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"My cousin went there last Halloween," Marcus said, his voice dropping to that theatrical whisper people used for scary stories. "Said the legend is real. You climb the stone steps at midnight, count each one out loud. When you reach the top—step one hundred—the Undertaker appears."
Sarah leaned forward, firelight dancing across her face. "What's he supposed to do? Kill you?"
"Worse," Marcus replied. "He shows you exactly how you're going to die. Every detail. You feel it happen, like you're living through your own death. But here's the thing—if you climb past step one hundred, you're not supposed to come back the same. Some people say you don't come back at all."
Jason snorted. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Some dusty old cemetery with stone steps? Big deal. Probably just local kids playing pranks on gullible tourists."
"Easy to say when you're sitting here," Marcus challenged. "But would you actually do it?"
The question hung in the air like smoke from the dying fire. Jason felt his friends' eyes on him, waiting for his answer. He'd built his reputation on not backing down from dares, on refusing to let fear—or superstition—control his choices. The idea that some mystical figure could predetermine his fate made his skin crawl.
"You're damn right I'd do it," Jason said, crushing his empty beer can. "When do we go?"
"Tonight," Sarah said quietly. "It has to be midnight, and it has to be alone. That's part of the legend."
Jason checked his phone: 10:47 PM. Plenty of time to drive to Brazil and prove his friends wrong about their supernatural nonsense.
"Fine," he said, standing and brushing off his jeans. "But when I come back with nothing to report except some moldy headstones and maybe a raccoon, you're all buying me breakfast."
The Brazil Cemetery sat on a hill outside town, surrounded by a wrought-iron fence that had seen better decades. Jason parked his Jeep on the gravel road and grabbed his flashlight, though the pale moonlight provided enough illumination to see the stone steps carved into the hillside. They were older than he'd expected—weathered limestone blocks that disappeared into the darkness above, flanked by crooked headstones and overgrown weeds.
His phone showed 11:58 PM. Close enough.
Jason pushed through the cemetery gate, which creaked on rusted hinges, and approached the bottom step. The air felt heavier here, pressing down on his shoulders like a wet blanket. He clicked on his flashlight and aimed it up the hillside, but the beam seemed to be swallowed by the darkness after about twenty steps.
"This is ridiculous," he muttered, but his voice sounded smaller than intended in the oppressive quiet.
At exactly midnight, Jason placed his foot on the first step.
"One," he said aloud, his voice echoing strangely off the headstones.
The second step was slightly higher than the first, worn smooth by weather and time.
"Two."
By the tenth step, Jason had found a rhythm. The counting became almost meditative, each number ringing clear in the still air. The flashlight beam danced ahead of him, illuminating carved names and dates on weather-beaten stones.
"Twenty-seven... twenty-eight... twenty-nine..."
Around step fifty, the feeling started. A prickle at the base of his neck, as if invisible eyes were watching from the darkness beyond his light. Jason paused, sweeping the flashlight across the cemetery, but saw only shadows and Spanish moss hanging from gnarled trees.
"Fifty-one," he continued, shaking off the unease. "Fifty-two..."
By step seventy, the whispers began. Soft at first, barely audible over the sound of his own breathing. But as he climbed higher, they grew more distinct—other voices counting along with him, slightly out of sync.
"Seventy-eight," Jason called out.
"Seventy-seven," came the echo from somewhere behind him.
"Eighty-one."
"Eighty..."
Jason spun around, flashlight beam cutting through the darkness, but the cemetery below looked empty. Just weathered headstones and the iron gate, now barely visible in the distance. When he turned back to continue climbing, the whispers stopped abruptly.
The last twenty steps felt different. Heavier. Each number seemed to hang in the air longer than it should, as if the darkness itself was absorbing the sound. Jason's heart pounded harder with each step, but he pressed on. He was too close to turn back now.
"Ninety-seven... ninety-eight... ninety-nine..."
He paused before the hundredth step, suddenly aware that his hands were shaking. The flashlight beam trembled as it illuminated the final stone step, and beyond it, a small clearing at the top of the hill.
"One hundred."
The moment Jason's foot touched the hundredth step, silence fell like a curtain. Even the whisper of wind through the trees stopped. His flashlight flickered and went out, plunging him into complete darkness.
Then, slowly, a figure materialized in the clearing ahead.
The Undertaker stood perfectly still, as if he'd been waiting there for hours. Tall and gaunt, dressed in a black coat that seemed to absorb what little moonlight filtered through the clouds, its fabric rippling without any wind to move it. A wide-brimmed hat shadowed his face, but Jason could see pale hands folded in front of him, long fingers intertwined with unnatural precision.
Jason's throat went dry. This wasn't some college kid in a costume—the figure radiated an ancient presence that made the air itself feel thick and oppressive. When the Undertaker moved, it was with fluid grace that seemed to ignore the normal rules of physics.
"You have climbed the hundred steps," the Undertaker said, his voice carrying clearly despite being barely above a whisper. "You have called, and I have answered."
Jason tried to speak but managed only a strangled sound. The Undertaker approached with measured steps, and Jason found himself unable to move, as if his feet had grown roots into the stone.
"Do not fear," the Undertaker continued, raising one gloved hand. "I bring only truth. What every mortal seeks and every mortal dreads."
The hand touched Jason's shoulder, and reality exploded.
Water rushed through the broken windshield, icy and relentless. Jason clawed at the safety belt that held him trapped as his Jeep sank nose-first into Silver Creek. The steering wheel pressed against his chest, making each breath a struggle. Outside the submerged windows, pale fish drifted past like ghosts.
He could taste the muddy water filling his lungs, feel his vision growing dim as his chest burned for air. The radio still played, crackling and distorted, some pop song that would forever be linked to his final moments. His phone's screen glowed briefly in the murky water—7:23 PM, March 15th—before the electronics died.
This was it. This was how Jason Riley would die. Alone in a sinking car, drowning in three feet of creek water because he'd been texting while driving on a rainy night. No heroic sacrifice, no peaceful passing in old age surrounded by family. Just panic and water and the crushing realization that he'd wasted his last moments on something as stupid as responding to a group chat.
The vision ended abruptly, and Jason gasped, stumbling backward on the stone step. His clothes were dry, his lungs full of air, but he could still taste the muddy water and feel the phantom pressure of the steering wheel against his ribs.
The Undertaker stood motionless, watching him with eyes that reflected no light.
"March 15th," Jason whispered, the date burned into his memory. "That's... that's only five months away."
The Undertaker said nothing. He simply stepped aside, revealing that the stone steps continued upward into the mist beyond the clearing. The path that should have ended at one hundred stretched on into darkness, disappearing into what looked like an endless climb.
The meaning was clear: accept what he'd seen and descend back to the world of the living, or continue climbing and face whatever waited in the mist above.
Jason stared at the Undertaker's still, silent figure. The vision played on repeat in his mind—the helplessness, the panic, the waste of it all. Five months to live, and then death by something as mundane as a car accident.
"No," he said, his voice stronger than he felt.
The Undertaker tilted his head slightly, the first reaction Jason had seen from him.
"I don't accept it," Jason continued, stepping toward the continuing staircase. "I won't be a slave to some predetermined fate. If that's supposed to be my end, then I'll find another way. I'll change it."
Pride flared in his chest—the same stubborn defiance that had driven him to take this dare in the first place. He'd never bowed to anyone's expectations in life, and he wasn't about to start with death.
Without another word, Jason stepped past the Undertaker and continued up the steps that shouldn't exist.
The cemetery faded into mist behind him, and the world he'd known was gone.
"One hundred and one," Jason called into the swirling gray void. "One hundred and two."
The steps continued upward, but they looked different now—less like weathered limestone and more like something carved from shadow itself. The numbers echoed strangely, bouncing back at him with harmonics that made his teeth ache.
"One hundred and fifteen... one hundred and sixteen..."
Shapes moved at the edges of his vision. Other climbers, he realized, trudging up steps that ran parallel to his own. Their lips moved in silent counting, faces blank and pale as they repeated the same numbers over and over.
"One hundred and fifty-three... one hundred and fifty-four..."
Jason passed a woman in a tattered wedding dress who stood frozen on her step, mouth opening and closing as she whispered "thirty-seven" again and again. Her eyes were empty sockets, but tears still streamed down her hollow cheeks.
Further up, a child in pajamas counted silently, resetting to one every time he reached twenty-three. His small hands reached toward Jason as he passed, but made no sound.
The realization hit Jason like a physical blow: these were the ones who had refused their fate but couldn't accept the alternative. The hopelessly lost, trapped between destinations, counting for eternity as their souls slowly unraveled.
"Two hundred and eight... two hundred and nine..."
His voice was growing hoarse, but he pressed on. Behind him, the endless parade of the lost continued their futile climbs, and ahead, the mist grew thicker.
That's when the Undertaker appeared again.
This time, the figure seemed more solid, more present. The Undertaker materialized directly in front of Jason, no longer the distant, mysterious guardian of the cemetery but something far older and more terrible. When he spoke, his voice carried the weight of centuries.
"Every hundred years, one must take the coat," he said, removing his wide-brimmed hat with ceremonial precision. "Someone must hold the bargain. Someone must show the living their end. The role is not for the meek—it is for those who climb past, those who fight."
Jason stopped counting, his voice catching in his throat. The Undertaker's face was gaunt and pale, with eyes like deep wells that reflected nothing.
"You have seen your death," the Undertaker continued. "By climbing past, you have sealed that fate. It will come to pass, and sooner now than it would have been. The vision becomes inevitable for those who defy it."
"Then what's the point?" Jason demanded. "If I'm going to die anyway—"
"You have two choices," the Undertaker interrupted, his voice carrying absolute authority. "Join them." He gestured to the lost souls climbing their endless steps. "Count until your voice fails and your mind breaks and your soul becomes nothing but repetition. Or..."
The Undertaker held out his black coat, the fabric seeming to ripple with its own dark energy.
"Take my place. Become the guardian between worlds. Show others their endings, as I have shown you yours. The role is eternal, but it is purpose. It is power over the boundary between life and death."
Jason looked back at the climbing figures, their endless suffering, their hollow existence. Then he looked at the coat, feeling its pull like gravity.
"What happens to you?" he asked.
"What happens to all who serve their time," the Undertaker replied. "Rest."
The choice felt like no choice at all. An eternity of mindless counting, or an eternity of purpose. Jason reached for the coat with trembling hands.
The moment the black fabric settled across his shoulders, the world shifted. The Undertaker's hat materialized on Jason's head, and he felt the previous guardian's memories flooding through him—centuries of climbers, thousands of visions, the weight of showing mortals their mortality.
The old Undertaker smiled for the first time, his form already beginning to fade. "The role chooses its own," he said, his voice growing distant. "Those with the strength to defy fate are the only ones strong enough to carry it."
He crumbled to dust that the wind carried away, leaving Jason alone on the endless staircase. But not truly alone—he could feel the presence of every soul who had ever climbed the hundred steps, every vision he would show, every fate he would reveal.
Jason's voice had changed, deepened into something that carried across dimensions. When he spoke, the words came from somewhere deeper than his throat.
"The steps will always be here," he said to the mist and the darkness and the lost souls climbing their eternal paths. "And there will always be someone waiting at the top."
The gray void began to shift, reforming into the familiar cemetery hilltop. Stone steps carved into the hillside, crooked headstones, the iron gate far below. Everything as it had been, as it would always be.
Jason stood in his black coat and wide-brimmed hat, hands folded, waiting.
Three weeks later, Marcus drove to Brazil, Indiana alone. Jason had never returned from the cemetery that night, and despite extensive police searches, no trace of him had been found. His Jeep sat where he'd left it, keys still in the ignition, but Jason Riley had vanished without explanation.
Sarah had refused to come. "If something happened to Jason there, I'm not risking it," she'd said. But Marcus couldn't let it go. He needed to know what had happened to his friend.
"Maybe he was right," Marcus muttered as he approached the stone steps. "Maybe it's all just superstition."
He checked his phone. 11:55 PM. Close enough.
Marcus climbed alone, counting aloud, his voice echoing off the weathered headstones. Each step felt heavier than the last, and by the time he reached ninety, he was having second thoughts.
"One hundred," he said, his foot touching the final step.
The figure that waited for him in the clearing was tall and gaunt, dressed in a black coat and a wide-brimmed hat. When he spoke, his voice was familiar but changed, carrying harmonics that made Marcus's bones ache.
"You have climbed the hundred steps," Jason said, though Marcus barely recognized him. "You have called, and I have answered."
He approached with fluid grace, raising one gloved hand. In his dark eyes, Marcus thought he saw a flicker of the friend he'd once known, but it was buried beneath something far older and more terrible.
"Do not fear," the thing that had been Jason continued, his voice echoing with the weight of prophecy. "I bring only truth."
Some fates cannot be outrun. Some bargains cannot be refused. And on the 100 Steps, there is always an Undertaker waiting.
© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved. This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog. Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission. This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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Don't forget to check out last week's story The Rougarou: Blood in the Bayou.
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