Terrifying Tales to Tell at Night

by Stephen Jones

  Collection and editorial material copyright © Stephen Jones 2019

  Cover and interior illustrations copyright © Randy Broecker 2019

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover illustration credit by Randy Broecker

  ISBN: 978-1-5107-5124-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-5125-5

  Printed in the United States of America

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Stephen Jones

  CLICK-CLACK THE RATTLEBAG

  Neil Gaiman

  HOMEMADE MONSTER

  R. Chetwynd-Hayes

  THE SIDEWAYS LADY

  Lynda E. Rucker

  HERE THERE BE TYGERS

  Stephen King

  THE CHIMNEY

  Ramsey Campbell

  SCHOOL FOR THE UNSPEAKABLE

  Manly Wade Wellman

  GRANNY’S GRINNING

  Robert Shearman

  THE CHEMISTRY OF GHOSTS

  Lisa Morton

  THE MAN WHO DREW CATS

  Michael Marshall Smith

  ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?

  Charles L. Grant

  Acknowledgments

  About the Editor

  About the Artist

  “Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”

  —Traditional English nursery rhyme

  INTRODUCTION

  I’M WARNING YOU. The stories in this book are scary. Real scary! So I don’t want you complaining to me that, after reading them, you couldn’t sleep or they upset you. That’s your problem. The clue is in the title of the book.

  However, if you enjoy being scared, or love ghosts, or monsters, or nasty old grannies, then this is the volume for you! You’ll find all these things, and more, in the following pages . . .

  You probably know Neil Gaiman as the bestselling author of Coraline and The Graveyard Book, and in “Click-clack the Rattlebag” he introduces us to the monstrous Click-clacks. who come from the dark to spirit away those who aren’t paying attention—and drink their insides.

  Rodney meets a descendant of Doctor Frankenstein who is trying his hand at a spot of monster-making in R. Chetwynd-Hayes’s humorous story “Homemade Monster,” while in Lynda E. Rucker’s “The Sideways Lady,” a group of children go searching for an old legend in a reputedly haunted house on Halloween. What could possibly go wrong?

  If you’ve ever been bullied at school, or embarrassed by a teacher, then you’re going to enjoy what happens to Charles in “Here There Be Tygers” by probably the most famous horror author in the world, Stephen King.

  Another tremulous young boy is afraid of what will visit him on Christmas Eve down “The Chimney” by Ramsey Campbell, and Bart Setwick discovers something very odd about his three new friends at the “School for the Unspeakable” by veteran pulp magazine writer Manly Wade Wellman.

  Our second Christmas story is “Granny’s Grinning” by author and playwright Robert Shearman, who brought the Daleks back to TV’s Doctor Who. It’s a nasty tale all about Sarah’s elderly grandmother, and the husband she still misses and wants back . . .

  Lisa Morton is an expert on Halloween, but her story “The Chemistry of Ghosts” is about a brother and sister who go on a ghost hunt and discover more than they bargained for when they encounter a phantom teacher who sets them a puzzle to be solved.

  “The Man Who Drew Cats” was the first story novelist and screenwriter Michael Marshall Smith ever published. He has always been a fan of the work of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, and you will find the influence of both in this tale of how a boy and his mother are saved from their tormentor one hot summer night.

  Finally, in Charles L. Grant’s story “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” three boys find themselves playing a terrifying game with a babysitter from Hell.

  And then there’s Randy Broecker’s creepy drawings. If the stories are not enough to send a chill up your spine, then his artwork certainly is. Or else you are made of sterner stuff than I am.

  So, there you are—a book of scary stories and illustrations that should keep you entertained for a few hours and hopefully will have you looking over your shoulder every now and again. Why don’t you read this book aloud to your friends around a campfire or by flashlight with a brother or sister before bedtime? And, once you’ve finished reading it, why not have a competition with them to see if the story they found the most terrifying is the same one that you did?

  But remember . . . once you’ve read this book from cover to cover, please do not hold me responsible for your—or anybody else’s—nightmares!

  I warned you.

  —Stephen Jones

  CLICK-CLACK THE RATTLEBAG

  NEIL GAIMAN

  BEFORE YOU TAKE me up to bed, will you tell me a story?”

  “Do you actually need me to take you up to bed?” I asked the boy.

  He thought for a moment. Then, with intense seriousness, “Yes, actually I think you do. It’s because of, I’ve finished my homework, and so it’s my bedtime, and I am a bit scared. Not very scared. Just a bit. But it is a very big house, and lots of times the lights don’t work and it’s a sort of dark.”

  I reached over and tousled his hair.

  “I can understand that,” I said. “It is a very big old house.” He nodded. We were in the kitchen, where it was light and warm. I put down my magazine on the kitchen table. “What kind of story would you like me to tell you?”

  “Well,” he said, thoughtfully. “I don’t think it should be too scary, because then when I go up to bed, I will just be thinking about monsters the whole time. But if it isn’t just a little bit scary then I won’t be interested. And you make up scary stories, don’t you? I know she says that’s what you do.”

  “She exaggerates. I write stories, yes. Nothing that’s been published, yet, though. And I write lots of different kinds of stories.”

  “But you do write scary stories?”

  “Yes.”

  The boy looked up at me from the shadows by the door, where he was waiting. “Do you know any stories about Click-clack the Rattlebag?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Those are the best sorts of stories.”

  “Do they tell them at your school?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “What’s a Click-clack the Rattlebag story?”

  He was a precocious child, and was unimpressed by his sister’s boyfriend’s ignorance. You could see it on his face. “Everybody knows them.”

  “I don’t,” I said, trying not to smile.

  He looked at me as if he was trying to decide whether or not I was pulling his leg. He said, “I think maybe you should take me up to my bedroom, and then you can tell me a story before I go to slee
p, but a very not-scary story because I’ll be up in my bedroom then, and it’s actually a bit dark up there, too.”

  I said, “Shall I leave a note for your sister, telling her where we are?”

  “You can. But you’ll hear when they get back. The front door is very slammy.”

  We walked out of the warm and cozy kitchen into the hallway of the big house, where it was chilly and draughty and dark. I flicked the light switch, but nothing happened.

  “The bulb’s gone,” the boy said. “That always happens.”

  Our eyes adjusted to the shadows. The moon was almost full, and blue-white moonlight shone in through the high windows on the staircase, down into the hall. “We’ll be all right,” I said.

  “Yes,” said the boy, soberly. “I am very glad you’re here.” He seemed less precocious now. His hand found mine, and he held onto my fingers comfortably, trustingly, as if he’d known me all his life. I felt responsible and adult. I did not know if the feeling I had for his sister, who was my girlfriend, was love, not yet, but I liked that the child treated me as one of the family. I felt like his big brother, and I stood taller, and if there was something unsettling about the empty house I would not have admitted it for worlds.

  The stairs creaked beneath the threadbare stair-carpet.

  “Click-clacks,” said the boy, “are the best monsters ever.”

  “Are they from television?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think any people know where they come from. Mostly they come from the dark.”

  “Good place for a monster to come.”

  “Yes.”

  We walked along the upper corridor in the shadows, walking from patch of moonlight to patch of moonlight. It really was a big house. I wished I had a flashlight.

  “They come from the dark,” said the boy, holding onto my hand. “I think probably they’re made of dark. And they come in when you don’t pay attention. That’s when they come in. And then they take you back to their . . . not nests. What’s a word that’s like nests, but not?”

  “House?”

  “No. It’s not a house.”

  “Lair?”

  He was silent. Then, “I think that’s the word, yes. Lair.” He squeezed my hand. He stopped talking.

  “Right. So they take the people who don’t pay attention back to their lair. And what do they do then, your monsters? Do they suck all the blood out of you, like vampires?”

  He snorted. “Vampires don’t suck all the blood out of you. They only drink a little bit. Just to keep them going, and, you know, flying around. Click-clacks are much scarier than vampires.”

  “I’m not scared of vampires,” I told him.

  “Me neither. I’m not scared of vampires either. Do you want to know what Click-clacks do? They drink you,” said the boy.

  “Like a Coke?”

  “Coke is very bad for you,” said the boy. “If you put a tooth in Coke, in the morning, it will be dissolved into nothing. That’s how bad coke is for you and why you must always clean your teeth, every night.”

  I’d heard the Coke story as a boy, and had been told, as an adult, that it wasn’t true, but was certain that a lie which promoted dental hygiene was a good lie, and I let it pass.

  “Click-clacks drink you,” said the boy. “First they bite you, and then you go all ishy inside, and all your meat and all your brains and everything except your bones and your skin turns into a wet, milkshakey stuff and then the Click-clack sucks it out through the holes where your eyes used to be.”

  “That’s disgusting,” I told him. “Did you make it up?”

  We’d reached the last flight of stairs, all the way in to the big house.

  “No.”

  “I can’t believe you kids make up stuff like that.”

  “You didn’t ask me about the Rattlebag,” he said.

  “Right. What’s the Rattlebag?”

  “Well,” he said, sagely, soberly, a small voice from the darkness beside me, “once you’re just bones and skin, they hang you up on a hook, and you rattle in the wind.”

  “So what do these Click-clacks look like?” Even as I asked him, I wished I could take the question back, and leave it unasked. I thought: Huge spidery creatures. Like the one in the shower that morning. I’m afraid of spiders.

  I was relieved when the boy said, “They look like what you aren’t expecting. What you aren’t paying attention to.”

  We were climbing wooden steps now. I held on to the railing on my left, held his hand with my right, as he walked beside me. It smelled like dust and old wood, that high in the house. The boy’s tread was certain, though, even though the moonlight was scarce.

  “Do you know what story you’re going to tell me, to put me to bed?” he asked. “It doesn’t actually have to be scary.”

  “Not really.”

  “Maybe you could tell me about this evening. Tell me what you did?”

  “That won’t make much of a story for you. My girlfriend just moved in to a new place on the edge of town. She inherited it from an aunt or someone. It’s very big and very old. I’m going to spend my first night with her, tonight, so I’ve been waiting for an hour or so for her and her housemates to come back with the wine and an Indian takeaway.”

  “See?” said the boy. There was that precocious amusement again. But all kids can be insufferable sometimes, when they think they know something you don’t. It’s probably good for them. “You know all that. But you don’t think. You just let your brain fill in the gaps.”

  He pushed open the door to the attic room. It was perfectly dark, now, but the opening door disturbed the air, and I heard things rattle gently, like dry bones in thin bags, in the slight wind. Click. Clack. Click. Clack. Like that.

  I would have pulled away, then, if I could, but small, firm fingers pulled me forward, unrelentingly, into the dark.

  HOMEMADE MONSTER

  R. CHETWYND-HAYES

  RODNEY WAS LOST.

  That should not be possible in twentieth-century England, where there are signposts standing at every crossroads, but Rodney managed to do it. He had been cycling through a network of country lanes and the signposts had not been helpful. They had said CATCHEM WALLOP 1 MILE and UNDER BASHEM 114 MILES, and when he reached these places they proved to be sleepy little villages surrounded by open fields. He could of course have asked someone the way to Benfield, which was his destination, but he was rather shy and found it difficult to approach strangers. So he cycled on, hoping that he would sooner or later reach a main road, and now darkness was falling and it was beginning to rain.

  Then his rear tire made a loud popping sound, which was followed by a prolonged sigh, and the bicycle began to wobble across the lane. Rodney dismounted and pushed the machine up a steep incline, wishing he had spent his holiday with his family at Bognor Regis.

  The rain simply teemed down, and in no time at all he was drenched. Then there was a vivid flash of lightning and a really ear-splitting clap of thunder, and Rodney, although he tried to be brave, was very frightened indeed. He knew he must not take shelter under a tree, because his father had often said that trees attract lightning, and it was hardly the time to find out if this information was true or not.

  He crested the hill, wheeled his bicycle around a sharp bend—and saw the house. It was a very large house, standing well back from the road, and surrounded by an unkempt lawn. No curtains veiled the windows, in fact some were boarded up, and it was reasonable to suppose the place was deserted. So Rodney pushed the rusty iron gate open, parked his machine in the large, crumbling porch, then looked for a way to enter the house.

  The front door was locked, but when he made his way around to the back, he found a small window half-open. It only took a few seconds for him to clamber over the sill and take refuge in the room beyond.

  Dust covered the floors, damp had loosened the wallpaper and formed brown stains on the ceiling. The place was cold, and, as the window refused to close, Rodney decided to venture farther
into the house, hoping that he would find a room with a fireplace so that he could light a fire and dry his clothes.

  The door reluctantly, and with many creaking groans, slid open to reveal a gloomy passage. This ended at a large hall where a splendid staircase rose up in a graceful curve to a long gallery. A number of closed doors led away from the hall, and Rodney chose the nearest one, pushed it open, and entered the room beyond. He found himself in what once must have been a luxurious drawing room. The upholstery on the chairs and sofa had rotted, the carpet was hidden under a thick layer of dust, and festoons of cobwebs swayed gently from the high ceiling. But there was a fireplace.

  Rodney was wondering what he could use for fuel, when he heard a sudden noise. It was the tramp of heavy feet. A slow, thudding tread that suggested a very large person, who did not believe in hurrying but moved forward with the ponderous approach of a tank.

  The footsteps crossed the hall—then stopped, and Rodney realized that his footprints must be clearly imprinted in the dust, leaving a trail to the door of this very room. The footsteps began again and grew louder as they came nearer, then the door trembled, before it flew back and crashed against the wall.

  A giant stood in the doorway; a massive figure with a completely bald head and an immense barrel of a chest that was barely covered by a worn leather jerkin. A rumbling sound started way down in the stomach, then rose up and emerged from the creature’s throat as booming words.

  “What you doing here?”

  Rodney gulped and tried to speak without stammering. “I thought the house was empty. It’s raining . . .”

  At that moment there was a terrific clap of thunder and the giant waited until it had died away before he spoke again. “I take you to doctor. Come.”

  “But I only . . .”

  His arm was seized by a gigantic hand and he was pulled toward the door, while his loudly proclaimed objections were completely ignored. They went back across the hall, along another long passage, down a flight of steps, and finally entered a small basement room that appeared to be situated at the back of the house. It was furnished with two armchairs, a long bench under the window, and a battered desk. Behind the desk sat a little white-haired man, whose small blue eyes were magnified by a large pair of spectacles. He looked up as Rodney was pulled into the room and expressed his astonishment by removing his spectacles, wiping them carefully with a yellow duster, then putting them on again. He spoke in a rather squeaky voice.