Six Scary Stories by Various (selected by Stephen King).
Title: Six Scary Stories.
Author: Elodie Harper, Manuela Saragosa, Paul Bassett Davies, Michael Button, Stuart Johnstone and Neil Hudson (selected by Stephen King).
Genre: Fiction, short stories, horror.
Country: England, Scotland, U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 2016
Summary: A collection of 6 short stories. In Wild Swimming by Elodie Harper, despite the locals' terrified protests, a young woman visiting a remote Lithuanian village insists on "wild swimming" in a lake above a flooded village, with dark and dire consequences. In Eau-de-Eric by Manuela Saragosa, a woman and her young daughter come across a mysterious teddy-bear that has the essence and smell of the woman's dead ex-husband, which soon leads to the daughter's strange and creepy behaviour. In The Spots by Paul Bassett Davies, a close adviser to a brutal dictator in an unspecified country finds himself with an impossible task of having to count a single leopard's spots without inhibiting the animal in any way. In The Unpicking by Michael Button, on a slow, boring night, a group of restless toys comes up with a morbid new game to pass the time. In La Mort de L'Amant bu Stuart Johnstone, a young cop encounters a suspicious man on a bridge famous as a local suicide spot. In The Bear Trap, a young boy isolated on a well-stocked farm during a nuclear winter is disturbed by a violent outsider, but he has a secret up his sleeve the man could never see coming.
My rating: 7.5/10
My review:
♥ So when my editor, Philippa Pride, said Hodder wanted to have a short story competition to promote The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, I agreed to pick a winner. Entrants were encouraged to write something scary, based on a few lines I wrote in the introduction to Bazaar: "There's something to be said for a shorter, more intense experience. It can be invigorating, sometimes even shocking, like a waltz with a stranger you will never see again, or a kiss in the dark." A quick, unsettling encounter, in other words.
♥ I wasn't the only one with doubts. In her piece for the Guardian, Ms Armitstead wrote, "I have to admit that the prospect of ploughing trough dozens of wannabe Carries and second-rate Shinings seemed like the roundabout route to Misery." (This, dear reader, is known as British humour.)
♥ Also-this is important, because scary stories are extremely delicate-each of the writers had internalised the most important rule when it comes to inducing unease: Never tell too much. The monster is always scarier when it is still under the child's bed; the intruder is more frightening when he (or it) is still a shadow on a wall, or a breathing presence behind the door.
~~from Introduction by Stephen King.
♥ Even at the edge, the reservoir is really deep, metres of black below. I cut out sideways, not making for the middle, to make sure my body acclimatised. The place is vast, but, oddly, it doesn't give you that sense of empty space and wide horizons you normally get in a big lake. Maybe it's the steep sides, hemming you in, but with the flatness and the firs it felt a bit claustrophobic, like I was a fly swimming in a giant's soup bowl.
I headed into the middle to see if that would give me a better view. There's nothing like seeing Helm Crag reflected in the water from the middle of Grasmere, and although this place is flat, I thought distance might lend it a little majesty. It did look prettier further in, the wavering green and black lines of the trees matching their sturdy frames above, so I trod water for a bit, absorbing it all.
I'm very used to lakes, the fact that there's nothing but the dark below you, going down tens, often hundreds of feet. That's never bothered me. The sense of emptiness beneath, I even quite like it. But that's not what I felt here at Vaiduoklis. Rather than nothing-ness beneath me, I felt a something-ness. That it wasn't empty space, that there was something there.
♥ Also, I finally have an explanation for our difficulty at the Foreign Office in locating the place from Christine Miller's friend's description. "Vaiduoklis" is in fact a local nickname for the village, not its actual name. It is the Lithuanian word for "ghost" and seems to refer to the original village, sunk in the reservoir.
~~Wild Swimming by Elodie Harper.
♥ Too fast.
Her back foot caught in a flap of carpet. Her mouth got halfway to a scream as She flew the length of the upper flight, sailing clean over Rupert. With a sharp snapping sound, She crashed in a tangled heap on the landing. Her neck was angled hideously. Her bloodshot eyes went as glassy as Nobody's. Everything was silent again.
..Sophie stayed where she was. She was fascinated by the way She lay. She looks like me, Sophie thought, me when I make myself still when He opens the toy chest. But somehow, without truly understanding why, Sophie didn't think that She could make Herself move again, no matter how hard She tried.
♥ "Funnnnn," said Annie, and, of course, the other toys agreed with her. But though the evening's events had been exciting, as exciting as anything they'd ever done, there was still a restlessness to the toys, as if they hadn't rally been sated, as if this night had only increased their appetite for more.
"Ball?" suggested Naughty Rupert. But from the weariness of his voice it was obvious his heart wasn't in it.
"No," said Sophie. "Something else."
But what else? Annie shrugged her doughy head. Nobody tried to suggest a fame of Chinese whispers, but he couldn't pique anyone's interest-he squandered his best shot too early, thought Sophie. Even Rupert seemed dejected-the climb had taken it out of him. All three looked to Sophie. She knew her moment had come.
"An Unpicking. Another one."
The toys looked from one to another, suddenly alert. Nobody and Rupert turned their heads towards Annie, but she was not as foolish as Bunny, and she scrambled away. Besides, she was the biggest, and who could say tat she wouldn't take the head off one of the others, even if they did all gang up on her.
"No," said Sophie. "Not one of us. Him."
And they all fixed their attention on Him, their freckled one-time master, eyes twitching in dreams. They rose as one. Gathered needles, scissors, toy drumsticks. And, without a mutter, without a whisper, they took their makeshift tools, and they circled His bed.
~~The Unpicking by Michael Button.
♥ "It's just that this bridge we're standin' on, it's sport of a popular spot for people who wanna... you know..." Charlie sent a curved hand over the handrail with a whistle.
"Suicide spot?"
"Yes, sir, three or four every year. That we know of. I mean you end up in there, the rocks are gonna tear you into pieces, then whatever the gators don't eat ends up washing out into Vermilion Bay and by then there's barely enough to tell if you started off a man or a woman. Um, La mort-day-lay-mant. It's like lover's leap... or something. I don't know for sure. I don't speak much French."
Lover's death, the older man corrected in his head.
Shiny boy, but not too bright.
~~Lamort de l'Amant by Stuart Johnstone.