Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

They arrived when the fog was thickest.

No wagons, no engines, no tracks in the mud. Just there—overnight—between two crumbling tenements in East Grinvale, where even the rats refused to live. Tattered banners flapped in windless air. A rusted sign arched above the crooked entrance:

CARNIVAL OF THE UNSEEN – ONE NIGHT ONLY

SEE WHAT SHOULD NOT BE SEEN

Jasper Crane, the gravedigger, stood among the gathering crowd. He wasn't sure why he had come. Perhaps it was the music—the calliope's broken tune twisting through the alleys like a whisper. Or maybe it was the voice he heard in dreams: "Come. Come and see."

The crowd shuffled forward, coins vanishing into a gloved hand at the gate. No face behind the ticket booth, just shadows shifting behind grimy glass. The moment Jasper stepped through, the world twisted.

The carnival breathed.

Tents swayed like lungs. Lanterns flickered with flame that wept. Sawdust clung to shoes like old flesh. A man in a pinstripe suit and a face painted with a permanent scream bowed low before him.

"Welcome, honored guest," he crooned. "Tonight, we perform for you."

The first act was The Bearded Child, weeping silently as she peeled off her own shadow and folded it into a swan. Then came The Glass Boned Sisters, who waltzed until their limbs splintered and sang even as they shattered. Jasper clutched his chest with each act, heart beating faster—not from fear, but from recognition.

He had seen these things before. In dreams. In memories too faint to trust.

The calliope twisted into a dirge as the final tent rose before him: red and black, striped like a clown's grin, towering impossibly high. A placard waited at the entrance:

THE FINAL SHOW – FOR YOUR EYES ONLY

Inside, mirrors lined the walls. Not normal reflections—no, these showed truths. One mirror showed Jasper holding his infant son, long before the plague took them both. Another showed him standing above an empty grave—his own.

The last mirror did not reflect at all. It rippled, like water touched by breath.

"Step through," whispered the Ringmaster, appearing beside him without sound. "You paid with your memory. Now see what you came to forget."

Jasper stepped.

And fell.

Through streets that screamed, across fields of glass teeth, through skies where stars blinked like eyes. He saw them—the Unseen. They walked behind every living man, woman, and child. Some with tears. Some with knives. All waiting to be remembered.

When he awoke, it was dawn. The carnival was gone.

Only a single scrap of paper fluttered in his hand: a ticket with his name written in blood.

He tried to tell others, but they laughed. Called him mad.

But those who meet his eyes too long swear they hear music. A distant, broken tune. And if they follow it?

They don't come back.