Scouring the Headstones

Guided only by the light of a smattering few lanterns that wobbled through the air, you trudged along to scour the headstones. Nocturnal insects buzzed their mourning song in the cool night air. The fog that swam around your ankles meandered between grand obelisks and the handles of earthen wedged shovels- like morbid edifices of their own.

Something groaned from a grave plot.

Holy shit- it’s real! Whatever monster you were hunting was not two feet from you! Startled, you shrieked and jolted away from whatever it was- incidentally alerting the rest of the hunting party to your discovery.

“Aah!” shrieked whatever was in the grave!

There was a man rooting around in a coffin- a living man, and an open coffin. Sure, he was squat and grim looking, but not a shred of decay nor evidence of the supernatural marred his blotchy complexion. 

“Oh.” Ida groaned, “Not you again…” 

Squinting in the light, he shielded his goggled eyes with an arm that was becoming a nice meal for a family of magots. His voice was a snippy croak: “Not you again, interrupting my work!”

“We are out here, hunting beasts-“

Waving a dismissive hand, she muttered. “Ah, do not pay mind to Ygor! He’s a freak- We don’t talk about him.” 

And you trudged on in solemn silence, one collective breath of rot held amongst the lot of you. “Grave robbers are good sign.” Keeping her voice down, your guide advised. “After midnight, they share pints with the undead.” That earned an amused chuckle from the rest of the Hounds…And there was you, too busy nervously creeping along and documenting your surroundings to derive any counsel or humor from this.

You could’ve sworn you saw a shadow flit between the spindly limbs of the trees. Your imagination, surely, was the source of that shriek- maybe an echo from the commotion before... But in this adrenaline laden moment of stillness, it might as well have been your heartbeat thumping in your eardrums…

What do You Do?