Graveyard Shift
Graveyard Shift is a slim modern-gothic novella from M. L. Rio, author of If We Were Villains. Every night, five insomniacs working the late shift in a small college town cross paths at an old campus cemetery: a bartender, a rideshare driver, a hotel clerk, a church steward, and the student-newspaper editor. Half-jokingly, they call themselves the Anchorites.
One October night they find something that shouldn't be there — a fresh, open grave dug where no burial was scheduled. As random people around town erupt into sudden, inexplicable aggression, the five begin trailing the gravedigger through the small hours, convinced he is tied to whatever is going wrong around them.
Atmospheric and dark-academic in flavor, the novella trades on mood, insomnia, and a creeping sense of unease more than on gore. It is a quick, eerie read about night people, curiosity, and the lines crossed in the name of knowledge.
While this story shares the academic setting and focus on intense group dynamics found in If We Were Villains, it shifts from a Shakespearean framework to a more supernatural and gothic narrative structure.