Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

In the drowned alleys of the ruined city of Brimvale, where soot rains down like ash and children's laughter hasn't echoed in years, a soft hum lingers in the fog. It drifts through broken windows, over rusted lamp posts, and down into the hollow bones of those trying to sleep.

A lullaby.

Low. Raspy. Wrong.

They say if you hear the Ragman's lullaby, it's already too late.

Talia Grimm crouched beneath a collapsed archway, her fingers ink-stained and cold. The mute girl had been sketching the same figure for days—long coat made of stitched doll parts, a bag of rattling bones, and a face hidden behind scraps of flesh and sewn-on buttons.

She didn't know who the Ragman was.

Not until the others began to disappear.

First it was Mara, the scavenger with the tin whistle. Then Old Clem, who slept with a rosary in his teeth. Each vanished without a trace—except for a piece of torn cloth left where they last slept.

And that song.

Always that song.

Talia knew the Ragman didn't walk like others. He glided, dragging his bag of nightmares behind him. His lullaby was stitched from screams too soft to recognize. Some said he was once a toymaker who sewed dolls from his dead children. Others claimed he was a plague spirit, collecting souls to patch the veil between worlds.

But Talia had drawn him before he came.

In her sketchbook, his form darkened with each vanishing. Every time she opened it, his figure stood closer to the page's edge.

Until tonight, when the drawing moved.

Talia didn't run. She followed the song.

It pulled her deeper into Brimvale's forgotten belly—into the sunken nursery beneath the Old Orphan Chapel, where the walls were padded with children's laughter carved into stone.

And there he was.

The Ragman.

He towered over broken cribs, sewing tiny shoes made from finger bones. His coat twitched and murmured—the faces of stolen souls sewn into its lining. A button eye turned toward her.

He didn't speak. He sang.

A lullaby about sleep and shadows. About never waking. About being loved... forever.

And as he reached into his sack, pulling out a small, eyeless doll, Talia's heart froze.

It wore her ribbon.

He had been waiting for her.

She lifted her sketchbook, her only weapon.

Pages flurried as wind and whispers circled her. Her hands moved fast, drawing with fevered purpose. A counter-spell. A seal. A trap.

The Ragman lunged, but she slammed the book shut—binding him within the last page, where his song twisted into silence.

The air fell still.

Only the sound of her charcoal pencil breaking echoed.

Now, Talia's sketchbook lies closed by candlelight.

But some nights, it hums. And if the flame flickers, you might swear you hear him again...

...singing from the paper.