When was the last time you heard a scary story?
How about the latest presidential poll? (Just kidding, George.)
This newspaper recently ran a contest, soliciting scary stories from readers. We’ve got some good ones, and have printed several of the best on page seven in this edition. I hope you enjoy them.
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| The Heiller boys, before they started telling little brother, David, horror stories |
I may be mistaken, but the best horror stories come from the minds of kids. As a member of the generation that grew up before axe-murder movies, I confess: I haven’t seen Friday the Thirteeth Part One yet, let alone Part Seven. And this Freddie guy doesn’t scare me—when I see those stainless steel finger nails, I think what a great job he could do working up our garden next spring. Wouldn’t even have to borrow a tiller. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre guy would be too tired for people after he finished cutting up the four-and-a-half cords of wood I bought from my neighbor last Saturday.
Yet 20 years ago, Lon Chaney would scare me for days if I sat up to watch him turn into a werewolf on Saturday night. Maybe it was staying up late that one night a week that did it. Maybe it was Earl Hinton. Maybe it was my brothers, who threatened to switch beds after I fell asleep and put me into Danny’s bed, the single bed—alone!—instead of the double bed where I slept with Glenn. (Glenn was nine years older than me, and always made me sleep next to the wall, but I didn’t mind after watching Lon Chaney turn into a werewolf.)
Back then, everybody knew a scary story or two. We took turns telling them at night at the school grounds. I think those stories had today’s butcher movies beat hands down. Danny had one of the best—or worst. I’ll share it here, with a warning—it came from the mind of a 12-year-old boy in 1962. Faint of heart and lovers of cats, stop reading now.
The story featured Danny (of course), and an old man, maybe Freddie’s grandfather. “This guy had only one good arm,” Danny would tell in an eager voice beneath the yellow streetlight at the school grounds. “The other he had lost in an accident. But for his other arm, the one that was missing, he bought a sickle attachment.”
“Where’d he get it, at the hardware store?” some older kid would crack. Danny ignored that, boring in on the younger kids with his quick eyes.
“And he didn’t use it to weed around the garden. He lived in this deserted house in the woods. One night a group of us got lost in the woods, and we came onto this house, see. A single kerosene lantern was all that shined through the windows.
“We crept up to a window, and slowly raised up to peek over the sill and into the room. Then we heard this noise—putt-ssss, putt-ssss, putt-ssss. Danny had this noise mastered from countless tellings, the sound of liquid dripping onto a hot surface. “Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”
“It was dark in the room, so we leaned closer against the window. We could see something dripping onto the glass of the lantern. It was dripping from the ceiling above the room. Putt-ssss, putt-ssss.
“We didn’t know what to do, so I thought, “Well, I’m going to see what’s upstairs.” So I climbed in through the window, and there was a stairway in the corner, a steep stairway that went almost straight up. I could see a dim light there. So up I went, trying not to make a sound. I got, to the top, and looked over.
“There, in a corner above the lantern we had seen downstairs, a man sat with his back to me. There was a gunny sack next to the man, and I could hear a strange noise. It was hard to figure at first, but then I recognized it, the sound of cats meowing all together, kind of crying and howling and moaning. Then this guy reached into the bag, and he pulled out a cat with his left hand, and he raised his right hand into the air, but he didn’t have a hand there at all. He had a sickle. And swoosh, that sickle sliced the air, and chopped that cat’s head off, and he raised it to his lips, and drank the blood, and tossed it in the corner. He was sitting in a pool of blood, so much that it was dripping through the floor, onto the lantern below, putt-ssss, putt-ssss.”
By this time, I couldn’t breath. Danny would manage a grin, a sneer that Lon Chaney would have envied. “Then I moved my foot, and the stairs creaked. That old man turned around and spotted me. He raised his right arm in the air, and jumped to his feet, blood dripping from the sickle. I couldn’t move. He charged, and then I turned and ran, we all ran, and we didn’t stop running, we ran for hours it seemed, always looking back, and seeing something behind us, we didn’t know what. We finally made it back to town, and we never saw that house or that old man again.”
About that time, someone would give a whoop. We would all jump and laugh. Mom would call from down the street. The story would be over, that night’s version anyway, forgotten but certain to be told again, passed down with the same chilling effect, until I had heard it enough times to scare the younger kids too.
I don’t think I’d ever repeat that story again today though. Certainly not in a weekly newspaper. Too tame. Better stick to Friday the Thirteenth and Halloween.
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