Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition Chapter 1198: Story 1198: They Who Dwell Behind

Chapter 1198: Story 1198: They Who Dwell Behind

Beneath the rotted crypts of the Blackmoor District, there was a wall older than the city itself. Stone etched with sigils not ant for eyes, pulsing like skin when touched. It wasn’t built—it was grown. And behind it, sothing waited.

Evelyn stood before it now, her torch sputtering. The silence from the previous days still weighed heavy, but here, in the deepest dark, she began to hear again.

Not words. Breaths.

Low. Deep. Ancient.

As though a dozen lungs exhaled behind the stone.

She traced the lines on the wall, and her fingertips trembled. The symbols felt warm. Wet. She tried to pull her hand away—but it stuck. A voice without air filled her mind.

“You have heard the silence. Now you will hear us.”

Aboveground, the city convulsed. Buildings twisted, bricks weeping mortar. Windows blinked. Streets folded into themselves like paper. Jasper and Clara ran across a bridge that no longer led anywhere. The river below had dried into a fissure, and in its depths stood black pillars—each carved with eyes, mouths, and nas no tongue could form.

“The city’s not dying,” Clara gasped. “It’s waking up.”

Jasper didn’t respond. His pupils were spirals now, and his voice had been gone since the mirror.

But still, he pointed—to the cathedral.

And to the thin place above it.

They had once been gods, if gods were just thoughts given skin. Buried when the world began. Trapped behind the veil of matter. Known only through dreams, madness, and the margins of prayer books written in blood.

Now, the veil was gone.

And they were listening.

Evelyn’s body was still pressed to the wall. She was no longer alone.

Shadows oozed from the cracks between the stones, stretching across the crypt like spines in motion. They crawled with intent. They whispered in tongues made of regret, betrayal, and hunger.

One peeled itself from the wall and spoke directly to her, though its mouth never moved.

“We are they who dwell behind. We have watched your world gnaw itself to bone. Now, we co through.”

She asked—though not aloud—what they wanted.

“Nothing. We do not want. We are. And soon, you will be too.”

Jasper arrived too late.

Clara held the last relic—an hourglass made from bone, the sands inside black as voidlight. “She’s in there,” she whispered.

The crypt walls pulsed.

Then cracked.

And a hand—longer than a man, made of tongues and antlers—reached out from behind the wall. It didn’t pull itself free.

The world pulled inward.

Above, the sky bled lines of light.

Below, the city bowed.

And from the mouth of every church, sewer, window, and dream, the sa voice rose:

“The gate is open. Let the behind beco the now.”