Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The trees began to whisper long before the survivors reached the edge of Crone's Hollow. Their branches curled like claws, tangled with moss, bone charms, and the brittle feathers of birds too afraid to fly. The mist that clung to the roots was thick as milk, and it moved against the wind.

"This place wasn't on the map," Esmé muttered, her voice swallowed by the hush.

"It's not supposed to be," replied Gideon Moth, who once studied the forbidden cartography of the eldritch. "Crone's Hollow finds you."

At the heart of the forest stood a crooked house on birdlike stilts, its windows glowing with a sickly green light. Smoke spiraled from a chimney shaped like a screaming mouth. Something inside was stirring a pot that smelled of rot, rain, and regret.

The Crone.

A being older than bones. A whisperer of spells. And sometimes, a feeder of the dead.

Wrapped in patchwork rags and crowned with antlers, she greeted them with a smile too wide and eyes that saw across timelines.

"You've brought it," she rasped. "The Debt of the Skinwalker lingers on your scent."

She offered no hospitality—only riddles and rituals.

"One of you is cursed to birth a shadow," she said, stirring her cauldron. "Another shall become the shadow's meal. Unless..."

She trailed off, her bony hand hovering above a jar filled with writhing teeth.

"A trade. Memory for mercy. Blood for balance."

The group hesitated.

Solomon Wraith stepped forward, producing an orb etched with runes—an echo crystal. It pulsed with memories from a hundred doomed survivors. Their last laughs, last breaths, last screams.

The Crone drank it in with her eyes.

"This will do… for now."

Suddenly, the cauldron boiled over.

From the smoke, a figure emerged—stitched of moss and twine, with a doll's head and the voice of a crying child.

The Hollowborn.

Created by the Crone from souls who bartered too little, or too late. It mimicked the living—mimicked them. Their voices. Their fears. It turned to Esmé and spoke in her dead sister's voice.

"You left me. You lit the fire. I burned because of you."

The Hollowborn charged.

Talia's blade slashed across its neck—but it didn't bleed. Instead, it crumbled into a thousand spiders, scuttling into the underbrush with tiny, human eyes.

"It's only just begun," the Crone cackled, licking the edge of a rusted spoon. "You've fed the Hollow now. And it's so very hungry."

She snapped her fingers.

The house sank into the earth. The mist swallowed the survivors.

And in the silence that followed, the trees began to whisper again—only now they knew the survivors' names.

Beyond the Hollow, the stars turned slightly wrong in the sky.

Whatever path they followed next… the Crone was watching.