Both Sully and Moulder stood up and stepped back. I quickly saw that the disturbance wasn’t limited to this area. On all sides, tombstones that lay flush with the ground were being nudged, then rocked… and then flung back, swiveling over their hinges to strike the abused earth with loud thuds, revealing yawning black cavities below.

I stared as more and more opened, the lids pivoting and banging into dirt, raising small dust clouds, until the cemetery hills were pocked with rectangular holes like a carcass pecked-over by neat ravens.

The nearest neighboring grave lay silent for an agonizing eternity that lasted all too briefly. Then a hand emerged… or something that may once have deserved the name.

While I stared, transfixed, the stone beneath me rocked once more, this time insistently.

“Well, bloodywarm?” Moulder sneered. “Gonna get out of the way? Or d’you want to join us the fast way?”

I turned to see that he and Sully had retaken their perches, climbing up the pedestal of the monument, more than two meters above the ground.

More hands were emerging from graves on all sides, followed by vague shapes that made me deeply grateful for the dark. The tombstone that I sat on received a bang from below that lifted one side several centimeters before slamming back down.

I suddenly found the will to move my arms and legs, scrambling to my feet and running past gaping crypts whose residents now emerged like implacable wraiths. Desperately, I dodged around crumbly, foul-smelling pits, evading clawlike hands that reached for me – whether in aggression or supplication I didn’t tarry to find out. I leaped for the pedestal and managed to get my arms over the stone lip, near the cold base of the statue. I was trying to swing my legs up when something brushed my left foot. I tried shaking it off, but a bony grip clamped down on my boot and began dragging me backward!

I seem to recall a sound leaving my throat. I would not be ashamed if anyone called it a whimper.

Suddenly, two pairs of chill hands seized my arms and yanked me upward. I felt a snap below, and soon thereafter found myself on my feet atop the pedestal, standing next to the statue itself, just under the benevolent arm of the sculpted eminence.

“Thank you,” I gasped, between hasty breaths.

This time, Moulder spilled no parts when he laughed. “Think nothing of it. That’s why the tribe has recents, like us, check out the surface before an advent. Older corpies don’t like surprises. Makes ’em grumpy.” He nodded downward, and I got an all-too good look at the entity who had tried to seize me, seconds before.