Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The bell tower of Hollowmoor Prison rang twice before dawn, each chime hollow as a coffin. The city below barely stirred, lost in uneasy dreams. But in the prison yard, a shadow walked where no man had stepped in decades.

The Executioner had returned.

They said he had no name—only a title passed down like a curse. Hooded, faceless, more myth than man, he had once delivered justice with an axe carved from cursed iron and a silence that clung to him like fog. The city claimed he vanished after the last execution—when the wrong man's blood soaked the stones and the gallows fell silent forever.

But vengeance keeps its own calendar.

Jasper Crane had heard the rumors in whispers—while digging graves, while drinking with Madame Grin, while pretending not to see the marks etched into the fogged windows of Hollowmoor. Now, with a trembling lantern in hand, he followed a trail of black bootprints through the prison gates.

The air was colder here, deathless.

Inside, the gallows stood rotten but intact. The noose swayed, though there was no wind. Shadows bled across the walls in unnatural ways, and silence reigned so loud it stung the ears.

Jasper turned a corner and froze.

A man stood beneath the scaffold, motionless. Not breathing. Not quite real.

He wore the executioner's garb—tattered robes of pitch-black cloth, hood stitched to his flesh. In his hand, the axe pulsed faintly, the runes carved into its blade glowing like dying embers. But it wasn't the figure that terrified Jasper.

It was the shadow it cast.

It moved when the figure did not.

The shadow paced, turned its head, raised the axe high in slow, deliberate arcs—practicing. And when Jasper stepped backward, the shadow stopped... and turned toward him.

A voice echoed inside Jasper's mind, dry as paper and sharp as bone:

"Innocent blood was spilled."

"I didn't—" he stammered, "I wasn't part of it!"

"All who forget justice feed the gallows."

The shadow lunged.

Jasper dropped the lantern and fled, boots slapping wet stone, breath tearing from his lungs. Doors slammed shut on their own. The prison rearranged itself, corridors stretching and bending like something alive. Behind him, the sound of dragging footsteps kept pace—too slow, too steady.

He burst into the old execution chamber. The wall was covered in names—thousands of them. All scratched in with fingernails, many long forgotten. Jasper's eyes scanned the wall.

His name was there.

Freshly carved.

"No..."

A cold hand gripped his shoulder. He turned.

The executioner stood inches away, no eyes beneath the hood—only darkness.

"The shadow remembers."

The axe descended.

But there was no pain.

Only silence.

Jasper awoke in his own bed, gasping.

His boots were wet. Mud caked the floor. His name was scratched into the windowpane.

And outside, under the gaslight, a shadow watched—axe in hand.

Waiting.