Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The ashen remains of the bonefield settled into silence, but the survivors barely had time to breathe. A thick, unnatural fog began to coil around them, dense and suffocating, swallowing the landscape in a cold, damp grip.

Elias flicked his lighter, the flame flickering weakly before vanishing. "This isn't normal fog."

Mira clutched the Cursed Book, feeling its pages pulse with an eerie rhythm. "Something's watching us."

Draven's shotgun was already raised. "Correction—something's hunting us."

A low whisper slithered through the mist. Not words, not quite. It was more like a thousand fingernails scratching across stone, a voice that burrowed into the mind rather than the ears.

Zara tensed. "Did anyone else hear that?"

Then, the fog moved.

It wasn't just mist—it had shape. Figures loomed within it, shifting just out of sight, their outlines twisting and reforming like shadows trapped in water. Hollow eyes blinked open in the fog, unblinking and hungry.

"Run," Elias muttered.

They sprinted, boots slamming against the ground as the fog creatures gave chase, their movements impossible to track, their forms flickering in and out of existence.

The whispers grew louder.

Draven fired into the mist. The shotgun blast ripped through nothing, as if the fog itself swallowed the bullets.

"They're not solid," he growled. "We need a new plan!"

Mira stopped abruptly, flipping through the Cursed Book. Her fingers traced a page etched with black ink that bled like fresh wounds. "I think I can banish them, but I need time!"

Zara pulled a knife from her belt. "Then we hold them off."

The fog thickened. The whispers became voices—low, guttural, repeating the same phrase over and over.

"She wields the Book. She must be taken."

Elias cursed under his breath. "They're after Mira."

The mist coiled around Mira's ankles, pulling at her, clawing at her skin with invisible hands. A shadowy face formed in the fog, its mouth stretching open in an unnatural howl.

Draven swung his shotgun like a club, dispersing the mist for a moment. "Hurry up, Mira!"

Mira's voice rose above the whispers, chanting the spell written in the Book. Dark tendrils of ink spiraled from the pages, reaching outward, battling the fog like a living entity.

The creatures screamed.

The mist shuddered, recoiling as if burned. The whispers turned to shrieks, and then—silence.

The fog vanished. The landscape around them was barren once more, nothing but dead earth beneath a hollow sky.

Mira fell to her knees, panting. "They'll be back."

Draven helped her up. "Then we keep moving."

But in the distance, just beyond sight, the fog stirred once more.

And a new voice whispered:

"She is marked. And the Hollow Man is waiting."