All characters are above 18 years old.

....

The autumn air hung thick and heavy over the Blackwood Cemetery, a place the local teens whispered was cursed. For Brad, Jarred, Carl, and Thomson, it was just another stage for their particular brand of nihilistic entertainment. They weren't delinquents in the traditional sense; they didn't steal cars or deal drugs. Their crime was a far more insidious one, a campaign of psychological warfare waged against anyone they deemed lesser, which, in their minds, was just about everyone.

Brad was the undisputed leader. Tall, with a cruel handsomeness that seemed to promise danger, he had a charisma that twisted loyalty into a weapon. Jarred was his lieutenant, a hulking presence whose intellect was as underdeveloped as his sense of empathy, but whose loyalty to Brad was absolute. Carl was the thinker of the group, a wiry, nervous young man with a penchant for the occult and dark things, whose mind was a library of unsettling trivia. Thomson was the follower, a round-faced boy desperate for the approval of the others, his laughter always a half-beat too late, his taunts a little too rehearsed.

Tonight's amusement was Carl's idea. "There's a story," he'd said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper as they huddled by the cemetery's rusted iron gates earlier that evening, "about Silas Blackwood. The town's first undertaker. Supposedly, he wasn't just burying people. He was… experimenting. They say he was buried with his most prized possession."

"A coffin full of gold?" Jarred had grunted, already imagining the ways to spend it.

"Worse," Carl had said, a glint of feverish excitement in his eyes. "A book. A grimoire. Supposed to let your soul… wander. Leave your body and walk as a spirit."

The idea had electrified Brad. Not the occult nonsense, but the potential. The ultimate prank. The ultimate power. To be somewhere you're not supposed to be. To do something without consequence. It was the pinnacle of their philosophy.

Now, under the sickly orange glow of a sodium lamp that flickered near the cemetery's oldest section, they were putting the plan into action. The grave was unmarked, a simple, sunken patch of earth overgrown with weeds, exactly as Carl's research had described. The soil was loose, easy to dig.

"Keep it down, you oaf," Brad hissed as Jarred grunted with effort, the shovel sinking into the soft earth with a sickening thud. …