Nightmare Hour

by R. L. Stine

  The cold wind swirled around us. Rachel struggled to hold the paper against the stone so that I could make a rubbing. But the paper kept flapping up in the strong gusts.

  “I’ll help hold it down,” I suggested. I pulled off my gloves, balled them together, and set them on top of the stone. Then I squatted down beside Rachel, and we worked together to do our tracing.

  We were just finishing when we saw Miss Applebaum come hurrying down the side of the hill, slipping on the snowy grass. “I’m sorry to cut this short, but we’d better go,” she said, brushing her windblown hair out of her face. “This was a bad idea. It’s just too cold and windy today. We’re all going to catch frostbite if we don’t get back to school.”

  Rachel and I packed up. I tugged the parka hood back over my head. Then, shivering, my feet frozen, my face tingling, I hurried to catch up to the others, eager to get out of the cold.

  It wasn’t until after dinner that night that I realized I had left my gloves in the graveyard. Mom and Dad were at their reading discussion group. Mark and I were supposed to be doing our homework, but we were watching TV. The local weather report had just come on.

  I jumped up and straightened my sweater. “Mark, I have to go back to the graveyard and get my gloves.”

  He looked up from his algebra workbook. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “They are my best gloves!” I said. “The warmest things I have. I love those gloves. I can’t leave them there.”

  Mark turned back to the workbook. “We’ll get them in the morning.”

  “No way!” I insisted. “They just said on TV that it’s going to snow later tonight. They’ll be ruined.” I opened the coat closet and pulled out my parka. “Are you coming with me or not?”

  He hesitated, chewing on his pencil. Finally he spit the pencil out. “Okay. I guess. Can’t let you go alone.”

  Macho Mark.

  The wind had died down, but the night air felt icy and damp. A tiny sliver of a moon winked down at us between black storm clouds. The thin layer of snow had crusted and hardened to ice.

  We kept slipping and sliding as we crossed the street. The low fence of Graystone Graveyard came into view.

  “You remember where you left them?” Mark asked. His face was hidden inside his big furry hood. He kept the beam of light from his flashlight ahead of us in the snow.

  I shivered. “On top of a girl’s gravestone. It’ll only take a second.”

  I grabbed the handle on the cemetery gate and pulled. The gate was stuck in hardened snow. I tugged again with all my strength, and it creaked open.

  The yellow circle of light danced over the gravestones as Mark and I climbed the sloping hill. The storm clouds rolled over the moon, and heavy darkness swept over us. The air grew even more frigid.

  I rubbed my nose. It already felt numb. “Down this hill,” I said.

  All around us, trees creaked and groaned. The wind made an eerie sound, like a soft, human sigh.

  Slipping on the hard crust of snow, I led the way down to Abigail Willey’s grave. “Here,” I said.

  Mark pointed the beam of light. I stopped and squinted at the stone. “They’re gone!” I cried, raising my hands to my frozen cheeks. “The gloves aren’t there! I left them on top of the stone!”

  Mark shone the light over the front of the stone. “The wind probably blew them off. Search the ground.”

  “Oh. Right. They must be on the ground,” I muttered. I stepped around the grave, my eyes searching the crusty snow.

  The wind sighed again. The trees groaned and shook. I heard a shrill cry far in the distance. Probably a cat.

  Bending low, I circled the grave. “Where are they?”

  “Maybe they blew down the hill,” Mark suggested. He pulled the furry hood tighter over his face. Then he walked slowly down the hill, sweeping the light from side to side over the ground.

  “Where are they? Where are they?” I repeated, rubbing my tingling nose, my frozen face.

  I almost bumped right into the girl.

  Her long, dark hair fell over her face, hiding it from view. She wore only a thin dress, with long sleeves and a long pleated skirt down to the ground. She stood very stiff and erect, hands behind her back.

  “Who are you?” I gasped.

  And then a gust of wind blew the hair away from her face.

  I stared--

  --stared in horror--at her skeletal face. No skin. No lips over her broken teeth. No eyes. Just empty eye sockets, so deep and dark.

  “I’m Abigail,” she croaked, her voice dry, dry as sandpaper, dry as crackling leaves.

  And then she lifted both arms. There was no skin on her arms, either. Only bone. And at the end of her gray, bony arms--were my gloves!

  She took a silent step toward me as I stood there frozen in horror.

  “I’m so cold,” she moaned through her rotted teeth. “It’s so cold here, Lauren….”

  “P-please…” I whispered, staring at my gloves. My gloves at the ends of those bony arms….

  “I need your coat!” she moaned, reaching out with both gloved hands.

  The deep, empty eye sockets…the bony head tilting toward me beneath the blowing hair…

  “Lauren, I need your coat….”

  “No! Please!”

  I turned, looking everywhere for my brother. “Mark!” I cried when I saw him running, running full speed, arms flying in front of him, running from a tall skeleton in a flapping black overcoat.

  Get going! I ordered myself. Lauren--go now!

  But my legs were shaking too hard. They wouldn’t move.

  “Lauren, I need your sweater….”

  “No--stop!”

  The fingers inside my gloves, grabbing for me.

  “Lauren, I need your clothes…. Lauren…it’s so cold here…. I need your coat…. I need your sweater….”

  “No! Get away from me!” I shrieked.

  “Lauren, I need your shoes….” The gloved hands grabbed at my hair.

  “Lauren, I need your skin!”

  The gloved fingers caught my hair and started to pull.

  “Let me go! Let me go!”

  “Lauren, I need your skin. Lauren, I need your body!”

  “Ohhhhh.” A moan of horror escaped my throat.

  And Rachel’s words flashed through my mind. The ghostly stare.

  The advice Rachel’s grandmother gave her: Don’t run. Stare into the ghost’s eyes. Stare as if searching for its soul.

  Would it work?

  I had no choice. Abigail’s ghost was pulling me close…closer.

  I jerked my head back, raised my eyes to her empty sockets--and stared. I stared wide-eyed, without blinking, into those deep, dark holes. Stared as if I was searching for Abigail’s soul.

  She stopped pulling. We both froze, like graveyard statues.

  Her bony jaw made a cracking sound and dropped open. Her scraggly, dark hair flew straight out from her skull.

  “Lauren…” she moaned. “Lauren…”

  And then her gloved hands let go of my hair and dropped to the sides of her rotting, stained dress.

  And still I stared, stared without blinking. Stared deep into those empty holes where her eyes had once been.

  The ghostly stare…

  She started to sink…lower…lower….

  Her hair settled over her face again. Her bony shoulders crackled as they slumped into the dress. Lower…I watched her drop behind the gravestone…sink back into her grave.

  “Lauren…?” She whispered my name one more time.

  And then she was gone.

  I started to breathe again, sucking in long, cold breaths.

  And then I ran! My shoes thudded hard over the crusted snow. To my relief, I heard Mark running right behind me, our shoes pounding together like drumbeats.

  I didn’t stop or slow down until we reached home. I burst through the front door, my heart pounding, my sides aching.

  Staggering into the living room, I bent over,
pressed my hands on my knees, struggled to catch my breath. “The stare….” I said. “I can’t believe it! It worked! The ghostly stare. You used it too--right?”

  Still panting hard, I turned back to him.

  And screamed.

  A shrill scream of horror--as I stared at the ragged black overcoat, the skeletal face, the fat brown worms curling from an open, toothless mouth. The bald, rutted skull. The deep, empty eye sockets.

  “Where is Mark? What did you do to Mark?” I screamed. “You don’t belong here! Where is Mark?”

  The jaw creaked open, and a cloud of sour air escaped from deep inside the ghost’s rotting belly.

  “Where is my brother?” I wailed. “Is he back in the graveyard? What do you want? What do you want?”

  Before I could move, the ghost slid over to the wall. He raised a bony hand to the lightswitch--and clicked off the light.

  We stood in total blackness now.

  “W-why did you do that?” I whispered.

  “Lauren, it isn’t polite to STARE!” he growled.

  And then I felt his hard, bony fingers wrap around my throat.

  “Lauren, I’m so cold…” he rasped. “Lauren…I need your sweater…Lauren, I need your hair. Lauren…I need your skin!”

  About the Author

  ROBERT LAWRENCE STINE is the best-selling children’s author in history. He began his writing career at the age of nine writing short stories, joke books, and comic books for his friends and has been at it ever since. A graduate of Ohio State University, Mr. Stine served as editor-in-chief of Bananas, a humor magazine for children, before teaming up with Parachute Press to create Fear Street, the first and #1 best-selling young adult horror series. After the enormous success of Fear Street, Stine and Parachute went on to launch Goosebumps, the best-selling series that made Stine an international celebrity and the #1 best-selling children’s author of all time (Guinness Book of Records).

  R.L. Stine lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jane, their teenage son, Matthew, and their dog, Nadine.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Also by R.L. Stine

  The Haunting Hour

  When Good Ghouls Go Bad

  Beware!

  Dangerous Girls

  Dangerous Girls #2: The Taste of Night

  Series:

  The Nightmare Room

  The Nightmare Room Thrillogy

  Rotten School

  Copyright

  The Hub and Hub logo are registered trademarks and © 2011 Hub Television Networks, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph by Katie Yu. From R.L. Stine’s THE HAUNTING HOUR: the Series on the HUB. Used by permission.

  Nightmare Hour

  Copyright © 1999 by Parachute Publishing, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Stine, R.L.

  Nightmare hour / by R.L. Stine.

  p. cm.

  Summary: A collection of ten short horror stories featuring a Halloween visit to a strange pumpkin patch, a girl who wants the power and respect that comes with being a witch, and a mask that lets the wearer see into another time.

  Contents: Pumpkinhead — Alien candy — Most evil sorcerer — Nightmare inn — I’m not Martin — Black mask — Afraid of clowns — Dead body — Make me a witch — Ghostly stare.

  “A Parachute Press book.”

  ISBN 978-0-06-210692-6

  [1. Horror tales, American. 2. Children’s stories, American. 3. Horror stories. 4. Occultism—Fiction. 5. Short stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S863037 NI 1999

  [Fic]

  99063663

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  11 12 13 14 15 CG/CW 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062107688

  Revised paperback edition, 2011

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