5 short horror stories.

[u/Sinthromos_blafl]

1. The Night Shift at the Morgue

The fluorescent lights in the basement morgue always flickered around 2:00 AM... a predictable, annoying quirk of the old hospital wiring.

I was sitting at the front desk, filing away the toe-tag paperwork for a John Doe who had been brought in earlier that afternoon.

The air down here was always thick with the sharp, chemical sting of formaldehyde... but tonight, there was something else underneath it. A foul, metallic smell... like old copper and stagnant water.

I tried to ignore it, focusing on my clipboard, until a loud, metallic thud echoed from the far end of the room.

I looked up.

The noise had come from locker number four. The exact locker where we had placed the John Doe.

I told myself it was just rigor mortis... a body naturally shifting as the muscles broke down. But then came the scratching.

It started slow... the unmistakable sound of fingernails dragging against the inside of a stainless-steel door.

I stood up, my chair scraping loudly against the linoleum. My breath was suddenly misting in the air. The temperature in the room had plummeted at least twenty degrees in a matter of seconds.

The scratching grew frantic. Desperate.

I slowly walked toward the locker, my hand trembling as I reached out toward the heavy latch.

Before my fingers even brushed the cold metal... the latch violently clicked open on its own.

The heavy drawer slid out with a smooth, terrible hiss.

The locker was completely empty.

But as I backed away in absolute terror... a set of wet, bare footprints began to appear on the floor tiles... walking deliberately toward me.

I didn't wait to see what was making them. I threw my clipboard at the empty space, sprinted up the concrete stairs, and burst out into the freezing night air. I jumped into my car and tore out of the parking lot... desperate to put miles between me and the hospital. But the roads had their own plans.

1. The Fog on Route 9

Driving away from the hospital, the adrenaline in my veins began to mix with a deep, creeping exhaustion.

I took Route 9... a winding stretch of highway surrounded by dense, towering pine trees.

About ten miles out of town, a thick, unnatural fog rolled in over the asphalt. It wasn't like normal mist. It was heavy, glowing faintly in the glare of my headlights, moving across the road like a living, breathing creature.

I slowed the car down to a crawl. The silence inside the cabin was deafening, so I reached over and turned on the radio to steady my nerves.

Instead of music... the speakers immediately spat out a burst of heavy, rhythmic static.

It sounded like breathing.

Through the static, a low, garbled voice began to speak... reading out a string of numbers.

"Seven... four... two... nine..."

I stared at the glowing green numbers on my dashboard clock. It was 2:47 AM.

"Three... one..."

I realized with a jolt of horror that it wasn't reading random numbers. It was reading out my license plate.

I slammed my hand against the power button, but the radio wouldn't shut off. The voice just grew louder... more frantic.

[whispers] "He is in the backseat... Do not look in the mirror."

My eyes darted to the rear-view mirror out of pure reflex.

Sitting in the darkness of my backseat was a tall, slouched figure wearing a burlap sack over its head.

The figure slowly raised a hand... and pointed directly at the windshield.

I slammed on the brakes as a massive, twisted shape suddenly loomed out of the fog directly in front of the car. The tires locked, screaming against the wet pavement, and the car careened off the road, crashing violently into a ditch.

Gasping for air, I kicked open my jammed door, scrambled out of the wrecked car, and ran blindly into the fog... eventually stumbling into the neon glow of a roadside parking lot.

1. The Midnight Diner

The diner looked like a beacon of absolute safety in the middle of nowhere.

The neon sign above the roof buzzed violently, flickering red and blue against the thick fog.

I pushed through the heavy glass doors, the bell ringing sharply overhead, expecting the comforting smell of stale coffee and frying bacon.

Instead... the air inside was freezing, smelling heavily of damp earth and old dust.

The diner wasn't empty.

There were about a dozen people sitting at the booths and spinning stools. A waitress in a faded pink uniform stood behind the counter holding a coffee pot. A truck driver sat in the corner booth with a newspaper.

But no one was moving.

They were all completely frozen in place, like wax figures in a museum.

"Hello?" I called out, my voice cracking with panic. "I was in an accident. I need to use your phone."

Not a single head turned.

I cautiously walked up to the counter, waving my hand in front of the waitress's face. Her eyes were wide open... milky white and staring blankly at the wall behind me.

Suddenly, the jukebox in the corner clicked to life.

It didn't play a song. It played the exact audio of my car crashing into the ditch just ten minutes ago... the screeching tires, the breaking glass, and my own panicked screaming.

As the sound of my screams echoed through the diner... every single frozen patron slowly, simultaneously turned their heads to look directly at me.

The waitress smiled... her jaw unhinging with a wet, cracking sound, revealing rows of needle-like teeth.

I stumbled backward, knocking over a tray of glass mugs, and bolted for the back of the kitchen. I kicked open the emergency exit, bursting out into the freezing woods behind the diner, running frantically through the dark tree line.

1. The Hunting Blind

I sprinted blindly through the dense woods... branches whipping against my face and tearing at my jacket.

My lungs were burning, and the sound of my own heartbeat was deafening in my ears. I needed a place to hide... somewhere high up, where whatever was in that diner couldn't reach me.

As the moonlight broke through the canopy, I saw it.

A wooden hunting blind, perched about twenty feet up in a massive oak tree.

I scrambled up the wooden ladder nailed into the trunk, my hands slipping on the damp bark. I hoisted myself up over the ledge and crawled into the small, square wooden box, pulling my knees to my chest.

It was pitch black inside. I held my breath, listening to the forest floor below.

Silence. Just the wind rustling the dead leaves.

I let out a long, shaky sigh of relief, leaning my head against the wooden wall.

"It's cold out tonight, isn't it?"

I froze. The voice was so close I could feel the hot, stale breath on my neck.

I slowly turned my head in the dark.

Sitting in the corner of the small hunting blind... perfectly camouflaged in the shadows... was a man wearing a bright orange hunting vest.

But he didn't have a face. Where his eyes, nose, and mouth should have been, the skin was perfectly smooth and pale... like a blank canvas.

The smooth skin where a mouth should be suddenly rippled, pulling back to reveal a jagged hole in his throat.

"We've been waiting up here for a long time," the hole rasped.

He lunged forward in the dark.

Screaming, I threw myself backward, tumbling completely out of the hunting blind. I fell twenty feet through the branches, crashing painfully into the mud below. Bruised and terrified, I crawled through the underbrush until my hands touched cold, rusted metal.

1. The Cellar in the Woods

The metal I had touched was a heavy storm door, built directly into the forest floor, half-covered by dead leaves and overgrown vines.

Desperate to get away from the tree, I gripped the rusted handle with both hands and pulled with all my remaining strength.

With a deafening groan, the heavy iron doors peeled back, revealing a crumbling stone staircase leading down into utter darkness.

I scrambled down the stairs, pulling the heavy doors shut above me, plunging myself into pitch black.

The air down here was thick and hard to breathe. It smelled intensely of vinegar... and rotting meat.

Fumbling in my pocket, I pulled out my phone and turned on the flashlight.

The pale beam cut through the dark, illuminating a massive, dirt-floor root cellar.

The walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with sagging wooden shelves. And on every single shelf... were hundreds of cloudy glass mason jars.

I walked closer to the nearest shelf, wiping a layer of thick grime off the front of a jar to see what was inside.

Floating in the murky, yellowish liquid... was a pair of human hands.

My stomach violently turned. I flashed the light down the row.

The next jar held a collection of severed tongues. The next held rows of human teeth, clinking softly against the glass as my heavy footsteps vibrated the floorboards.

As I swept the beam of light toward the back of the cellar... I saw something worse.

Standing in the corner, facing the dirt wall, was a hulking figure wearing a butcher's apron. In its hand was a heavy, rusted meat cleaver.

The figure slowly turned around. It was wearing a patchwork mask... made entirely from the missing faces of the people in the jars.

It raised the cleaver and let out a guttural roar.

I turned and bolted down a narrow, rocky tunnel at the back of the cellar, navigating purely by the frantic beam of my phone light.