Slenderman, Slenderman - And Other Terrifying Tales

Jack Goldstein

Description

A boy who makes up tall tales to scare his friends, but has the tables turned on him... A girl who should have been more careful what she wished for... A young know-it-all who is sure he knows how a magician's tricks work... These are just three of the terrifying tales featured in the fantastic collection from bestselling author Jack Goldstein.With three macabre short stories and three poems with unexpected twists, both adults and children will enjoy being scared out of their wits. A word of caution however - all of the stories feature mature horror themes, and may not suit the youngest - or most timid readers. If, however, the thought of Slenderman running his long, thin decomposing fingers through your hair sounds exhilarating, then you are sure to enjoy being truly terrified by this haunting anthology!

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 20 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781782344858
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page
SLENDERMAN, SLENDERMAN
And Other Terrifying Tales
by
Jack Goldstein



Publisher Information
Published in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Jack Goldstein to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2012 Jack Goldstein
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
Disclaimer: The author and the publisher can accept no responsibility for heart conditions or any other medical issue caused by the reading of these stories



Author’s Note
When I was around six or seven years old, I remember reading a book by Jan Mark called Nothing To Be Afraid Of . It had a huge impact on me - and not just because it kept me from sleeping well for at least a couple of weeks.
Despite the fact that I first read that book many, many years ago, I can still remember the story that scared me the most almost word for word. I’m not going to tell you more as I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I highly recommend you get hold of a copy of it. I read it again as an adult, and it still made me scared to look down the staircase from my landing...
As for my writings - well, if I can give just one person the same kind of pleasure - and horror - that I got from that book all that time ago, then I am happy with that.
So thank you for buying this collection - I hope you enjoy it!



Daniel’s Dark Stories
I
“Mum, Daniel’s teasing me again!”
“What is it this time, Matthew?”
“He says Slenderman’s going to get me!”
“You know darling that there’s no such thing as Slenderman, he’s just being silly. Isn’t that right, Daniel?”
“There IS such a thing as Slenderman, and his slender arms are going to catch Matthew and...”
“ENOUGH! Matthew, there is NO such thing as Slenderman, and Daniel you can go to your room for telling tales.”
Now Daniel was pretty sure there was no such thing as Slenderman, and he didn’t really mind going to his room. He had achieved what he wanted to - in that his little brother would not be sleeping well tonight - and anyway, his room was where his Playstation was, and that suited him just fine.
You see, Daniel wasn’t a very nice boy. What he enjoyed most of all was teasing and scaring other people. Oh, his little brother was easy enough, but he had a hundred-and-one tales that he knew about, enough to scare even the most sceptical children at school. And, believe me, he did just that on a daily basis.
Daniel didn’t really have friends, but people listened to him when he told stories - a strange fascination with the macabre perhaps, or maybe to laugh at another child who was scared by one of his tall tales. But when they went home, they wouldn’t peek out of the curtain on a dark night for fear of seeing just what they’d been told about.
Slenderman was Daniel’s current dish of the day, however this was just the latest in a long list of favourites. Take, perhaps, last week when he scared Bethany Jones (one of the most sensible girls at school) witless with the story of Jenny Greenteeth.
Have you ever seen algae or weed on the surface of a pond, making it look like a nicely kept lawn? Well, some people call that Jenny Greenteeth. However, the truth - according to Daniel - was much darker than that. You see, if an unsuspecting child crept up to the water’s edge to take a closer look, a hideous hag with jagged green teeth and decomposing limbs would jump out and pull the unfortunate soul underneath the surface until they succumbed to the ultimate fate.
Now, we all know Jenny Greenteeth isn’t real. And neither is Slenderman. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. After all, if these two nightmarish creatures could exist, what else could be out there?
And that’s how Daniel could tell these stories without getting scared himself. All he did was remind himself that there was no possible way that monsters were hiding under the bed, witches and werewolves lurking in the shadows, or fetid putridness lying in wait beneath the surface of the village pond.
II
“Tell us more about Slenderman, Daniel.”
“You sure you want to hear more?”
“Yes!” the class said in chorus. Jimmy Russell was a little more hesitant, but joined in anyway. He was certain that when he had walked home the other night, a really tall guy had been walking silently behind him, so he had made a run for it. There was nothing more than that, but it was disconcerting enough. But he didn’t want to seem to be the odd one out, so he joined in with the rest of the children’s pleading to hear more. After all, what else was there to do whilst Mr Malinko had gone to get a laptop from the IT department after his had broken down (of course, a teacher couldn’t conduct a lesson without having the answers in front of him, could he?).
“OK then. Now you know he is about two or three times as tall as a normal man?”
“ Yeeees .”
“and his arms and legs are long and thin, like branches on a tree?”
“ Yeeees .”
“Well, he doesn’t just kill you. He... well... he does things to you.”
“Oh my god! What like?” Jimmy said.
“Jimmy’s scared!” said one boy.
“Baby, baby!” a girl said, quite childishly - maybe because she was pretty frightened as well.
“Well, he cuts you open..”
“ Euuurgh !”
“and he takes your organs out...”
“ Yuck !”
“And then he wraps them in moleskin and puts them back into your body.”
“ That’s horrible !”
“But the worst thing is... you’re still alive when he’s doing this to you. You feel everything! ”
It was too much for Jimmy. He started to cry and ran towards the classroom door, which - as he was approaching it - creaked open.
“Oh no, it’s the Slenderman!” shouted Daniel.
Thankfully however, it wasn’t. It was Mr Malinko, returning with his laptop. Not that this made any difference to Jimmy, who had at this point passed out from fear.
“What’s this all about?” asked the teacher.
“No idea, sir.” Said Daniel, with a big smile on his face.
III
It was just Paula who walked home with Daniel. It may have been that everyone else had had enough of the scary stories for one day, or perhaps that they would get in trouble for encouraging the tall tales if the truth about Jimmy’s scare got out.
But Daniel was on form.
“Have you ever heard of a will-o’-the-wisp?” he asked Paula.
“I don’t think so, no, what’s that?” she asked with some trepidation.
“Well, they’re pretty rare now - what with most people living in towns rather than the countryside, but in days gone by they were quite common.”
“OK...”
“You see, it was very easy to get bogged down in marshy ground, and with no mobile phones back in the olden days, once you were stuck, that’s where you’d stay - until you died of starvation and completely sunk into the marsh.”
“That’s horrid! ”
“Ah, but that’s not the scary bit.”
“It’s not?”
“No. You see, on marshy ground you would sometimes get little lights floating above particularly deep patches. Now, some people would say these were pockets of gas which would spontaneously ignite, and burn for a while. But the truth is a lot stranger.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Because whether that was true or not, if someone did lose their way in the marshes and meet a sticky end, the very next day there would be an extra light !”
Paula let out a gasp. “So, the souls of dead people manifest themselves as sort of floating orbs of light?”
“Something like that, yes, that’s what the old folk thought.”
It was too much for Paula. “Oh, look at the time, I’m late for my music lesson” she said. “Gotta run, see you tomorrow” and took off like a rocket.
Of course, Daniel knew she didn’t have a music lesson, a fact which meant his story had taken effect perfectly. And with glee he ambled home.
IV
Although Daniel had chalked up dozens of ‘successes’ on his belt, they had all been with other children of his age. To be a true storyteller, he thought, perhaps he should try scaring an adult. Yes, that was it. They had a particularly timid teaching assistant at school. If he could engineer things so he could get some time with her, ideally in a quiet corner of the classroom, well, then the game was truly on.
But which story to use?
At first he thought he should tell her about Mari Lwyd - an absolutely terrifying sight - a horse skull on an upright body with glaring bejewelled eyes, which on the darkest night of the year would knock on people’s doors with a rotten hoof. If the resident dared to answer the knock, they skeletal jaws of the awful figure would snap their heads off at the neck and take it away to a nest, deep in a cave in Wales.
But that was a ‘trump card’, a story he would only use if all else failed. There would be no reason to pull that one out of the bag if something else worked first, so let’s just save that one for a rainy day, Daniel thought.
How about Reynardine the werefox? He would attract beautiful women with his charm, then take them away to his castle of bones for a fate worse than death. But somehow he got the feeling that the teaching assistant would not run with this one, perhaps because the story only applied to beautiful women, and Daniel didn’t think she fell into that category.
No, it would have to be something in between the two. Someth