Sunday Shorts

Half-Minute Horrors

Edited by Susan Rich

2009, Harper

www.authortracker.com

Very short (most are a page or less) “scary” stories for kids.  Some are definitely scary, some are odd, some leave you scratching your head, some are in comic book/graphic novel form. All are written by famous authors, some well-known to children, some well-known to adults.  It’s fun to see what some of your favorite authors can do with very few words and such a subject.   Margaret Atwood, Michael Connelly, Neil Gaiman, Gloria Whelan, Jerry Spinelli, Lemony Snicket and Adam Rex  are just a few that contributed.

I picked out two that I will probably use with my fourth graders.

“At the Water’s Edge” (page 57) by Ayelet Waldman.  This has great descriptive writing, and I plan to read almost the entire story to them, but stop after, “Except the car door is opening and …..” and have them think, then write their own ending.  After we share and discuss, I’ll read the real ending aloud.  The whole thing is really quite spooky…..

    I include it here, in its entirety, to give a sampling of the writing in this book:

    " The water is still, and so clear I can see the tangled stems of the lily pads leading down to the muddy bottom.  I have made a careful study of the lilies, their white outer leaves that shade to pale pink and finally to magenta.  The pistils are bright orange, the color of the dress my mother was wearing when she left for work this morning, only a few minutes before the children came.  I am paying such close attention to the blossoms floating in the pond because I don’t want to look at the children.  The pond is small, and they have surrounded it entirely.  They stand very still, staring at me.  I think they don’t even blink, but since I try to avoid their eyes, I cannot really tell.  They don’t say a word.
     It has been hours since they first burst through doors and crawled through windows, silent all the while, even when they snatched my little sister from her crib and bundled her away.  My mother should be home by now.
     They have never once spoken, or shouted, even when I managed to tear loose from their filthy hands and race out to the pond.  They chased me, their fingers brushing the edges of my clothes.  I leaped into the canoe and paddled out to the middle of the pond, a smart thing to do, it turned out, since it seems they cannot swim.  But the pond is shallow, and soon enough they’ll figure out that they can wade.  Already I see on or two of them testing the water with their dirt-encrusted toes.
     I hear the noise of an engine, and only now do I allow myself to burst into tears.  My mother is home – her car is coming up the driveway.  She will chase them away.  Except the door is opening and…..
 …….it is not my mother who is stepping out.  It is one of the children, dirty and disheveled, with torn clothes and bare feet.  I am staring at the child who has replaced my mother, and there is no air left in my lungs.  The child lifts her hand and waves.
     It will be dark soon."

And “On a Tuesday During That Time of Year” (page 102) by Chris Raschka.  Again, I will stop and have them write their own ending before sharing with them Mr. Raschka’s version.

     "On a Tuesday during that time of year when it is particularly unpleasant to be out in the early gray twilight of those sometimes rainy or even sleety days, a small boy, perhaps nine or ten years old, was looking in his deep sock drawer for a particular pair of warm ones that he saved for just this sort of morning.  He dug past his long basketball socks, pushed aside his black dress socks, and held for a minute a pair of red-and-blue –striped socks that he had once wore to a party.  Plunging his hand back into the spaghetti bowl of stockings, he felt and pinched everything, with his eyes closed, to test if it was that wonderful soft and homey wool of the pair he was looking for.
     Figuring that they were perhaps in the laundry, he was about to give up when he touched……
 …….something hard, lumpy, and, he thought,, a little bit hairy.   Curious, he curled his fingers around whatever it was and slowly pulled it up, the layers of socks tumbling this way and that, until when he opened his hand he found something gray-green, longish – about five inches – and thin, scabby, with little hillocks crowned by short black hairs, very wrinkled, and with what looked like withered corn husk protruding from its end.
     It was a finger."