Beware! Read online

  Then halfway up the rope, it stopped. It lowered its head and furiously began to gnaw.

  What is it doing? Malcolm wondered. Why is it chewing at the rope?

  Outside, the wind howled. Waves of rain battered the windows.

  Malcolm stared up helplessly as the rat chewed through the rope. After a few seconds, a long section of rope fell to the floor in front of the chair.

  The rat clung to the remaining rope.

  Dr. Thornhill’s words came back to him: “If you have any kind of fright tonight, ring the alarm bell. I will hurry to your rescue.”

  But I can’t reach it now, Malcolm realized. Now I can’t pull the rope to call for help!

  And then Malcolm let out a shrill cry of horror as his eyes returned to the third painting on the wall.

  How could that be? How?

  A wide brown patch filled the center of the painting.

  The judge had disappeared from the painting.

  Malcolm spun around, and in a chill of horror, he saw the judge. Saw the judge in his scarlet robe, sitting on the oak chair.

  He wore a cold smile of triumph on his face. And as his smile grew wider, the clock began to chime.

  Midnight.

  Slowly, the judge rose from the chair. As Malcolm stared in fright, the judge picked up the piece of rope. He drew it through his hands, smiling all the while. Then he began to knot one end of it, tying it into a noose.

  Holding the rope in both hands, the judge moved in front of the door.

  I’m trapped, Malcolm realized. He has me trapped here.

  The judge moved closer, staying between Malcolm and the door. He raised the noose—and threw it at Malcolm.

  Malcolm tried to dodge away. But his legs were trembling too hard to move.

  The loop of the rope narrowly missed him.

  His eyes glowing, the judge raised the noose again—and tossed it at Malcolm.

  Malcolm uttered a faint cry.

  Another near miss.

  Malcolm’s heart pounded. He searched the room, frantically looking for a way to escape. To his horror, the rats began to come out of their holes.

  Hundreds of them huddled around the walls, red eyes glowing. Snapping their jaws, whipping their tails, chittering and shrieking, they moved in, tightening their circle.

  More rats poured out from behind the painting. They swarmed over the mantel, over the table. Rats covered every surface.

  Glancing up, Malcolm saw the rope to the alarm bell covered with rats. Every inch. And still more and more rats poured out from the ceiling onto the rope.

  The rope grew heavier. Heavier. And the bell began to ring.

  Yes! Malcolm thought. The rats are ringing the alarm!

  The bell rang louder. And louder.

  Yes! Malcolm thought. Ring the alarm. Ring the alarm to bring help!

  The bell clanged. The rats began to squeal. The wind howled.

  The judge stepped up and lowered the rope around Malcolm’s neck.

  The people of the village heard the clang of the alarm bell. A crowd came running through the storm with lamps and torches.

  Dr. Thornhill was the first to arrive. He pounded on the door, but there was no reply. “Break down the door! Hurry!” he boomed.

  The men used a wide tree branch to break it down. Dr. Thornhill rushed into the dining room. The villagers followed close behind him.

  “Nooooo!” He moaned as he saw Malcolm’s body swinging from the end of the alarm bell rope.

  And then he turned in horror and saw the face of the judge in the painting. The judge’s face with its broad, triumphant smile.

  The Cremation of Sam McGee

  by Robert W. Service

  ILLUSTRATED BY JACK DAVIS

  When I was a kid, I loved listening to stories on the radio. Stories I heard on the radio were so much more exciting than on TV—because I had to picture them in my own imagination.

  A radio storyteller named Jean Shepherd introduced me to Robert W. Service. Shepherd had an all-night radio show that started at midnight. As a kid, I would sneak my radio into my bed and stay up most of the night with the radio pressed to my ear, listening to his stories.

  Sometimes Shepherd read Robert Service’s poems. They weren’t like any poems I had ever heard before. They were about hard, dangerous men out in a cold, unfriendly world. The poems were tough. They made you shiver. They made your blood run cold.

  If you think poems can’t give you a chill, try this one. It’s my all-time favorite.

  THE CREMATION OF SAM McGEE

  by Robert W. Service

  There are strange things done in the midnight sun

  By the men who moil for gold;

  The Arctic trails have their secret tales

  That would make your blood run cold;

  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

  But the queerest they ever did see

  Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

  I cremated Sam McGee.

  Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,

  where the cotton blooms and blows.

  Why he left his home in the South to roam

  ’round the Pole, God only knows.

  He was always cold, but the land of gold

  seemed to hold him like a spell;

  Though he’d often say in his homely way

  that “he’d sooner live in hell.”

  On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way

  over the Dawson trail.

  Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold

  it stabbed like a driven nail.

  If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze

  till sometimes we couldn’t see;

  It wasn’t much fun, but the only one

  to whimper was Sam McGee.

  And that very night, as we lay packed tight

  in our robes beneath the snow,

  And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead

  were dancing heel and toe,

  He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he,

  “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;

  And if I do, I’m asking that you

  won’t refuse my last request.”

  Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no;

  then he says with a sort of moan:

  “It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold

  till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.

  Yet ’tain’t being dead—it’s my awful dread

  of the icy grave that pains;

  So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,

  you’ll cremate my last remains.”

  A pal’s last need is a thing to heed,

  so I swore I would not fail;

  And we started on at the streak of dawn;

  but God! he looked ghastly pale.

  He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day

  of his home in Tennessee;

  And before nightfall a corpse was all

  that was left of Sam McGee.

  There wasn’t a breath in that land of death,

  and I hurried, horror-driven,

  With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid,

  because of a promise given;

  It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:

  “You may tax your brawn and brains,

  But you promised true, and it’s up to you

  to cremate those last remains.”

  Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,

  and the trail has its own stern code.

  In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,

  in my heart how I cursed that load.

  In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,

  while the huskies, round in a ring,

  Howled out their woes to the homeless snows

  —O God! how I loathed the thing.

  And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy

  and heavier grow;

  And on I went, though the dogs were spent


  and the grub was getting low;

  The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,

  but I swore I would not give in;

  And I’d often sing to the hateful thing,

  and it hearkened with a grin.

  Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,

  and a derelict there lay;

  It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice

  it was called the “Alice May.”

  And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,

  and I looked at my frozen chum;

  Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry,

  “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”

  Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,

  and I lit the boiler fire;

  Some coal I found that was lying around,

  and I heaped the fuel higher;

  The flames just soared, and the furnace roared

  —such a blaze you seldom see;

  And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,

  and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

  Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like

  to hear him sizzle so;

  And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,

  and the wind began to blow.

  It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled

  down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;

  And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak

  went streaking down the sky.

  I do not know how long in the snow

  I wrestled with grisly fear;

  But the stars came out and they danced about

  ere again I ventured near;

  I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:

  “I’ll just take a peep inside.

  I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”;

  . . . then the door I opened wide.

  And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,

  in the heart of the furnace roar;

  And he wore a smile you could see a mile,

  and he said: “Please close that door.

  It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear

  you’ll let in the cold and storm—

  Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,

  it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”

  There are strange things done in the midnight sun

  By the men who moil for gold;

  The Arctic trails have their secret tales

  That would make your blood run cold;

  The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

  But the queerest they ever did see

  Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

  I cremated Sam McGee.

  The Elevator

  by William Sleator

  ILLUSTRATED BY PATRICK ARRASMITH

  I live in New York City, so I ride in a lot of elevators. I’m not afraid of them, but sometimes they give me creepy thoughts.

  For example: What if every time you stepped into an elevator the same person was there? At first, it would be kind of funny. You’d think it a strange coincidence. But by the third or fourth time, you’d start to think something weird was going on. Is this person following you?

  William Sleator is one of my favorite authors. He has a great ability to make ordinary situations absolutely terrifying. And he can make truly bizarre and terrifying situations believable.

  William Sleator must have the same feeling about elevators that I do—since he wrote this truly frightening story.

  Most elevators go up and down. But this elevator is a one-way ride to terror!

  THE ELEVATOR

  by William Sleator

  It was an old building with an old elevator—a very small elevator, with a maximum capacity of three people. Martin, a thin twelve-year-old, felt nervous in it from the first day he and his father moved into the apartment. Of course he was always uncomfortable in elevators, afraid that they would fall, but there was something especially unpleasant about this one. Perhaps its baleful atmosphere was due to the light from the single fluorescent ceiling strip, bleak and dim on the dirty brown walls. Perhaps the problem was the door, which never stayed open quite long enough, and slammed shut with such ominous, clanging finality. Perhaps it was the way the mechanism shuddered in a kind of exhaustion each time it left a floor, as though it might never reach the next one. Maybe it was simply the dimensions of the contraption that bothered him, so small that it felt uncomfortably crowded even when there was only one other person in it.

  Coming home from school the day after they moved in, Martin tried the stairs. But they were almost as bad, windowless, shadowy, with several dark landings where the light bulbs had burned out. His footsteps echoed behind him like slaps on the cement, as though there was another person climbing, getting closer. By the time he reached the seventeenth floor, which seemed to take forever, he was winded and gasping.

  His father, who worked at home, wanted to know why he was so out of breath. “But why didn’t you take the elevator?” he asked, frowning at Martin when he explained about the stairs. Not only are you skinny and weak and bad at sports, his expression seemed to say, but you’re also a coward. After that, Martin forced himself to take the elevator. He would have to get used to it, he told himself, just the way he got used to being bullied at school, and always picked last when they chose teams. The elevator was an undeniable fact of life.

  He didn’t get used to it. He remained tense in the trembling little box, his eyes fixed on the numbers over the door that blinked on and off so haltingly, as if at any moment they might simply give up. Sometimes he forced himself to look away from them, to the Emergency Stop button, or the red Alarm button. What would happen if he pushed one of them? Would a bell ring? Would the elevator stop between floors? And if it did, how would they get him out?

  That was what he hated about being alone on the thing—the fear of being trapped there for hours by himself. But it wasn’t much better when there were other passengers. He felt too close to any other rider, too intimate. And he was always very conscious of the effort people made not to look at one another, staring fixedly at nothing. Being short, in this one situation, was an advantage, since his face was below the eye level of adults, and after a brief glance they ignored him.

  Until the morning the elevator stopped at the fourteenth floor, and the fat lady got on. She wore a threadbare green coat that ballooned around her; her ankles bulged above dirty sneakers. As she waddled into the elevator, Martin was sure he felt it sink under her weight. She was so big that she filled the cubicle; her coat brushed against him, and he had to squeeze into the corner to make room for her—there certainly wouldn’t have been room for another passenger. The door slammed quickly behind her. And then, unlike everyone else, she did not stand facing the door. She stood with her back to the door, wheezing, staring directly at Martin.

  For a moment he met her gaze. Her features seemed very small, squashed together by the loose, fleshy mounds of her cheeks. She had no chin, only a great swollen mass of neck, barely contained by the collar of her coat. Her sparse red hair was pinned back by a plastic barrette. And her blue eyes, though tiny, were sharp and penetrating, boring into Martin’s face.

  Abruptly he looked away from her to the numbers over the door. She didn’t turn around. Was she still looking at him? His eyes slipped back to hers, then quickly away. She was still watching him. He wanted to close his eyes; he wanted to turn around and stare into the corner, but how could he? The elevator creaked down to twelve, down to eleven. Martin looked at his watch; he looked at the numbers again. They weren’t even down to nine yet. And then, against his will, his eyes slipped back to her face. She was still watching him. Her nose tilted up; there was a large space between her nostrils and her upper lip, giving her a piggish look. He looked away again, clenching his teeth, fighting the impulse to squeeze his eyes shut against her.

  She had to be crazy. Why else would she stare at him this way? What was she going to do next?

  She did nothing. She only watched hi
m, breathing audibly, until the elevator reached the first floor at last. Martin would have rushed past her to get out, but there was no room. He could only wait as she turned—reluctantly, it seemed to him—and moved so slowly out into the lobby. And then he ran. He didn’t care what she thought. He ran past her, outside into the fresh air, and he ran almost all the way to school. He had never felt such relief in his life.

  He thought about her all day. Did she live in the building? He had never seen her before, and the building wasn’t very big—only four apartments on each floor. It seemed likely that she didn’t live there, and had only been visiting somebody.

  But if she were only visiting somebody, why was she leaving the building at seven thirty in the morning? People didn’t make visits at that time of day. Did that mean she did live in the building? If so, it was likely—it was a certainty—that sometime he would be riding with her on the elevator again.

  He was apprehensive as he approached the building after school. In the lobby, he considered the stairs. But that was ridiculous. Why should he be afraid of an old lady? If he was afraid of her, if he let it control him, then he was worse than all the names they called him at school. He pressed the button; he stepped into the empty elevator. He stared at the lights, urging the elevator on. It stopped on three.

  At least it’s not fourteen, he told himself; the person she was visiting lives on fourteen. He watched the door slide open—revealing a green coat, a piggish face, blue eyes already fixed on him as though she knew he’d be there.

  It wasn’t possible. It was like a nightmare. But there she was, massively real. “Going up!” he said, his voice a humiliating squeak.

  She nodded, her flesh quivering, and stepped on. The door slammed. He watched her pudgy hand move toward the buttons. She pressed, not fourteen, but eighteen, the top floor, one floor above his own. The elevator trembled and began its ascent. The fat lady watched him.

  He knew she had gotten on at fourteen this morning. So why was she on three, going up to eighteen now? The only floors he ever went to were seventeen and one. What was she doing? Had she been waiting for him? Was she riding with him on purpose?

  But that was crazy. Maybe she had lots of friends in the building. Or else she was a cleaning lady who worked in different apartments. That had to be it. He felt her eyes on him as he stared at the numbers slowly blinking on and off—slower than usual, it seemed to him. Maybe the elevator was having trouble because of how heavy she was. It was supposed to carry three adults, but it was old. What if it got stuck between floors? What if it fell?