The winter of 1877 froze Charleston so deeply that old-timers swore they hadn’t seen the river crust with ice in forty years. But the cold wasn’t what made the city tremble… it was a boy who had been buried three weeks earlier — walking out of his grave.At midnight, the cemetery watchman saw the soil over a fresh plot… move. The coffin had burst open from the inside. And there, under the moonlight, stood John Mercer — the child with eyes so blue they seemed to glow like lamps in the dark, set in a dirt-streaked face the color of polished mahogany.The problem was… they had nailed that coffin shut themselves. They had heard the earth thud down onto the lid.Just before dawn, his mother opened her door to a soft knock. She didn’t scream. Didn’t faint. She pulled her son — cold as stone — into her arms, as if death had only been a long fever. But John whispered something that turned her blood to ice:“I didn’t come back alone…”After that night, the dead began slipping into the dreams of the living. Some heard lost loved ones calling their names outside bedroom windows. Others swore they saw figures standing by the well at 3 a.m. Then… a corpse was seen walking through the street, before collapsing like a puppet with its strings cut.John wasn’t a miracle.He was a door.And whatever was knocking from the other side… was running out of patience.