From that moment on, he became the deadly enemy of all Indians in the area—the guilty and the innocent. He secretly haunted the woodland paths and stream banks, killing any Indian man he chanced upon. Then he took the heads of his victims and put them on shelves he built in his cabin.
In time, he collected ninety-nine of these ghastly trophies. Row upon row of grinning skulls filled his shelves.
“Only one more skull to go,” he muttered to himself. “Then my vengeance is complete.”
But the Indians—aware of their danger—were keeping better guard. Many had already left the area.
Before the hundredth man fell to his rifle, Bill was seized with a fatal illness. He called his son, Tom, to his bedside. Pointing to the skulls, the dying man said, “You must fulfill the oath I took, by adding a hundredth skull to the others. If you fail, your murdered grandfather and I will come back to punish you.”
“I promise,” said Tom uneasily.
Shortly after this, Bill Quick died.
Tom tried to make good on his gruesome vow, but things always seemed to work against him. He wasn’t much of a hunter, or a very good shot. He had no liking for violence. And the Indians had by now abandoned the region completely.
He kept putting off the unpleasant duty of filling the final space on the topmost shelf. When he felt guilty about failing to keep his promise to his father, he soothed his guilt with drink and gambling. As time went on, he caroused more and more and thought less and less about his promise.
One morning, Tom had returned home after a wild night of carrying on. The bleary-eyed man was nearly frightened out of his wits when the eye sockets of the skulls upon the shelves suddenly began to glow. Then they began to gibber and clack their teeth together. Certain the skulls were mocking his weakness, he cursed them, then fled into the daylight.
When Tom babbled out his story to his friends, they first decided he had gone mad. But when they learned his dark secret—that he was under oath to kill an Indian—they grew disgusted and shunned him.
Tom was left alone to his fancies. Now his nightmares included nightly visits from the ghosts of both his father and his grandfather. They shook their fists and demanded he deliver the final skull. As his mind became more unstable, he grew more and more determined to carry out his promise and so put his ghosts to rest. When he heard that a band of Indians had been seen in the neighborhood, Tom took up his rifle and set out on his horrible mission.
Shortly after this, a nearby settler heard a single shot from the direction of Tom’s cabin. Hurrying to see what had happened, the man found the cabin silent and the door closed. He knocked and called out, but there was no answer. At last he pushed open the door and entered.
Staring blindly at him from the topmost shelf at the center of the far wall was the hundredth skull, a bullet hole through its forehead.
The head, which had been scalped, was Tom Quick’s.
The Ogre’s Arm
(Japan)
In Japan long ago there was a large plain, which was said to be haunted by an ogre. From time to time travelers crossing it would disappear, never to be heard from again. People in nearby villages whispered dreadful stories of how the missing folk had been lured away by the goblin and eaten.
One evening a brave knight named Watanabe rode onto the empty plain as a storm came on. Rain fell heavily and the wind howled like the wolves in the mountains. The weary knight was relieved when he spotted a clump of trees in the distance, and, through the trees, the glimmer of a lamp.
Hoping to find shelter for the night, Watanabe soon came to a miserable-looking little cottage. The bamboo fence was broken, and weeds and grass had pushed through the gaps. The paper screens covering the windows were full of holes. The old thatched roof sagged on posts that were bent with age.
The door was open. A young man, dressed as a farmer, looked up from his bowl of rice in surprise when Watanabe knocked on the doorpost.
“Good evening, sir,” the knight said. “I beg you to let me take shelter for the night under your roof.”
“Of course,” said the farmer. “I can only offer you a poor welcome, but come in. I will make a fire to warm you.”
He told the traveler to put his horse in the stable, which was as tumbledown as the house. When Watanabe had done so, he politely took off his boots (for he was in armor) and entered the hut. The younger man gave him a cup of tea, then said, “We will soon be out of wood. I must go and gather some more.” Before he left, however, he cautioned the knight, “You must sit where you are, and not go near the back room.”
“As you wish,” said the knight, somewhat puzzled.
Then the farmer went away. Soon the remaining fire died out, and the only light came from a dim lantern. The farmer’s warning not to look into the back room increasingly aroused Watanabe’s curiosity and unease.
At last, deciding that he could take a look without his host knowing, Watanabe crept forward and pushed open the sliding door at the back of the room. What he saw froze the blood in his veins. The floor was littered with dead men’s bones, while heaped in a corner, a stack of skulls reached to the ceiling.
Quickly Watanabe put his boots back on and hurried to the stable, for he had left his weapons with his horse.
But as soon as he entered the stable and reached for his sword, he became aware of someone standing behind him. At the same time the farmer’s voice said, “My dear guest, why such haste to be away into the storm? Have you looked where you were warned not to look? And we had so little time to talk. Alas!”
With this, Watanabe’s helmet was seized from the back. Quickly the knight put out his hand and groped around to find out what held him from behind. He touched an arm—but it was not human: It was covered with bristles and as big as a tree trunk.
Watanabe wrenched free and spun around. He discovered that the farmer had taken on his true goblin shape. He was taller than two men. His eyes flashed like sunlit mirrors, his hair streamed out on all sides as though it were made of living snakes, his mouth was filled with bloodred fangs.
The ogre grabbed for him again, but Watanabe swung his sword fiercely. There was a dreadful yell of pain, and the ogre backed off. Then the knight attacked the ogre with all his strength. At last the monster, who clearly was better at deceiving travelers than fighting a war-hardened soldier, took flight.
Watanabe pursued the ogre, but quickly lost the creature in the stormy darkness. Returning to the stable, the knight stumbled upon something lying on the ground. It was the ogre’s arm, which the monster had lost in their fight.
Wrapping it up, Watanabe rode home to Kyoto with the arm as a trophy. When he showed it to his comrades, they declared him a hero and gave him a great feast. Soon word of his deed spread, and people came from far and wide, hoping to see the ogre’s arm.
But Watanabe knew the ogre was still alive and might try to steal back his arm. So he had a box made of the strongest wood, banded with iron. He refused to open it for anyone. He left the box in his own room and never let it out of his sight.
One evening soon after this, he had a visitor. He recognized the old woman at once: She had been his nurse when he was a child. He greeted her warmly, though he thought it strange that she should come so late at night.
As they shared a friendly cup of tea, the old woman suddenly asked, “Master, the report of your brave fight with the ogre is so widely told that even your poor old nurse has heard of it. Is it really true that you cut off one of the ogre’s arms? If you did, you are to be praised indeed.”
“Yes,” admitted Watanabe, “but I am ashamed that the monster escaped with only the loss of an arm!”
“Oh! There is nothing that can be compared to your courage! Please, let me see this arm,” she begged.
“I am sorry,” said Watanabe, “but I cannot. Ogres are very vengeful creatures. If I open the box for a moment, the ogre may suddenly appear to carry off his arm. So I never show it to anyone.”
“Your caution is reasonable,�
�� said the old woman. “But I am your old nurse. Surely you will not refuse to show me the arm. Didn’t I come rushing through the night to your door the moment I heard of your brave deed?”
Watanabe was troubled by her disappointed look. Still, he refused.
Then the old woman grew angry. “Do you suspect me of being a spy sent by the ogre?” she demanded.
“No, of course not,” Watanabe answered, sighing. “You are my old nurse.”
“Then do not deny this poor old woman her heart’s wish,” she pleaded. Tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Defeated, Watanabe said, “Very well. I will show you the ogre’s arm. Come, follow me.”
He led her to his own room. When he had carefully shut the door, Watanabe lifted the heavy lid on the iron-banded box in the corner of the room.
“Let me have a good look at it!” cried the woman joyfully. She came nearer and nearer, her face shining with eagerness.
Suddenly she plunged her hand into the box and seized the arm, roaring so that the room shook, “I have got my arm back!”
The nurse changed triumphantly into the towering figure of the frightful ogre. Watanabe, whose sword was always at his side, drew it from its sheath in a flash. But the ogre knew only too well the man’s skill with a sword. He sprang to the ceiling and burst through the roof, vanishing into the night.
Though people continued to tell the story of Watanabe and the ogre’s arm, the knight raged at the way the ogre had tricked him. In fury, he returned to the haunted plain to confront the monster. But the farmer’s hut had fallen to ruins; wind and rain had ground the bones and skulls to dust.
Watanabe raised his sword and cried challenge after challenge to the unseen ogre. But his only answer was a sound like mocking laughter, so faint that it might have been nothing more than the wind stirring distant pines.
The Hairy Hands
(British Isles—England)
There is a road that stretches from Postbridge to Two Bridges, across the rugged and desolate landscape of Dartmoor. It is reportedly haunted. For years, pony carts would overturn into the ditch alongside the road. Horses would shy, throw their riders, and gallop off. In later years, bicyclists swore that their handlebars would be suddenly wrenched out of their control, sending them crashing. Cars and buses would skid—often causing fatal accidents.
Once, a young army officer was injured in a motorcycle crash. The shaken man insisted that, just a second before he had slammed into a stone wall, a pair of large, muscular, hairy hands had closed over his own, forcing his cycle off the road.
Some locals were convinced that the ghostly hands belonged to a highwayman who had held up coaches centuries before. As punishment the authorities had cut his hands off and thrown them away. “Not havin’ a proper Christian burial,” one person said, “them hands took on a life of their own.”
When reporters got wind of this story, the mystery of the hairy hands became front-page news. Marjory Landis had followed the reports with interest. So when her husband, Frederick, suggested they rent a camper and explore Dartmoor on their summer holiday, she tried to get him to change his mind. But her fear of the haunted road made him laugh. “Those stories are nothing but rubbish designed to sell newspapers,” he insisted. “You can’t take them seriously.”
Still, she remained uneasy when they actually began their holiday. In Postbridge they arranged to rent the camper from a local agent. When she asked a clerk about the haunting, he simply shook his head and said, “The experts checked that whole stretch of road. They found the paving pitched too sharply to the sides. They repaired it, and that’s ended most stories of hairy hands.”
This made Marjory feel a bit better about their journey. But she grew apprehensive when Frederick decided to stop for the night about a mile west of the place where the two worst accidents had happened.
They had a light meal, then retired early. But Marjory awoke with a start in the chilly night. She sat up, her heart pounding. Through one of the camper’s small windows, she could see moonlight shining on the ruins of an old mill. Though nothing seemed amiss, she felt a sense of menace, as though danger were creeping up on them.
In his bunk at the far end of the camper, Frederick slept soundly. But a sudden faint noise drew Marjory’s attention to the window above her husband. There she saw something moving. For a moment it seemed like a large, pale spider. Then she realized that it was the fingers and palm of a very large hand. The moonlight showed many dark hairs on the joints and on the back of the hand. It was clawing its way up and up, toward the top of the window, which was open a little. The sound she had heard was the faintest scraping of fingernails on the glass.
“Frederick!” she called, but her husband did not stir. The horrible thing continued climbing. Now she could see that, beyond the wrist, there was nothing. It looked as though it had been cut cleanly off a body. She imagined the hand reaching the opening, scuttling through, dropping onto her sleeping husband’s face.
Never taking her eyes off the horror, she hurried to Frederick. But even shaking him failed to rouse him.
The hairy hand was almost to the top. Frantically she slammed the window shut and bolted it. Frustrated, the fingers scrabbled back and forth, seeking a way in.
The hand sank slowly out of sight. But then she heard soft patterings along the wall. The window near her own bunk rattled. The danger wasn’t gone. The thing was seeking another way in.
Not knowing what else to do, Marjory grabbed the Bible she kept beside her bed. She made the sign of the cross, then began reading aloud in a shaky voice.
Suddenly she heard a fist slammed against the wall near her head. Then again. The camper shook. She had the feeling that the thing was angered by her reading. While the unseen hand pounded away, she continued to read her Bible, though her voice grew weak and sometimes failed her.
And then, after one final blow, the assault stopped. She continued to read for several more minutes before pausing to listen. Her blood ran cold. A sound like fingernails scraping on the metal side of the trailer behind her was echoed by a second set of unseen nails scratching outside the opposite wall.
With a groan, Marjory realized that the reports had always spoken of two hands. She imagined the ghastly things hunting like a pair of small, lethal animals.
They were moving together now, one on either side of the camper, heading back toward the window over Frederick’s bed.
Still holding the Bible, Marjory leaned over her husband, shaking him and shouting until she roused him. He seemed dazed, and angry with her for waking him so violently.
“Listen!” she cried. “Don’t you hear them?”
“Hear what?” Frederick snapped. “There’s nothing to hear.”
The hands were silent.
Her husband was now fully awake and thoroughly angry. “You and those fool stories of yours!” he said. “Hairy hands. Ghosts. What rot!”
He pointed to the window. “There’s nothing out there, Marjory. You get a grip; I’m going to make a cup of tea, since I’m awake now.” He sat on the edge of the bunk to pull on his slippers.
Outside the window appeared the misty figure of a big man wearing a mask over his eyes, a plumed hat, and a loose shirt and doublet. He thrust his two bare, hairy fists through the windowpane. The spray of glass sent Frederick ducking with a cry. Behind him, the hairy hands grabbed for him.
Though Marjory had been cut by some bits of glass, she opened the Bible halfway, then slammed it closed on the outstretched fingers.
There was a sickening sizzling sound like frying sausages, and the smell of burning sulfur. Beneath its mask, the face of the ghostly highwayman twisted in pain and fear. Then the misty shape flew apart. The pages of the Bible thumped together a moment later as the hands vanished.
Neither Marjory nor her husband was hurt, except for some minor cuts from the glass. Frederick, whose back had been toward the hands and the ghostly figure, still groped for some “logical explanation.” Then Marjory ope
ned the Bible.
There, burned into the pages, was the clear impression of two big hands.
The Snow Husband
(Native American—Algonquin tribe)
In a northern village of the Algonquins dwelt a young woman so beautiful that many young men came to woo her. So lovely was she that she received the name Fairest.
Now, one of the young men who was most in love with her was named Elegant, because of his noble features and the rich beadwork on his clothing. One day he went to her father’s lodge to ask Fairest if she would marry him.
But when he had poured out all his love to her, the maiden only laughed at him and rudely sent him away. To make things worse, she stood outside her father’s lodge and repeated her refusal, shaming him in front of everyone.
Elegant, who was very sensitive, suffered terribly at being rejected and mocked so. His heartsickness soon turned into an illness of his whole body. He would not eat. He sat for hours staring at the ground, remembering Fairest’s harsh words and the laughter of everyone who had heard them. He felt sad and disgraced. The kind words of family and friends did nothing to improve his spirits.
When his tribe was preparing to move to winter camp, he refused to leave with his family. At last the others could wait no longer, and they bade him sad farewell. He had grown so weak that they thought he would not live to see their return in the summer.
For a time, he lay shivering as the first snows began to fall. But at the very moment icy death seemed closest to him, Elegant found himself beginning to burn with the desire for revenge. He decided to punish Fairest for casting aside the love he had so honestly given her. He felt he had laid his heart at her feet, and she had treated it like a scrap not fit for dogs.
So Elegant appealed to his guardian spirit to help him. In a dream, the spirit came to him in the form of a wolf and told Elegant what he must do. As soon as the young man awoke, he ate a little pounded corn soaked in snow water for strength.
A Terrifying Taste of Short & Shivery Page 4
