Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges was pretty much the first thing Mireille De la Grange heard about after moving to Montreal. I should know, it’s the first place I took her to see. The cemetery is the largest in Canada, with 55 kilometers of graveyard and 65,000 monuments commemorating the dead.

Perhaps it’s not the first thing most people would show the girl they’ve known since childhood, especially with a bit of a romance budding over the years, but the cemetery really is a stunning sight. No expense spared for upkeep and beautification.

Mireille had moved to Montreal with her parents a year after I moved here. Both of us came from a small town up north. She and I both moved here so we could attend the University of Montreal, which neighbored Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges. I had started my schooling at the university a year before her and was overjoyed when she told me she’d be coming to study music at the school, which was her passion. The romance between us had been reaching new heights over the last couple years and, although it was moving slow because of our long-time friendship, I was contended to let it progress at whatever speed it needed to.

Before long Mireille joined a sorority. I was a little disappointed that she hadn’t chosen to live with me in my apartment, mostly at myself for being too afraid to ask, but integrating herself into university life would be good for her…or at least that’s what I had thought at the time.

Mireille’s sorority had a doubly rewarding form of hazing. Other than being officially accepted after the challenge was complete, the new-blood could also earn some money. Three of the girls—rich girls who had nothing better to do with daddy’s money—came up with an idea. If an initiate could stay in the cemetery until 3am—the witching hour—the girls who came up with the challenge would each give the recruit $100. If, however, the initiate stayed out until 3am naked, they would reward them $150 each instead as a bonus.

When she told me about it I only expected her to take the $300, but to my surprise she was going to take on the bonus challenge and do it naked! Most students were always scrambling for extra cash, and this seemed like an easy way to earn a respectable sum.

Mireille asked me to be there the night she went to the cemetery to meet the sorority girls, two run-of-the-mill busty blonds and a bitchy looking redhead who cared about nothing but looks and causing drama. They greeted me with disapproving side-long glances as Mireille and I rolled up in my old beater. As always, Mireille looked gorgeous. Her straight raven hair drifted just over her shoulders, contrasting with her perfectly pale skin and striking blue eyes. Mireille was easily better looking than any of the other three girls standing just outside the arching sepulchral gates. I wondered briefly why such a nice girl would want to live with these hussies.

Mireille gave me a nervous nod and we opened the car doors. “About time,” said the apparent leader of the trio, the redhead.

“I’m ready. Let’s do this,” said Mireille, wasting no time. The shy girl I knew was suddenly replaced with a determined woman, though I knew she was just putting on a brave front.

The fiery haired speaker—I never did learn their names—pulled out a wad of cash from her pocket and let Mireille count it. The amount was correct.

Mireille began undressing then. She started with her top, lifting it over her head and handing it to me. Next she slid out of her jeans so that only her undergarments remained. I couldn’t help but stare at her lithe figure.

“You can keep your cellphone on you,” said the blonde, handing a pair of cheap flip-flops to Mireille. “But nothing else. Take a selfie at 3am as proof, make sure we can see your tits in the picture for our Wall of Champions.” The blondes snickered.

At least the weather was warm enough to be comfortable. It was supposed to be a nice night other than the breeze that rustled the leaves of the trees around us.

Then it happened. Mireille reached around it unfasten her bra, laying bare her perky handfuls. Her nipples stood at rapt attention in the evening air. Next she slipped off her little black panties, exposing herself to the world. I was transfixed by her tight little butt. Mireille noticed my wandering eyes and gave me a coy smile. I glanced down to her shaven cleft and shifted to better hide the bulge growing in my pants. She seemed to enjoy my torment.

Mireille came close to me then and planted a tentative kiss on my cheek. I steeled myself and went for her lips instead as she started pulling away. The smell of her perfume in that moment and the fact that she was completely naked drove me crazy with desire for her. Our lips locked for what seemed like forever. Finally, after one of the blondes made a rude sound, we broke the embrace.

I was unashamedly hard now and the sorority hussies noticed. But fuck them, I’m only human. Besides, what guy in my position wouldn’t have had a raging boner!

Mireille turned towards the gates and, after a brief exchange with the other girls, walked into the graveyard gloom. We planned to be in contact all night, and at quarter after 3 I would be waiting at the gates to pick her up—with her clothes.

I should have never let her go. The events following our parting kiss will haunt me until my dying breath—and perhaps even after that.

It was just about 10:30pm when I got back to my apartment in the neighborhood north of the college. I received my first text from Mireille at 10:34pm. She was fine, she had said, and shortly after entering the cemetery had found a comfortable hideout away from potential prying eyes. We tried calling each other but for whatever reason it wasn’t working. Perhaps due to the vast canopies of the graveyard trees.

Even so, she and I were content to continue our conversation via text. Mireille had told me she was a crept out by the graveyard. She told me the shadows cast by the trees looked like long, grasping claws in the moonlight and the rustling of the breeze played tricks with her mind. I wasn’t too concerned. Graveyards were creepy, she was supposed to be scared.

We exchanged the odd text until 11:49pm, at which point I must have dosed off—I had set alarms for just that reason—until I jolted awake at 12:30am.

There were 12 text messages from Mireille and several missed calls.

The messages started off as benign. The first few were casual banter followed by a couple cute ones teasing me about falling asleep. They became somewhat darker after that, the first of which came about quarter after midnight. Mireille seemed to be getting really scared. I felt bad for her.

It wasn’t until I continued reading that I really started to worry about her. She said she’d seen shadowy figures standing in open mausoleum doors. That was, of course, impossible. The mausoleums were sealed tight against grave robbers and vandals. Mireille told me that they were watching her, and she’d left her hiding spot to get away from them.

The next text made my blood run cold.

Something had chased her. Mireille described it as a gaunt human figure in tattered clothing with a horrible gimp. She managed to loose it, thankfully, and then sent a message begging me to come get her. She didn’t care about the challenge anymore.

Finding her would be fairly difficult in the enormous cemetery. Mireille didn’t know where she was, having just moved to her new home, and it was dark. Despite all these things I flew off my bed and grabbed my keys.

My phone bleeped at me again before I reached the door. Another text from Mireille.

The words were broken and some of it didn’t make sense, but my heart hammered in my chest as I read. She was frantic.

I dialed her number.

Miraculously the call went through. “Come get me, please,” Mireille answered, it sounded like she’d been crying.

“Mireille, where are you? Is there a landmark you can pick out?”

There was a pause, and then, “There’s a large spire on top of the closest mausoleum,” she sniffled.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “That’s good. Mireille, what’s going on?”

“They’re everywhere,” she hissed into the phone, “in the dark. I can’t see their faces. One of them is following me,” she began crying again, “I can’t-”

She began breaking up.

“Chased—watching me—-please help.”

“Mireille, I’m loosing you. Mireille!”

Only silence answered me. Then she spoke again, it was Mireille’s voice on the phone, but I knew beyond a doubt that it wasn’t her speaking. The voice uttered only one word, a name. “Hasarkiir“.

My world spun and darkness kept into my peripherals. The name struck a cord of pure terror in me; to this day I don’t really know why. It was just a name. But from the mouth of Mireille that night it was more than my sensibilities could bear. I must have blacked out then, because when I woke the first rays of dawn were glinting through my bedroom window. It took me a moment to separate my horribly vivid dreams, dreams of Mireille running down endless rows of headstones into an interminable darkness, from reality.

Memories of the previous night came flooding back to me then. I ran downstairs and drove straight to the cemetery. The entrance was blocked off by police cars and ambulance. I ran to one of the officers and asked him what was going on.

They had found Mireille sitting behind a headstone, legs drawn up to her chest, rocking back and forth muttering something under her breath. Her eyes were glazed, as if she was in some faraway place. I ran up to her, explaining to them that I was a friend, but she hardly seemed to recognize me.

They took her away then.

It took many months and intensive sessions with a psychiatrist to stabilize Mireille’s mind, and even after that she was never the same. The kind and optimistic girl I’d known had become sullen and brooding, always shying away from human contact. And she would never, ever go near Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.

I took a stroll through the cemetery five months after the incident. As always, it was beautiful. It wasn’t until I passed a headstone, under a large oak by a mausoleum with a large spire, that I noticed something that froze me in my tracks. The headstone was nearly too weathered to read, but the last name of the interred was still legible: Hasarkiir.