The Long Night

by Steve Vance

Morgan’s Point was a quiet, peaceful town tucked away from the rest of the world. People felt
safe there. The sheriff, Bill Mason, had spent most of his career handling small disputes and
the occasional petty crime. Nothing ever really happened — until one cold autumn night when
two grave robbers broke into the old cemetery on the outskirts of town.

They were looking for valuables buried with the dead — gold rings, family heirlooms,
anything they could sell. But instead of treasure, they broke open a coffin that was never meant
to be opened. Inside was no ordinary corpse. It was an ancient, withered body, sealed with
strange symbols and iron spikes. The grave robbers thought they’d found something worth
stealing — but they had just set free something far worse.

The next morning, Sheriff Mason was called to the cemetery. What he found made his stomach
turn. The grave robbers were dead, their bodies drained of blood, eyes wide open in terror. Dr.
Ellen St. James, the town’s young medical examiner, examined the wounds. They looked like
animal bites — two deep punctures at the neck — but they were too precise, too clean.

That same night, another body was found. Then another. All with the same wounds. The news
spread like wildfire. Fear took hold of Morgan’s Point. People locked their doors and shut their
windows tight at dusk, whispering about what could be out there. Some said it was a wild
animal. Others, mostly the older folks, remembered stories told by their grandparents — stories
about something buried long ago to protect the town.

Ellen was the first to say what nobody else dared to. She told Sheriff Mason that they might
be dealing with something supernatural. The sheriff didn’t believe it — not at first. But as the
attacks grew worse, he knew they had to find answers. He turned to a local historian, Mr.
Keller, who had spent his life studying the town’s old records.

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Keller explained that, more than a century ago, the town’s founders had captured a creature —
a kind of vampire, but older and more powerful than any European legend. They couldn’t kill
it, so they bound it in chains, sealed it in an iron-lined coffin, and buried it in the cemetery,
using special symbols and stakes to keep it trapped forever. The townsfolk believed that as
long as the coffin remained untouched, they would be safe.

But now, the seal was broken, and the creature was free.

Each night, the creature hunted. It was clever and cruel, moving through shadows and mist. It
could mimic voices and slip through the tiniest cracks in doors and windows. Families huddled
together, terrified of what they might hear scratching at the glass. Pets disappeared. The town’s
lights seemed dimmer, the nights longer.

Sheriff Mason, Ellen, and Keller formed a desperate plan. They needed to find a way to trap
the creature before it became too strong to stop. They studied the old journal Keller had found
— it described the monster’s habits and weaknesses. The creature had to return to its grave
before dawn or it would become weak and vulnerable to attack. Sunlight was its enemy.

One foggy evening, they set a trap at the cemetery. They used themselves as bait, staying out
in the open to draw the creature in. The hours crawled by in tense silence. Then, just before
dawn, they heard it — a low growl, like something between an animal and a whisper. The
creature emerged from the mist — tall, pale, with eyes that seemed to burn red in the dark.

A frantic fight broke out. Sheriff Mason fired his shotgun, but the creature barely flinched.
Ellen tried to keep the monster distracted, circling around the graves while Mason and Keller
forced it back toward its original coffin. The creature was strong, but the first rays of sunlight
were creeping over the trees, and it began to weaken.

With a final push, they forced the creature into the coffin. Keller muttered the old binding
words from the journal while Ellen nailed the iron spikes back into place. Mason doused the
coffin in gasoline and struck a match. Flames engulfed the coffin as the creature screeched,
shaking the ground around them. Then, slowly, the screams faded, and the sun rose fully over
Morgan’s Point.

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The nightmare had ended, but the cost was heavy. Several townsfolk were gone forever, and
the survivors would never forget the terror that had walked their streets. Sheriff Mason knew
the people would have questions — about the legends, about what they really faced. But some
things, he thought, were better left buried.

Ellen, exhausted but relieved, told him they would have to be vigilant. If the creature had
returned once, it could happen again. The town would need to remember the stories, the signs,
the ways to protect themselves. Some secrets, she said, shouldn’t be forgotten.

As dawn spread its warm light across the cemetery, the sheriff, the doctor, and the old historian
stood together, silent among the tombstones. They had faced the long night and survived —
but they all knew the darkness could return someday.

In Morgan’s Point, people would lock their doors a little earlier now, and parents would tell
their children tales of what lay beneath the earth — not just to scare them, but to remind them
that some evil sleeps only lightly, waiting for fools to wake it once more.

And so, after one terrifying, endless night, the town finally saw the morning sun — a fragile
promise that sometimes, light can win.