Hare has been sitting in an ambush for some time now.

His paws are cold and frost covered the tips of his ears. It's beautiful and dangerous. But Gothic Hare is not concerned with beauty at the moment.

The cemetery ghosts float past him as pale shadows, going about their business. And they have little to do on a cold night like this. To smell the traces of the living and if not to frighten them, at least to curse. Or wish some misfortune in their wake. You can't make out a word in the soundless clacking of phantom jaws anyway.

But there are no fresh traces, and the ghosts hover in frustration over the graves. By winter they turn pale. Without the living, they may disappear. They can become shapeless mists and drive travelers off the road for the rest of the Afterlife. That is why in the last days of autumn the cemetery is swarming with restless souls.

Yet there is still no sign of the deady.

‘And there won't be,’ comes a lazy voice.

Gothic Hare jumps at the suddenness. A hungry clatter of disturbed bare branches follows. The cemetery trees are restless, too. They, guardians of the dead, are accused of missing one. Moreover, if the deadies leave the grounds, what do they have to feed on then?

Gothic Hare knows that the thickest and best-fed of them grow right out of the graves. Their roots are firmly embedded in the deads’s bones and these will never rise again. Probably that is why the living plant something on the graves. Hare nods his head in understanding.

‘You are wasting your time freezing. She won't come back in that hullabaloo,' Vampire continues. ‘She may not be able to see anymore, but the dead don’t complain about hearing.’

It's true. The deadies in the graves grumble at the noise and stir restlessly in their coffins. The shrill laughter sounds again. Vampire sighs and squints at the widows with disapproval. Giggling and teasing each other, the old women take turns picking at the frozen ground with a shovel. From their hooked noses, whitish clouds scurry away with each breath. The restless ghosts greedy reach out their bony, pale arms for warmth.

‘Hopeless,’ grumbles Vampire, licking his fangs. ‘Just hopeless. Then again, there's no doubt valium in their blood, and I'm allergic to it...’

Next moment he disappears and Gothic Hare wants to disappear after him. There is still hope that the Empty Grave is not empty after all. This hope is as pale as the inscriptions on the old graves. Hare glances at the crooked tombstone, where the only remaining word - May - stands out orphaned. Everything rest has faded, crumbled, perished.....

The deady running away is half the trouble. But if there's nowhere to come back to...

Vampire pops up again. This time he is wearing a black shirt with the usual white polka dots. His hair is styled with something dark and wet, parted straight.

‘Blood?’ inquires Hare.

‘Hemp oil.’

Vampire smugly examines himself in Gothic Hare's eyes. Mirrors and thin ice of black puddles do not reflect him, alas. Only the eyes of the victims.

Or the friends of the Watcher.

‘Can't the deady use the other cemetery?’ asks Hare.

The first prickly snowflake falls ominous on his nose. As lonely, and as cold, as the deady who has left the grave.

‘Deadies are settled folk.’ Vampire adjusts the collar of his shirt, keeping his heavy blood-red gaze fixed on Hare. ‘They're not prone to moving. If there isn't a cemetery in place, she'll create one. Out of the living of course. You can't create dead out of anything else.’

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‘So what?’

’So what are we supposed to eat? Me, Night Watcher, the others? I can't dine upon the dead. I'm not an oak, sorry.’

Both of them squint with suspicion at the sullenly silent cemetery trees. The trees might add that they don't mind the living either, but they choose to keep wise quiet.

‘A deady doesn't come back alone. It's either plague or flood. Or worse, evacuation. That leaves the oldest, the toughest, and the most forgetful. And they run out fast,' Vampire takes another look at the old women.

‘Well, I'm going. Before we really gets to valium,’ he leaves the unfriendly branchy shelter between the icy maples. From them, grey wraithlike hoarfrost falls down in serene silence.

‘May I?’ Vampire pulls with gallantry the shovel from the widow's gaunt hands.

Some say empty graves mean a soon funeral. Well, very soon…

There is a crunch of dry roots, a moist squelch of soil and a squeal. Following the shovel, Vampire and Widow fall into the suddenly opened grave. Not a sound comes from the dark hole for quite some time.

‘Lucifers!!!!’ there is a heart-rending growl of Watcher who appeared to the noise.

‘What, again?’ awakes Deadly Root, all this time snoozing in ambush.

He was dreaming of a day, warm rain and rainbows. He rushes to roll from side to side to chase away the remnants of the nightmare.

‘Rutabaga!!!’ bursts from the grave the cheerful voice of Widow. ‘Throw the rutabaga in here!’

‘I'm not a rutabaga!’ squeaks Deadly Root outraged.

Sharp thorns of the graveyard rose stick out behind him and he has nowhere to escape. When he is pulled off the ground, again, he only changes his colour to an indignant inky and puffs up his cheeks. Whilst already rolling down the cold clay slope into the musty darkness, he hears the flicker of a lucifer. Root and the light reach the bottom at the same time.

The Empty Grave is crowded at the moment. But indeed, there is no deady in there. The rotten remains of the coffin do not conceal a single bone. Not a single omen, not a single sign of black magic. Only Widow's red cheeks stick out, beetroot-like, from beneath a pointy hat pulled down over her nose.

March? April? June? Root can't tell them apart. Her eyes glisten in excitement. Root seems that the old woman has somehow become younger. Kneeling one knee down, Vampire holds out to her the dirty shovel. In Root's eyes is flashing with white polka dots. Straightaway he gets covered with them too. Now it is flashing in everyone's eyes. Thank Dark, at that moment the lucifer goes out.

In its last flicker Root sees a narrow hole of a mysterious tunnel going into the lightless depths of the earth. Then a suffocating shroud of darkness covers everything. This darkness moves, sways and flies somewhere. Root realises that it is not the darkness, it is him. It's him swaying and flying, rolling over the cold blade of the shovel. Picked up from the bottom of the grave by Widow.

‘Tell May to come to the wedding!’ he hears a sinister happy old woman's voice. ‘I seem to have fallen in love again!’

With that, Root rolls into the tight abyss of the tunnel, where only a mid-sized rutabaga can slip through.

‘I'm not a rutabaga!’ he shouts again in despair.

In reply, comes the joyful laughter of Widow. It recedes right away and fades in no time into the distance. The hungry darkness of the tunnel whistles around and it lasts and lasts and lasts.

...