Southern Fried Rat and Other Gruesome Tales Read Online Free Page B

room, because the guests never stayed through the night.
    But there was a convention in town, and every hotel room for miles around was booked. So when a tired-looking salesman appeared at the desk begging for a room, the clerk took pity on him and gave him the key to room 1313.
    "I warn you," said the clerk. "It's haunted."
    "I'm not afraid of ghosts," said the salesman.
    The salesman was exhausted from traveling. He went directly to his room and started to unpack. When he opened the closet a ghost came out, and it was a particularly horrible ghost too. It waved its bleeding hands in the air and shouted, "Bloody fingers! Bloody fingers!"
    The salesman decided that he wasn't so tired after all, and besides he really was afraid of ghosts, so he left immediately.
    Next came a soldier. He was on his way home for a leave but had missed his plane connection and couldn't get another flight until the following morning.
    "I'm afraid the only room we have is haunted, sir," said the clerk.
    "I've fought in three wars," said the soldier. "I've seen men die all around me. I don't believe in ghosts."
    So he went up to the room. Once again the ghost came out of the closet and waved its hands in the air and moaned, "Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers."
    The soldier decided he would sleep in the airport.
    It got to be very late, and the clerk didn't expect any more guests. One showed up though. He had long shaggy hair and a scraggly beard. He wore torn Levis and carried a battered guitar case. The clerk didn't much like his looks. So he gave him the haunted room.
    The fellow ambled into the room, sat down on the bed, took out his guitar, and began to play softly.
    The ghost popped out of the closet and, waving his crimson and dripping hands in the air, moaned, "Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers."
    The man kept right on strumming and humming, not paying the slightest attention to the ghost.
    "Bloody fingers. Bloody fingers," meaned the ghost more loud!y.
    The guitar player barely looked up.
    "Bloody fingers! Bloody fingers!" shrieked the ghost.
    The guitar player stopped, looked over at the ghost, and very slowly said, "Need a Band-Aid, man?"
    —————
    Once there was a large and prosperous kingdom ruled by a wise and powerful king. Then disaster struck in the form of a strange plague, which caused people to sicken and die horribly within a few weeks. The population of the kingdom was being decimated. All the physicians in the land were called to the palace, but none of them had any idea of what to do about this new disease.
    The oldest of the physicians said that he had once heard that many years ago, when his grandfather was a boy, the kingdom had been struck by just such a mysterious sickness. The pestilence had been ended with a magic potion prepared by an old sorceress. It was said that she was still alive, but her home was in the middle of the Dark Forest.
    "The Dark Forest!" everyone gasped. They all knew that the Dark Forest was the most dangerous place in the kingdom. Perhaps the most dangerous place in the entire world, for in the Dark Forest lived the Yellow Fingers, which grabbed a traveler and squeezed him to death. But no one could come up with another plan to save the kingdom, so it was decided that someone had to defy the Yellow Fingers and find the ancient sorceress in the middle of the Dark Forest.
    The king called his bravest knight and explained the situation. Without hesitation, the brave knight marched off into the forest and was never heard from again.
    The king then called his second bravest knight. This knight hesitated for a moment before going into the fatal forest. But once he went in, he never came out.
    So the king called his third bravest knight, who took a bit more persuading. And his fourth, and fifth, and so on. None of them ever returned from the forest. Finally the remaining knights, who were not very brave at all, went into hiding.
    The king was reduced to a state of despair. Then one of the king's young