Terrifying Tales

  CONTENTS

  Before We Begin . . . by JON SCIESZKA

  1. Mr. Shocky by MICHAEL BUCKLEY

  2. Licorice Needles by NIKKI LOFTIN

  3. The Blue-Bearded Bird-Man by ADAM GIDWITZ

  4. Don’t Eat the Baby by KELLY BARNHILL

  5. My Ghost Story by DAV PILKEY

  6. Marcos at the River by DANIEL JOSÉ OLDER

  7. Coconut Heads by RITA WILLIAMS-GARCIA

  8. Manifest by ADELE GRIFFIN and LISA BROWN

  9. Disappear! by R.L. STINE

  10. The Mandigore by CLAIRE LEGRAND

  About Guys Read

  About the Authors

  Back Ad

  Also Available in the Guys Read Library of Great Reading

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  BEFORE WE BEGIN . . .

  Come on in.

  Closer.

  Don’t be afraid.

  It’s just a bunch of stories.

  What could be so terrifying about that?

  Well—maybe your sister’s footless ghost appearing in the middle of the night. Maybe an imaginary friend . . . who might not be so imaginary. Or maybe tattoos that suddenly and very painfully start etching themselves all over your body!

  Sorry.

  I got a little carried away.

  Heart pounding a little faster. Breathing a bit ragged.

  You think you can take more?

  What if your little brother vanished? What if water spirits came out of the river and haunted your every moment? What if your local librarian turned out to be something more (and something more disgustingly creepy) than a librarian? What if you actually had to tell the brother you always wished for, “Don’t eat the baby”?

  Palms sweating a bit now.

  And I haven’t even told you where, and in what shape, a young girl finds her missing sisters.

  Yikes!

  It’s just a fairy tale, just a fairy tale, just a fairy tale, I keep telling myself.

  The writers in this volume of your Guys Read Library of Great Reading may have done too good a job. We told them to go all out to shake you up, freak you out, and just completely terrify you.

  Did they ever.

  I’m not sure why some people like to read scary stories. Many experts say it might be a way of conquering fears in practice. Other experts say they love the rush of excitement, and the relief when the terror is over.

  I say these people are nuts.

  And if you really want to be stuck sleeping with the light on for the next week or two, take a good long look at that Gris Grimly cover.

  Whoa.

  Oh, and one more bit you might learn from this volume: You know that crazy old lady down the block? The one you suspect might actually not be crazy, but horrifically evil?

  You’re right.

  Neck hairs now straight up.

  Good luck, and please enjoy these terrifying tales at your own risk.

  Jon Scieszka

  MR. SHOCKY

  BY MICHAEL BUCKLEY

  I hear my little brother’s terrified screams a block away. I pump my pedals as hard as I can and steer my bike toward home. Tearing through my yard, I destroy my mother’s azalea bush on my way to the back of the house. There I find him clinging to the highest rung of a rotting rope ladder. It leads to my long-abandoned tree house, a place he should know better than to explore. It’s been threatening to collapse for months, and worse, it’s dizzyingly high above the ground. If he falls . . .

  “Hold on, Dylan!” I shout, ditching the bike and sprinting to the base of the tree, praying he won’t plummet to the ground before I can get to him. He’s only four years old. How did he even get up there?

  “Tyler, I’m slipping,” he sobs when he hears my voice.

  “I’m coming up!” I say, trying to sound as confident as possible. I scamper up the remains of the rope ladder as quickly as I can, hearing its strained fibers groaning against my weight. I nearly fall when one of the rungs splits, but I manage to hold on and regain my balance. A moment later I have Dylan safely in my arms and we climb back down.

  “You know you’re not allowed in the tree house,” I cry once we are on firm ground. It comes out loud and angry, and he breaks into fresh tears. I hug him and tell him I’m not mad. To be honest, though, I’m fuming—but not at him. Ella, his babysitter for all of a week, is supposed to be watching him. I lead him into the house and the two of us find her lying on the couch, texting furiously on her phone. She’s oblivious to what just happened, and completely surprised. I know I’m only twelve, but I fire her right then and there. I doubt Mom and Dad will disagree with me when they get home. She may be a grade older than me, but she’s clearly in over her head. Ella is a complete idiot.

  After she turns over her keys and the door slams in her face, I take Dylan upstairs to the bathroom and put him in the tub. A bubble bath always calms him down, especially if I use the lavender baby soap he loves. Mom swears by it. Soon he’s covered in suds and playing with his tub toys, his brush with death a distant memory.

  “Dylan, why did you go up to the tree house? You know that’s off-limits.”

  “I was playing and he said it would be okay. He said the tree house was full of toys and candy.”

  “Who said that?” I ask, wondering if some neighbor kid lured him into this dumb stunt.

  “Mr. Shocky told me to do it,” he says. “He’s my friend.”

  Dylan is in bed and my parents are taking turns chewing out the ex-babysitter on the phone. When they’re done, we sit down at the table to make a plan. Both of them work full-time jobs, so until they can hire a replacement, I’m going into the babysitting business, which means picking Dylan up from preschool right after school. It also means no Minecraft at Jake’s, or skateboarding at the park, or working on my free throws. But he’s my brother. And I actually like hanging out with him, mostly. Besides, Jake’s house always smells like vegetable soup.

  “Mom, did you tell Dylan about Mr. Shocky?” I ask as I watch her load the dishwasher.

  She flinches, as if stung by a bee, then stares at me with a mixture of concern and fear. “No. You know how I feel about that. Why?”

  My father pokes his head into the kitchen. “Tyler? Should we be worried?”

  Mr. Shocky is a sore subject in my house. He was my imaginary friend when I was Dylan’s age, and he stuck around a bit longer . . . well, actually a lot longer than is probably normal for kids. I was a loner when I was little, and pretty shy, and so I invented a playmate. Mr. Shocky was with me until I was almost nine, and at that point my parents took me to see Dr. Rosen, a child psychiatrist who prescribed pills and taught me how to make real friends. It wasn’t easy but it worked. It has been three years, and I feel good. I don’t have to take the meds anymore, and I haven’t seen Mr. Shocky in a long time.

  “I’m fine,” I say, trying to diffuse the tension in the room. This conversation feels like an overstretched rubber band that is about to snap and fling us all into space. “Dylan told me that Mr. Shocky got him to climb the ladder. I’ve never said anything about him, so I thought maybe he overheard you two talking.”

  My “break with reality” is a frequent topic of conversation in their room late at night when they think I can’t hear them. I hate that three years later it’s still coming up. They treat me like I’m fragile, like an expensive vase resting on a wobbly table. They don’t need to be worried. Mr. Shocky is behind me.

  My father flashes my mother a knowing look. “I’m tearing that tree house down this weekend.”

  My mother nods. “It’s about time.”

  The next day I pick Dylan up at his preschool. He is covered in finger paints and a huge smile. They must let the kids go
crazy with the art supplies. The rest of him is smeared with glitter and purple glue stick. Making art projects is Dylan’s favorite thing to do, so I’m happy for him, but man, what a mess.

  He’s beaming with pride today, holding a painting out to me with his sticky red and purple hands. It’s his latest masterpiece.

  “Wow!” I say when I look at his treasure. Standing on a hill covered in yellow flowers is Dylan, all smiles and a mop of red hair. Next to him is a man, or rather the silhouette of a man, a tall black figure sporting two fiery red eyes and a long pointy tail. “It’s awesome, buddy, but who is this person standing next to you?”

  “Mr. Shocky.”

  My head starts to pound and my heart is rising up into my throat. “Dylan, where did you hear about Mr. Shocky?”

  “Nowhere,” he says. “I told you, he’s my friend. He plays with me every day. He says he wants to be with me, always.”

  I shudder and break into a sweat. The echo of my younger self is bouncing around in my ears. I said the same exact thing to Dr. Rosen when I was his patient. I can still see his sad, sympathetic smile, the funny green pills he gave me that made me sleepy, his endless insistence that Mr. Shocky was not real. A panic rolls through me as I imagine Dylan taking my place in those therapy sessions. I see him swallowing those little green pills. I can’t let him go through that. I have to protect him, even if it’s from himself.

  “Mr. Shocky is not real,” I snap, wadding his painting into a ball.

  Dylan bursts into tears.

  “Now I know why he’s mad at you,” my brother cries. “He said you’re mean and a bad friend. And he’s right.”

  I heat up some leftover spaghetti and feed Dylan, then get him into the tub again to scrub off the layers of finger paint. He won’t talk to me. He’s still angry about the painting, so we sit silently and watch an episode of Wild Kratts on TV. Afterward we lie in my parents’ bed and I read him books about a pig and an elephant who are buddies until he falls asleep. I carry him into his own room and tuck him in.

  There are paintings all over the walls. He’s proudly taped them up, his own personal art gallery. In every painting there’s a long black figure with red eyes and a tail.

  Mr. Shocky is creeping around again—poking into my life, challenging the walls Dr. Rosen and I built around my sanity. But this time it’s different. Dylan’s version of our mutual friend isn’t how I remember Mr. Shocky, or at least not how my brain conjured him back then. It gives me hope that I’m not losing it again, that this is just an odd coincidence between two brothers. But I need to be sure.

  When Mom and Dad get home, they check on Dylan while I grab a flashlight from the junk drawer and creep into the backyard. I pad across the cool grass to the old oak tree and shine a beam on my tree house. It’s been there for years, long before my parents bought the house, but decay is having its way with it. Rusty nails are popping out and wooden planks are rotting. My mother declared it off-limits after she climbed up into it looking for the neighbors’ cat. A floorboard cracked under her weight and that was it—no more tree house. I wasn’t even allowed to go up and get the stuff I kept there, little boy treasures that meant the world to me.

  I carefully climb the rope ladder and scamper inside. I can no longer stand all the way up, having grown since my last visit, so I crawl on hands and knees searching with the flashlight and trying to avoid anything sharp. My stuff is still here, though strewn around in a mess by several harsh winters and rainy springs. A small stack of waterlogged Donald Duck comics that has toppled over; an old sock filled with marbles; my father’s favorite flip-flops, the ones he frequently tears the house apart looking for. There is a box filled with action figures and a wooden sword used for fighting off pirate invasions. At the bottom is my own art collection. Like Dylan, I loved to draw, and kept every art project I made. I sort through the brittle paper until I find the one I want; a portrait almost identical to the one Dylan gave me earlier that day. It’s me, standing in a field of golden flowers, and next to me is a tall man. He has a huge grin on his face and the two of us are holding hands, but, unlike Dylan’s haunting black figure, this one is made of rainbow colors. This was my “Mr. Shocky.” No darkness, no threatening eyes. Dylan’s friend is something else entirely. I’m not going crazy. My imaginary friend has not returned. The walls are strong and tall.

  Dylan wakes me up in the dimmest hours of the night. I can barely see him through fuzzy eyes, only his outline against the yellow hallway light.

  “You made Mr. Shocky sad,” Dylan says.

  “Dylan, why are you out of bed?”

  “You stopped playing with him. You hurt his feelings. He says he’s going to hurt me if you won’t be his friend again.” Dylan’s voice sounds odd, high-pitched, almost cartoony but angry. “You just left him. You didn’t even say good-bye.”

  I take him by the hand and lead him back to his room. “You’re having a bad dream,” I say, then wait for him to go back to sleep. When he is safe and sound, I creep back into the hallway and into the bathroom. I flip on the light and splash my face with some water. I hate the idea of Dylan having to suffer through Dr. Rosen’s treatment, but I can’t keep what I know from Mom and Dad. He needs help. I will tell them in the morning. Let the kid have one more night of feeling normal.

  The next day I wake to find Dr. Rosen in our living room. He sits still and tall in a high-backed chair with his hands in his lap and a concerned expression on his face. My parents sit on the very edge of the couch, nervous and jumpy.

  “Hello, Tyler. It’s good to see you again,” the doctor says in his most calming voice. I know it well. He used it during most of our conversations, especially in the beginning.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I say, but my eyes are going back and forth from Mom to Dad.

  He nods. “Your parents tell me there’s been some trouble,” he says.

  “Yes, I’ve noticed it for a few days, but it’s under control and—”

  “Tyler, what did we agree to long ago? We promised to be honest with each other. I’m your friend and I have had a lot of success making you feel better, so there’s no need to hide anything or feel embarrassed. Why not just tell me what is happening? The sooner you open up, the better you’re going to feel.” Dr. Rosen’s hands come together in front of his chin, making a steeple that holds up his face.

  “Wait! This isn’t about me,” I say, suddenly confused.

  “You’re not seeing Mr. Shocky anymore?”

  “No!”

  “You’re not acting out parts of your daydreams again?” my mother cries, then breaks into tears.

  “Mom?”

  “Tyler, are you really going to stand there and act like you didn’t do it?” my father barks.

  “Do what?”

  Dr. Rosen waves his hand to quiet the conversation.

  “Tyler, let’s go take a look at your brother’s room,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask. “Where is Dylan? Did something happen?”

  “Dylan is safe,” the doctor says as he stands and leads us all upstairs. My father opens my brother’s bedroom door and I step inside only to see a disaster. Everything is trashed. Dylan’s stuffed animals are torn to shreds. His bed is tipped over and a long, jagged slash in the mattress spills stuffing all over the floor. His curtains are ripped off the walls and now lie in clumps on the floor. Every toy he has is smashed into thousands of tiny plastic pieces. Scrawled on the wall in big black letters are the words “YOU ABANDONED ME.”

  My head is spinning so fast I worry it might pop off my shoulders. “What were you thinking when you did this?” my father demands.

  “Dad, I didn’t—”

  “Don’t lie to me!” he shouts. He has never yelled at me like this and it startles me.

  “Let’s stay calm,” Dr. Rosen says, coming to my defense. “When Tyler says he didn’t do this, he isn’t lying. He truly believes he is innocent. His brain won’t let him remember. He’s suffering from what is called a dissociati
ve state.”

  “A what?” my mother asks.

  “His mind won’t let him deal with his illness, so it erases his actions from his memory. It’s a way of protecting himself from having to deal with what he’s feeling. In other words, Tyler, clearly angry about the loss of his imaginary friend, is acting out on Mr. Shocky’s behalf.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing!” I cry. I can’t believe they are blaming me for all this mess, and now they’re saying I’m doing it without even knowing.

  “I’ll need more time with your son to know for sure,” Dr. Rosen says, “but that’s my best educated guess.”

  “Can you fix him?” my father asks.

  The psychiatrist cringes, as if the answer gives him great pain. “He’s not a broken chair. But if he’s willing to do the work, my center is his best chance at recovery.”

  “Center?” my mother blubbers.

  “A home for troubled children,” the doctor explains as he looks right at me.

  “I don’t want to go,” I beg, backing away from them.

  “Right now you’re too dangerous to be around Dylan,” my mother says.

  “I would never hurt him,” I plead with my family. They have to believe me.

  “You lured him into the tree house, Tyler,” my father snaps. “Ella told us.”

  “I did not! She wasn’t paying attention—”

  “Ella says she never let Dylan out of her sight until you came home,” my mother says.

  “Would Tyler live at this center?” my father asks the doctor.

  “He’d have to,” Dr. Rosen says. “It’s probably his only chance at a normal life.”

  I panic and dart through my bedroom door, slamming it behind me and locking it tight. Why did I come in here? Now I’m trapped. I pace the room while they pound on the door and demand I open it.

  “I won’t go with him!” I shout through the door.

  Suddenly, I catch some movement in the mirror on my bedroom wall. At first I think it’s a shadow, some trick of the light, but then I realize it’s stalking toward me. I can hear the skittering of its toenails on the hardwood floor. And then, in the mirror, I can see it towering over me from behind. It’s disgustingly thin, at least twice my height, and black as death, but it’s not a person. It’s a hole, a sucking wound in the body of reality, and the nearer it gets to me, the more I feel the pull of that hole. It grasps at my T-shirt, determined to pull me into it, drag me down, drown me. And its tail, long and ebony, ends in a vicious point, but when it touches me, it’s so cold it burns. It wraps around my throat, squeezing like a snake, stealing my breath. But it’s his eyes that cause my body to tremble. They are red like angry blisters, full of rage and insanity, and looking right at me.