Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

At the far end of Marrowick Street, where the buildings sagged with time and mold clung to every stone, stood a derelict townhouse wrapped in mist. The locals called it Widow Bellamy's Place, though no one alive claimed to have seen the woman herself in decades.

The fog never lifted there.

While the rest of the city woke to sun or rain, the Bellamy house remained cloaked in a soft, silvery vapor—thick enough to muffle footfalls, thin enough to invite curiosity. But every soul who stepped into that haze... was never quite the same after.

Some never returned at all.

Evelyn Blackmoor, drawn by a string of vanishings—six in the past month—approached the property with her notebook, her revolver, and a locket of grave-iron clutched tight in her coat. The fog met her like a sigh, curling around her legs like a cat.

The door opened before she knocked.

Inside, silence ruled.

Dust coated everything, but the air smelled of lavender and wet soil. Portraits stared from the walls, all women dressed in black, their eyes glossed as though painted with mourning.

She stepped deeper in.

A music box chimed from somewhere upstairs—a slow, dragging lullaby, notes bent like old nails. Evelyn's breath misted in front of her face, though no fire burned and no window was open.

Then came the whisper.

"He never came back..."

It drifted down like a lullaby in reverse.

Evelyn climbed the stairs, each step creaking like a throat about to scream. The fog thickened as she reached the upper floor, swirling into shapes—hands, mouths, memories.

The bedroom door was ajar.

Inside, a woman stood at the mirror. Thin. Dressed in a gown of layered black lace. Her veil trailed like a funeral shroud, blending into the floor fog. She didn't turn. Her voice trembled like glass.

"He said he'd return. The sea swallowed him. But I waited. I waited..."

Evelyn took a cautious step forward. "Widow Bellamy?"

The woman nodded slowly.

"I lit a candle each night. I called his name. I prayed. And when prayers failed... I bargained."

The mirror shimmered.

Evelyn saw not her own reflection—but a dark expanse of water. From its depths, bloated hands reached upward. A shipwrecked man with hollow eyes mouthed her name from the abyss.

"You called something else," Evelyn said softly.

The Widow turned.

Her face was half-human, half mist. Her mouth was a hollow maw, leaking fog with each word.

"And it answered."

The walls pulsed. From beneath the bed, skeletal arms slithered out. The portraits on the wall wept vapor. The room twisted.

Evelyn hurled the grave-iron locket at the mirror.

It shattered with a scream.

The fog recoiled, writhing like a wounded beast. The Widow howled, fading into strands of vapor that scattered into the cracks of the house.

Silence returned.

And so did the sun—for the first time in decades.

Evelyn walked out, coughing, the locket's chain burned black in her palm.

Behind her, the Bellamy house stood still.

But the fog... lingered.

And in the broken shards of the mirror, something beneath the sea smiled.