A Terrifying Taste of Short & Shivery

by Robert D. San Souci

  William was really angry now. But the woman smiled a curious, twisted smile. And then she was gone. She disappeared as quickly as she had come. And William realized what had struck him as odd about her: Though there was sunlight everywhere, she had thrown no shadow.

  Tanith shivered as she asked, “Was she a ghost? What did she mean by ‘powers’? What powers? This is all so strange! I don’t know if I want to stay here.”

  “We haven’t unpacked the car,” said William, who was just as shaken as his wife. “We’ll leave now. I’ll phone the agent when we get back to London. Say we’ve changed our minds.”

  Leaving the keys in the hallway, they hurried to the car. From somewhere came the sound of laughter, though neither the caretaker nor anyone else was in sight. To Tanith, the hill suddenly looked very steep. A sign they hadn’t noticed before warned, DANGEROUS HILL.

  “Be careful, William,” Tanith begged.

  But the car fairly flew down the hillside, taking the dangerous curves as smoothly as it had when climbing them. Tanith breathed more easily when they rounded the last curve and reached the bottom of the hill. From here the road stretched flat and straight ahead. But the air seemed alive with voices as steady and meaningless as crickets’ humming. And somewhere the passing bell tolled again.

  Then, dead ahead, a big truck shot out of a hidden side road. There was no time to brake. William’s sports car hit the truck with a sickening grinding noise.

  William was killed instantly. Tanith, though badly injured, recovered. In the days that followed, she tried to make sense of the tragedy. There seemed so many bits and pieces to fit together in the puzzle. She often talked to people who lived near Dangerous Hill, though she could not go back there. Even the sight of the place—the slopes covered with flowers, the house shimmering in the sunlight—chilled her to the bone.

  Then, one day, she met an old man who had lived his whole life near there. When he heard her story, he nodded and said, “Your husband was a sacrifice to the Things that own Dangerous Hill. The ghost—oh yes! she was certainly a ghost; she’s been dead many years—was right to warn you. It’s a pity her warning came too late.”

  “Then you know who she was?” asked Tanith.

  “Yes,” said the old man. “She had an only son, very much like your William, I imagine. He was engaged to a pretty girl like you. The young people were killed in a car crash on Dangerous Hill. The poor mother died of a broken heart soon after. All three are buried in the churchyard nearby. Perhaps the sound of the church’s passing bell was another warning sent too late.”

  The Witch’s Head

  (El Salvador)

  A young farmer named Luís took a cartload of fresh fruit to market one day. As he sat in the plaza with his goods spread out on a blanket, a lovely young woman, a stranger, stopped to look over his wares. Then she picked up a ripe zapote. Smiling, she bit into the juicy apple-shaped fruit. “Ah! Sweet zapote!” she cried. “It is my favorite fruit, but I have never tasted one half as sweet.”

  They began talking, and Luís learned that she had come to live with an elderly aunt. The farmer was captivated by the charming young woman, and began to call on her. Soon they were married.

  Not long after the wedding, a witch began to trouble the neighborhood. The hag came by night. Jewels and other valuables would disappear. Food would be eaten. Unfortunate watchdogs or homeowners who discovered the witch at her business were found bitten to death.

  No one knew what she looked like, though one or two people claimed to have seen a ghostly form, with dark hair streaming behind it, flying beneath the stars just before dawn. Witnesses would cross themselves, and pray that the sight didn’t prove a curse.

  Luís grew worried that the creature might come to his house and harm his wife. But when he told her his fears, she laughed. “That mischief-maker will never bother us,” she said.

  Her husband, however, decided she was merely acting brave so that he wouldn’t worry. Luís did not tell her that he planned to keep watch all through the night. Later, while his wife slept in her bed, he only pretended to sleep. In the dark, he kept his eyes and ears open for the slightest movement or sound that would reveal the coming of the witch.

  To his amazement, Luís saw his wife get up in the middle of the night. He was about to call to her when her actions stopped him. Moving silently, she put two cushions under her covers. Then she moved her hands in a curious pattern over the bed. She whispered words he could not hear. To his horror, the bedclothes began to rise and fall gently as if his wife were still asleep.

  In the main room, she swung herself up to the ceiling beams, then dropped straightaway to the floor, where her body lay headless. But her head—which now had the features of a withered, sharp-toothed old woman—floated above the body a moment. Then it vanished through the door, which opened and closed by itself. Paralyzed with fright, the farmer spent the next hours praying.

  Before cockcrow, the door swung open. For a moment Luís saw his wife, with her witch’s face, standing there. Her dark hair trailed down over a form as clear and colorless as glass. Then, from the neck down, the body faded away like smoke in the breeze. All that was left was the hideous head, which floated over and rejoined the body lying on the floor. The moment she was whole again, her face became as lovely as before. The woman stood up. Her husband saw his wife return to bed, rearrange her bedclothes, and fall asleep as the sun was beginning to rise.

  Later that day, the terrified farmer went to an old man who was supposed to know a thing or two about witches. “What am I to do?” he asked when he had told the fellow of his wife’s secret.

  “When your wife goes out to make mischief,” the old man said, “let her body lie where it is. But put a heap of hot ashes on the spot where the head belongs.”

  That night the farmer did as he was told. Then he hid himself in the loft. When the head returned, it could not attach itself to its body. Its face twisting in rage, the head cried, “How have you dared to do this, you miserable man?” Then it flew about the room screaming and gnashing its razor-sharp teeth.

  The farmer, crouching in the loft, kept silent. But his foot slipped, making a noise. The head flew up and faced him. “Cruel husband,” it said, “you have shut me away from my own body forever. Now you will have to share your body with me.”

  So the awful head settled on his shoulder and stuck fast. The man wept at his misfortune. He knew he could never rid himself of a witch who had fastened on his body this way.

  In despair, the man ran into the woods beyond his farm. All the while, the witch’s head, which had little power during the day, dozed. As the man wandered about, he found himself at the base of a gigantic zapote tree. High above, the zapotes were just beginning to ripen.

  Suddenly he had an idea. Gently he began to stroke the head. “Poor thing,” he said soothingly, “you are so tired. Sleep, sleep in the warm sun.” Then he pointed up to the ripening fruit. “Look! There are zapotes. Wouldn’t you like some to eat? I know how fond you are of them.”

  “Let me sleep,” the head complained.

  “Please sleep while I fetch you some zapotes,” the man said, spreading his serape on the ground.

  “Yes,” the head murmured. “Sweet zapotes.”

  Then it said, “I will rest. But do not try to escape. I will be waiting.” The head let the farmer lift it down from his shoulder and gently place it on the serape. Then the farmer climbed the tree and got hold of some green zapotes. He hurled them with all his force at the head.

  “Traitor!” screeched the head. “Come down so that I can punish you!” It began to jump about, snapping its teeth and growling. But the man continued to pelt the head with hard green fruit.

  Looking about for a way to escape, the head spotted a deer. Confused by the shouting, the deer ran right past the tree. With its last bit of strength, the head jumped high enough to settle on the back of the animal. The terrified deer charged into the wood while the head screamed and its hair whipped about in
the wind, driving the animal to madness. So it was that the deer plunged over a cliff into a deep valley.

  A long time after this, some hunters found the dusty bones of what seemed to be a deer with two skulls, the second one human. Shuddering, they ran from the place. Nor would they ever go near the valley again.

  Dinkins Is Dead

  (United States—South Carolina)

  Wadmalaw Island is one of the Sea Islands just off the South Carolina coast. Many years ago, a man named Theodore Dinkins lived there. He was so opinionated and stubborn, no one could convince him of anything.

  He had lived many years, and so he grew old. He, however, did not believe it. “Old?” he said angrily. “Me? I’m not old.”

  Yet he began to look old and to be old, to go to bed early and get up late, to be well one day and ill the next. But the worse he grew, the better he said he felt.

  His doctor, his lawyer, and his minister came to see him. They told him he was dying; they wanted to help him make out his will; they wanted to help him make his peace with the Lord.

  “I am not dying!” he shouted, and sent them away. But he really was dying.

  When he was dead, the undertaker laid him out in his coffin. The sexton tolled the bell. The preacher read the burial service. His widow wept. All his friends said, “Death has convinced him, even if nothing else could.”

  But death had not.

  The next morning a friend from another town rode by the graveyard. He saw Dinkins sitting on the fence, looking a little odd but nothing too strange. “Hello, Tom!” Old Dinkins called.

  “This is a surprise,” said the neighbor. “I heard you were at death’s door. To tell the truth, I heard you were dead and buried.”

  “Do I look dead?” asked Dinkins.

  “We-ell …” The neighbor hesitated. There was something about the old man’s look that bothered him.

  “We-ell yourself!” Dinkins bellowed. “I’m not dead, and any fool can see I’m not buried.”

  “Yes,” said the neighbor, riding on to avoid an argument.

  Soon it began to rain. A traveling man from town came by. He was startled when a voice from the graveyard called, “Hello!” Reining in his horse, the traveler peered through the downpour. He saw an old man sitting on the graveyard fence. He couldn’t say what it was, exactly, but the look of the old man was … strange. “How do?” the traveler asked.

  “Fine enough,” said the old man. “Coming from town?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s the news?”

  “Old Man Dinkins is dead.”

  “ ’Tain’t so.”

  “But, sir,” said the traveler, angry that the old man had contradicted him, “I heard it from the widow Dinkins herself.”

  “Clementina Dinkins?” said the old man. “Why, she never got anything right in her life.”

  “Still and all, sir, you must admit she should know if her own husband is dead or not.”

  “Sure she ought to,” said the old man, “but she evidently don’t.”

  “How come you know better?” the man challenged.

  “ ’Cause I’m Theodore Dinkins.”

  “The devil you are!” cried the traveling man, and he rode off. At the crossroads store he stopped and said, “There’s an old fool sitting on the graveyard fence who says he’s Theodore Dinkins.”

  “Can’t be,” said the store owner. “Dinkins is dead.”

  Things went on this way, week after week, month after month. Everyone knew that Dinkins was dead. But Theodore Dinkins sat on the graveyard fence and said he was not; he grew mighty angry if anyone contradicted him. And he was looking worse and worse.

  What was to be done? The town had buried him once.

  “Bury him again,” said Clementina Dinkins, who was mild but firm. So they buried him again, ignoring all his protests. But this time they put above his grave a marble headstone that read:

  Here Rests the Body of

  Theodore Dinkins

  A Highly Respected Native of

  Wadmalaw Island

  Who Departed This Life on

  the Seventeenth Day of January, 1853,

  in the Ninety-first Year of His Age.

  When Theodore read that inscription on his own tombstone, he was at last persuaded. It was the only time he was ever known to be convinced by evidence or argument. In any case, he hasn’t yelled at anybody from the graveyard fence since then.

  Old Nan’s Ghost

  (British Isles—England)

  One night a tinker was hurrying along the road to Stokesley. Suddenly a wild-haired old woman, wrapped in a black shawl, appeared out of the dark in front of his cart. With a curse, the man reined in his horse before he ran the woman down.

  “Stand aside!” the man ordered as the horse reared and whinnied. Peering closer, he recognized the wrinkled face of Old Nan, who wandered the moors. It was rumored that she was a witch. To the tinker she had never seemed more than a half-mad beggar.

  Silently the woman reached up and took the bridle. At her touch, the nervous horse grew calm. Then she led the animal along a rough track that branched off from the main road. The tinker tugged at the reins, but the horse plodded on, ignoring all but the old woman’s controlling hand.

  Furious at being led astray, the tinker shouted at the woman and cracked his whip above her head. But the hunched figure who held the bridle just shuffled on, unbothered. The spellbound horse followed.

  At last they halted where the path ended, at the foot of a hill. The old woman pointed to the mouth of a cave, partly hidden by brush. She beckoned to the tinker. As though he was under her spell, he unhitched the lantern from his cart and came closer. At her silent urging, he went inside.

  The place smelled of earth and decay. Looking around, the man found a drawstring pouch of flannel tucked into a rocky niche. The bag was filled with silver charms and jeweled rings and golden coins. The tinker could not imagine how the old woman, so aged and ragged, had come by such treasure.

  Suddenly Old Nan’s ghostly voice echoed in the cavern: “It’s for her … for her.”

  Under other circumstances the man would have trembled with fear. But greed for the newfound fortune crowded out all other thoughts.

  Nan’s voice continued. “I have a niece, a sweet, generous girl, who lives in Northallerton. But she is very poor. Take this pouch to her and tell her to buy fine clothes and happiness. Tell her this is the gift of Old Nan. It is her earthly reward. You may keep two gold pieces for your help—that is your reward. The child’s name is Anne Compton. Will you give her Old Nan’s gift?”

  “I will,” the tinker promised.

  There was only silence after this. The shadowed figure of the old woman had disappeared from the mouth of the cave.

  When he reached Stokesley, the tinker learned that Nan had died upon the moors some weeks before. Though he guessed that he had met her ghost, this did not prevent him from keeping Old Nan’s riches for himself. He prospered and became a wealthy merchant in Stokesley. Never once did he give a thought to the old woman’s niece.

  Often, in his dreams, Old Nan returned to haunt him. Each time she seemed more ghastly: As her bones were moldering out on the moors, so her ghost seemed to be rotting, too. He would dream himself back in the hidden cavern. There the aged, shawl-clad bundle of rotting flesh and bones would confront him.

  “Will you give my niece her earthly reward?” the horror would ask.

  “I will not,” he would answer, pleased at his dream-courage. Then he would awaken with a start, and for a few moments he would still hear Old Nan’s question. But he would turn over and fall asleep, assuring himself that the hag had been dead and gone for many years.

  Sometimes he thought he caught a glimpse of a dark figure shambling along behind him in town. “Will you give my niece her earthly reward?” he once fancied she asked. But when he turned, he saw nothing. “I will not!” he said aloud, dismissing it all.

  At last, in a dream or in the street,
her accusing voice faded to a whisper, then a sigh. He imagined her bones, picked clean, scattered across the Yorkshire hills and moors—barely strong enough a link to bind a ghost to the earth.

  One last time she came to him while he was asleep. But her voice was weak. The dreaming man strode boldly across a moor, following the voice to its source: a sheltered space in a circle of tall rocks. Yellowing bones and bits of black cloth lay at the center of the ring.

  “Will you give my niece, now grown an old woman and hungry, her earthly reward?” The voice issued from between the unmoving jaws of the yellowed skull at his dream-feet.

  “I will not,” said the rich man, sure that Nan’s ghost was fading as her bones turned to dust. He kicked the skull aside; it rolled silently into the shadows. He woke up feeling pleased with himself.

  One evening soon after this, the merchant was riding home on his fine new horse. Dusk was falling as he passed a rough track leading off the road. Something startled his horse and spurred it to a gallop, as though it were fleeing some terrifying presence. A figure leapt out of the dark and onto the horse just behind the merchant.

  The man lashed with his whip at the thing that had grabbed him from behind. His nose was filled with the odor of rotten meat and decaying weeds and wet earth. Something made of old bones and mud and moor wrack, wearing an old shawl stained green with mold and slime, locked a dank, stinking arm across his throat.

  “Will you give my niece her earthly reward?” demanded the specter in a gurgle.

  “I will!” cried the tinker-turned-merchant.

  “Too late!” the thing burbled. “She has gone to heaven today. Now you shall have your earthly reward!”

  A farmer the horse passed on the road reported that he saw the merchant trying to escape the clutches of something clinging to his shoulders. All the time, the man was screaming out, “I will, I will, I will!”

  “I would swear it was an old woman,” the farmer said. “She was wrapped in a wretched black shawl, and her hair was blowing wild in the wind!”