Spooky Stories To Tell In The Dark: A Scary Short Story Collection

By S. Cary

ATTENTION SCARY STORY READERS:

 

If you're looking for some bone-chilling entertainment, then this is the book for you!

When you buy this book, here's just  a glimpse of what you'll get:

 

22 SCARY STORIES!

--Science Fiction Frights

--Paranormal Provocations

--Travelling Terrors

--Holiday Horrors

 

Get all of this, and much, MUCH MORE…

 

So are you planning a cabin trip? Going hunting? Looking for stories to tell around the campfire? Or maybe you want to spook your friends this weekend? 

 

No matter the occasion, this is the book for you! Spooky Stories To Tell In The Dark is the latest installment of tantalizing tales from S. Cary and Story Ninjas Publishing. In this book, you'll find 22 OF THE SCARIEST STORIES to tell your friends. From Area 51, to fishing trips, this anthology has all kinds of spooky stories to make your spine tingle. What happens when a bunch of teenagers have a New Years' Eve party on a private island? Or what about a paranormal party at Christmas? Maybe you would think again about camping if you came across a fairy ring? Don't forget haunted houses and strange sacrificial rituals. Also, alien abductions and evil robots. What happens when a group of college students go on a fishing trip in the great outdoors? Or when a game of hide-and-seek goes terribly wrong? Maybe you would prefer to hear about Grandpa's run-in with the tall people from the woods? 

 

All of this and more await you in Spooky Stories To Tell In The Dark.

 

In this short story anthology, you'll find scary, spooky, haunting, bizarre, paranormal, ghostly, ghastly, demonic, and horrific tales. Don't delay, buy your copy today!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Story Ninjas
• Release date: Oct 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9798201933272

Book preview

Section 1

Science Fiction Frights

This section is sure to slither down your spine, with scary stories that spin science fiction and the sinister to new spooky heights.

Fun At Area 51

HEY, YO, ARE THOSE dogs ready yet? Josh asked.

Not yet, Austin replied. I mean, you’d think a whole thirty seconds would be more than enough for eight hot dogs, but I guess time moves slower in Nevada.

Josh raised his hands. Geez, my bad, Chef Austin. I forgot I can only be hungry when you say it’s okay.

What are you, twelve? Lucy’s voice piped up from behind them. She and Andrea had just come from porta-potties that someone sometime had the foresight to put in place so the few dozen people who actually bothered to drive out here could do their business somewhere other than the open desert.

The Fellowship has returned! Josh exclaimed, standing and gesturing theatrically.

Lucy kissed his cheek and said just as theatrically, Yes. We have returned from our long journey to destroy the one ring in the fires of Mount Poop.

Andrea wrinkled her nose. I’m sorry, how old are you? She made sure Austin saw her look of exasperation. He smiled at her before turning his attention back to the hot dogs just starting to sizzle.

A few minutes later, they sat around the fire eating while Josh regaled them with conspiracy theories. I’m telling you guys, they’re hiding something in there! he said, gesturing to the gate marking Area 51 about fifty yards from where they were sitting.

Yeah, your mother, Andrea said. She, Lucy, and Austin laughed but Josh continued, unfazed.

Think about it! he said. They’re spending all this money to maintain a huge Air Force base in the middle of the desert hundreds of miles from anywhere but no one’s ever seen anything fly out of here except a few transport planes. They’ve taken pictures from the air. There’s no fighter jets, no bombers, there aren’t even that many buildings.

Isn’t most of it underground? Lucy asked.

Josh nodded but waited until he finished a long sip of his extra-caffeinated soda. Exactly! He leaned forward. The base itself is only a few acres, but they have like a hundred square miles fenced off! I’m telling you, they’re hiding something.

Yeah, Austin said. I’m pretty sure you made all that stuff up.

You’ll see, Josh said. When we finally storm the base and uncover the truth, you’ll see!

Do you think anyone will actually try to get in? Andrea asked.

Heck, yeah! Josh said. That’s why we’re here right? He stood up facing the gate, downed the last of his soda, chucked the bottle into the fire and cupped his hands over his mouth. FIGHT THE POWER! he yelled. A few scattered cheers came from the other campfires. A bored-looking guard raised his hand in a halfhearted wave, causing further cheers to erupt. Josh sat back down, grinning happily.

Austin rolled his eyes. Nobody is gonna make it past the fence and nobody actually thinks they can.

Just then there was a commotion at the gate, a few guards chasing a guy somehow over the fence and whooping and running toward the base. They caught him and escorted him out to a standing ovation. The guards grinned as much as the culprit, and Austin figured that was probably the most excitement they were going to get tonight.

See? Josh said. He gets it.

Lucy, Andrea and Josh continued to banter while Austin looked up at the stars. Even with the light from the campfires, there were far more here than he had ever seen in Los Angeles. He didn’t believe Josh’s crap, of course, but the vast panorama of stars stretching across space above him made Earth seem like a speck of dust. Believing in something out there came easily but it felt ludicrous to believe they’d end up on Earth, much less in this place.

He awoke with a start the next morning, surprised he slept. Overslept, actually. The others were already packing Josh’s truck. He helped with what remained. You still don’t want to follow us back? Josh asked.

No, I’m good, Austin replied. I’m gonna drive into the desert a little ways and sketch.

Sure? 

Austin nodded.

Josh shook his head. Weird artists, he said. All right then, ladies, I guess it’s just you and me! He smiled mischievously at Lucy and pulled her close. She rolled her eyes but didn’t protest when he put his arm around her and didn’t turn away when he kissed her. They walked back to the truck. See you later, Austin! Josh called over his shoulder.

You sure you’ll be alright? Andrea asked. Her strawberry blonde hair shone like fire in the rising sun and Austin almost asked her if she wanted to stay with him.

Josh honked the horn, causing them both to jump and making the moment pass.

Yeah, I’ll be okay, he said smiling.

Andrea smiled back. Okay, just be careful, please? She touched his hand briefly, got up and walked to the truck. A moment later, Josh revved the truck’s engine and sped out of the camp, dust billowing behind them. He stuck his fist out of the window, extending his pinky and ring fingers in a devil-horns salute. Austin waved at them then walked over to the old SUV his grandpa had let him borrow for the road trip.

He might have remained in place if the other campers had left but there were still dozens of people there. He packed his sleeping bag, poured some water over the campfire, just to be sure, and drove away. An hour later, he reached a small mesa and parked the car. He could just see the highway in the distance. That and the near imperceptible fence surrounding Area 51 were the only signs of civilization.

He stepped out of the SUV and sat on the hood with a pencil and sketchpad.

A few hours later he held his sketch up and smiled. It was sparse, just a drawing of the desert landscape around him, the mesa in the lower left corner with his SUV on top and Austin sitting on the hood sketching.  He was proud of it. He had used subtle variations in shading to create the illusion of brighter light from behind the SUV toward the horizon. It captured a sense of freedom, miles away from anyone else, while exaggerating the vast emptiness of the desert.

He admired it only briefly.  Time had disappeared and he could sense rather than see it was getting dark. He put his sketchpad and pencils back in the truck, set up the tent, ate dinner, and turned in just as the sun dipped below the horizon and plunged the desert into complete darkness.

A few hours later, eyes suddenly open, he tried to place the sound that woke him. He failed and almost fell back to sleep when he heard it again.

And again.

A soft scraping sound outside his tent, faint enough he might have missed it if the desert offered anything other than silence. Probably a lizard hunting for insects. He rolled over and ignored the sound but it was a while before he could return to sleep.

He woke in the morning feeling stiff and sore. He stumbled out of the tent and walked to the car. When he got there, he noticed the door was slightly ajar.

Darnit, he whispered. He quickly went to the driver’s seat and turned the key, smiling when the familiar cough and rumble of the engine greeted his ears. He shut the engine off and got his kettle, mug and coffee out of the trunk, careful to check that all the doors were closed before he left.

After coffee, he cleaned the kettle and mug and returned them to the truck, grabbing his pencils and sketchpad. It was too hot to sit on the hood, so he opened the back and sat on the bumper. He opened his sketchpad and stopped. His drawing was gone. He had forgotten to bring it in with his sketchpad and pencils last night. Nice job, Austin, he said. A-plus work.

He got up to look for his sketch, knowing and then confirming that the desert wind carried it away. Well, so much for that, he said. He got his sketchpad and began drawing again.

As the day wore on, the temperature rose from very hot to boiling. Austin spent many summers at his grandparent’s house in the high desert and imagined this wouldn’t faze him but he wasn’t in a house with swamp coolers and he hadn’t slept well the night before and his eyes began to feel heavy.

He heard a loud snap and sat bolt upright, heart pounding. He looked around but there was no one there. He swallowed hard and looked again. Still nobody there.

Of course there’s not, he said, jumping at the sound of his own voice. He laughed, which didn’t loosen the knot inexplicably formed in the pit of his stomach. He slid from the hood and saw a coffee kettle on the ground, cracked. He groaned. Its fall had startled him.

Damn it. The kettle, a gift from his grandfather, broke into large glass shards. It left a long, jagged shadow on the ground. Looking up, Austin noticed the sun was considerably lower than it had been a few minutes ago.

A few hours ago. He must have drifted off. Great, he said. Another day wasted. He went to the tent early that night, exhausted, and drifted off.

A few hours later, Austin drifted in and out of consciousness as pale light pulsed softly through the tent, gradually brighter and faster. He faltered in the world between sleep and wakefulness, brow furrowing but consciousness out of reach.

A loud shattering noise closed the gap and his eyes snapped open. Someone was breaking into the SUV. His heart pounded as he heard the intruder rummaging through his stuff. No, not someone but something. It had to be a wild animal, mountain lion or something. He couldn’t imagine another human being happening on this exact spot miles away from the nearest road.

I should go see what’s going on.

It’s probably just the wind.

He didn’t move though, not even when the noises stopped. He lay there, eyes wide open until well after the sun rose.

Finally, he left the tent to check the SUV. Whoever or whatever had broken into it completely devastated the rear window. There was shattered glass all over the trunk and backseat, coating everything inside.  He saw most of his stuff strewn around the car in various states of disrepair. His suitcase lay open and his clothes formed an uneven fan on the sand and brush beyond the SUV. As he stared, a gust gently lifted a t-shirt off of a cactus and gently carried it over the edge of the mesa. Austin sighed and stepped toward his things when something on the trunk bed caught his eye.

A sheet of paper.

He shuffled slowly toward it, a fist in his stomach reaching up through his chest and slowly squeezing his heart as he approached it. He knew what it was before he reached it.

His drawing. Perfectly clean and undamaged. Exactly as he had drawn it.

He lifted it and looked. He was wrong. It was exactly as he had drawn it except for a crude sketch of a tall, pale-skinned girl with unnaturally long fingers standing behind him.  He stared at her unnatural hands and then her face but he couldn’t find a way to focus on her face so he returned to her hands. As he stared, the sketched girl seemed to approach him, her freakish fingers reaching out until the hand filled his vision. He stared, transfixed, as the girl in the drawing loomed larger and larger.

A gust of wind blew the drawing back into the car and Austin breathed again. He brushed the glass out of the truck, cutting himself twice but only bandaging the wounds when he noticed blood dripping onto his clothes as he shoved them haphazardly into his suitcase.

Twenty minutes later, car packed, he jumped into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The car sputtered and stopped. He tried again and got the same result. God no! Austin thought. He turned repeatedly in rising panic but to no avail. He slumped over the steering wheel, shaking. Finally, he fumbled for his cell phone. No signal. He leaned back against the chair, thinking. Thirty or so miles to the highway and the last stop gas station, give or take. He would have to leave nearly everything behind but he could make it in ten hours of brisk hiking. He looked up at the sun and his heart sank. It was already settling toward the west. It would be dark long before he reached the road. He would have to stay the night.

How?

He’d just come out of the tent after sunrise, hadn’t he?

He felt like he watched an hour in a minute as the sun dipped below the horizon. He steeled himself, climbed over the seats and sat in the trunk facing the shattered rear window, flashlight in one hand and keys in the other.

He woke with a start to pulsing light. Three pale circles of light blinked and rotated in front of him and he shrank back as they grew brighter, blinding him. Lightning struck and faded, and the world became the shadow of the strikes until she stood twenty feet from his empty window. The sketched girl, tall and very slender with long, straight hair and huge dark eyes.

She raised a long arm and splayed her fingers, each about eight inches long and tipped with a nail the color of pencil lead. Austin opened his mouth to scream but all he managed was a soft keening sound. The girl walked slowly toward him, and Austin heard sand crunching softly under her feet as it approached. He couldn’t make out her face just as he could not in the sketch but as the lights returned, swirling about her, he saw her eyes more clearly. Large, larger and blacker than any human girl. He didn’t know if the creature lacked pupils or if its eyes consisted entirely of pupils. He could see no other features but he imagined a mouth so well hidden it appeared only when opened so rows of needle teeth became visible.

He leapt over the back seat and to the front of the vehicle. He said a silent prayer and when the engine sputtered, his foot pumped the gas automatically and the engine roared to life. It was no good. He could feel the truck moving but the highway moved farther away, as though elastic and stretched by an unseen hand. Then, the truck leapt onto the asphalt. He gasped and slammed the breaks, skidding and lurching in a half circle. Miles in front of him, he saw the mesa, still swimming with lights.

He righted the truck and sped along the highway, heading west toward home. His phone chimed with a few dozen notifications, likely held at bay by the lack of signal before. He didn’t look until he reached the gas station and then only after he filled the tank. There was nothing of import other than a sweet message from Andrea. He put the phone down and noticed his sketch.

Trembling, he lifted it into the light.

It was sparse, just a drawing of the desert landscape, the mesa in the lower left corner with his SUV on top and Austin sitting on the hood sketching. Subtle variations in shading created the illusion of brighter light from behind the SUV toward the horizon. It captured a sense of freedom, miles away from anyone else, while exaggerating the vast emptiness of the desert.

It captured the vast emptiness of the desert with no crude sketch of the girl, his art marred only by smeared droplets of his own blood.

R.E.M. Corporation

I WAS ASSIGNED THIS task because it was categorized as an extinction-level threat. Sure, my partner had some sway in my final decision, but let’s face it; you only get one chance at a mission like this in the space corps. I’ve seen plenty of action, from quelling the Martian, ‘Re Dust Rebellion’ to being part of the ground team during nuclear suppression on Earth, but always in the backline. I never had a chance to prove my worth as a human being.

That was, until today.

I took a shuttle far outside the Milky Way, beyond the reaches of the Terra Collective. It was farther than I’d ever been before, surrounded by nothing but an endless, black sea of stars. Zero communication to other quadrants, low-tech security measures, and some of the coldest individuals I’d ever seen. No one spoke a word on our flight to R.E.M’s base of operations, not even to tell me exactly what I’d be doing.

The space station itself was sad, pathetic-looking; I’d miss it completely if I was the one piloting. It was a bottom-of-the-barrel design, filled to the brim with 21st-century tech I thought were reserved for pictures in history books, ancient relics in museums. The guys escorting me through the facility used key cards—key cards—to open doors and work the elevators.

I know what you’re thinking, One of the white coats giving me the tour began. But it’s safer than you think. No one out there bothers to learn this tech anymore, no ports to mentally jack into or code to re-write. It’s all old-school. Quiet.

I wouldn’t realize the significance of that last part until we finally reached my assigned room.

You’ll be required to wear this, White Coat hands me a temple chip, gesturing to my standard-issue one still plugged into the side of my forehead. There can be no room for error. I or another doctor will remove it once your shift is done.

I gave him a wary look, quickly pulling my chip out of my head. The world slipped off-kilter for a beat, my body trying to re-align itself without the aid of Terra’s hub to keep me balanced. So, how long am I gonna be, my sentence drops off as I stick the secondary chip in its slot. It’s suddenly impossible to speak; I don’t forget how to, it’s just physically not possible.

Each shift is twenty-four hours, White Coat explains, not even phased by the panic in my eyes, my hands around my throat. You’ll have full access to the room’s diagnostics, with your handler—that will be me—in control of major functions. Please note that numerical buffers have been put in place to ensure the general atmosphere of the room remains within predetermined parameters.

General atmosphere? Should I be worried about breathing in this place?

A changing room has been provided to your left, White Coat continues, gesturing towards a door with a humanoid symbol painted across it. "Please remove yourself of all armor and equipment in exchange for the Synapsis Suit provided.

All I could do is scowl darkly. This was a much lengthier list of demands than I expected. And what kind of high-level threat required no weapons? But I wasn’t there to argue—even if I could—so I did as they asked, entering the changing room and stripping down completely. It was like being forced to peel my skin away, watching as it swirled to the center of the room before being atomized for storage. There, in its place, drifted the latest version of the Synapsis Suit, shimmering black with zero visible signs of the typical sensory pads.

I put it on quickly, shuddering as it shaped to my body’s figure. A few experimental taps of finger-to-finger contact resulted in a small, electrical charge that raced through the bones themselves; not exactly a plasma rifle, but it could get the job done.

Sandman, if you’re ready?

I rolled my eyes at the codename, stepping out from the room with a nod. White Coat then led me to the front door, an overly simplistic keypad that only needed a numerical code, a key card, and a vocal password. He must’ve seen my dubious look because as the doors silently slid open, he repeated again. It’s quiet, Sandman. That’s what we strive for here at the R.E.M corporation.

At this point, I wasn’t sure what the hell to expect after stepping inside. An empty white room with a sound-sensitive AI, a lab full of test-tube experiments gone wrong and in deep slumber—anything would’ve been more believable than what I actually entered. The room was dimly lit, painted a soft shade of blue, and sporting only a queen-size bed, a bookshelf, and a panel indicating the temperature and time. As I stepped inside, the ground seemed to sink with my weight, muffling my footsteps completely. The furniture was made of similar material, with its corners smooth and almost rubber-like. There were a few books—actual books—lined on the shelves, bound together by paperbacks and set beside the soft dronings