Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

In the drowned catacombs beneath the Abbey of Withered Tongues, a choir still sang.

Their voices were hushed, reverent, and slithering.

No one knew who taught them the words, only that they were not meant for human throats. The psalms, etched into the scales of a great serpent skeleton coiled through the chapel like a fossilized god, were forbidden even to read.

Yet tonight, Jasper Crane would hear them.

Jasper was no scholar. Just a gravedigger with dirt-stained hands and dreams full of hissing voices. For weeks, he'd dug up bones that weren't there before, their sockets filled with black sand, and tongues fossilized mid-scream.

He followed the voices underground.

The abbey had long been abandoned, swallowed by a sinkhole and now half-flooded. Mold devoured the hymnbooks. The pews were sunken and split. But the altar remained intact—its stone shaped into a twisted ouroboros, its center open like a waiting mouth.

A breathless chant echoed up from below.

"H̸e̵a̷r̴ ̷u̷s̸,̷ ̶S̴l̸e̵e̷p̵e̷r̸ ̸B̴e̵n̸e̴a̶t̶h̶ ̶S̶c̵a̵l̷e̸s̷…"

Jasper stepped into the dark.

Beneath the altar was a stairwell carved from vertebrae. Torches lit themselves as he descended, one by one. At the bottom, he entered a cavern shaped like a serpent's skull, its walls slick with moisture and scripture.

There they were: the Choir of the Hollow Coil.

Figures cloaked in shed skin, mouths sewn shut, yet still they sang.

And at the center, wound around a black spire, was the Serpent. Not alive. Not dead. A massive skeleton, its bones engraved with verses that shimmered in the torchlight.

Jasper felt his knees buckle.

The psalms were not heard—they were felt. Deep in the marrow, in the memories of his blood. Words he should not understand filled his mind.

He looked down.

The words were carving themselves into his arms.

"Chosen…" a voice whispered in his skull.

One of the choir broke rank, their stitches bleeding as they stepped forward and held out a parchment of skin.

It read:

"The Serpent dreams of time unwound. Feed it memory, and it shall rise."

Jasper shook his head. "I didn't ask for this."

"You were born of graves and silence. The dirt speaks your name."

The Serpent's bones trembled. One fang fell from its skull with a thunderous crash, splitting the floor—and something moved beneath it.

Jasper turned to flee.

But his hand was still burning. The psalms were now inside him, coiling around his ribs like vines, whispering truths:

That death is just a pause.

That gods can molt, and rise new again.

That one day, the Hollow One will wear flesh again—and he will sing with the choir.

He burst from the abbey, the psalms still echoing in his ears.

The stars above twisted into serpents, circling one another.

He no longer remembered what silence sounded like.