Half-Minute Horrors

by Susan Rich

  Then the something grabbed my shoulder.

  And I took a breath and it felt like a hammer in my throat. And I blacked out.

  When I woke up, my mom was wrapping me in a beach towel. My dad was holding a flashlight, looking at me.

  “What’s that on her shoulder?” Mom screamed.

  A mark. Like little teeth.

  We still don’t know what it is.

  Now I’m not allowed to play with Jenny or the hole. Dad filled it up. Just as well I guess. Jenny’s a jerk.

  BRIAN SELZNICK

  A Thousand Faces

  FRANCINE PROSE

  Chocolate Cake

  Lately, I’ve had the definite feeling that my parents aren’t my parents. I can’t exactly explain it. But I’m convinced that they’re space aliens who look and act like my parents and have taken their places.

  I’ve been asking them trick questions to trip them up. “Dad, what was the name of my first puppy?”

  “Uh . . . Fluffy?”

  “His name was Earnest,” I say.

  “I’ve got a lot on my mind,” says “Dad.”

  Tonight I’m trying something new. My real mom is horribly allergic to chocolate. She breaks out in a skin rash if she even looks at chocolate.

  I bake my fake mom a chocolate birthday cake. I watch her eat it. No rash. She smiles.

  “Delicious,” she says. “Thank you, Timmy.”

  “My name is Jimmy,” I say.

  AYELET WALDMAN

  At the Water’s Edge

  The water is still, and so clear I can see the tangled stems of the lily pads leading down to the muddy bottom. I have made a careful study of the lilies, their white outer leaves that shade to pale pink and finally to magenta. The pistils are bright orange, the color of the dress my mother was wearing when she left for work this morning, only a few minutes before the children came. I am paying such close attention to the blossoms floating in the pond because I don’t want to look at the children. The pond is small, and they have surrounded it entirely. They stand very still, staring at me. I think they don’t even blink, but since I try to avoid their eyes, I cannot really tell. They don’t say a word.

  It has been hours since they first burst through the doors and crawled through the windows, silent all the while, even when they snatched my little sister from her crib and bundled her away. My mother should be home by now.

  They have never once spoken, or shouted, even when I managed to tear loose from their filthy hands and race out to the pond. They chased me, their fingers brushing the edges of my clothes. I leaped into the canoe and paddled out to the middle of the pond, a smart thing to do, it turned out, since it seems they cannot swim. But the pond is shallow, and soon enough they’ll figure out that they can wade. Already I see one or two of them testing the water with their dirt-encrusted toes.

  I hear the noise of an engine, and only now do I allow myself to burst into tears. My mother is home—her car is coming up the driveway. She will chase them away. Except the car door is opening and it is not my mother who is stepping out. It is one of the children, dirty and disheveled, with torn clothes and bare feet. I am staring at the child who has replaced my mother, and there is no air left in my lungs. The child lifts her hand and waves.

  It will be dark soon.

  R.L. STINE

  My Worst Nightmare

  For a long time, I had the terrifying idea that an evil stranger lived in my bedroom closet. It was my worst nightmare.

  My room was up in the attic. It was a long, narrow room. My bed was against one wall. My closet stood at the far wall. It was as big as a room. The kind of closet you can walk in. I kept the white wooden door shut tight.

  Late at night, I’d hear noises in the closet. Bumps and soft thumps.

  I knew a stranger was hiding in there. Living secretly in our house. When I told my parents, they laughed at me and told me to grow up.

  One night, the noises in the closet were loud and frightening. Thump thump bump. Was someone moving around in there?

  No way I could get to sleep. I knew I had to look.

  My legs trembled as I stepped up to the closet door. My hand shook as I reached for the knob.

  Thump bump thump.

  I took a deep breath—and pulled open the door. And let out a moan of horror.

  Deep in the closet, a red-haired boy stared back at me. “NO! OH, NO!” he screamed. “I knew someone was hiding in my closet . . . living in my house! It’s my worst nightmare!”

  ADELE GRIFFIN

  The Beast Outside

  Jane didn’t say thank you for the dollhouse. She just began to destroy it.

  “Twister!” She smashed the furniture. The dolls hid in the attic. They were used to children who loved them.

  Did Mama cry out when Jane tore her dress? Did the Boy bruise when she hurled him down the stairs? Jane grinned, locked Granny and her Scottie in the trunk, and shoved Papa up the chimney.

  After Twister, Jane played Flood. Typhoon. Famine. She ripped off Mama’s leg and set it on a plate. “Eat that!”

  The next morning, Jane saw what the dolls had done. The Boy lay in a heap as if thrown from the roof. Inside, Papa hung from a noose, his neck snapped. Granny’d stuck her head in the oven. Mama was drowned in the tub.

  A growl made Jane jump. The Scottie’s eyeball filled her window.

  Time to play Revenge.

  ALIZA KELLERMAN

  Unannounced

  “Hi,” Allan said, his eyes huge and pleading. He was rain drenched, slicked wet in a T-shirt and cargo pants.

  “Eight weeks after dumping me. Now you show up. Real nice.”

  He wiped his face. “You’ve been counting?”

  “Leave.” She wanted to close the door, slam it in his face. But he looked like he needed to say something. “What?”

  He took one step inside, then back out. “I love you.”

  She blinked. “Great for you.”

  This time she had no problem shutting him out, for good.

  At breakfast the next morning, her brother gently tapped her shoulder. “Emmy?”

  She rubbed her eyes groggily. She had barely slept the night before, thinking of the pleading look he’d given her, the rain coating his hair.

  “Remember that kid you used to see? Allan what’s-his-face?”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. “Why?”

  “They found his body at the bottom of St. Peter Lake. It made the front page.”

  “W-what?” she stuttered. “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Em. Paper says he’d been there for at least two months.”

  “But that—that’s impossible.”

  “I’m sorry, Em. It’s probably weird for you. You haven’t seen him in months, and now you’ll . . .”

  He trailed off.

  “I’ll never see him again,” she finished. She wondered if it was true.

  MARK CRILLEY

  Krüger’s Sausage Haus

  ALLAN STRATTON

  There’s Something Under the Bed

  “There’s something under the bed.”

  “Don’t be silly. You’re a big boy now,” his father said, and turned out the light.

  “But there is! Please, Daddy, look!”

  So his father got down in the dark beside the bed. And disappeared.

  “Daddy? . . . Where are you, Daddy?”

  A gentle chuckle. “I’m under the bed.”

  “You sound different.”

  “Do I?”

  “Yes. Very different. . . . Are you really Daddy?”

  “Why don’t you come under the bed and find out?”

  SARAH L. THOMSON

  Cat’s Paw

  The boy sat up in bed, listening.

  First a feathery sound. Like a dry paintbrush whispering across paper.

  Then footsteps softer than his own heartbeat.

  Finally a thump more felt than heard, as something landed on the bed.

  The
boy groped for a lamp. He touched the switch. He looked at the cat sitting by his feet.

  He sighed. “It’s you. I thought it was something scary.”

  “Silly,” said the cat. “Cats aren’t scary.”

  “I’m dreaming,” the boy whispered. “Cats can’t talk!”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that,” answered the cat. Her whiskers were wet with something sticky and dark.

  “I’d worry about the rats,” she added.

  “Now that’s scary.”

  Inside the wall, the boy could hear tiny claws scrabbling at plaster.

  When the claws broke through, he could swear the cat smiled.

  KATHERINE APPLEGATE

  Horrorku

  Death’s gruesome face taunts:

  soulless eyes, crimson grimace.

  I really hate clowns.

  AVI

  The Itch

  It was an itch that woke me. I pulled my hand out from beneath the warm blanket and scratched my face.

  I felt hair. Odd, I thought. Hadn’t I shaved today?

  I started to tuck my hand away when I realized it was wet. Increasingly puzzled, I turned on my bedside lamp and looked. The hand was covered with hair. And it was bloody, too. The fingernails had become yellow and long.

  I leaped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. I peered into a mirror.

  A wolf looked back at me. I growled, revealing my fangs.

  What I felt was a great need to get outside and start hunting.

  I’m not even sure I shut the door. I was that hungry.

  GAIL CARSON LEVINE

  The New Me: A Pantoum

  This heat. I pull myself along,

  blocking the narrow school stairway.

  I wish for a broader chest, stronger legs.

  A teacher pushes past, angry at the delay

  blocking the narrow school stairway.

  My skin feels tight on my bones.

  A teacher pushes past, angry at the delay.

  I grow heavy and as stupid as an ox.

  My skin feels tight on my bones.

  Jennifer says, “You okay, Sam?”

  I grow heavy and as stupid as an ox,

  thinking, How changed I am.

  Jennifer says, “You okay, Sam?”

  I shake my huge head. I’m yoked to a plow,

  thinking, How changed I am.

  Farmer, do not use your whip!

  I shake my huge head. I’m yoked to a plow.

  I wish for a broader chest, stronger legs.

  Farmer, do not use your whip!

  This heat. I pull myself along.

  DAVID STAHLER JR.

  Always Eleven

  I told you last night, I won’t hurt you. Not me.

  Yes, the house was just as moldy and awful when we came here too. Father was dead in the war, and my little brother cried every night. But it wasn’t just for missing Father. It was that man.

  You know him.

  He showed up not long after we got here, seemed to cast a spell over Mother. Not us. It was the way he moved. Smooth and quiet, like a slinking wolf. And he hated us. This was his house. That’s what he told us.

  One night, James wouldn’t stop crying. The noise brought the man up to the top of the stairs, to throw open the door.

  “Why are you crying?” he growled at us. “What are you afraid of?”

  “Monsters,” James whimpered.

  “There are no monsters,” I hissed. “Stop crying and go to sleep.” I just wanted that man to leave, to close the door and leave us to the cold.

  He didn’t say anything. He just laughed. That’s when I saw the eyes start their glowing, a devilish red in the darkness.

  It didn’t take long, what happened next.

  So that’s why I’m here. So many years later and I’m still here. Still eleven. Always eleven, just like you.

  CARSON ELLIS

  Aloft

  TUI T. SUTHERLAND

  Skittering

  I knew I never should have killed that spider.

  I was making my bed when I saw something skitter away under the sheets. I threw back the blankets and slammed my book onto the mattress, banging and smashing and screaming until the big brown spider was a squashy, flat, oozing mess.

  My skin was crawling. Had the spider been in the bed with me all night? I pulled all the sheets off the bed and took them to my mom, and we put them straight into the washing machine.

  But even with new sheets, I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept feeling tiny legs slithering over my skin. Prickly thin fingers danced across my bare feet, climbed slowly up my pajamas, brushed against my exposed neck. I thought I was imagining things. I tried to ignore it.

  And then . . . I felt something as small as a pencil eraser land softly on my cheek and scuttle toward my ear.

  I sat up, shrieking. I was still screaming for help when my mom came running in and turned on the light.

  The ceiling was swarming with spiders. Spiders clambered up the bedposts, prickly arms marching toward me. All around me the blanket was a sea of twitching legs and glittering eyes.

  But they weren’t here for me. As the light went on, they began to pour across the floor and drop down from the ceiling. They converged on the door in a skittering swarm.

  I had killed their mother . . . and they were here for mine.

  ABI SLONE

  Stuck in the Middle

  On the basement stairs, halfway between the darkness below and the light of the first floor, Erin heard the footsteps behind her. As she took another step forward, the footsteps got louder. Like they were closer. Like they were running. Like they were on her.

  On her next step she turned around and looked back into the dark. Erin could hear nothing but her own heart pounding. Turning back toward the light, she felt a chill run through her as her body was pushed ever so slightly forward. And looking up one last time, she saw the door at the top of the stairs close and heard the lock click.

  JOSEPH DELANEY

  All Fingers and Thumbs!

  The bone witch chained my legs to a stake very close to the pit and left me there. When I tried to pick the lock, I was all fingers and thumbs.

  The sun was setting behind Crow Wood, the shadows lengthening. Down in the darkness of the pit I could hear something moving. Something big and scary grunting and snuffling. Suddenly it sniffed loudly three times and growled.

  “My son’s hungry,” said the witch. She was back and was standing behind me. “So I’ll give you a chance. Feed him a morsel, one each day for ten days, and I’ll let you go. Something tasty so that he won’t bother to climb out. You could walk free then.”

  “I’ve nothing to feed it with!” I complained, starting to tremble.

  “Oh, yes you have!” said the witch, placing a sharp knife at my side. She laughed wickedly, and the crows took flight.

  “Start with your left thumb. . . .”

  Then the footsteps came toward her.

  ALAN GRATZ

  Don’t Wet the Bed

  Russell’s parents told him there was nothing under his bed, but he didn’t believe them.

  Yes, his father had turned on the lights and lifted the bedsheets off the floor to show him nothing was there, but the thing that lived under his bed came back when the lights were off. He could feel it, sense it, as surely as if it were a part of him, and he knew that no matter where he tried to climb out of bed, it could reach out and get him.

  It had tentacles.

  As long as Russell stayed perfectly still under his covers, as long as a foot or a hand didn’t stray off the edge during the night, he was safe until morning.

  The problem was, Russell had to go to the bathroom.

  Bad.

  Last time he had wet the bed rather than put his foot down in the dark, but tonight he was ready. The fishing rod with the straightened coat hanger on the end wobbled as he aimed for the light switch at the far end of the room, but it reached. The hook caught the switch, it started to lif
t—

  —and the coat hanger broke through its tape and fell too far away to reach.

  The light was still off, and Russell had to pee so badly now, it burned. The bathroom was just a few steps away. Maybe if he jumped, got a running start. He couldn’t sleep in a wet bed again. Couldn’t face the shame of telling his mother.

  He stood, shivering, and backed up on his bed. Beneath him, the thing stirred.

  Run as fast as you can, then jump, grab for the light switch—

  Russell ran. He jumped. His foot hit the ground—

  —and he was gone.

  The Final Word

  illustrated by Brett Helquist,

  story by Josh Greenhut

  It had been an eternal minute since the Ouija board had finished pronouncing the most terrible fate that Elijah could imagine. Trembling, he forced himself to ask a final question.

  The board began guiding his fingers at once.

  With a roar, Elijah hoisted the board over his head and brought it down against the wall with a crack. On his fourth try, it splintered. He held an edge against the floor and stamped down with his foot, hard, breaking it in half. He kept at it until the floor was littered with fragments.

  Spent at last, Elijah climbed the stairs and crawled into bed. There seemed to be something hard beneath the pillow. Lifting it, he found the Ouija board—cracked and scarred, but somehow whole—staring up at him. It jerked his finger as if with a string. All the way to . . .

  the third and final letter:

  NEIL GAIMAN