Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The survivors hit the ground hard. Draven groaned, rolling onto his side, his fingers gripping dirt—no, not dirt. The ground was soft, pulsing beneath his hands, as if he were lying on something alive. A rancid, wet smell curled into his lungs, making his stomach twist.

Mira coughed, pushing herself up. "Where… are we?"

The darkness above them had vanished. In its place, a mansion loomed against the blood-red sky, its iron gates hanging open like a hungry mouth. The windows were black voids, and something moved behind them, shapes shifting just out of sight.

Elias dusted himself off, his revolver already drawn. "I've been to haunted bars, but this? This is a whole new level of bad."

Zara pointed toward the gate, its iron bars slick with fresh blood. "We don't have a choice, do we?"

Draven clenched his jaw. No. They didn't.

As they stepped forward, the ground heaved beneath them, a low, wet groan rippling through the air. The corpses half-buried in the earth twitched, their hollow eyes rolling toward the group. Hands burst through the soil, clawing at their ankles.

The dead were waking up.

Draven fired, his shotgun ripping a hole through a skeletal face, but the body kept moving. Mira flung open the Cursed Book, her fingers shaking as she whispered a chant. Symbols flared, burning into the air around them, forcing the creatures back.

"Move!" she screamed.

They sprinted toward the mansion doors, the moans of the dead rising behind them. The entrance yawned open, swallowing them whole as they stumbled inside.

Silence.

The air was thick with dust, the scent of decay and something old, something watching. A grand staircase stretched into darkness, its wooden banister covered in deep claw marks. Chandeliers hung crooked, their lights flickering as if afraid.

The doors behind them slammed shut.

A voice whispered from the shadows, low and hungry.

"You shouldn't have come."

The hallway twisted, stretching, walls crawling with things that should not exist. A figure crouched at the far end, its limbs too long, its face a mask of rotting porcelain.

The Hollow Man.

Zara gasped. "We burned him—"

It grinned, the edges of its mouth splitting open too wide. "And yet, here I am."

The walls groaned, and doors burst open along the hallway. Figures spilled out, their bodies broken, their faces stitched together with black thread. Some were missing eyes, others smiled with too many teeth.

Mira's pulse pounded. "This place—it's not just haunted. It's alive."

The Hollow Man's head tilted. "And it's hungry."

The creatures lunged.

Draven fired. Elias swung his revolver like a club. Zara's dagger flashed.

Mira chanted, her voice rising in desperation. The mansion shook, walls bleeding.

The floor split open, and the house began to devour them whole.