Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

By lantern light and fog, Jasper Crane dug.

Always the same rhythm—shovel, breath, earth. And always at night, when the townsfolk of Greyhall slumbered under roofs they prayed would not leak into their dreams. Jasper had long since learned not to pray. Prayers, in Greyhall, had a cost.

His graveyard, Wyrm's Hollow, was older than memory, stitched across crumbling hills. The headstones shifted when no one watched. Names faded. Some plots dug themselves. And Jasper never questioned it.

Not after what he had done.

The pact was simple. One life spared—his brother, dying of fever—and Jasper would bury whatever the voice asked. No questions, no funerals, no crosses.

The first time it spoke, it came from the open earth.

"You will dig. We will feed. You will never ask for whom."

That was fifteen years ago. His brother had lived, untouched by sickness, but changed. Quiet. Feral in moments. And Jasper had kept digging.

Tonight, the voice returned.

"The soil is restless."

Jasper halted mid-shovel. A black fog crept between the graves, thick as ink and smelling of sulfur. His lantern dimmed, flickering as though afraid.

Something stirred at the gate.

A woman in a mourning dress stood watching him—face pale, hands folded, veil unmoving in the breeze. Her eyes, when they met his, were not human.

"You've broken it," she whispered.

Jasper blinked. "Broken what?"

"The pact." She pointed to the mound he had just unearthed. "You dug too deep."

He turned.

The grave was empty. But not freshly dug. Ancient.

Bones jutted from the walls, clawing toward the surface. And beneath them, a black sigil pulsed with dim red light—coiled and insectile, like a forgotten letter of some dead tongue.

The voice from the ground screamed. "You were not meant to find it!"

Jasper staggered back. The woman reached into her dress and pulled out a coin etched with matching symbols. "They will come now. You fed them well. But even hunger has rules."

The earth beneath the grave exploded.

A skeletal figure rose, its face a hollow spiral, mouth wide with infinite rows of fangs. It screamed—not with air, but with memory—and Jasper saw flashes of every body he'd buried: their final thoughts, their unspoken fears, the wrongs they carried to the grave.

The creature surged forward.

Jasper dropped to his knees. "Take me. Spare the others."

The voice laughed, echoing through every tomb.

"You already gave yourself, gravedigger. The debt is ours to spend."

The woman placed the coin in Jasper's hand.

"You still have one right," she whispered. "One grave you may choose."

Jasper stared at the mound. At the bones. At the thing.

And he whispered a name: "Mine."

The world went silent.

The creature lunged—and vanished mid-lunge. The sigil faded. The fog cleared.

Jasper was gone.

Only the shovel remained, driven into fresh earth. A headstone, newly carved, read:

Jasper Crane

"He buried others so they could rest. He buried himself so they would forget."