Beware! Read online

  “I didn’t mean it, Your Grandness!” the witch cried out. “I didn’t mean to argue! I was just talking to myself!”

  “You dared to argue vith me!” screamed The Grand High Witch.

  “I was just talking to myself!” cried the wretched witch. “I swear it, Your Grandness!” She began to shake with fear.

  The Grand High Witch took a quick step forward, and when she spoke again, it was in a voice that made my blood run cold.

  “A stupid vitch who answers back

  Must burn until her bones are black!”

  she screamed.

  “No, no!” begged the witch in the front row. The Grand High Witch went on:

  “A foolish vitch vithout a brain

  Must sizzle in the fiery flame!”

  “Save me!” cried the wretched witch in the front row. The Grand High Witch took no notice of her. She spoke again:

  “An idiotic vitch like you

  Must rrroast upon the barbecue!”

  “Forgive me, O Your Grandness!” cried the miserable culprit. “I didn’t mean it!” But The Grand High Witch continued with her terrible recital:

  “A vitch who dares to say I’m wrrrong

  Vill not be vith us very long!”

  A moment later, a stream of sparks that looked like tiny white-hot metal filings came shooting out of The Grand High Witch’s eyes and flew straight towards the one who had dared to speak. I saw the sparks striking against her and burrowing into her and she screamed a horrible howling scream and a puff of smoke rose up around her. A smell of burning meat filled the room.

  Nobody moved. Like me, they were all watching the smoke, and when it had cleared away, the chair was empty. I caught a glimpse of something wispy-white, like a little cloud, fluttering upwards and disappearing out of the window.

  A great sigh rose from the audience.

  The Grand High Witch glared around the room. “I hope nobody else is going to cross me today,” she remarked.

  There was a deathly silence.

  “Frrrizzled like a frrritter,” said The Grand High Witch. “Cooked like a carrot. You vill never see her again. Now vee can get down to business.”

  Joe Is Not a Monster

  by R.L. Stine

  ILLUSTRATED BY TIM JACOBUS

  This is the only story I ever wrote that made my son, Matt, laugh. So I had to include it in Beware!

  JOE IS NOT A MONSTER

  by R.L. Stine

  Joe is not a monster.

  Believe me. I know Joe better than anybody.

  Joe is a sweet guy. He is a pussycat. He wouldn’t hurt a flea.

  How did the nasty rumors get started? I really don’t know.

  Someone at Joe’s school must have started them. Someone at Joe’s school whispered to someone else that Joe was a monster. And the rumor spread and spread.

  Now the whole school is against Joe.

  Kids are frightened of him. Kids laugh and point at him behind his back.

  The braver kids shout, “Hey, monster!” when Joe walks past. Then they laugh and hoot when they see Joe turn red.

  Someone wrote “MONSTER” on Joe’s locker. Someone tucked a windup toy monster in his backpack.

  Because of the ugly rumors, no one will hang out with Joe. Joe eats by himself in a corner of the lunchroom.

  No one will choose him for after-school soccer games. He has to stand and watch the games alone on the side of the field.

  No one will dance with him at the school dances. No one even talks to him in the halls or in class.

  Yesterday, a big kid from the upper school punched Joe really hard in the chest and said, “Go away from here, monster.”

  Joe cried all the way home.

  Let me tell you something about Joe. He is very hurt by these rumors. Joe has feelings, just like everyone else.

  Joe wants to have friends. He really wants people to like him.

  Joe is a nice guy. He is kind and generous. He has a great sense of humor. He can be a good friend.

  Joe didn’t ask me to speak for him. But I am speaking out anyway. I want to set things straight once and for all.

  Joe is not a monster. Not a monster. Not a monster.

  How do I know so much about Joe?

  Well, that question is easy to answer. No one is as close to Joe as I am. No one knows Joe better than I do.

  Because I am Joe’s second head.

  Tiger in the Snow

  by Daniel Wynn Barber

  ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLES BURNS

  When I was a kid, sometimes I would stay at a friend’s house until late and have to walk home in the dark. I lived in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood. But that walk home was always terrifying—because my imagination was too good!

  As I hurried along the sidewalk, I would imagine a snarling wolf creature crouching behind a bush. Or a drooling fanged monster waiting to pounce from the side of a garage. Every sound made me jump. Every rustle of leaves in the wind made me think I was being followed by something hideous.

  I came across this story recently and it brought back my memories of those frightening walks home. I also loved the title. Sometimes a title is so intriguing you just have to read the story.

  In the story, Justin leaves a friend’s house one night and imagines he is being followed by a tiger.

  Is it really a tiger—or is it something even worse?

  TIGER IN THE SNOW

  by Daniel Wynn Barber

  Justin sensed the tiger as soon as he reached the street. He didn’t see it, or hear it. He simply . . . sensed it.

  Leaving the warm safety of the Baxters’ porch light behind him, he started down the sidewalk that fronted State Street, feeling the night swallow him in a single hungry gulp. He stopped when he reached the edge of the Baxters’ property line and looked back wistfully toward their front door.

  Too bad the evening had to end. It had been just about the finest evening he could remember. Not that Steve and he hadn’t had some fine old times together, the way best friends will; but this particular evening had been, well, magical. They had played The Shot Brothers down in Steve’s basement while Mr. and Mrs. Baxter watched TV upstairs. When the game had been going well and everything was clicking, Justin could almost believe that Steve and he really were brothers. And that feeling had never been stronger than it had been this evening.

  When Mrs. Baxter had finally called down that it was time to go, it had struck Justin as vaguely strange that she would be packing him off on a night like this, seeing how he and Steve slept over at one another’s homes just about every weekend. But this evening was different. Despite the snow, home called to him in sweet siren whispers.

  Mrs. Baxter had bundled him up in his parka, boots, and mittens, and then, much to his surprise, she had kissed his cheek. Steve had seen him to the door, said a quick good-bye, then hurried away to the den. Funny thing, Steve’s eyes had seemed moist.

  Then Justin had stepped out into the night, and Mrs. Baxter had closed the door behind him, leaving him alone with the dark and the cold and . . . the tiger.

  At the edge of the Baxters’ property, Justin glanced around for a glimpse of the beast; but the street appeared deserted save for the houses and parked cars under a downy blanket of fresh snow. It was drifting down lazily now, indifferent after the heavy fall of that afternoon. Justin could see the skittering flakes trapped within the cones of light cast by the streetlamps, but otherwise the black air seemed coldly empty. The line of lamps at every corner of State Street gave the appearance of a tunnel of light that tapered down to nothingness; and beyond that tunnel, the dark pressed eagerly in.

  For a moment, Justin felt the urge to scurry back to the Baxters’ door and beg for sanctuary, but he knew he should be getting home. Besides, he wasn’t some chicken who ran from the dark. He was one of the Shot Brothers. Rough and ready. Fearless. Hadn’t he proven that to stupid Dale Corkland just the other day? “You scared?” old zit-faced Corkland had asked him. And Justin had shown him. />
  At the corner, Justin looked both ways, although he knew there wouldn’t be many cars out on a night like this. Then he scanned the hedges along a nearby house, where dappled shadows hung frozen in the branches. Excellent camouflage for a tiger—particularly one of those white Siberian tigers he’d read about.

  He kept a close eye on those hedges as he crossed the street. Snow swelled up around his boots and sucked at his feet, making it impossible to run should a tiger spring from behind the mailbox on the far corner. He stopped before he reached that mailbox, listening for the low blowing sound that tigers sometimes make as they lie in ambush. But all he heard was the rasping of his own breath. (“You scared?”) Yes. Tigers were nothing to be trifled with. They were as dangerous as the ice on Shepherd’s Pond.

  Justin had stared at that ice, thinking about the warm weather they’d had the past week. Then he had looked up at Dale Corkland’s face, three years older than his and sporting a gala display of acne. “You scared?” And Justin had shown him.

  But that was then and this was now; and weren’t tigers more merciless than ice? Oh, yes indeed.

  Justin gave himself a good mental shaking. He tried to summon those things his father had told him at other times when this tiger-fear had come upon him. (Don’t be such a baby.) At night, when he would awaken screaming after a tiger nightmare. (It was only a dream.) Or when he felt certain that a tiger was lurking about the basement. (There are no tigers in the city. You only find tigers in the zoo.)

  Wrapping himself snug in these assurances, Justin tramped past the brick retaining wall at the corner of State and Sixteenth without so much as a glance toward the spidery line of poplars where a tiger might be hiding. He rounded the corner and marched on. Heck, he had walked this way dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe.

  But tonight the usually comfortable features seemed alien and warped out of reality under the snow, and finding himself in this strange white landscape, Justin suddenly felt the tiger-fear return. It bobbed up and down within him until he could almost feel the tiger’s nearness, so close that the hot jungle breath seemed to huff against his cheek.

  He was halfway down the block when he saw a shadow slip effortlessly from behind the house two doors up. It seemed to glide dreamlike across the snow, then disappear behind a car parked in the driveway. It was just a shadow, but before it had vanished, Justin thought he caught a hint of striping.

  There are no tigers in the city.

  Justin watched and waited—waited for whatever it was to show itself. He even considered turning back, rerouting around Rush Street, but that would put it behind him.

  Come on, he scolded himself. You only find tigers in India. Or the zoo. Or behind parked cars. Nonsense. Tigers don’t stalk kids from behind parked cars in the middle of an American city. Only little kids let themselves be scared by shadows in the night. Not one of the Shot Brothers. Not a kid who had dared the ice on Shepherd’s Pond. Not a kid who was only two years away from attending Rathburn Junior High, where you get to keep your stuff in your own locker and change classrooms every hour and eat your lunch out on the benches. Kids at Rathburn didn’t go whimpering and whining because they saw a shadow in the snow—probably thrown by a branch moving in the wind.

  But there is no wind tonight.

  Justin swallowed hard, then started forward. He walked slowly, never shifting his gaze from the taillight of that parked car. If only he could see around it without getting any nearer. If something were crouching back there, it would be on him before he could cover the first five feet. And then . . .

  . . . teeth and claws, tearing and slashing.

  You scared?

  You bet.

  When he had drawn even with the driveway across the street, Justin stopped. Two more steps, maybe three, and he would see if his father and the kids at Rathburn Junior were right, or if tigers do indeed lie in wait on winter streets. Of course, there was still time to turn back.

  Perhaps it was the idea of turning back that propelled him forward. If he were to retrace his steps, he would never know; but if he looked and saw no tiger behind that car, then the tiger-fear would be banished, and he wouldn’t see them anywhere. Not in bushes. Not behind trees. Not between houses. Just three steps, and he could lay tigers to rest forever.

  Justin took those three steps the way he had walked out onto the ice on Shepherd’s Pond. Old zit-faced Corkland had dared him, and he had faced it.

  One—two—three.

  He turned and looked.

  Nothing. Nothing behind that car but an old sledge lying on its side. No tigers. No lions, bears, werewolves, or boogie-men. Just an old sledge. His father had been right all along.

  He covered the last block and a half with steps as light and carefree as those of a June day, when the air smelled of new-mown grass and the sun baked your skin brown. But, of course, it wasn’t June, and as he sprinted up his porch steps Justin realized that he had reached home without a moment to spare. He could scarcely see his breath at all. Much longer out in the icy cold and he thought his lungs might have frozen solid.

  As he stepped into the familiar warmth of his own house, he heard voices coming from the living room. It sounded as though his folks were having a party, although the voices seemed rather subdued—much the way they sounded on bridge nights when the evenings began quietly, but noisied up as the hours grew old.

  Justin tiptoed down the hall, thinking it wise not to interrupt. And as he passed the living room, he caught a snatch of conversation. It was a man speaking, “. . . bound to happen eventually. They should have put up a fence years ago. I’ve a good mind to . . .”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Gordon,” a woman said. (It sounded like Aunt Phyllis.) “This isn’t the time.”

  That was all he heard before hurrying to his room.

  When he flipped on the light, he was greeted by all the treasures which reflected his short life in intimate detail. The Darth Vader poster, the Packers pennant, the Spitfire on his dresser, the bedspread decorated in railroad logos.

  And one new addition, sitting in the corner on great feline haunches.

  For the briefest instant, Justin felt the urge to run—to flee into the living room and hurl himself into his mother’s arms, as he had done so many times in the past. But as he stared transfixed into the tiger’s huge, emerald eyes, he felt the fear slipping from him like some dark mantle, to be replaced by the soft and gentle cloak of understanding.

  “It’s time to go, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that was low but unwavering.

  The tiger’s eyes remained impassive, as deep and silent as green forest pools. Warm pools that never froze over, the way Shepherd’s Pond did.

  In his mind, Justin heard again the pistol crack of ice giving way beneath him, and he felt the chill water closing over his head. It really hadn’t hurt that much, not the way he would have thought. Not much pain, just a moment of remorse when he realized he wouldn’t be seeing his folks anymore—or Steve . . .

  . . . Had it all been a dream, this last wonderful evening together with Steve? Would Steve even remember?

  Justin looked at the tiger, searching its peaceful face for the answer; but those fathomless eyes kept their secrets.

  “Did you follow me tonight?” Justin asked.

  Whiskers twitched as the tiger’s muzzle wrinkled into a slight grin.

  “Yes,” Justin said softly. “I thought it was you. You’ve been following me all my life, haven’t you?” He turned to close his bedroom door, and when he turned back the tiger was crouching to spring.

  A Sock for Christmas

  A Grim Fairy Tale from The Vault of Horror, Volume 4

  ILLUSTRATED BY JACK KAMEN

  As a boy, I devoured horror comic books such as Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror. The drawings were brilliantly gross and disgusting, and so were the stories.

  Many adults thought these horror comics were bad for kids. The U.S. Congress held hearings about them and condemned them.

&
nbsp; My mother wouldn’t let me buy them. She said they were “trash.” That made me like them even more. I used to go to the barbershop every Saturday so I could read their collection of horror comics. I had the shortest hair in America—but I never missed a single issue!

  I read this story when I was ten years old, and I never forgot it. It still makes me laugh.

  The drawings are by Jack Kamen, one of the master horror-comic artists. Settle back and let the Vault-Keeper give you “A Sock for Christmas.”

  The Terrifying Adventures of the Golem

  A Jewish Folktale, retold by R.L. Stine

  ILLUSTRATED BY LEO AND DIANE DILLON

  The Golem is a character from Jewish folklore that has always fascinated me. I’ve always considered the Golem to be the first Frankenstein monster—and the first superhero. He was a giant figure made of clay and earth and water brought to life to battle the enemies of the Jewish people.

  The first Golem story was told in medieval times. Whenever the Jewish people were being mistreated by the rulers where they lived, they told stories of a mighty Golem who would come to protect them.

  The most famous story—which I chose to retell—relates the adventures of the Golem of Prague, brought to life in the 1500s. Yes, the story is almost five hundred years old. But I think you will agree with me that it is as exciting as any superhero adventure story told today.

  THE TERRIFYING ADVENTURES OF THE GOLEM

  A JEWISH FOLKTALE

  retold by R.L. Stine

  My name is Jacob, but that is not important. This is not my story. This is the story of Rabbi Judah Levi and the terrifying creature he made to walk the earth.

  Levi means lion in Hebrew, and it is a good name for Rabbi Levi. I am his student, and I have seen him roar many times. I have also seen his strength and his courage, and the power of his beliefs.

  Rabbi Levi looks like a lion with his strong, stern face, his dark eyes, and his thick mane of white hair. But he is a kind man, a wise man, and a religious man.