Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition
Chapter 1231 - 1231: Story 1231: The Voice That Screamed

It began as a whisper.

Just beneath the rustling wind and the hollow calls of distant crows, there was a voice—too faint to follow, too loud to ignore.

Lena had made it through fire, cults, and carnage. But nothing had prepared her for the silence that now plagued the outskirts of Sector R.

This wasn't the deadlands. This wasn't the city. It was the school.

Redgate Elementary had been closed for years. Molded papers still sat on desks. Lockers hung open like yawned mouths. And in the center of the main hallway stood a child-sized mannequin. Dressed in the school uniform. Eyes painted shut.

Don't look away.

That's what the scribbled message on the wall said—scrawled in a child's handwriting.

Lena, cautious and half-starved, ignored it.

The moment she turned, the scream erupted.

A sound so sharp, so impossibly loud, it made her drop to her knees. Her eardrums throbbed. Her vision blurred.

And then… she saw it.

The voice had a shape.

Not a body—no. A distortion, like heat over pavement. A screaming ripple that dragged the air with it. It floated toward her like a vengeful memory, looping that same ear-splitting shriek.

She stumbled into a classroom, slamming the door shut, wedging a broken chair beneath the knob. Blood trickled from her left ear. She couldn't hear her own breathing. Just the echo of that unholy wail.

On the chalkboard behind her, words were forming in real time—chalk writing itself:

"HE TOOK HER VOICE. GIVE IT BACK."

Below it: a drawing of a man. Slender. Face scribbled out. Holding a microphone.

The walls shook.

The mannequin was at the window now. Still. Watching.

Lena wasn't superstitious. She'd seen the dead reanimate, parasites mimic voices, and corpses walk. But this? This wasn't biological.

It was… haunted.

The microphone. That was the link.

She remembered seeing it—earlier, half-buried under rubble in the auditorium. Maybe it was ceremonial, maybe it belonged to the principal. Maybe it was cursed.

Either way, it was drawing her closer.

She made her way through the corridors, light flickering as if reacting to her movement. The scream returned in surges—rising and receding like ocean waves, each one stronger than the last.

When she reached the stage, the microphone was floating.

Cracked. Wrapped in wire. Bleeding.

She hesitated.

Then the mannequin appeared beside it—no longer still.

Its eyes were open now. Hollow.

And it whispered—not screamed—just one word:

"Please."

Lena grabbed the mic.

The scream stopped.

Silence—total and oppressive—settled over Redgate.

The mannequin crumbled to dust.

And far in the distance, the crows stopped circling.

Something had been silenced… and something else had awakened.

Lena left the building with the microphone strapped to her belt. Not a weapon. Not a relic.

A warning.