Scary Story

by Harley

Last week a bloodcurdling midnight cry of "MOMMY!" sent me racing to the bedroom of my 9-year old daughter.

"Are you hurt?" I asked.

"No."

"Bad dream?"

"No." she shuddered. "It was a . . . story."

She wouldn't discuss it, but insisted I sleep with her, which I did, on her twin bed that accommodated most of me, although not my left arm.

 I'm used to Nightmare Patrol. One scary night last month my older daughter asked me to sleep on her top bunk. Our dog Cairo, not used to seeing me up there, began barking. I hopped out of bed to reassure Cairo, only I miscalculated how far it was to the ground, so my daughter woke to see me fly through air and crash into her desk, further terrifying both her and the dog.

Anyhow. The next day I asked my 9-year old if she remembered what scared her. "Of course," she said. "At recess, Jenna told us this story about a girl named Molly who went to a doll store and found this really ugly doll holding up two fingers, like a peace sign and the man who worked at the doll store told her never to take her eyes off this doll, but one night Molly forgot and left the doll in the kitchen, and she heard the doll on the stairs and it yelled out, 'Hey, Molly. I'm on the first step.' And then, 'Hey, Molly, I'm on the second step.' And like that all the way up the stairs and then Molly hears the doll say, 'Hey, Molly, I'm outside your bedroom' and then, 'Hey, Molly, I'm right here by your bed.' And then the doll cuts off Molly's head. Oh, yeah – and the doll guy knew that would probably happen, because the doll had already cut off two other girls' heads and that's why she was holding up two fingers."

 Okay. Leaving aside questions like "is being left overnight in a kitchen motivation enough to turn a doll into a murderer?" and whether the doll salesman had some moral or legal liability in the matter, what struck me about this story was its popularity. Among pre-adolescents in our neighborhood, "Molly's Murderous Doll" is the #1 scary story.

In my day it was "Dead Babysitter." You know, where the babysitter gets the phone call saying, "I'm three blocks away . . . I'm on your street . . . I'M IN THE HOUSE."

For my friend F. Paul Wilson, with whom I discussed this at Bouchercon, the story in the 'hood was "The Hook," featuring a one-handed killer who preyed upon teens parked on Lover's Lane, which ends with a satisfying . . . hook. Paul, who knows from horror, feels it's all in the ending (and recommends Ray Bradbury's short story, "October Game" as a case in point.)

It is all in the ending. I came home from Bouchercon to find that my son, perhaps to torment his sisters, had checked out a book called Scary Stories, on which the school library had slapped the exciting warning label: THIS BOOK FOR 4th and 5th GRADERS ONLY. Alas, the book was a bitter disappointment. Several of the stories ended with the word "Boo!"

Which wouldn't even scare a 3rd grader.

Here's my kind of ending: discovering that things that once frightened me no longer do. Like high school principals, driving on the freeway, soufflés, speaking French in France, clowns, root canals, Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Or Bob, our family mannequin who used to scare us all, even the dogs, but now only scares the Ukrainian dishwasher repairmen.

I am, however, still scared of those twin girls in The Shining, the Gregg Hurwitz novel with the severed head in the refrigerator and Don't Look Now (I can't even post those stills). Dead children who, for one reason or another, remain behind to haunt the new inhabitants of their old houses. Victorian clothing.

But Molly's Murderous Doll? Ha. I could take her down.

                                 

And you? Apart from cancer, war, or natural disaster, what scares you? And what do you laugh in the face of?