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The Cold Hands of Fate
An unreleased short story from the book:
The Last Breath: Tales of Survival in a Zombie-Infested World
The mansion loomed against the darkened sky, a decaying relic of an age long passed. Its silhouette stood like a guardian, twisted and silent, as the winds howled through the trees surrounding it. For the survivors, it was a place of refuge—a place to rest, to regroup. The days had blurred together in the aftermath of the apocalypse, and after trekking through the desolate landscape, the mansion promised a brief respite from the horrors outside.
Sarah, the leader of their small group, had been the one to spot it first. A beacon of something normal, something human in a world that seemed to have abandoned all semblance of life. The crumbling exterior didn’t faze her; after all, they had seen far worse. The heavy doors of the mansion creaked open with an effort, but they gave way, revealing the darkened interior. Dust and cobwebs clung to every surface, and the faint smell of mildew lingered in the air.
It felt cold. Too cold.
But they were too tired to question it.
“Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” Sarah said, her voice tired but hopeful. The others—David, the older, weary man; Claire, the young woman whose eyes spoke of trauma too deep to comprehend; and Jack, the teenager who had lost everything—murmured in agreement, each of them too exhausted to argue.
The first few hours were uneventful. They explored the mansion, a place that seemed frozen in time. The furniture, although covered in layers of dust, was surprisingly intact, as though someone had left hastily, abandoning everything behind. It wasn’t much—chairs, a broken table, a grand staircase leading to an upper floor—but it was shelter. The others gathered in what seemed like the safest room: the large, dimly lit parlor at the heart of the house. It was quiet there.
However, something about the mansion felt off. The cold seemed to linger, seeping into their bones, and the stillness was unnerving. Every now and then, the wind would rattle the windows, but the house itself seemed strangely sealed off from the world outside. The noise of the dead, of the occasional screams they had grown used to hearing, was absent. It felt as though the mansion existed in a bubble, protected from the horror that still gripped the world.
But that night, as Sarah lay in a makeshift bed of blankets, a noise broke the silence. It was faint at first—a low creaking, a dragging sound. At first, she thought it was the house settling, but the noise grew louder, more distinct, until it echoed in the hallway just outside. The others woke at the sound.
David was the first to move, slowly and stiffly, his tired legs creaking as he stood up. “What the hell is that?” he whispered, squinting into the dark hallway beyond the parlor.
Sarah moved to his side, her hand on the gun she kept hidden under her jacket. “Stay here,” she whispered, her voice trembling despite her attempt at control. She motioned for Claire and Jack to stay behind. “I’ll go check it out.”
Reluctantly, the others nodded, but as Sarah moved toward the door, Jack called after her. “Be careful, Sarah.”
The door to the basement was ajar, the creaking and dragging noise seeming to come from within. The others, unable to shake their curiosity or fear, followed her down the dim hallway, their footsteps muted by the worn carpet. The air grew colder as they approached the basement, the temperature dropping noticeably with each step.
As Sarah stepped onto the first step of the basement stairs, a strange, unsettling sensation washed over her. The darkness felt… wrong. It pressed against her, the air thick with something ancient. She paused, her hand hovering over the knob of the door, and then turned it.
The basement room was vast, the shadows stretching long across the walls. They entered cautiously, and Sarah’s flashlight flickered in the dark as they stepped deeper into the space. At first, all she could see were boxes, old crates stacked in forgotten corners, but then—
Then, she saw them.
The bodies.
Frozen in time.
They were huddled together in a grotesque, lifeless cluster, as though they had been frozen mid-action. Their faces were frozen in expressions of terror, eyes wide open in a way that suggested they had been alive when they died. Their hands gripped each other in frantic, desperate movements. Some clutched at their throats, others at their chests, and one woman seemed to have collapsed mid-scream, her mouth open, a rictus of horror etched into her face.
The cold in the room intensified, as though the bodies’ presence had sucked all the warmth from the air, leaving them all standing in the freezing grip of something unnatural. The stench was stale, old death mingled with the sharp tang of something metallic.
“What… what happened to them?” Claire whispered, her voice shaky, eyes wide with fear.
David stepped forward, his hand trembling as he wiped sweat from his brow despite the cold. “I… I don’t know,” he murmured, his voice trembling. “But whatever it was, it’s not something I ever want to experience.”
“Look at their hands,” Jack said, his voice trembling in disbelief.
The hands, those cold, lifeless hands, were still gripping one another. It was as though they had been caught in a moment of pure terror, their final act of desperation frozen in time. Their faces, too, seemed to have captured the raw emotion of their last moments. But there was something else.
The walls around them. The cold seemed to emanate from the walls themselves, not just the bodies. The room felt as though it were holding onto something ancient, something evil that never let go. It was suffocating, like being trapped in a nightmare where you couldn’t escape.
Sarah moved closer to the bodies, her flashlight illuminating more detail. But the moment her light passed over one of the corpses’ faces, her breath caught in her throat.
There was a figure behind them. A shadow, tall and thin, its face obscured by a tattered hood. It hadn’t been there before, and it was standing at the far end of the basement, watching them. A faint, distorted whisper drifted toward them, just beyond the edges of their hearing.
Help us…
The air grew colder still, the temperature plummeting, the chill sinking deep into their bones. The shadow seemed to grow, elongating, stretching out across the walls. The bodies around them began to shift in response, their frozen hands twitching, their eyes moving, and their mouths whispering in unison.
You shouldn’t have come…
And then, the shadow spoke.
“You should have left,” it rasped. “Now you belong to this place.”
Suddenly, the room seemed to tilt, the air thickening. The shadows clung to the walls like living creatures, and the bodies in the corner began to shift. They lurched forward in slow, jerking movements, and the room was filled with the whispers of those who had been trapped. The terror that had consumed them in their final moments seemed to bleed into the very fabric of the house itself.
Sarah turned to flee, but the door slammed shut. The whispers became screams.
The last thing she saw was the figure stepping closer, its hollow eyes reflecting the terror she had seen in the faces of the dead.
And the cold… the cold was all-consuming.
As the darkness closed in, she understood—there was no escaping the mansion. There was no way out. They were trapped, frozen in a place where death lingered, where terror had claimed the lives of so many before them. And now, they would be part of that frozen moment. Part of the horror.
The mansion was no sanctuary. It was a prison, and they would never leave.
The last whispers of the dead echoed in their ears, but by then, it was already too late.
The cold hands of fate had claimed them, too.
If you enjoyed this short story you will probably like our latest release available now:
The Last Breath: Tales of Survival in a Zombie-Infested World
$3.99
Prepare to face the terrifying unknown in The Last Breath: Tales of Survival in a Zombie-Infested World, a chilling collection of dark, morbid, and suspense-filled short stories that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
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