The Puffin Book of Horror Stories

    I picked up my first jug and let the water tumble out behind the spider. My idea was that the force of the water would push the spider down the plug hole. And it worked. Partly. The water carried the spider about half-way down the bath. So straightaway I poured the second jugful behind the spider, which was by now tightly curled up in a ball. And the water forced it right up to the hole. One more jugful should send it hurtling down the plug hole.

    But then I remembered something. In a lot of drains there's a little ledge where spiders sit waiting to come back again. I imagined that spider unfurling itself and then sneaking back into the bathroom again. Once more I started shaking but this time more with anger. I didn't want this fear any more. But I couldn't lose it. Perhaps I'd never lose it.

    Yes, I could. Suddenly I flung open the bathroom window, pulled off about half a metre of loo paper and scooped up the spider. I did all this in about ten seconds flat, moving as if I'd been pushed into the wrong speed.

    'Hold in there,' I said to myself. 'All you have to do now is throw the thing out of the window.' I took careful aim, holding the paper right by my ear, as I'm not a very good shot, while furiously crunching the paper tighter and tighter. Then I hurled the loo paper right out of the window and watched it plunge on to the back garden like some deformed kite. Tomorrow, no doubt, my stepdad would want to know why there was a roll of toilet paper on the back garden. I found myself smiling. Who cared about that! I was free of it at last. I was free. I even started feeling a bit proud of myself.

    Soon I was too exhausted to stay awake very long. I crashed out on the top of my bed and immediately I was asleep and dreaming of a dead bird. I had seen it one morning on the road, lying there all shrivelled up. But that was years ago. I was at primary school. Yet, here it was again. Did nothing ever get lost?

    And then I saw something crawling out of the bird's eye…

    It was such a relief to wake up, even though I was sweating like crazy and I had this strange tickling sensation in my hair.

    I was still half asleep, wasn't I, tasting the last moments of my nightmare? How could anything be in my hair? Unless… An image flashed through my mind of me holding the loo roll just under my ear, close enough for something to spring on to my face and…

    And I started to scream. And soon I heard people hammering on the front door calling my name, just like they had all those years before. Only this time they'd never be able to get in. This time no one can help me.

    And then I felt a strange tickling sensation creeping down my face.

2/ Stephen King - Battleground

         

    'Mr Renshaw?'

    The desk clerk's voice caught him half-way to the elevator, and Renshaw turned back impatiently, shifting his flight bag from one hand to the other. The envelope in his coat pocket, stuffed with twenties and fifties, crackled heavily. The job had gone well and the pay had been excellent - even after the Organization's 15 per cent finder's fee had been skimmed off the top. Now all he wanted was a hot shower and a gin and tonic and sleep.

    'What is it?'

    'Package, sir. Would you sign the slip?'

    Renshaw signed and looked thoughtfully at the rectangular package. His name and the building's address were written on the gummed label in a spiky backhand script that seemed familiar. He rocked the package on the imitation-marble surface of the desk, and something clanked faintly inside.

    'Should I have that sent up, Mr Renshaw?'

    'No, I've got it.' It was about eighteen inches on a side and fitted clumsily under his arm. He put it on the plush carpet that covered the elevator floor and twisted his key in the penthouse slot above the regular rack of buttons. The car rose smoothly and silently. He closed his eyes and let the job replay itself on the dark screen of his mind.

    First, as always, a call from Cal Bates: 'You available, Johnny?'

    He was available twice a year, minimum fee $10,000. He was very good, very reliable, but what his customers really paid for was the infallible predator's talent. John Renshaw was a human hawk, constructed by both genetics and environment to do two things superbly: kill and survive.

    After Bates's call, a buff-coloured envelope appeared in Renshaw's box. A name, an address, a photograph. All committed to memory; then down the garbage disposal with the ashes of envelope and contents.

    This time the face had been that of a sallow Miami businessman named Hans Morris, founder and owner of the Morris Toy Company. Someone had wanted Morris out of the way and had gone to the Organization. The Organization, in the person of Calvin Bates, had talked to John Renshaw. Pow. Mourners please omit flowers.