“What could possibly go wrong?” I ask Jen. She gives me a nervous smile and shakes her head. I can tell she doesn’t want to be here, but I don’t care.

“Don’t even say that, Clara! People who say that always end up dead or worse, they’re friend does. I don’t want to be the one who dies because you choose to say something stupid like ‘what could possibly go wrong.’!” Jen is hyperventilating now and I laugh as I grab the duffel bag with shovels, pickaxes, and a book of spells that someone on our soccer team gave us.

“We’re just doing the stupid initiation dare, Jen. It’s not like we’re actually raising the dead. Look, if you want to back out, go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.” The soccer team would kill me if I backed out of another initiation dare, or at least never let me join the team. It wasn’t like this was the worst thing they’d made someone do, either. Digging up a grave and chanting some random Latin words was hardly something like stealing a Taser off of a cop or stealing coach’s cigarettes and replacing them with candy cigarettes. Jen doesn’t move to go and I smile.

“Just help me dig, yeah?” I ask her. She nods, pulling one of the shovels out of the bag and she takes the first shovel-full of dirt out of the grave. We officially start the only illegal thing that I’ve ever done in my life—digging up the grave of someone who’s been dead for 100 years.

Three hours and an enormous pile of dirt later, Jen pulls me out of the six foot deep hole where the grave was. I wipe my dirty hands on my shirt and pull the spell book out of the bag. I flip it to the page with the incantation on it and start to read out loud.

“Anima mea tua sunt, tuum est corpus meum, cuncta haec anima et reversus est, ponite haec anima denuo. My soul is yours, my body is yours, bring this soul back home, fix this soul anew.” I repeat the incantation two more times and Jen pours a water bottle of holy water over the broken bones of what used to be a living, breathing man. When the bottle is empty, Jen throws it back into the duffel bag and shivers. I realize that the air seems cooler now than it did before the spell, but I pass it off as some stupid paranoia.

“There, can we cover the bones up now?” Jen asks, rubbing her arms to heat herself up. I pull out my cell phone and take a picture of the bones. After making sure that I have the evidence of what we did, I nod my head. Just as we step near the hole with our shovels, the bones jerk in the grave. Jen and I jump back from the hole and watch it sit up. I hear Jen scream and watch as the skeleton pulls itself out of the dirty grave and wraps one skeletal hand around Jen’s ankle. Now, we’re both screaming so loud I’m surprised more of the skeletons don’t wake up. Jen collapses next to the skeleton.

I stumble away screaming as its hands push through the fabric of her shirt and I watch little droplets of blood explode into the air, splattering like red paint on the skeleton’s pale white bones. I watch as her screams die out and as her guts are pulled out of her stomach like candy from a piñata. The skeleton covers itself in the blood from her stomach, draping the small intestine around its neck like a pearl necklace and staining the bones with red.

I turn to run, tripping over my own feet until I fall to the grass. I hear the sound of ripping flesh so loud against the quiet of the night and feel the warmth of tears spilling down my face. Just as I’m about to get back on my feet, I hear the sound of the skeleton standing. Spinning around, I face the skeleton, watching it walk toward me in a slow lope. Another scream tears through my throat and I fumble for my cell phone desperately, pushing my feet so I’m scooting farther away from the thing as I get my phone out of my pocket.

I hit 911 with my finger, trying hard not to drop the phone as I shove my feet under me. I hear someone on the other end of the phone and I’m about to tell them where I am when I feel cold fingers wrap around my wrist. I scream and drop the phone, tearing my hand away from the skeleton.

Suddenly, pain tears at my neck and head and I fall to the ground, my hands clutching my neck, where they become covered in sticky blood. Then the skeleton’s on top of me. I try to push it off, but I can’t even move it a centimeter. Pain, bright and white-hot flares in my arms. Its face is covered in blood, mine and Jen’s, and I scream louder than ever when its teeth sink into the muscles in my upper arm. I keep screaming when its face leers in front of mine and I look straight through where its eyes should be to the inside of its skull.

One of my arms finally starts to work and I push my fingers into both eyes sockets. Wrenching my hand, the skull pops free from the rest of the body and I fling it off into the dirt. The skeleton doesn’t react at first; it just keeps trying to attack me. Finally, it realizes that it’s missing something and launches after the skull like a dog after a bone.

I pull myself to my feet, wincing at the pain that erupts in my arm, legs, neck, and head, but start running. I run faster than I thought possible, but it’s still not enough. I hear the sound of it launch off of the ground and wince, knowing that it’s going to tackle me. Fire burns down my spine, the only way I can describe the pain of your spine bending unnaturally and your ribcage shattering on the ground. The boney hands spin me onto my back and are pushed into my gut.

More pain, pain worse than anything I’ve ever felt, blossoms to life in my stomach and I scream again. I watch as he pulls my guts right out of my body and scream louder when he yanks them in half. My screams stop being loud when I can’t force enough strength out of me to scream anymore and the last thought that runs through my head is the words that I said to Jen before we started this. What could possibly go wrong?