Short stories to chill your blood! Vengeful spirits, carnivorous toddlers, haunting dreams, curses, experiments gone terribly wrong and much more! Turn the page if you dare and prepare for a scare!
There was once a story of a large house that lay on the top of a hill overlooking a small, quaint, New England town. A family had built the house and they loved the space that they all had. But three years later, they had all mysteriously disappeared...
Many years later, another family moved into the house. They looked around their new home and the little boy, Michael, spotted a portrait hanging on the wall of a huge black panther. "Must've belonged to the people who used to live here," he said turning to his younger sister, Audrey. The picture was one of those old, hand-painted ones. It was rather frightening to look upon because it looked as if the large jungle cat was going to spring out of the picture at you at any moment to attack you and devour your corpse. It scared the two children and they decided to turn it over so that it couldn't watch them.
One day, Audrey and Michael's mother had to visit her sick cousin who lived a few miles away. The children were left to care for themselves (because they were old enough) and Michael found himself staring hypnotically into the picture. He was drawn to it and he often wondered why it had been left behind for it was stunningly realistic. That night, Michael found the answer to his question.
Michael had gone downstairs to get a glass of water sometime around eleven-thirty at night. As he walked past the picture, he noticed that it was flipped back around so that it was facing the room again. Then he noticed something that scared him even more. The panther was missing.
Suddenly, Michael heard a low rumbling coming from somewhere behind him. He slowly turned around and found himself face to face with a tremendous panther. He ran upstairs to wake his sister. The two children ran around the house trying to escape the oversized feline, but they couldn't find a way to get around the panther. Suddenly, Audrey had an idea. "Its the picture!" she cried. "We have to destroy the picture!" Together they moved the cumbersome picture off the wall and threw it into the fireplace where a fire burned constantly to keep the winter chill from the house. (The house was really old and no gas heating had been installed.) The big cat instantly vanished into thin air and the children collapsed on the floor from exhaustion. After resting for half an hour, the two children wearily climbed the stairs back to their own bedrooms.
A week later, the children's mother returned from her cousin's house. "Hey kids! Come and see what your old mother found at the flea market!" she called up the stairs to her kids. The children raced excitedly down the stairs and their mother produced a stunning hand-painted portrait of a snarling leopard about to pounce. It stared at them with coal-black eyes and it had a wild grin playing about its lips. The children took one look at the picture, looked at each other and screamed as they ran from the house. They left their mother in the front doorway shaking her head with a very confused look on her face.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
LOL. Short. Sweet. To the point. My prolific use of "had" and "that" in my formative years as a writer abounds in this one! :)
