Creepy Creepier Creepiest: Another collection of quirky tales

By Martii Maclean

This second collection of quirky short stories will take you to creepy places just beyond the here and now. Come travelling through these tales if you dare. Learn the fate of the children who break free from their ropes when the moon is full. Visit a school where teasing voices haunt the chilly hallways, waiting for you fade so they can take you

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kooky Cat Books
• Release date: Mar 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9780987644213

Book preview

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Published by Kooky Cat Books 2019

Copyright © 2019 Martii Maclean

www.martiimaclean.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from both the copyright owner and publisher.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia.

Book cover design and formatting services by

Self-publishingLab.com

First edition 2019

ISBN 978-0-9876442-0-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-0-9876442-1-3 (e-bk)

For Trevor and Minerva,

thank you

for being my compass and my comfort

when things feel a little creepy

Contents

Stolen Words

The Robot House

Wrong Number

The Girlfriend That Jack Built

Fade Out

Prawn Head

The Rope

The Locket

Bonus Creepy Story: #spinfall

Stolen Words

Things had become very peculiar around the town of Nautilus Beach. Especially at the school, and especially at playtime. Usually when the bell went at the start of playtime, the kids all exploded out of the classrooms, laughing and yelling, calling dibs for handball and bull rush, telling jokes and teasing. The bell still clanged and the kids still rushed out, but lately the playground had become unexpectedly quiet.

There were no more jokes or teasing. No more circles of gossip. Even the little kids had stopped singing their cute songs with the wrong words, or playing hand-clapping rhymes. In the classrooms, the teachers didn’t need to nag or shush the usually chatty children.

Around the town, the playgrounds and parks were strangely peaceful. But Bailey couldn’t help noticing that as the quiet grew, friendships seemed to be fizzling. Mates weren’t laughing at each other’s jibes and jokes. No one was making secret plans. It wasn’t that the words weren’t being spoken; it was more that they never appeared to reach the listener’s ears.

This quiet didn’t happen all at once, so for a while Bailey didn’t properly notice the change, but as time passed he started feeling lonelier and lonelier, so he decided to find out what was happening to all the words.

Bailey watched conversations. He listened as words faded when they had no reason to. Then he noticed that everyone was wearing jackets. Nautilus Beach was a sunny holiday town, but all the kids were wearing jackets on the playground, even though it was the middle of summer. Bailey felt the chill in the air that gathered all around the schoolyard, and when the mysterious chill crept across the playground, the kids became quieter than ever.

‘Hey, Mark,’ Bailey called through the icy air, ‘wanna play handball?’

Handball had always been like a magic word for getting attention, but no one seemed to hear Bailey.

He called again. ‘Hey, Mark, Tom, handball?’ As Bailey called the second time, he felt the icy air lick past his face. As the air twisted around in front of him, he was sure he could see a shimmer; the air quivered in front of him.

‘Mark, whatcha doin’?’ There it was again, a cold stutter in the air, and Bailey’s words sounded like he’d yelled them into a pillow. He shivered and zipped up his jacket.

Bailey strained his eyes and followed the glimmering ribbon of cold air as it twisted away. He watched as the currents of icy air wound between the groups of soundless kids. He walked across the playground, watching and listening.

As the creepy, shimmering something moved through the groups of kids, all their words were snatched away as soon as they were spoken. Bailey stared hard at the quivering air as it moved. The quiver had a shape. It was person shaped, kid shaped.

Bailey’s heart thumped. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, blinked again. The shape remained. It was moving around, brushing close to kids who shivered as it passed. The thing kept on sucking sounds all over the playground. Kids were turning away from each other, ignoring each other.

What was this thing? And why was it stealing all the words? How could it take words? Bailey’s mind swirled as he tried to make sense of the strangeness he was seeing.

The shape wandered on, leaving behind a trail of shimmering, quivering air. The school bell clanged; it sounded so loud compared to the muffled playground. The shape started drifting away. Bailey ignored the bell. Instead of going to line up for class, he decided to follow the person-shaped shimmer. He badly wanted to solve the mystery and get the school, and his friends, back to normal.

Once the kids had headed inside, the shape turned and moved towards the back gate. Bailey followed, but it didn’t seem to notice him.

‘Get real,’ he mumbled to himself. ‘How would I know if it’s noticed me or not.’ The thing shouldn’t exist in the first place, so why should it do anything he expected?

The shape moved closer to the gate.

‘No way.’ Bailey’s whisper choked up into his throat.

The shimmer-shape slowed down at the gate, and the gate moved, like it had been pushed open for someone to go through. Bailey couldn’t understand why an icy breeze needed to open a gate when it could just blow around it or through it like a … breeze.

In moments Bailey was out in the laneway, still following whatever it was. The big deal now was that he had left the school without permission. He was officially breaking school rules, and his reason for breaking the rules was to follow a shimmering wind current that was shaped like a kid. He was wondering how much detention he would get when he realised the shape had stopped at the end of the laneway. He gasped at