Don't Touch My Men - Helen Scott Page 0,23

screamed uselessly into the sky until my throat was stinging from the sensation.

A flock of birds decided that I was too weird for them and they flew away, launching from the tree tops with angry shouts, as though I’d disturbed their evening get together. Ignoring them and their caws of insult, I trudged through the cemetery to the grave I’d found before, the one with my grandfather’s name on it.

I plopped down on the grass with my back resting against the headstone opposite my grandfather’s, my gaze locked onto his name like I could will an explanation into being. As I sat there, the same magic as before was present, flowing through me, though fainter this time. It still didn’t stop my curiosity.

If I was going to be stuck in this nightmare of a place, then I was going to make the best of it, just like I did in the mirror realm. I may not have been able to save people while I was stuck at the asylum, but that didn’t mean I had to just sit still and do nothing.

I pulled on the new magic and pushed it into the ground where my grandfather’s remains would be. At first, I thought I’d misunderstood how the power worked, but then a bony hand punched through the surface from below. A terrified yelp escaped me at the sight. I’d expected a spirit, not a corpse.

When a head began to break through the disturbed soil, I popped to my feet and scurried behind the gravestone that I’d been leaning against. It wasn’t that I was super scared, or at least that’s what I told myself. I was just being cautious. I mean, who knew what was coming up out of there?

A head of dark hair appeared as the dirt shifted away. It was quickly followed by a face that looked like it belonged to someone who was much younger than a person who could be called a grandfather, let alone my own grandfather. It wasn’t like I came from a time with great skin care and hygiene.

The man struggled up out of the dirt, if he hadn’t been a corpse I’d somehow resurrected, I would have gone over to help him. I couldn’t quite bring myself to move from behind the gravestone that was acting as my shield though. Besides, I was too busy staring at one thing.

The stake coming out of his heart.

Two thoughts entered my mind at once. First, how had the stake survived the trip up from the coffin? Secondly, why was my grandfather staked?

We were a family of witches, even if my parents had refused to believe in it and cast me out. I knew that there was witch blood on both sides, and my parents had just been unlucky enough to not be born with any innate abilities. Although they probably thought they were the lucky ones, since they accused me of being devil spawn. Either way, I’d seen enough over the years and put together enough from what I’d found out about my family and the world of magic that I lived in to know that I wasn’t a random mutation.

Witches didn’t get staked though, so there was something else going on with this corpse, making me wonder if it just had the same name as my grandfather.

I continued to watch in horror as the corpse pulled the rest of its body free from the ground and finally looked around, its eyes landing on me. When he didn’t move to attack me, I slowly stood from my crouch and brushed myself off.

“How…how am I here?” the walking corpse asked. His eyes traveled from me to the stake in his chest, which was followed by a vague mumble of, “I remember.”

I waited, but I wasn’t sure what for. Maybe a sign that he wasn’t going to suddenly lose his shit and attack me? Or maybe a sign that he was capable of interacting with others? I mean, I didn’t know what to expect from a corpse that had crawled its way out of the ground.

My sign came when he said, “How did you manage to raise me with my stake intact?”

I startled briefly, surprised that this was the first question he would ask. “I don’t know. It just kind of happened.”

He looked me over, and I wasn’t as surprised as I should have been when his eyes went wide. Seeing a woman in a dress with the skirt torn away and her petticoats on display like