Cracked Pastels and Hollow Hunts [Wraith]
Out in the churchyard field behind the old brick chapel where the grass grows patchy and the stones lean like they’re tired of remembering names,
The Sunday school crowd spills out with plastic baskets and squeals, chasing pastel bait tossed by adults who never notice how wrong the air feels, how off the sky seems in its faded frame.
Somebody’s mom is laughing too loud, already filming the chaos in vertical blur, while the pastor stands with his paper cup of coffee,
Talking about resurrection and hope, not bothering to look down and see the way the ground itself seems restless, seams cracking softly.
The plastic eggs shine like cheap gemstones scattered through the brittle green,
Pink and blue and yellow shells winking from the roots of gravestones, the whole scene trying too hard to look clean.
But there are others, tucked closer to the shadows by the iron fence,
Not quite the store-bought sort—painted in shades that don’t show up on any craft aisle, colors that make your eyes tense.
Their surfaces are just a little too smooth, a little too cold when fingers close around them with that greedy little thrill,
And when you shake them, they answer with a weight that doesn’t sound like candy, more like something that’s been grinding its teeth still.
Little Tommy dives behind the angel statue with the chipped wing, spots a strange egg tucked in the crook of a root like it grew there from the tree’s regret,
Painted a faint, sickly lavender with hairline veins running through, as if it remembers every secret this yard won’t forget.
He laughs, calls dibs, holds it up like a trophy, expecting chocolate coins or gummy worms that dye his tongue,
But the thing vibrates against his palm in a low, steady hum, like a throat warming up a song it has no business being sung.
Down near the rusted gate, Ellie finds a robin’s egg blue shell split along one side,
Inside, not jellybeans, but a fleck of something dark and wet that smells like burned soil and formaldehyde.
She frowns, wipes it on her dress, pretending it’s just dirt, just mold, just some weird old bug nest,
But when she blinks, she swears she sees tiny faces pressed against the plastic from the inside, begging the shell not to rest.
Parents shout directions—“Over here, sweetheart!” “Check by the tree!”—their voices bright and oblivious as stage lights blinding the cast,
Never hearing the thud-thud-thud rising underfoot, the muffled rhythm like too many hearts beating from the past.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, a teenager in a black hoodie leans against a headstone, scrolling on his phone and pretending he’s above all this pastel joy,
Yet even he goes a little still when he sees an egg roll uphill on its own, right to his boot, like the ground just delivered him a toy.
He picks it up, this one painted in stripes that seem to move when you don’t,
Thin lines zigzagging in patterns that knot your vision, like a maze with no exit, like a whispered, “Don’t.”He pries it open with a sigh, expecting a tiny plastic ring or stale gum no one wanted last year,
Instead, all he gets is a breath of cold that should not exist in spring and a voice that doesn’t ring in his ear but inside his skull, close and near.
We’re still here, it murmurs, not in words but in meaning, a pressure behind his eyes that makes him stagger,
The egg snaps shut on its own, and when he tries to drop it, his fingers lock, every tendon turned to jagged wire, every muscle a dagger.
Across the yard, two little girls fight over a speckled egg, yanking it like a wishbone until it cracks with a sound way too wet,
Not plastic on plastic, but something like cartilage giving up, like a knuckle dislocated in a losing bet.
Instead of candy, a puff of black dust spills into their faces, smells like old hospital sheets and rain trapped in concrete,
They cough, eyes watering, and for a moment they swear they see rows and rows of coffins under their feet.
The sun should be warm but it’s thin, stretched like it’s slipping behind some invisible cloud made of sighs,
Colors around the kids go slightly washed-out, except for the eggs, which stay vivid, sharp, and hungry-bright, like teeth behind eyes.
Every shell cracked in greed leaks just a little more of what’s buried down below,
Memories of bodies lowered to hymns and the way everyone left too quick, leaving the soil to glow.
A mother calls “Time’s up!” and they all line up to show off their haul, baskets clattering, old grass stuck to damp knees,
But as the children count their prizes, certain eggs keep shifting place, never staying at the number that should put anyone at ease.
Tommy finds the lavender one nested on top again though he swore he shoved it to the bottom,
Ellie’s blue egg, cracked open and empty a minute ago, now sits whole, unbroken, as if whatever was inside it has already chosen and forgotten.
When the kids leave, buckled into cars with sticky hands and sugar promises, the yard sighs into silence that feels a little too aware,
The eggs left behind still wink in the grass, some half-buried, some resting against stone mouths that never learned to speak their own despair.
At midnight, the shells that weren’t found split open without hands,
Spilling, not candy, but fragments of whispered prayers, fingernail scratches, scraps of burial bands.
Each pastel dome cracks like a rotten tooth,
Releasing flickers of faces, fragments of youth.
Out crawl small shapes that aren’t quite bones and not quite smoke,
They gather around the places where small feet stomped earlier, sniffing scent trails like some joke.
They remember being hidden every spring, not as a game, but as a bargain, a trade,“Let the children laugh,” the old caretaker used to mutter, “if they tread over us, maybe the digging stops, maybe the debts fade.”
But no debt really fades, it just waits beneath plastic shells and cheerful lies,
And this year, the arrangement feels thin, stretched, ready for something ugly to rise.
As the bells from the chapel strike three, the air turns the color of bruised petals and old ink,
The phantom shapes slip back into the eggs, satisfied for now with the tremor in the kids’ dreams when they think.
By sunrise, the field looks harmless again, dew shining on cheap grass and crooked markers,
Only a few suspicious parents notice the faint little handprints on their children’s bedsheets, darker.
The eggs go back into storage, plastic bag inside cardboard box inside church closet that always smells wrong,
Next year they’ll bring them out again, polish them with wipes, fill them with sweetness and one more venomous song.
Somewhere in the walls, the foundation creaks like a throat clearing before a sermon nobody wants to hear,
And beneath the flowerbeds, the ground hums lazily, counting down another restless year.
Easter Sunday wears its suit and tie and pretends it doesn’t feel the slow, patient clawing beneath its lace and stone,
But the dead know how holidays work; every time you bury dread in sugar and religion, you give it one more decorated shell, one more home.