Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

In the forgotten wing of the Blackmoor Library, sealed by chains no key could open, a boy named Corwin Hale found a door that wasn't there the day before.

It had no handle. No hinges. Just a frame, and within it, a yawning dark like an eye blinking open.

He stepped through.

Beyond was a circular room made of interlocking shelves, curving upward like a tower swallowed in shadow. There were no stairs. No ladder. Only the feeling that the books themselves were watching.

And in the center of it all, resting on a pedestal of ribs carved from some massive creature long dead, was the Book.

Bound in skin darker than night, its cover bore no title. No lettering. Just a shape… shifting. As though something writhed beneath its binding.

Corwin, ever the curious apprentice, reached out.

The moment his fingers brushed it, the room breathed.

The pages fanned open—without wind—and the words inside began to rearrange.

Not in ink. In blood.

They formed his name.

Then his birth.

Then his sins.

The book was not to be read.

It was reading him.

Corwin stumbled back, but the room had changed.

Where once were shelves, now stood faces—etched into the walls, their eyes hollow, their mouths stitched shut by golden wire. They watched him, though they could not scream.

Then came the voice—not from the book, not from the walls, but from inside his thoughts:

"We are the scribe of the Unwritten One.

You are our parchment now."

Words began to etch themselves across Corwin's arms.

Memories. Dreams. Regrets.

He tried to resist, but the Book was stronger.

In desperation, he hurled it from the pedestal.

It landed open, and the room erupted with pages—fluttering like crows, sharp as razors, slicing the air in a storm of parchment and shrieking ink.

He ran.

The tower spiraled now. A staircase where none had been.

He climbed, faster and faster, chased by flying verses screaming his name, reciting pieces of him he had forgotten:

"The night you let her drown…"

"The lies you buried with your father…"

"The oath you broke under the harvest moon…"

He reached the top, breathless.

A single door.

He threw it open.

And stepped back into the library.

Only—it was silent. Frozen.

Dust floated like ash.

The door behind him vanished.

And in his hands, he still clutched the book.

Only now it bore a title:

The Life of Corwin Hale

As Written by the All-Seeing Ink.

He tried to burn it.

But the flames turned cold.

And from within the book, a voice whispered:

"Turn the next page, Corwin…

We've only just begun."

And so he did. Because he had no choice.

And the book smiled.