Story classification: Original fiction. This story was created for darkrecord’s Dreams & Premonitions archive and is not presented as personal testimony or a documented event.
Adrian’s recurring dream of digging a grave becomes real when he wakes with soil beneath his nails and finds his own obituary underground.
The dream always began with the shovel already in Adrian’s hands.
He stood beneath a dead yew tree in Fenwick Cemetery. Rain fell beyond the branches but never touched the ground around him.
At his feet was a rectangular hole.
Inside lay a small wooden box.
Adrian never remembered placing it there.
He only knew he had to bury it before the church clock struck four.
On the first night, he filled the grave halfway.
On the second, the soil reached the lid.
On the third, someone inside the box knocked.
Adrian woke with dirt beneath his fingernails.
He lived almost five kilometres from the cemetery. His doors were locked, his shoes dry and his bedroom carpet clean.
The soil was black and cold.
He washed his hands and tried not to think about it.
The following night, the knocking became louder.
“Please,” said a voice inside the box.
Adrian recognized it.
It was his own.
The clock struck once.
He pushed soil into the grave.
Twice.
The box shook.
Three times.
Fingers appeared through a split in the lid.
Before the fourth strike, Adrian woke.
Mud covered his feet.
A cemetery leaf lay on his pillow.
Adrian visited Fenwick the following afternoon. The yew tree stood in the oldest section, exactly where it appeared in his dream.
The ground beneath it was undisturbed.
He brought a shovel the next morning.
At first, he felt foolish. Then the blade struck wood less than a metre below the surface.
The box was real.
Inside, Adrian found a newspaper clipping.
It was his obituary.
ADRIAN VALE, 38, FOUND DEAD AT FENWICK CEMETERY.
The date of death was the following Sunday.
He had four days.
Beneath the clipping lay his house key, his watch and a photograph taken from behind him as he slept.
Adrian contacted the police.
The officer who examined the box suggested an elaborate threat or prank. There were no fingerprints other than Adrian’s. The newspaper did not exist, and the photograph contained no recoverable metadata.
“Stay with someone for a few days,” the officer advised.
Adrian went to his sister’s apartment.
The dreams followed him.
Each night, he buried the box deeper.
Each morning, evidence of the cemetery appeared around him.
A worm in his shoe.
Yew needles in his hair.
A strip of rotting burial cloth beneath his tongue.
On Saturday night, Adrian refused to sleep.
At 3:40 a.m., his sister found him standing in the kitchen, holding a shovel she did not own.
His eyes were open.
He was whispering, “Before the fourth bell.”
She shook him awake.
Adrian screamed.
Mud covered the kitchen floor.
A trail of footprints led from the wall behind him.
Not the door.
The wall.
On Sunday morning, Adrian burned the obituary, smashed the wooden box and scattered the pieces in separate bins across the city.
He rented a room on the twelfth floor of a hotel.
No soil.
No cemetery.
No way to wander outside without passing cameras and staff.
He handcuffed himself to the radiator.
At 3:51 a.m., the church clock began to strike inside the hotel room.
One.
The carpet beneath Adrian’s bed darkened with moisture.
Two.
Roots broke through the floorboards.
Three.
The dead yew tree rose through the ceiling.
Adrian closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he stood in Fenwick Cemetery.
The shovel was in his hands.
The grave waited.
The box lay open beside it.
There was no newspaper clipping inside.
There was a sleeping man.
Adrian.
He wore the same clothes and the same handcuff around one wrist.
The sleeping Adrian opened his eyes.
“Don’t bury me,” he said.
Adrian dropped the shovel.
The church clock prepared to strike four.
“What happens if I don’t?”
The man inside the box looked toward the darkness beyond the tree.
Figures stood between the graves.
Hundreds of them.
Each held an open wooden box.
“You wake up,” the man whispered.
“And you?”
“I become the one who dreamed you.”
The fourth bell struck.
Adrian woke in the hotel room.
The handcuff remained secured.
The carpet was dry.
Sunday passed.
Then Monday.
His obituary never appeared.
The police closed the case.
Adrian returned home and tried to rebuild his life.
For several weeks, he slept without dreaming.
Then small things began to feel unfamiliar.
His sister remembered childhood events he did not.
His signature looked wrong.
The scar on his right hand had disappeared.
One evening, Adrian opened an old family album.
In every photograph, his face had been replaced by the face of the man from the box.
Not similar.
Identical.
At 3:56 the following morning, Adrian woke holding a shovel.
Dirt covered the bedroom floor.
A new wooden box stood beside the bed.
From inside came a frightened voice.
It belonged to a man Adrian had never met.
“Please,” the stranger whispered. “I only dreamed about you.”
Adrian looked at the clock.
One minute remained.
He understood then that the cemetery was not where people buried bodies.
It was where dreams buried their dreamers.
The church clock struck once.
Adrian lifted the shovel.
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