Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They say the orphanage on Mire Hill was swallowed by the earth one black winter's night—consumed whole, like a secret too heavy for the world to bear. No one speaks its name anymore. Not because they forgot.

But because the children didn't stay buried.

Once, the place was called Saint Eulalia's Home for the Forsaken, a crooked house of sour wood and weeping stone. It perched like a bird of prey on the fog-wrapped hill, cradling the unwanted and unloved in rooms that smelled of mildew, blood, and chalk.

Sister Delores ran it—half-nun, half-gaoler, with cataract eyes and hands like pruning shears. She told the children stories each night, but not the good kind. Tales of the hollow woman in the walls, and the soot-faced man who fed on breath. She said if they disobeyed, they'd go down to the red basement, where the air buzzed with whispers and the walls bled prayers.

They thought she was only trying to scare them.

They were wrong.

One by one, the children began to vanish. Not during storms. Not in darkness.

But during the sunniest hours of the day.

No screams. No footprints. Just a small scorch mark on the bed and a faint smell of sulfur, like a struck match held too long.

When Sister Delores finally disappeared, she left behind only her habit—folded neatly on the altar—and a nursery rhyme scratched into the chapel floor:

"Ten little souls in borrowed skin,

One by one, they all went in.

None came out, but all still roam,

Forever bound to orphaned home."

The town tried to forget.

Then came the quake.

Saint Eulalia's orphanage crumbled, dragged screaming into the dirt by invisible hands. The ground swallowed it without sound, and where it once stood, a shallow depression remains—always cold, even in summer, even under the sun.

But some nights, the bell rings.

No one has touched that bell in seventy years.

They say if you wander Mire Hill at midnight, you'll see flickers of light—not fireflies, but candle flames dancing in impossible patterns.

You may hear lullabies, broken and out of tune.

And if you're truly unlucky… you'll see them.

Children with stitched eyes and skin like moth wings. Holding dolls that blink. Smiling wide enough to split.

They don't speak.

But they point.

To the open doors of the orphanage that is no longer there.

If you follow, you'll never return.

But they'll thank you.

Because with each soul taken, they get closer to rebuilding their home.

And when they find ten…

They'll walk the earth again.

So if you hear a bell where no bell should be…

If you see lights flicker in the fog…

Don't answer.

Don't look.

And for the love of your soul…

Never follow a child up Mire Hill.