Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

It rained for the third night without pause—black water that stained the cobblestones and refused to dry. Umbrellas snapped in the wind, and the gaslights flickered as if they mourned something unseen. Those who lived near Hollowgate Bridge had long since learned not to go out when the rain turned metallic. Not after the bodies began to surface.

Evelyn Blackmoor stood beneath a broken awning, coat soaked, staring at a smear of crimson washing into the gutter. This one was fresh. A man in a conductor's uniform, eyes wide open, mouth frozen in a gasp. No wounds. No blood in the body—only out, spilled as though wrung from within.

"Third this week," muttered the inspector beside her. "No footprints. No weapon. Just… drained."

Evelyn didn't respond. She watched the blood trail, noticed how it swerved against the slope of the road—moving uphill before vanishing into a sewer grate.

She already knew what waited beneath the city. This wasn't its doing. This was higher.

She looked to the rooftops.

It stood there.

Still. Shrouded in black. Arms too long. Head cocked unnaturally.

The Rain Priest.

She'd seen it before—years ago, in a half-burned journal written by a blind cultist who had lived in an attic that never dried. He walks when the skies cry iron. He offers red in place of prayers. He drinks from the sky and feeds the clouds below.

The rain was its sacrament.

And tonight, it was hungry.

The figure vanished. A blink. A breath. Gone.

Evelyn ran.

Up the alley, over the slick stones of Widow's Row, through a street that hadn't appeared on any map since the Fire of 1882. Her boots splashed through water thick with copper. She heard it behind her—the sloshing, but not from steps. From above.

Rainfall made flesh.

It dropped in front of her.

No face. Just a smooth canvas where eyes should be, stretched over a skull that didn't end. Arms that unraveled into tendrils of shadow and water. And in its chest—a hole, swirling like a drain.

"You carry memory," it gurgled, voice like thunder filtered through blood. "Give it. Or drown."

Evelyn reached into her coat. She didn't pull a weapon.

She pulled the fragment of the Banshee's song, a recording on cracked vinyl, captured in episode one.

A sound of mourning. Of sorrow wrapped in defiance.

She hurled it to the ground and smashed it.

The cry that emerged wasn't hers.

It was his.

The Rain Priest staggered. The downpour slowed.

Screams filled the air as the rain turned to mist—and blood rose upward instead, pulled back into the sky like reversed tears. It let out a final howl before evaporating, unraveling into vapors and sighs.

Evelyn collapsed against a wall, soaked, exhausted.

And yet… it had left her something.

Etched into the brick behind her, where no rain touched, were the words:

"One more, and the gate opens."