A Terrifying Taste of Short & Shivery Read online

  Then, one Sunday when Aaron was out fishing, he sat for hours and hours without a single bite. He was just about to give up when he felt a slight tug on his line. His cork was yanked under the water, so he knew he had a bite.

  Eagerly he pulled with all his might, but he found it difficult to haul the fish to the surface. He tugged and strained, and finally he flipped his catch out of the water and onto the bank beside him.

  To his amazement, he found he had caught an animal unlike any he had ever seen. It had a head like a snapping turtle, wings like a duck, and a tail like a fish. Strangest of all, it had a human voice, and it sang him a greeting:

  How do, Aaron?

  How do, Aaron?

  Frightened, the young man dropped his fishing pole and started up the bank as fast as his legs could carry him. But the animal sang after him:

  Come back, Aaron,

  Come back, Aaron.

  Aaron found himself unable to resist, so back he came. Then the creature sang:

  Pick me up, Aaron,

  Pick me up, Aaron.

  Aaron picked the animal up. Then it sang:

  Carry me home, Aaron,

  Carry me home, Aaron.

  Aaron did as the thing ordered. When they got to Aaron’s cabin, the animal sang:

  Clean and cook me, Aaron,

  Clean and cook me, Aaron.

  Aaron cleaned it and put it on to cook, thinking that after the creature was in the pot, it would stop singing commands to him. But as soon as the turtle-duck-fish was cooked, it piped up from the pot:

  Take me off, Aaron,

  Take me off, Aaron.

  Unable to disobey, Aaron took the thing off the stove, and set it on a big old plate. By now the young man was sweating with fear. He dreaded what he was afraid was coming. And—sure enough!—the steaming plateful sang:

  Eat me up, Aaron,

  Eat me up, Aaron.

  Helpless, Aaron began to eat as he was commanded. But the awfulness of what he was doing stopped him after a mouthful or two. Still his dinner sang even more compellingly:

  Eat me all up, Aaron,

  Eat me all up, Aaron.

  Forkful by forkful, Aaron ate every bite. As soon as he had finished the last mouthful, his stomach began to pain him something terrible. Then it began to swell up like a balloon.

  Clutching his gut, Aaron ran into the yard, yelling, “I ate me something bad. It done poisoned me!”

  His neighbors came running, along with the preacher, who cried, “Wickedness gonna catch up with a sinner sooner or later.”

  Meanwhile Aaron was rolling around in the dust. His stomach had swollen as big as if he’d swallowed the grand-daddy of all pumpkins. Still it continued to grow—until he burst open.

  Out came the turtle-duck-fish, whole and alive, looking the same as when Aaron had caught it. Hopping and flopping, it went back to the river, all the while singing:

  Catch fish on Sunday, Aaron,

  And see what catches you!

  Aaron was laid to rest in the little cemetery by the riverbank. The preacher preached the story over and over again, reminding his flock to keep holy the Lord’s Day. And that strange creature was never seen again in those parts.

  Apparitions

  (Germany)

  In 1816, the king of Prussia paid a hurried visit to his favorite officer, Marshal Blucher, who had retired years before. The old soldier had sent word to the monarch that he was unwell and urgently wished to see his dear friend. Blucher’s message pleaded with the monarch to visit him no later than August twelfth.

  Court matters delayed the monarch’s departure. He reached Blucher’s castle at the stroke of midnight on the twelfth. Servants quickly led him to the library, where the old soldier, dressed in a heavy robe, sat in an armchair. A second chair was set beside the marshal’s for the king. The ruler was startled to see that the man, once so rough and ready, had grown frail and infirm.

  “What was so important that you had to see me right away?” the king asked kindly.

  Blucher clutched his robe more tightly around his thin chest, then said, “I am not mad, but I have a terrible secret to reveal.” As the hour grew later, he told his strange story.

  When Blucher had been a lad of about sixteen, the Seven Years’ War was raging across Europe, spreading ruin and death. The young man, born of a noble family, left his father’s estate to join the Prussian cavalry. Events kept him away for more than a year. During this time, he had no word from his family. He grew increasingly worried when he learned that fierce fighting had taken place near his home.

  At last he obtained several months’ leave from his regiment. After a long journey, he arrived in the forest near his father’s house during a raging storm. Just before midnight he reached home drenched to the bone. Jumping off his horse, he tried the door. It was locked. Losing patience, he hammered at the heavy oaken door with the end of his whip.

  Suddenly the door swung open. To his surprise, young Blucher saw no one. Shouting, he hurried inside; but the halls and rooms were dark and silent. With a sinking heart, he guessed that the war had driven his family away. He decided to spend the night; the next day he would try to learn more about what had become of his parents and sisters.

  But when he had climbed the stairs to the upper hall, he saw light under the closed door of his father’s bedroom. Eagerly he entered. Inside, a faint and fitful flame in the fireplace threw a dim light over six seated figures. As one, his father, mother, and four sisters rose.

  Blucher went to embrace his father, but the older man waved him away. Blucher held out his arms to his mother, but she backed off with a sad look. His sisters just stared at him a moment, then took each other by the hand and sat down again.

  “Father, don’t you know me?” the confused young man asked. “Mother, you are silent. Dear sisters, have you forgotten the laughter and childhood games we shared?”

  At these last words, his sisters began whispering to one another. Then each of them stood up and beckoned him closer. The youngest, Katrina, knelt down in front of their mother and hid her face at the woman’s knee.

  Blucher realized that the girl wanted to play a game they had played as children. With her eyes hidden, Katrina held her hand out, palm up. She would try to guess who touched it. The others stood watching, no one making a move to play. On impulse, Blucher lightly touched his sister’s hand. Instantly she lifted her head and looked at him, nodding. Then she stood aside and indicated silently that he should take a turn.

  The young man knelt before his mother. As he had often done as a child, he hid his face on her knee while he put out his hand.

  To his horror, Blucher felt through her silk dress the cold hardness of bone. The room was now filled with a rattling sound. He was further startled when he felt a hand placed in his.

  Looking up, he saw that he held a skeletal hand that had a gold bracelet circling the bit of wristbone. With a cry, he dropped it on the carpet in front of the now stone-cold fireplace. All trace of his family had disappeared, except for the delicate, gleaming bones in front of the empty chairs.

  In a panic Blucher ran from the room, hurried out to his horse, and fled wildly through the forest. A low-hanging branch struck him unconscious from his mount. He was found by a hunter the next day and nursed back to health by the man’s family. The horror of what he had seen troubled him more than his injuries.

  Blucher learned that his family had perished in the war, when enemy soldiers had raided the house. As soon as he was strong enough, he returned to search for the bodies of his family, to give them a proper burial. But all he found was the single skeletal hand, encircled by its gold bracelet, which lay where he had dropped it. This he took and sealed in the wall of the family chapel.

  “Many years have glided by since that awful scene in my father’s castle,” Marshal Blucher said to the king of Prussia. “But now comes the reason I sent for you in such haste.

  “Several days ago, while I was dozing in this armchair, a s
light noise awoke me. I looked up and saw my father, mother, and sisters—just as they appeared on that terrible night. They joined hands and slowly circled my chair. This time they spoke, saying over and over, ‘We’ll meet again on the twelfth of August, at midnight!’ Three times they moved around me, then faded into the air.”

  The old soldier shuddered and turned away. “I knew they were warning me of my approaching death. And I did not want to depart this world until I bade farewell to Your Majesty, my oldest and dearest friend.”

  But the king shook his head and said, “My dear marshal! What you’ve told me is very strange; but I believe the second visit was only a fever dream, caused by your illness. I am sure you will live many years yet.”

  The clock on the mantel struck three A.M. “You see!” the ruler exclaimed, “August twelfth is long past, and here we sit together. Now will you believe you imagined the ghostly warning?”

  The king grasped the old man’s hand to reassure him. The bones beneath the paper-thin skin were as chilled and stiff as rods of ice. “Your hands are as cold as the grave!” cried the king. But there was no answer. The king watched in horror as the skin began to crumble beneath his fingers, leaving him to hold the pale bones of a skeletal hand.

  The Bijli

  (India)

  In 1890, Herbert Young, a Britisher living in India, set out on a hunt. He traveled on horseback, accompanied by several servants. At the end of the second day, worn out from long hours in the saddle, he decided to pitch camp near a little village. There was a large pool on the outskirts, shaded by a wide, leafy banyan tree.

  While his servants prepared the evening meal, Young strolled along the edge of the pool. He discovered a fakir, a wandering holy man, sitting and staring at the water. The man wore only a loincloth, and his hair was long and matted, but he greeted Young politely. Then he said, “I beg you not to touch or drink this water, Sahib. If you do, evil will surely befall you.”

  When Young asked the reason for this warning, the man replied, “Many years ago a wicked man drowned in this pool. Anyone who drinks or bathes in this water will suffer for it.”

  Young thanked him, but gave no serious thought to what he believed was superstitious chatter. One of his servants overheard, however, and alerted the others. Though the Britisher drank the nearby pool’s water and washed in it, his frightened servants brought water for their own use from a distant stream.

  After a brief rest, Young decided to break camp and travel on in the cool of the night. About three A.M., he and his bearers had reached the middle of a wide expanse of cotton fields. Far ahead, Young saw a tiny glimmer of light. At first he thought it was the light in some native hut. Then he noticed that it appeared to be moving rapidly toward them. It seemed to be a flaming torch, though he could not see who was carrying it.

  To his astonishment, his bearers suddenly threw down the baggage they were carrying, crying, “Bijli! Bijli!”

  Young knew the word meant “evil spirit.” All around him, his men were running for their lives, away from the torch.

  Cursing them for being such cowards, Young spurred his horse forward, toward the light. He could now see that the torch was being held by what looked like a man.

  “Halt!” he cried in Hindi, as loudly as he could.

  The person paid no attention to the shout. He came gliding along at the same speed. Suddenly Young’s horse snorted, reared, and nearly unseated its rider. Trembling in every limb, the horse refused to move forward.

  Determined to find out who the stranger was, Young dismounted to march on and meet the man on foot. The moment he released the reins, the frightened horse bolted, following the fleeing bearers.

  Young sensed a threat in the onrushing flame, which was only a few yards away. He raised his rifle to his shoulder, crying, “Stand still, or I will fire at you!”

  The words were hardly out of his mouth when he was horrified to see that the figure, which was flying along above the ground, was not a human being at all. All that was visible was a grinning, bony skull with empty eye sockets, long, streaming hair, and a fleshless arm holding a flaming torch. The rest of the figure was a trail of gray mist.

  Holding his ground, Young fired. His bullet didn’t seem to strike the thing, but the apparition suddenly swerved a bit, then hurtled past the terrified man. About twenty feet behind him, the bijli suddenly dived earthward and vanished into the ground.

  Shaking, Young went to the spot and stamped on the earth. It seemed solid. Only a sprinkling of red-hot embers marked the passage of the torch-bearing horror.

  Young started back the way he had come, and soon found his horse grazing peacefully. Then, after much shouting, he located his bearers. They continued on their way, avoiding the haunted cotton fields.

  Later, when they returned to the village by the fatal pool, a man told Young, “You were lucky, Sahib. Last year a traveler who drank from the pool was found dead in the cotton fields you crossed. His face was horribly burned.”

  Before his meeting with the fiery figure, Young would have laughed at such talk. Now he felt a chill down his spine. He felt certain that if he had shown any trace of fear when face-to-face with the bijli of the flaming torch, or if it had even touched him, he would be a dead man.

  The Lutin

  (Canada—French Canadian traditional)

  When the French came to Canada, they brought many traditions with them, including a belief in lutins. These goblins could take many forms, from giant spiders to small humans. They might help farmers by bringing good weather or by keeping the milk from souring, or they could cause great mischief.…

  There was once an habitant, a farmer, named Louis, who had a splendid mare he called Ma Princesse, who was his pride. Each morning he would go to the stable to bring her fresh oats and water, tend her, then take her for a ride.

  But one morning, he discovered Ma Princesse trembling with weariness, her flanks soaked with sweat, her muzzle flecked with foam. Clearly she had been ridden furiously during the night. Curiously, the mysterious rider had braided the horse’s mane into tangled loops.

  Louis soothed and groomed her, but he could not comb the loops out of her mane. That night he padlocked the stable securely. In the morning, he found the lock still securely fastened, though Ma Princesse was in the same exhausted state as the night before. This time one of her shoes was missing.

  While the blacksmith in the nearby village was reshoeing his horse, Louis explained what had happened. Antoine, the blacksmith, nodded and said, “This is the work of a lutin. You must brand Ma Princesse with a cross. That will keep her safe. Then the loops will comb out when it rains again.”

  But Louis thought such stories were foolishness. “I am sure someone who is a clever picklock is coming by night to ride my mare. Perhaps he is jealous of Ma Princesse.”

  When he returned the mare to her stall, he tried and tried to untangle her mane. But the untidy loops came back no matter how hard he combed them out.

  Still Louis refused to believe that a lutin was causing his troubles. He made up his mind to catch what he was sure would prove to be a human mischief-maker. So that night he kept watch from his bedroom window on the second floor of his house. From this vantage point, by the light of the full moon, he could clearly see the barn doors with the padlock in place.

  Suddenly he heard the frightened neighing of Ma Princesse. To his astonishment, the padlock snapped open and the barn doors flew wide. Out galloped Ma Princesse, with something on her back that seemed as dark as the horse’s coat.

  The frantic horse raced toward the house on a course that would take her beneath the window where her owner stood. Louis was trembling now, because as the horse came nearer, he could see that the creature riding her was a small, horrible goblin covered with long, dark hair. Its apelike head had sharp white fangs, fiery yellow eyes, and horns like a goat. One clawed hand was tangled in Ma Princesse’s mane, while the other lashed the horse’s flank with a slender branch.

  In a momen
t, the horse and the hideous rider would pass beneath the window. Quickly Louis grabbed the little holy-water font that every devout habitant kept in his bedroom. He flung this at the goblin’s head.

  The font struck the creature on the forehead. It shrieked as the little stone bowl shattered, showering both the lutin and the horse with droplets of holy water. Where these touched the monster, its fur began to burn, and the skin beneath to sizzle. The thing howled and leapt about, driving Ma Princesse to a frenzy. Then the lutin burst into flame and vanished with a final, horrible scream.

  For a moment Louis feared he had been blinded by the flash of devil’s fire; then his sight returned. There was no trace of the creature. But the riderless, still terrified horse charged on into the night.

  It was not till late the next day that Louis, with the help of his neighbors, found the horse in a distant meadow. Her dark coat was streaked with white sweat; her mane was still tangled in loops.

  Louis was careful to brand her with a cross. And he had the village curé, its priest, bless the barn and sprinkle the horse with holy water.

  No lutin ever came back to trouble Ma Princesse. And the next time it rained, Louis was able to comb the tangles out of the mare’s mane. The farmer never doubted the old stories after that.

  The Hundredth Skull

  (United States—Ohio)

  In the early 1800s, Bill Quick, a trapper and frontiersman, lived in a cabin on the upper Scioto River, near what is now the town of Kenton, Ohio. It was a time of hatred between many whites and Indians—hatred that often flared into violence.

  One evening when Bill returned from hunting, he found his home ransacked and robbed of everything of value. Amid the wreckage his aged father lay dead, with an arrow in his heart. To Bill’s horror, he saw that his parent had been scalped. The raging, grieving hunter vowed on the spot that he would avenge his father’s death a hundred times over.