The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

Table of Contents

1/ Pete Johnson - Secret Terror

2/ Stephen King - Battleground

3/ Robert Westall - The Vacancy

4/ Guy de Maupassant - The Twitch

5/ Laurence Staig - Freebies

6/ Roald Dahl - Man from the South

7/ Kenneth Ireland - The Werewolf Mask

8/ John Gordon - Eels

9/ Bram Stoker - Jonathan Marker's Journal

10/ Anthony Horowitz - Bath Night

1/ Pete Johnson - Secret Terror

         

    I've never met you but I know this about you: you're terrified of something. It's no use denying it. Everyone is. My mum, for instance, is terrified of intruders. That's why our doors are decorated with a whole variety of locks and chains. There's even a peephole so you can stare at whoever's out there, undetected.

    But no lock can stop the intruder I fear. This intruder comes and goes as it pleases. And when it moves, no boards creak under its tread. There's not even the whisper of a sound to alert you where it is.

    I can't remember a time when I didn't fear it. But then I was always a very nervous girl. Especially in those years before I went to school. For no one had realized then how short-sighted I was, nor that I was living in a world which was permanently out of focus. It was as if everything was being reflected through one of those distorting mirrors, the ones which twist you into something hideous.

    My eyes were as crazy as those mirrors and as treacherous. And then, when I was four, I was suddenly left alone in the house. Mum had been rowing with Dad on the phone (a strange, whispered row) and then she'd rushed out saying, 'I'll only be a minute.'

    But she was gone for much longer than that. And I sat in the lounge, cold and tired and afraid. What if Mum didn't come back? What if no one came back? Then I saw something new in the room: a small dark shape, blurred and mysterious. And then, the dark shape ran across the room.

    I don't think I'll ever forget the speed with which it ran or its sudden, jerky movements. And before I knew what was happening it was on me, crawling over my feet. I screamed even though the house was empty. And finally my screams were so piercing a neighbour charged in through the back door. Then my mum returned and, a bit later, the doctor came too, because I couldn't stop shivering. He said I was in a state of shock. Well, why wouldn't I be? A lump of dust had turned into a spider.

    That was how I overcame all my objections to wearing glasses. I had to know if lurking in the darkest shadows was another spider. At least, armed with my glasses, I could now identify my enemy.

    Except when I was in bed at night. One time I saw a spider climbing across my bedroom ceiling. At once I called for my mum. She couldn't see it and said I was letting my imagination run away with me. But she didn't look for very long. And afterwards I thought, what if the spider is still somewhere in my room, nicely camouflaged for now, but later… later when I'm asleep it could scurry out of the darkness and continue its climb and perhaps even drop off the ceiling - spiders often do that - and on to my bed. And I'd never know. I'd only feel it as it crawled up my neck and on to my face. To wake up and feel its spindly legs scuttling over your face - I can't think of a worse terror.

    I remember one evening when I was watching a James Bond film round at a friend's house: the one where a tarantula crawls over Bond and he has to just lie there, sweating like crazy, until the thing moves off him. And I was horror-struck, not at the prospect of the tarantula biting him, but because he had to stay completely still while a giant spider crawled over him.

    I just ran out of the house. My friend's mum rang home and unfortunately, my new stepfather answered. And after hearing about this incident, my vile stepfather decided he'd prove to me that spiders can't do any harm. So one evening, just as I was finishing drying the dishes, he suddenly yelled, 'Catch, Clare,' and threw a spider right at me. Even now I can taste the utter panic and terror I felt then. My mum said the spider had never actually landed on me but no one was really sure where it went. It seemed to just disappear. For days, weeks afterwards I'd wake up convinced the spider was still somewhere on my body.

    Happily my stepfather left us shortly afterwards and was replaced later by a stepfather I call Roger, who, whenever I sighted a spider, understood that he had to search properly for it everywhere. No, both he and my mum were very sympathetic. Although occasionally I could see them looking at me questioningly. And I knew they were wondering, is she just putting all this on to gain attention? But something, perhaps something in my eyes, always stopped them accusing me of faking.

    As I got older, into my teens, my fear of spiders remained. Only now my reaction to the spiders scared me almost as much as the spiders themselves. For I couldn't seem able to control this fear. And I did try.