Half-Minute Horrors Read online

  Now I fight to keep Amy from running downstairs.

  “Scribbles!” she whispers, struggling against me. “We have to get Scribbles!”

  “Amy, no.” I can hardly breathe, and my thrumming pulse is making me dizzy. Th-thump, th-thump. So loud in my head I can barely hear . . . what? Or rather, who? Who is downstairs, prowling the rooms of this cold, dark house?

  Not Amy’s parents, who aren’t due for hours. And not Scribbles, Amy’s poor dumb bunny who comes out of his hutch only when Amy unlatches the top and scoops him up, holding him like a baby in her pudgy four-year-old arms.

  Only, if you squeezed a baby that hard, the baby would cry. Scribbles never makes a sound.

  “He’s my bunny!” Amy wails. “He needs me!”

  She twists free and darts out of the bathroom—the smallest, most tucked-away room on the second floor, and so the best place to hide. But to hide, you have to stay put. To stay safe, you cannot go seeking.

  But I am the babysitter. I have no choice.

  This time, when I pick up the razor, I hold the blade away from me. At the last minute, I also grab the plastic princess container of bubble bath. I don’t know why. Yet the heft of it gives me courage.

  “Amy?” I call hoarsely.

  God, it’s dark. I don’t want to go down this dark hall . . . these dark stairs. . . .

  But I am the babysitter.

  I reach the kitchen. Someone breathes by the rabbit hutch.

  “Amy?”

  Then the screaming begins, high-pitched and piercing.

  “Amy? Amy!”

  I slap the wall to find the light switch. I flip it on, and a stranger has Amy. Dangling from his other hand, hind legs thrashing wildly, is Scribbles—and it’s Scribbles, not Amy, whose animal fear makes this horrible shriek.

  “Rabbits scream when they’re in mortal terror,” the stranger says in a velvety, dreadful voice. “Did you know that?”

  I stare into his soulless eyes.

  He chuckles. “Little girls scream, too. When I make them.” He digs his bony fingers into Amy’s chubby arm, and she whimpers.

  But I am the babysitter.

  I feint as if to slash him. When he dodges, I’m ready with the plastic princess. I aim. I squeeze. And now who’s screaming, you soulless monster?

  His hands fly to his burning eyes and Amy flees, pausing only long enough to scoop up her stupid, precious bunny.

  “Run!” I cry.

  As soon as they’re out the back door and running for the neighbors, I squirt the remaining bubble bath on the tiled kitchen floor. When this monster comes after us, half blind, he will fall. And he won’t smell blood, as he had hoped, but strawberry bubbles.

  BARRY YOURGRAU

  We Think You Do

  On a dare two boys sneak into a spooky house. They gulp at the vast cobwebs, the shadows.

  There’s a moan from upstairs. “Help. . . .”

  The boys gasp. They rush back to the window they snuck through. But then one of them decides to investigate. Cursing, his buddy flees.

  Heart pounding, the lone boy edges up the main stairs. He reaches a dark doorway. Trembling, he peers in. He gasps in shock.

  A life-size replica of himself stands tied up in the bare room, a rope around its neck.

  “Help . . . ,” it moans mechanically.

  The stairs creak below. “Ah,” chuckles a sinister voice. “Here to exchange places? Your buddy is my new assistant. He’s very talented, don’t you think?”

  That’s how the town starts to fill with replicas. You know some of them, too.

  No?

  Well, here in the spooky house, we think you do.

  AARON RENIER

  The Prisoner of Eternia

  GREGORY MAGUIRE

  In Conclusion

  You turn the page in the anthology of nightmares. Your head throbs. At least this is the last story.

  But you begin to anticipate—the way one does—the infamous two words centered in boldface type. Farther on.

  Don’t look. Don’t dare glance ahead. You will come to them in time. We all do.

  They wait for us.

  That omega prophecy curses the turn of the page. Inevitable. Final. What if—when you get there—you find out the truth of this bedeviled book—that those words mean what they say. They really are . . .

  Index

  The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use the search feature of your e-book reader.

  Afflictions of the skin, 39, 72, 98

  Aguiar, Nadia, 34

  Anderson, M. T., 17

  Animals, 3, 22, 24, 34, 48, 61, 69, 91, 95, 100, 114, 119

  Applegate, Katherine, 71

  Atwood, Margaret, 49

  Avi, 72

  Babysitters/caretakers, 31, 7, 14, 17, 119

  Basements/cellars, 49, 82

  Beasts, 12, 50, 61, 73, 117, 123

  Beds, under and around, 4, 49, 68, 85, 89, 94

  Betrayal, 14, 17, 34, 37, 69

  Black, Holly, 27

  Blood, 33, 72, 106, 112, 119

  Body parts, dismembered, 33, 49, 91, 116

  Body parts, unexpected, 24, 50, 102, 117

  Bosch, Pseudonymous, 33

  Bray, Libba, 112

  Brown, Lisa, 31

  Children, 19, 57

  Clowns, 71, 106

  Cobwebs, 44, 106, 123

  Connelly, Michael, 117

  Creepy crawlies, 43, 49, 80, 106

  Crilley, Mark, 65

  Crime, 15, 16, 17, 21, 65

  Dares, 44, 123, 129

  Delaney, Joseph, 83

  Dismemberment, 1, 39, 49, 83

  Doom, 19, 57, 80, 87, 104, 109

  Doors, 7, 12, 14, 17, 19, 20, 26, 40, 44, 49, 57, 59, 70, 75, 80, 82, 104, 112, 114, 119, 123

  Ehrenhaft, Dan, 98

  Ellis, Carson, 77

  Fingers/fingernails/hands, 1, 21, 24, 39, 49, 72, 102

  Food, 48, 56, 65, 95

  Gaiman, Neil, 91

  Gantos, Jack, 39

  Genrich, Tom, 12

  Ghosts, 27, 31, 79, 82

  Godenir, Stacey, 104

  Gorman, Carol, 44

  Gratz, Alan, 85

  Greenhut, Josh, 87

  Griffin, Adele, 61

  Gutman, Dan, 106

  Halloween, 10, 21, 106

  Helquist, Brett, 87

  Houses, spooky and/or haunted, 15, 19, 26, 40, 44, 106

  Hunter, Erin, 7

  Incognito, 10, 21, 53

  James, Henry, 31

  Johnson, Angela, 14

  Justice, 16, 39

  Kellerman, Aliza, 63

  Kellerman, Faye, 29

  Kerr, M. E., 20

  Klassen, Jon, 15

  Knives, 1, 40, 46

  Kuipers, Alice, 108

  Lethem, Jonathan, 116

  Levine, Gail Carson, 73

  Livingston, Lesley, 92

  Lorey, Dean, 22

  Maguire, Gregory, 129

  Marche, Stephen, 40

  Marr, Melissa, 100

  Masks, 10, 21, 53

  MCGhee, Alison, 97

  Meltzer, Brad, 41

  Mercer, Sienna, 37

  Mirrors, 7, 10, 72, 98

  Moans, 59, 123

  Monsters, 5, 27, 72, 75, 85, 125

  Myracle, Lauren, 119

  Nightmares, 59, 100

  Nimmo, Jenny, 48

  Oates, Joyce Carol, 114

  Oppel, Kenneth, 4

  Parents/stepparents, 17, 20, 27, 56, 57, 68, 75, 80, 108

  Patterson, James, 9

  Perry, Michèle, 12

  Pets, 22, 69, 114, 119

  Prinz, Yvonne, 19

  Prose, Francine, 56

  Quiet, 1, 9, 16, 75

  Radunsky, Vladimir, 95

  Raschka, Chris, 102

  Renier, Aaron, 125

  Replicas, 19, 123

  Revenge, 29, 61, 65, 80, 108

&
nbsp; Rex, Adam, 21

  Rich, David, 46

  Sala, Richard, 5

  Scieszka, Jon, 94

  Screams, 9, 12, 37, 59, 80, 106, 112, 119

  Selznick, Brian, 53

  Shadows, 12, 14, 27, 34, 40, 46, 83, 91, 100, 123

  Siblings, 57, 75, 98, 104

  Slade, Arthur, 16

  Slone, Abi, 82

  Smith, Lane, 43

  Snicket, Lemony, 1

  Sones, Sonya, 10

  Spinelli, Jerry, 3

  Stahler Jr., David, 75

  Stine, R.L., 59

  Stratton, Allan, 68

  Summer camp, 37, 46

  Supernatural objects, 12, 41, 77, 87, 108, 109

  Sutherland, Tui T., 80

  Tamaki, Mariko, 50

  Teeth, 22, 40, 50, 112, 117

  Thomson, Sarah L., 69

  Toys, 12, 61, 87, 108

  Transformations, 5, 10, 12, 72, 73, 75, 98

  Underwater, 9, 24, 29, 37, 92

  Vehicles, 40, 57, 104

  Viva, Frank, 109

  Waldman, Ayelet, 57

  Water, 16, 29, 37, 57, 63, 92

  Weeks, Sarah, 24

  Whelan, Gloria, 26

  X, 43, 109

  Yourgrau, Barry, 123

  Zombies, 112

  About the Editor

  SUSAN RICH has edited a frightening number of books, including those in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Gloria Whelan’s National Book Award–winning Homeless Bird, and the series Flat Stanley’s Worldwide Adventures. Born in Winnipeg, she attended McGill University in Montreal and received her master’s degree in children’s literature from Simmons College in Boston. She has haunted old publishing houses in New York and then Toronto, where she now lives with her devilish husband and ghastly children.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  Credits

  Jacket art © 2009 by Bobby Chiu

  Jacket design by Torborg Davern

  Copyright

  “A Thousand Faces” by Brian Selznick first appeared in The Boy of a Thousand Faces, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2000. Printed here by permission of the author.

  “The Shadow” by Neil Gaiman was previously broadcast on Weekend America’s Halloween Radio program in 2007. Printed here by permission of the author.

  Half-Minute Horrors

  Copyright © 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Half-minute horrors / edited by Susan Rich. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: An anthology of very short, scary stories by an assortment of authors and illustrators including Chris Raschka, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Jack Gantos, and Lane Smith.

  ISBN 978-0-06-183379-3 (trade bdg.)

  1. Children’s stories. 2. Horror tales. [1. Horror stories. 2. Short stories.] I. Rich, Susan, date

  PZ5.H147 2009

  [Fic]—dc22

  2009018293

  CIP

  AC

  09 10 11 12 13 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

  EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062113535

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