Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The village of Calder's Hollow had no birds.

No laughter.

No wind.

Just the click-clack of strings tightening in the night.

They said the house on the hill breathed. Not from its chimney, but from beneath the floorboards—slow, wheezing exhales, like lungs stitched from shadows.

And at its heart lived the Puppeteer.

Not a man.

Not anymore.

Elinor was just a scavenger, slipping into abandoned places to find scraps of survival. When she entered the house, it wasn't to summon evil—just to escape a storm.

But the moment the door shut behind her, it locked without a latch. The air was thick with dust and something sweeter, something rotting just beneath lavender.

And then the strings dropped.

Dozens of them. Silken. Singing like violin bows.

The room was a theater. Broken marionettes dangled from the rafters—some carved from bone, some from bark, and others… once human.

Their mouths were stretched open. Screaming.

But no sound came.

Until Elinor touched one.

Then came the chorus.

A hundred muffled voices shrieked in unison, their screams stolen and woven into the strings. The sound was unbearable—anguish turned into an orchestra.

And in the center, he descended.

The Puppeteer.

Long-limbed. Featureless face. Fingers tipped with needles and thread, sewing sorrow into the air.

"You have a voice," he crooned, though no mouth moved. "Let me borrow it."

Elinor tried to run. The floor turned to stagewood, every step echoed as if on cue. Her scream came too late.

A string wrapped her throat.

She awoke hours—or maybe days—later in a chair stitched from bones.

A stage curtain rose.

And she performed.

Danced against her will, strings jerking her limbs in cruel choreography. Her mouth moved in a scream, yet no sound came.

It had been stolen.

Spun into the Puppeteer's collection.

Each night, the villagers of Calder's Hollow hear the wails from the hill. Not with ears, but in dreams.

Their bodies twitch as if tugged by unseen threads.

Some awaken tangled in twine.

Others never awaken at all.

The Puppeteer doesn't kill.

He converts.

Your voice becomes his aria.

Your pain, his art.

And once you scream for him, once he takes that last breath of resistance, you join the show.

A permanent part of his silent theater.

Now, the house on the hill is always lit, even though no one lights the lamps.

And if you look too closely at the shadows cast in the window…

You might see Elinor still dancing.

Her jaw wide.

Mouth moving.

But the scream?

It belongs to him now.