The Most Frightening Story Ever Told Read Free

later on threatening to sue me because I was cruel to her crybaby son.”
    “If you knew my mother, you’d know that just couldn’t happen.”
    Mr. Rapscallion shrugged.
    “The Ghost Section is up the wooden stairs, turn right. Through Vampires and Voodoo, up the shaky spiral staircase—don’t worry, it’s safer than it looks or feels—along the very long hotel hallway, beyond the Red Room—don’t spend the night there unless you have to—and you’ll see it right in front of you. Maybe.”
    Billy nodded and started to walk toward the main staircase.
    “If you need any help,” said Mr. Rapscallion, his eyes rolling wildly around his head like two marbles, and his voice dying to a whisper, “just scream.”
    And then he started to laugh once more.

The Haunted House of Books was much larger than Billy had expected. And much more fantastic than ever he had imagined. The floors creaked under his feet like the timbers on an old ship, and somewhere, from behind one of the walls, he was almost sure that he could hear the muffled sound of someone moaning or muttering or moaning
and
muttering—it was hard to tell one from the other.
    Billy wasn’t at all surprised to have learned from Mr. Rapscallion that there really was a ghost in the bookshop. A couple of times Billy thought he saw a ghost and he was more than a little relieved when these turned out to be other customers. One of these customers was a tall man in a black coat browsing in the Vampires and Voodoo Section. Billy was certain the tall man wasn’t a ghost because while he was reading, he kept on scratching his head and, since Billy could hear the sound of the man’s head being scratched and even see the dandruff flaking off his head, he thought it unlikely that the man could be anything other than solid. Anything solid seemed less than ghostly.
    The other customer he saw was a thin woman with braided black hair and a dark green leather coat who Billy found staring uncertainly up the spiral staircase.
    “Do you think it’s safe?” she asked Billy. “To go up?”
    Billy thought it wasn’t very likely a real ghost would have been worried about going up a spiral staircase. A genuine ghost would surely have just floated up the stairs like a cloud without a care in the world.
    “Yes,” he said. “I think it’s probably all right. At least, that’s what Mr. Rapscallion told me just a few moments ago. He said it’s safer than it looks or feels.”
    He started to climb the spiral staircase, watched by the woman in the green leather coat. It shifted a bit but no more than a tall ladder leaning against a building.
    “Do be careful,” she said, biting her fingernail anxiously.
    Biting her fingernail was another thing Billy thought a ghost probably wouldn’t have done.
    “It’s okay, really,” he said. But a bit farther up, the staircase started to shift as if it wasn’t secured properly to the walls and the floor, which was a little alarming, and, worried that the thing would collapse underneath him, Billy felt obliged to quicken his steps to reach the top.
    “I think you must be braver than me,” said the woman, and walked away.
    “No,” Billy called after her. “I’m not brave at all.”
    Turning around, Billy found himself at one end of a long carpeted hallway that seemed like a very ordinary hallway for a haunted house of books. A child—much younger than him—had left a tricycle in a corner and Billy thought this did nothing at all for the ghostly atmosphere that Mr. Rapscallion had talked about. Nor did the life-size waxwork of twin girls he found at the end of the hallway after he turned the next corner. Both the girls were about the same age as Billy. They were wearing pretty blue dresses and holding hands and looked very much as if butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
    That was just weird, thought Billy. And not at all frightening.
    Pushing open the red door of the Red Room, he went inside and found it to be a much larger room