin, did you ever stop to think that maybe that was Jungkook trying to find us?” sighed Namjoon exasperatedly.

That hypothesis seemed reasonable enough to him; after all, wouldn’t their lost friend be wandering, possibly disoriented and afraid, as he searched for the place where he last remembered being? Jimin didn’t seem swayed by the logic, though, and insisted that he and Namjoon stay away from any shambling, unfamiliar figures until they could locate Jungkook and leave. Namjoon agreed to go looking for their friend, and the two men set out down an eerily dim path that was next to the bush they’d been hiding in.

“Jungkook?” called Jimin softly.

His voice was still audibly trembling, so Namjoon squeezed the younger man’s shoulder in support as they continued walking along the dusty path.

“Jungkook?” repeated Jimin. “Are you there?”

The boys were answered by nothing but the wind, and a gentle breeze offered little in the way of assistance when it came to finding their missing friend.

Suddenly, Jimin pointed to a mausoleum that loomed largely ahead in the distance. He explained that he thought maybe Jungkook had been attracted to the structure while the poor boy was lost and wandering around, and suggested they check it out to see if they could find any sort of sign left by the younger man. Namjoon agreed that the tomb looked distinctive, so it was likely that Jungkook had seen it, too, and could have been using it as a hideout or landmark. The men crept quietly up to the crypt, cutting through the dense layer of fog that had started to accumulate as the morning drew ever closer.

“Kookie. Hey, Kookie, are you here?” whispered Jimin as they approached the mausoleum.

Surprisingly, the door to the tomb was wide open, and Namjoon could just barely see the outlines of several stone coffins that lined the aging, cobwebbed walls as he squinted into the dark abyss. There was no discernible sign of Jungkook, but Namjoon thought that he heard a small scraping sound coming softly from inside of the burial chamber.

“Should we go and check it out?” gulped Jimin, nervously tugging at the hem of his own shirt.

“I guess it wouldn’t hurt,” agreed Namjoon. “Just to make sure, you know…”

❧

The older man stepped cautiously and gingerly toward the swung-open door. The metal bars that should have been closing it were still intact on their hinges, although Namjoon thought they looked terribly rusty and in ill repair. Obviously nobody regularly visited this particular tomb anymore, because it was dank and uninviting on top of being broken into. The interior looked like it was probably home to a lot of parties thrown by the local rowdy teenagers, as broken bottles and burnt-out cigarettes carpeted the dusty floor.

“Jungkook,” Namjoon mumbled as he took a step inside. “If you’re in here, then please come out now. We’re going home; Jimin’s getting creeped out.”

“Am not!” argued Jimin from the doorway.

The younger man clung to the arch of the door frame, unwilling to venture any farther inside. Although this only served to prove Namjoon’s point, Jimin was adamant about staying safely outside of the crypt. Namjoon turned his back to his scared friend as he peered into one of the deeply shadowed corners.

“Namjoon!”

Creeeeeek.

The older man whipped around, just in time to see the metal door swing decisively shut on its squeaky old hinges, separating him from a very shocked-looking Jimin, who immediately started to rattle the bars. The door of the mausoleum shuddered and squeaked, but the rusted steel bars stayed stubbornly sealed.

“Jimin, what are you doing?!” yelled Namjoon. “Why the hell did you lock me in here?”

“It wasn’t me!” blubbered the younger man. “It shut on its on; I swear, I swear!”

“Well, what am I supposed to do now?” grumbled Namjoon.

The door certainly didn’t look like it was going to open, and although Namjoon had a clear view of Jimin through the wide metal slots, the portal reminded him a little too much of a jail cell for him to feel comfortable being there. Not to mention he was trapped with a bunch of old corpses - which, while Namjoon didn’t believe they posed any real threat to him on their own, didn’t do much to help calm the chilling atmosphere.

❧

Namjoon glanced up, and immediately noticed a figure emerging from the loosely-knit fog.

“Jungkook?”

The sound of Namjoon’s voice caused Jimin to nervously turn around, and he started waving frantically at the shadow, which had stopped before it fully emerged from the mist.

“That looks like him,” Jimin whispered over his shoulder. “Why the hell is he walking away?”

Indeed, the dark form had started to drift out of the men’s already limited field of vision, and before long they had lost sight of the vaguely Jungkook-shaped, blurry shadow. Jimin hopped off the steps leading up to the closed door, and started to chase after the figure while Namjoon was left stranded in the crypt.

“Jimin!” called Namjoon, desperate for his companion.

“Don’t worry, Namjoon; we’ll get you out of there,” came Jimin’s voice from somewhere deep within the darkness.

Namjoon waited for what felt like several minutes, craning his neck and squinting his eyes in a poor attempt at getting a better view of either of the people wandering in the fog. He couldn’t see the figure they had hoped might be Jungkook, and he’d lost track of Jimin completely as well when he slowly stepped back from the firmly shut bars, muttering curses under his breath about being left to rot with a bunch of dead people.

The young man examined the tomb he was trapped in, and noticed that it was in even greater disrepair than he had first assumed. There was a large hole in the ceiling where a section of the mortar and stone had crumbled away, revealing a sliver of patchy moonlight that cascaded over the large chunks of rock that piled up in the dim corner. The light of the moon was just barely bright enough as Namjoon climbed on top of the rubble, thinking that perhaps he could find his way out, leave the tomb behind at last, collect his two friends, and get the heck out of the cemetery. He still wasn’t frightened - or at least not as much as both Jimin and Jungkook appeared - but Namjoon felt that they had unquestionably overstayed their welcome, and was ready to call off the bet and take whatever consequences Jin decided it fair to dole out.

“Stupid kids wrangling me into a punishment for a push-up contest that I didn’t even have something to do with…” grunted Namjoon huskily.

He was trying to scale the wall with the assistance of the curtains of ivy that hung over the edges of the hole before they spilled onto the cold, stone walls of the mausoleum. Just as he was about to reach out of the hole in the crumbling, cracked ceiling, Namjoon lost his footing and came tumbling to the floor with a huge puffy cloud of dust. Coughing, he righted himself, and was about to try to climb out again when a noise came suddenly from behind him.

Scratch. Scratch.

The sound itself reminded Namjoon of hard rock being chiseled, although it was more like something had been rubbing against the rough stone floor. He looked behind him to see nothing out of place, and turned his attention back to the hanging wall of ivy.

Scrape.

The two short bursts of sound had been something that Namjoon was willing to disregard. He believed that such noises could be attributed to rats scurrying around the loose rocks. But in this instance, the scrape was much, much longer - and Namjoon theorized that it could only be produced by something being deliberately moved.

Not only that, but the sound was quite loud, which suggested that it had been made by something that was too heavy to be knocked over by even a large rodent.

❧

Namjoon abandoned his goal of getting out of the crypt for the immediate time being, and instead diverted his energy toward figuring out what was making the strange noise. He walked to the opposite end of the room, sweeping the floor with his eyes as he went. There was still nothing there that was obviously making noise, so when Namjoon reached the opposite darkened corner, he focused intensely on the hard-to-see shadows.

His back carelessly turned to the rest of the room, Namjoon examined the pile of rocks on the floor directly in front of him. It was very nearly impossible to see, but the young man didn’t think any of the stones looked like they had been recently moved.

I’m just freaking myself out.

Namjoon turned around to head back in the direction of the opening in the ceiling.

Of course it’s just some of the loose rocks crumbling. This place is a mess; I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t collapse on me before I can get myself the hell out of here.

As he was walking back to the other corner of the mausoleum, something caught Namjoon’s eye that he hadn’t noticed before when he came in. One of the coffins was askew in its place in the row of small chambers lining the walls, and the stone lid of the casket looked like it was open enough so that somebody could crawl into the space the body was housed if they were to have such a morbid inclination. Namjoon ran his fingers over the decorated top, and couldn’t help but wonder if he could see the corpse resting inside. The thought of actually looking at a dead body disturbed him, but in the end Namjoon’s curiosity won out, and he peeked past the pushed-aside lid into the coffin.

What the-?

The casket was totally empty. Where there should have been a pile of debris and bones, there was only a box of open air and a little bit of swirled-around dust. There was no body at all in the entire walled chamber, though the dated plaque above it suggested that there definitely should be.

Namjoon’s mind drifted to the mysterious figure in the mist, and how it had stopped and listened to him and Jimin when they’d called out.

That’s ridiculous. My imagination is getting the best of me.

Namjoon’s hands were planted firmly on the slightly-opened stone box, and he was having a considerable amount of difficulty in getting them to let go so he could move back over to the pile of rocks.

Scratch. Scratch.

This time the sound came from almost directly next to him, and Namjoon spun his head around to look at another stone casket - which was thankfully still sealed - to his left. His eyes remained fixed on it as the lid moved a centimeter, revealing a thin slit of inky, stale darkness as the coffin started to slowly open.

❧

Namjoon stumbled backwards, trying to convince himself that it was a trick; that he had hallucinated the lid moving in his panicked state, because he was honestly starting to get more than a little scared at this point. Jungkook and Jimin still weren’t back, and Namjoon felt nervous about being in the tomb alone.

Scrape.

The lid of the second coffin peeled back more, and Namjoon thought he saw something moving below it. He hastily backed up even more, hitting something that was crumbly and dusty in the very middle of the room. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there a minute ago, and Namjoon sprang up without looking at the thing that was standing right behind him. He sprinted to the locked bars of the tomb, and started shaking and hitting them as he screamed at the top of his lungs for Jimin and Jungkook.

Scratch. Scratch.

A third set of scratches assaulted his already fretfully numb ears as Namjoon tried desperately to open the doors. The graveyard in front of him was desolate and empty, and he felt tears run down his face as he stared out into nothingness.

Scrape.

Something slithered around Namjoon’s thin ankle, and he felt the breath catch in his throat. The bony fingers gripped his leg tightly, and Namjoon swallowed as he looked down to see a rotting, yellow-fingernailed hand.

Poor Namjoon. Trapped and alone in a crypt with a big group of undead monsters, haha. I don’t know about any of you guys, but I have always loved zombies. And I mean all kinds of zombies. From the classic reanimated corpse in a desolate graveyard to the modern day, plague-infested walking dead ; )

I think the first zombie-related movie I was allowed to watch as a teenager was Zombieland, which was good because it’s really actually  a very funny comedy. So I probably wasn’t frightened by the zombies themselves, since I was way too busy laughing! Though I already really enjoyed the concept of zombies before actually seeing that film, so I don’t know what my parents thought they were trying to protect me from by not letting young me watch zombie movies. Maybe all the guts and gore? I’ve never really been particularly squeamish about stuff like that, though, so who knows? All I’m sure of is that I would not want to be trapped in a building with a bunch of decaying, undead corpses!