13 SCARY STORIES
John McDonnell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 John McDonnell
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
NIGHT WORK
Sarah woke up screaming. She sat up in the bed gasping for air, her heart pounding in her chest, sweat bursting out of her pores.
It took minutes to calm down, but echoes of the dream reverberated in her head. It was the same as before.
Something was trying to strangle her.
It was a dark shape close to her face, so close she could feel its heat, smell its rank breath. There were yellow eyes staring at her as the claws tightened around her neck.
She got up and stumbled into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and looked at herself in the mirror. In the harsh light she looked carefully at her neck for any marks. There was nothing.
She ran the water in the sink and splashed some on her face, then grabbed her bathrobe from the hook on the door and put it on. She found her slippers under the bed, and went downstairs, making her way by the light of the moon that streamed through the windows.
In the kitchen she went to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of milk, then poured a glassful and drank it in one gulp. She wished Lou was here. He would know how to comfort her. But he was out. He worked nights as an EMT, and every time she heard a siren in the night, she thought of him working in the back of an ambulance, biting his lip the way he did when he was nervous.
Nights were bad for him. He often came back exhausted, drained from the things he'd seen. He wasn't cut out for this, she often thought. He was pushing himself too hard – working nights, and going to med school in the daytime.
She sat down at the kitchen table and paged through a women's magazine, but her mind couldn't focus. All the stories were about sex. How to get a better orgasm, how to drive your man wild, how to get rid of your inhibitions. Didn't they think women had anything else on their mind besides sex?
With Lou's schedule sex was an impossibility anyway. He got home just as she was leaving for work in the morning, and when she came home at night he was busy studying, or writing assignments. The sex the women's magazines talked about -- that was a distant memory.
Lou was studying to be an emergency surgeon, like his father. "It's the family trade," he'd say. "We're all adrenaline junkies. We need that high."
It was dangerous work, and she worried that something bad was going to happen. Like, a few weeks ago, when he'd gotten bitten. An old woman, alone in a house out on the prairie, had called 911.
"She was crazy," Lou said, when he got home from work. "She kept a lot of animals in the house. Cats, dogs, they all looked half wild. She was actually foaming at the mouth, and we had to subdue her. You wouldn't believe how strong she was – she bit me, and it hurt."
They gave him some shots at the hospital, but he still developed a nasty red rash around the bite, and ran a temperature for a few days. After that, he'd been moody, distant, given to sudden flareups. Suddenly, he'd want to make love all the time – although "love" wasn't a good word for what he wanted. Then, he lost interest. It was all confusing, and sometimes the look in his eyes told her he didn't know what was happening.
The clock on the kitchen wall said four. She could see the moon through the skylight in the kitchen. It was almost directly overhead. She felt flush, feverish. Her head was pounding. She had so many strange feelings these days, so many weird dreams.
"What's happening to me?" she said out loud. She gripped the table and put her head down.
Then there was a sound, a muffled sound out back. She pricked her ears and listened, and heard it again. It was like something was being dragged across the backyard. She went to the door and looked out. A hint of a smile crossed her lips, then she unlocked the door. In a moment, Lou was through the door, a dark blur in front of her eyes. He threw something heavy on the kitchen floor, then looked at her. She saw the raw excitement in his eyes, the lust.
The woman on the floor looked to be in her early twenties. Her clothes were torn off, and fresh blood seeped from the scars on her neck and face. Her mouth was twisted in a silent scream, and her face was chalk white, drained of blood. Sarah looked at Lou and smiled. Their eyes locked, and they grunted.
Then they were on the floor, tearing into the flesh.
A FROZEN TREAT
The Mr. Sweety ice cream truck was as much a part of summer on the island as bikinis and sunburn, and when the kids heard its tinkling music they'd run from the beach with their money and line up to get their frozen treats.
The truck was owned by a man named Banana Joe, who wore a big floppy hat and pretended he liked kids, although the kids knew his smile was fake and his cheery manner disappeared when there were no parents around. Besides, he had one long fingernail, his pinky nail, and the kids thought that was weird.
Banana Joe had a specialty, miniature bananas dipped in chocolate sauce and frozen. He called them, "Banana Joe bars". The kids loved them.
He had a brother named Willy who was not too smart, and he helped out on the truck, but Banana Joe was mean to him. He called him "Stupid," and "Dummy", and ordered him around.
One time Willy felt sorry for a little girl who didn't have any money with her, and he gave her an ice cream bar for free. When Banana Joe found out about it he got angry at Willy and called him really bad names until Willy got tears in his eyes and looked embarrassed in front of the kids.
"You do that again and I'll put you back in the home," Banana Joe said.
"No," Willy said. "Please, don't do that, Joe."
"I swear I will," Banana Joe said. "I oughtta do it anyway. You're more trouble than you're worth, you moron. I oughtta put you back in that retard home where you belong."
Willy's lip was quivering, and he was wringing his hands.
The next day, when the kids heard the music from the truck and they ran to get their ice cream, Banana Joe wasn't there. "He got sick," Willy said. "I'm gonna sell the ice cream now."
The kids all cheered, because they loved Willy. They lined up and fired their orders at him, and Willy tried his best, but he got all mixed up about what everybody wanted and how much everything cost. He took forever, and the kids were getting impatient. One teenage girl tried to butt ahead of everybody.
"I'm tired of waiting," she said. "I want a Banana Joe bar."
"I'll get to it," Willy said. "Just give me a chance."
"I want it now," she said. "My Dad knows the mayor. He can get you kicked off this beach. Now!"
Willy wiped his brow, and said okay. He reached in the freezer and brought out a Banana Joe bar. The girl paid him and tore the wrapper off the bar. She bit into it, said, "Ow!" and cursed. "What is in this thing?"
She looked closely at the place where she'd taken a bite. Her face changed, and her eyes got very, very big.
"Oh my God," she said. She dropped the Banana Joe bar on the pavement and ran screaming down the beach.
In the noonday sun, you could see a fingernail sticking out from the chocolate.
BIG MAN ON CAMPUS
"Yes?" Ashley said, to the tall man in black standing at the door.
"Good," he said, walking through the doorway, "you have the right coloring for black. You'll look terrific."
"What? Who are you?"
"At the funeral. You'll be perfect, you have just the complexion for a black outfit. That china doll face, the bangs, you'll be lookin' good."
"What are you talking about? And I don't remember inviting you in."
"Of course you did, don't you remember?"
He walked past her, and she felt an icy breeze. "Is this the way to the kitchen? Ah, here it is. I need to sit down. My feet are killing me." He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down, then put his feet up on another chair. "What a day. I'm beat."
"Hey," Ashley said. "You'd better get out of here before my Mom comes back."
"Not until I get what I came here for."
"What's that?"
"Your brother Timmy. He's upstairs, right?"
Ashley ran to a kitchen drawer, pulled out a meat cleaver, and brandished it at him. "You get out of here now," she said, "before I slice you up."
"Please. I hate violence. Put the knife down. You can't hurt me with that anyway."
"What do you mean?"
He sighed deeply. "Typical American teenager, huh? Don't you have any sense of the supernatural? No, I guess not. Why do you think I'm dressed all in black?"
"I have no idea."
"I'm the Angel of Death. I've come to take Timmy's soul."
"What? Are you some nut case—"
He leaned over to a vase of flowers on the kitchen table, breathed on them, and they wilted instantly. "Could a nut case do that?"
Ashley dropped the meat cleaver on the floor. "What do you mean, take Timmy?"
"He's got a virus, right? High fever?"
"My Mom is out getting medicine for him."
"She'll be too late. I'll be gone by the time she gets back."
"But why--?"
"Let me refresh your memory." He reached in his robe and pulled out a small notebook, paged through it, and said, "Here it is. June 18th of last year: 'Mom, why did you have to bring this little monster into the family?' September 5th, this year: 'I hate you, you little jerk. You're a waste of God's time.' One week ago: 'I wish you were dead.' I believe that was after he read your diary."
"But I didn't mean that. I was just—"
"That's not how they saw it." He pointed skyward.
Ashley felt like she'd been kicked in the stomach. "I can't believe this. Isn't there something you can do?"
"If it was up to me, maybe I'd give you a break, but I have my orders."
"Oh, can't make your own decisions, right?"
He seemed to falter. "I, uh, of course I can. Well, actually, no. I have to do what they tell me."
"Oh, that's great. You must love your job."
His face fell. "No, I don't. I don't feel good about it at all. I'm the ultimate bad guy." His eyes misted up. "You don't know what it's like, having this job. Nobody wants to see me. You should see the look on their faces. People curse me. They run away. They try to make deals; anything to get me to leave. I'm an outcast." He put his head in his hands.
Ashley sat next to him at the table, and stroked his arm. "I'm sorry," she said. Then, her face brightened. "Hey, I have an idea. If you don't take Timmy today, I'll let you hang with my friends for a month. Everybody wants to hang with us, but we have outrageously high standards. People would commit murder to get invited to our lunch table."