Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories

by Paul Jennings

  I had to get out of there.

  But how? I was trapped.

  4

  The dragonfly circled mercilessly. Once again I crouched in the corner with my arms over my head for protection.

  Everything the dragonfly sat on had disappeared and been replaced by something else.

  Above me was the picture. I couldn’t see it from my crouched position but a sudden thought hit me like a bullet. The room in the picture was this room. The same fireplace. The same walls. And barred windows. It was a painting of the same room done long, long ago.

  The dragonfly still circled.

  Zap.

  The dim globe dangling from the ceiling flickered and was gone. In its place a candle spluttered in a steel saucer attached to three chains.

  Think, think, think, Jeremy.

  What was going on? All of the new objects had come from the picture. I wanted to look at it but I was too scared to move.

  Where was Mum? Gasbagging on her mobile, probably.

  ‘Mum, I need you,’ I whispered.

  From somewhere deep inside I found the courage to move. I sprang to my feet and fixed my eyes on the painting. Oh, no, no, no. There it was. My mobile. And the Laminex table. The bunks were there too. And our backpacks. And the dangling light globe. Everything that the dragonfly landed on had swapped with something in the picture.

  I stared with wide open eyes at the wicked skeleton holding the poor toad above his cauldron. What if he should come into my prison? The soulless bone-man who should be in his grave – not prancing around like a person.

  I shrank back in terror from the red dragonfly. Was it about to bring this dead horror into the room?

  Zap. Zap. Our backpacks vanished. And in their place were two long sticks with cloth bundles tied to the ends. I gazed at the picture again. It was modern and old at the same time. As if it had been painted by some ancient artist who could see into the future. I could see our modern hiking packs together with my mobile phone and the steel bunks.

  Zap. A bubbling cauldron appeared at my side. It was filled with green gurgling liquid that burped and threw out a stench even worse than the bog.

  By now, everything in the skeleton’s painted room was modern. Except him and the toad.

  The dragonfly began to circle above me. ‘No, no,’ I shouted. ‘Get away.’

  Down, down, down, it came. Like a dive-bomber about to attack.

  Zap.

  The world as I knew it began to fade. My blood was ice. My bones were sticks. My brain was filled with fog. And then, as the mist cleared, I saw a crazy world.

  Upside down.

  The skeleton danced a silent jig, holding me by one of my ankles. My head shook as he swung me around.

  The toad was gone. I had taken its place. Inside the picture.

  I was dead.

  That was the thought that filled my head.

  5

  For some reason the thought gave me strength. Mum was in another world. I had nothing to lose. I kicked out at the skeleton with my free leg and caught him by surprise. His leg bones and skull scattered across the floor. I fell down onto the flagstones with a loud thump.

  Quickly I sprang to my feet.

  But the skeleton was not finished. No, not by a long shot. He reached out with spidery fingers, even though he was headless and legless. He began to place the bones into their correct positions one at a time.

  Hurry, hurry. Use your brain, Jeremy.

  The answer must be in the picture on the skeleton’s wall. It was a drawing of the Bed and Breakfast room. A room that now had a crackling fire, a cauldron, and a toad. Yes, the toad had gone into the painting and replaced me. There was not one modern object there. And on the table. What was that? A metal box with an open lid. And a dragonfly hovering above it.

  The skeleton and I were in a modern world. A world with a microwave. A light-glove, bunks, backpacks and a mobile phone.

  I ran to the picture and squinted at the room I had just been in. I could see a woman outside the cottage. A modern woman walking past the window.

  Mum.

  In my world, the skeleton was still assembling himself. He was nearly done. His bone fingers reached out for his skull.

  Would the dragonfly bite my mother and bring her here too? What would swap with her? I stared around. There was only one thing left.

  I had to warn Mum.

  I pounced on my mobile and started jabbing at the buttons. Could you make a phone call from another world? Another time? It was worth a try.

  I had to stop her swapping with the skeleton.

  The skeleton seemed to sense what was happening. His feet were still scattered but he was putting himself together quickly. He crawled painfully across the stones, collecting the last few bones.

  I jabbed at the buttons. Ring, ring.

  ‘Please be the right number,’ I groaned. ‘Please.’

  ‘Jeremy,’ came Mum’s voice over the phone, ‘I told you not to use that mobile. Your father can …’

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘shut up. If you love me, if you trust me, don’t go into the cottage. There’s a dragonfly. It bit me and took me away. Run, run for your life or it will get you too.’

  ‘Where are you, Jeremy?’ Mum shrieked.

  ‘I’m in another …’

  The phone was snatched from my hands. The skeleton held it above his head and threw it onto the bed. Two bony hands grasped my throat. They had enormous strength.

  I knew that this time nothing would release me from the skeleton’s grasp. He was wringing my neck. Wring, wring. Tighter and tighter.

  His grip was so strong that I couldn’t speak.

  Zap.

  ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha …’

  A terrible wicked laugh. An evil shriek. From the fading skull.

  The skeleton began to shimmer. And was gone. He had got what he wanted.

  Mum’s shape appeared as if from a mist.

  She looked at me with terrified eyes. ‘Jeremy,’ she said, ‘what …? Surely I’m dreaming.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s real. We are in another world. Inside the picture. Why didn’t you listen to me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mum. ‘Everything’s normal.’

  She was staring around the room. She was right. The Laminex table was the same. The steel bunks were the same. And our packs. And the microwave. The fridge. And the empty fireplace.

  I grabbed her hand and dragged her to the picture on the wall. The ugly skeleton was there, holding a toad over a cauldron. The candles were there. And the steel bunks.

  Everything had swapped over.

  The skeleton was now in his world and we were in ours. We were saved.

  No. No. My hopes vanished like a glass of water tipped onto the desert sand. It was only the contents of the room that had changed.

  Behind the skeleton, outside the window in the picture, was a black-and-white cow, grazing sleepily.

  I rushed across our room and stared through the glass. The bog was still bubbling. But there were bent and gnarled trees that had not been there before. And just outside, playing in the dust, was a circle of ragged children, holding hands and singing in screeching voices.

  Ring, a ring of roses,

  A pocket full of posies,

  A’tishoo, a’tishoo,

  We all fall down.

  They dropped down onto the ground laughing madly. Their hopeless, unhappy voices made my skin grow cold and sweaty.

  A horse and cart rumbled along a bumpy road. Walking next to it were two stooped men. They wore long, grey cloaks. One was ringing a brass bell and calling out in a wavering voice, ‘Bring out your dead. Bring out your dead.’

  Mum gasped. ‘Don’t go out there,’ she yelled. ‘It’s the Black Death.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A terrible disease,’ said Mum. ‘From the Middle Ages. Long ago. We have to get out of here.’

  I ran back to the picture. The hated skeleton was still there, living in our world, inside the
picture. And we were trapped inside his.

  Think, think, think. There must be something I could do. I hated that picture. I hated it. And this foul, fetid world from long ago.

  ‘Mum,’ I yelled, ‘have you got any matches?’

  She pulled a packet from her pocket. ‘I brought them to start a barbecue,’ she said.

  I snatched the matches and then pulled the picture from the wall. I jumped up and down on it, smashing the frame to bits. My legs began to grow heavy. My hands and feet felt fat and useless. Some strange force seemed to know what I was doing. But I managed to kick the buckled picture into the fireplace.

  With fumbling fingers I scratched a match along the matchbox. It broke. I scrabbled at another one but I couldn’t pick it out. I tipped the matches onto the fireplace and managed to grab one.

  Swshtch. The match flared.

  My hand shook as I held it under the painting. Blue and red flames suddenly flared and ran across the canvas surface. In no time at all, the whole thing was alight.

  A terrible screech filled the room. Everything began to float around in the air like the contents of a space capsule. Mum and I drifted eerily above the table. We were moving. We were mobile.

  We began to swirl and tumble as if we were in a giant clothes dryer. We were mixed up with tables and backpacks and chairs and …

  … a skeleton and a toad and a candle.

  And a dragonfly.

  Bits of both worlds were mixed together in a gigantic whirlwind. The skeleton began to shriek. His bony arms and legs jigged in a terrible dance of death. Faster and faster and faster we tumbled and turned. The world grew black.

  Suddenly everything froze. We both fell heavily to the floor. The contents of the room were strewn about.

  ‘Where are we?’ I yelled.

  I rushed over to the window. The trees had gone. The black-and-white cow grazed sleepily outside. We were back in our own world.

  But what about the skeleton?

  The painting in this world was still intact. Not burnt. I picked it up from where it lay upside down on the floor. Everything painted there was as it had been before. No it wasn’t. The skeleton was there with his toad and cauldron. But … But … There was no painting on his wall. Just a dragonfly sitting on a faded patch where the picture had been.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Mum.

  She didn’t have to say it twice. I was already halfway out of the door.

  6

  Mum drove fast. She was putting as many kilometres between us and that cottage as quickly as she could. She had only seen a bit of what happened. She had walked into the cottage and found it changed. She had seen the table and beds and objects from another time.

  ‘I couldn’t let you go on your own,’ she said. ‘So I let the dragonfly bite me too. Where you go, I go. That’s what mothers are for.’

  ‘And fathers,’ I said.

  Mum didn’t say anything to that.

  After a while I said, ‘Do you think anyone will believe what happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mum. ‘Why don’t you tell your dad?’

  ‘How?’ I said.

  ‘You’ve got a mobile phone, haven’t you?’ she said with a grin. ‘Why don’t you use that?’

  I look like a boy of fifteen but I am really sixty-five years old. My brain is old but my body is young. I have smooth skin and thick fair hair. I have fine hair on my top lip but have not yet started to shave. Inside I am old and wise. Outside I am only a teenager.

  If I look in the mirror I see a young reflection. I know, however, that I was born a long time ago.

  I am not showing off when I tell you that I am wise. I have read a lot of books. Thousands and thousands of books. I have spent fifty years doing nothing but reading books. When people look at me they do not know why I am so smart. They see a fifteen-year-old boy. They do not see a man who has spent fifty years reading. I had to read. There was nothing else to do. Those books stopped me from going mad.

  I had better tell you the story from the start. You probably won’t believe it. I don’t blame you if you think my story is a lie. It is not a lie, it is true. You might think a fifteen-year-old boy couldn’t write this story. You are right. I am not fifteen, I am sixty-five.

  When I was fifteen I lived near the sea. The place was called Port Fairy. Outside Port Fairy was an old fort. It was called Fort Nelson after an Admiral called Nelson.

  No one was allowed to go near Fort Nelson. No one lived there. It was deserted. It was supposed to be dangerous.

  The walls of the old fort were crumbling. Sometimes bricks or lumps of stone would fall down and crash to the ground. You would be killed if one hit you.

  There were platforms on top of the walls. These platforms once had guns on them which pointed out to sea. The guns had gone. They had been put in a museum where you had to pay to get in to see them.

  The buildings had gone too. They had been pushed over and wrecked. They were just ruins. All that was left were the walls and a deep well – and the story. There was a story about Fort Nelson called ‘The Legend of John Black’.

  John Black was also fifteen years old. He was alive when Fort Nelson was not a ruin and the buildings still stood. He used to go to the fort and watch the soldiers. He liked to watch them fire the guns at practice time, and he would go to the well to get the soldiers water to drink. He would lower a big bucket on a rope and wind the handle to bring up the bucket of water. Then he would climb the stairs and give the soldiers the water. They were not allowed to leave the gun platforms while they were on duty. They liked John Black because he was helpful. They told him jokes which made him laugh.

  John Black’s father did not like the soldiers. He said they were rough. He said their jokes were crude. He told John never to go to the fort. ‘You are forbidden to go there’, he said. ‘If I ever catch you there I will thrash you. You are not to talk to those soldiers.’

  John Black didn’t take any notice. He disobeyed his father. He didn’t like his father who was a cruel man. Once he had hit John across the face with a horsewhip. The whip left a scar on John’s face which stretched from his mouth to his ear.

  One day John Black was swimming in the sea near Fort Nelson. He was swimming with some soldiers who were off duty. All their clothes were on the beach. They were swimming in the nude. John and the soldiers were all as naked as the day they were born.

  Suddenly John Black saw his father coming. He was frightened. He was terrified. He didn’t want to be whipped again so he ran away to hide. He ran into the fort with no clothes on. The soldiers laughed. They thought it was funny to see a naked boy running away from his father.

  John Black didn’t think it was funny. He didn’t want to be whipped. He ran to the well and started to climb down the rope which was used to bring up the water bucket. The rope was wet and slippery. The well was deep and the bottom was filled with cold, black water.

  Now the soldiers didn’t think what was happening was funny either. They called out to John to climb up the rope.

  A scream was heard. And a splash. Then silence. The water was still and quiet and terribly dark.

  A soldier jumped into the well to look for John. He dived and dived but couldn’t find him.

  The next day all the water was pumped out of the well, but nothing was found. John Black’s body was never discovered. He was never seen again.

  Some people say that if you go to the ruins of Fort Nelson at night you will hear a strange echo in the well. It sounds like a boy calling for help. It is said that the ghost of John Black calls from the well, ‘Let me out, let me out’.

  That is ‘The Legend of John Black’. I didn’t believe it, not the bit about the ghost, anyway.

  2

  John Black was fifteen when he fell down the well. He had been dead for fifty years when I was fifteen.

  I used to play in the ruins and think about John Black. I would climb up to the empty gun platforms and think of how he used to talk to the soldier
s. I would look at the empty places where once there were buildings. I tried to imagine what Fort Nelson must have been like in the old days.

  I was not supposed to be there. Outside the main entrance was a sign which said, ‘Keep Out – Trespassers Prosecuted’. I didn’t take any notice of the sign. I went to the old fort every day. I was foolish. Something terrible happened to me there. It was the day that I decided to go down the well.

  There was no water in the well any more. It was just a deep, dark, dry, empty hole. I couldn’t see the bottom, but when I dropped a stone down I heard it clatter on something hard.

  I had brought a rope from home because the rope to which the bucket had been tied had rotted years ago. I tied the rope to the wooden frame outside the well and threw the other end down the well.

  Nobody knew I was there. I climbed down carefully. I didn’t want to fall as John Black had so many years ago. The further down I went, the more scared I became. It was very dark. My knees began to knock.

  Finally I reached the bottom. It was hard and stony. When I looked up I could see clouds far above. It was like looking up a round chimney. The sides of the well were smooth. I would never be able to climb up without the rope.

  While I was examining the sides of the well I noticed something unusual. It was a door. A small, metal door with rusty hinges. It had a large, round brass knob.

  For some reason the door made me frightened. It seemed to glow in the dark. I wanted to go back home, but I also wanted to know what was behind that door.

  I turned the knob. It turned easily and the door swung open. Inside I was amazed to see a vast room lit with candles. I went in. I didn’t really want to go in but something was making me. Something seemed to be forcing me to enter.

  As soon as I was in the room, the door closed behind me. There was no knob on the inside. There were no windows and no other door. I was in a room at the bottom of a well and no one knew I was there.

  Now I was really frightened. I tried to get out. I kicked at the door. I pulled at it with my fingers until my fingernails broke. It was no use. I could not escape.