Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The chimes began to toll at midnight—soft at first, like distant wind against hollowed glass. No bell tower stood nearby. No clock struck the hour. And yet, the sound seeped through the narrow alleys of the city, echoing in places untouched by moonlight.

Everyone in the district stopped moving. Not out of fear—out of recognition.

They had heard the chimes before.

They meant someone was going to die.

Lenrik Shaw had heard tales of the Chimes of the Doomed. He was a reporter, skeptical and sharp-eyed, known for exposing frauds and urban legends. The City of Echoes, however, had changed him. Its streets bent in impossible ways. Its people aged backward. And at night, the air carried voices from beneath the cobblestones.

So when the chimes returned—after nearly a decade of silence—he followed them.

He wandered through mist-shrouded alleys and between twisted lamp posts. With each chime, the air grew colder, and his breath became a mist of silver. He kept walking until he reached a cul-de-sac that should not have existed—hemmed in by cracked statues and windows that blinked like eyes.

In the center stood an iron tree, dead yet humming with sound. Hanging from its crooked branches were hundreds of wind chimes, each one made from human bone and threaded with strands of ghostlight.

They tinkled not from the wind—but from the memories that clung to them.

A small plaque was nailed into the bark:

"Here toll the lost.

Each chime, a soul who tried to rewrite their fate."

Lenrik stepped closer, entranced.

One chime swayed more violently than the rest. Beneath it, a puddle of darkness pooled like ink. He looked up—and saw a familiar name etched into the bone.

His own.

A surge of nausea washed over him. The stories were real. The chimes named the doomed. You didn't hear them by chance. They tolled only for those who had tried to outrun their death... and failed.

"Back away," croaked a voice behind him.

A hunched figure appeared—a blind woman with a string of keys around her neck and scars where her eyes once were.

"The tree chooses," she said. "You must either claim your death... or offer another in your place."

Lenrik shook his head. "There's no one else."

"Then your bell tolls alone."

The chimes rang louder.

He turned to run—but the ground pulled him downward like wet clay. Shadows from the statues reached for him, dragging him back toward the tree. His reflection in the puddle beneath the chime began to scream.

He vanished with the 13th toll.

By morning, the tree was gone.

In its place, a single bone chime dangled from a rusted lamppost. It bore his name.

It still sways.

And when it does, another lost soul hears it—and follows.

The chimes don't stop.

They never stop.

Because there are always more stories to finish.

And always more doomed to ring.