The Paperback Turnstyle of Horror

In 3rd grade, I started checking out horror stories from the school library.

The paperback turnstyle overflowed with well-intentioned copies of Judy Blume novels and A Wrinkle in Time. But what drew me were the limp and worn copies of pulp fiction for 6th graders: poorly written little collections of “scary stories.” Stories about powerful Evil - evil toys, evil houses, evil dogs.

I was addicted to them.

Below I repeat a story that stuck with me, more than any other, as I remember it.

**

A small family lives in an old farmhouse. The father works second shift to supplement income from the farm, so the mother is alone in the evening with her two children. They eat dinner, and the kids go in the living room to watch TV while the mother cleans up.

She hears the dog scratching at the kitchen door to be let in, so she dries her hands and opens the storm door.

There is no sign of the family dog.

She calls to it, “King! King!”

King runs in from the family room, where he had been happily watching TV with the kids.

The mother frowns and closes the door, locking it.

She goes back to washing dishes.

She hears scratching again, but this time at the front door.

Her daughter is about to open the door, when the mother stops her. The scratching stops. She turns on the porch light, peers through the window, and sees nothing on the front porch.

She opens the door, and calls out “Scat! Shoo!” assuming there is a stray dog or cat, wanting food.

She sees nothing.

She closes and locks the door.

She finishes cleaning the kitchen, turns out the light, and joins her children in the darkened living room to watch television.

She is dozing off, when one of the children begins shrieking.

She looks up to see red eyes peering in the window at them, reflecting the light from the TV.

The living room windows are more than six feet off the ground.

The frightened mother sends the screaming children upstairs, and turns on all the lights in the house.

When the father returns home at midnight, he finds his wife barricaded with the children in a bedroom, clutching a hunting rifle and her bible.

Together, they check the outside of the house. Their flashlight beams reveal claw marks on the front and back doors, and two large, deep hoof prints beneath the living room window.

***

Now, that story scared the bejesus out of me. I read it in my little twin bed at 2am, and slept with the covers pulled over my head, draining the battery of a flashlight. I returned the book to the library without ever looking at it again, averting my gaze and using a t-shirt to keep from touching it with my bare skin as I stuffed it in my bag, and shoved it through the return slot at the library.

I couldn’t look out a dark window for many years.

It could have been a deer, right? Or a moose? You think that now.

But then, I knew it was some sort of hooved demon. A very tall one, with claws, waiting to get the little girls whose daddy worked the second shift - like mine.

When I house-sit, I turn on all of the lights in the house, to prevent any hooved demons from peering in at me, unnoticed.