Book Horror Stories Novels & Stories

she calls out, a smirk playing at her lips. She just had to end with another jab about the formal. Right when Axel was here. God, I’ll kill this girl someday. Axel, however, doesn’t seem to pick up on Corey’s final remark. His eyes are fixed on the book in front of me. “What are you reading?” “It’s… nothing. Just a story.” But almost as if he can sense my bluff, he flips the front page with ease, revealing the title sprawled in bold letters: LYCANTHROPY: HISTORY, MYTHS & OLD FOLKLORE.

So she quickly changed her clothes and then jogged all the way back downstairs, straight to the supply closet. Silence greeted her as she walked through the house, along with an eerie calmness. He was nowhere in sight, and Nancy didn't seem to have returned either from wherever she had disappeared to. In the land of spirits, maybe. She lightly shivered, pushing away the thought. She hadn't cared much about all these paranormal things before, when she had no idea that they even existed at all. But now that she knew that they were real, that a creature that she'd priorly believed to be a myth, a silly bedtime story happened to actually exist, she couldn't help but feel so terrorized. About all

Jessica's voice went dead serious. "This manor has thirty floors. The monsters on the lower floors? They're simple. Predictable. They work on pure instinct. Learn their patterns, and you can survive. Treat them like traps. But the higher you go... the ones at the top are a different breed entirely. They won't just kill you. They'll shatter your sanity in seconds. They'll show you what true terror really is." "She's right," Brad chimed in, his smile turning predatory.

She opened it—pages parting easily now, as though the book recognized her exhaustion and offered no resistance. She flipped past the early chapters she had already memorized. Deeper. To the sections she had only skimmed before, too afraid to linger. *Control of the Undead* The script here was denser, colder. Diagrams of binding circles, sigils of domination, lists of names for the restless dead. Zombies—simple thralls of flesh, bound by will alone. Ghouls—carrion-eaters, drawn by hunger, controlled through offerings of meat and bone.

They approached the apartment door cautiously, then slowly stepped out, partially closing the broken door behind them, leaving a small gap through which the dim light of the entrance filtered in, as if the apartment itself had refused to close completely, guarding its dark secrets, waiting for the next intruder to venture into the depths of the shadows. The air escaping from the apartment was heavy and thick with the scent of ancient horror and blood, and the long-standing silence. Every step they took on the rough hallway floor resonated like the pulse of another world, a world hidden within walls and shadows, watching them with the cunning of the patient, testing their fear, gauging their

I steeled myself and opened the door. The hallway was awash in red. Smears and spatters of bright and dark blood covered the walls, the floor, and my door. My head reeled. What the hell happened? Why was there so much blood outside my door? Hadn't the guy in 603 seen it through his peephole? I couldn't help looking toward apartment 603. To my surprise, the door stood half-open, and it was dead quiet inside. I picked my way past the bloodstains and made my way to apartment 603.

“It keeps the ghosts away.” Downstairs, the inn filled with the low rumble of conversation. When they went to eat, eyes followed them—some curious, some fearful, most unreadable. News had clearly outrun them. Whispers curled through the room like smoke: the witch of the Black Moon, the swordsman who bled for her, the ones who closed the sky. A young boy darted forward and set two bowls of stew on their table. “Innkeeper says this one’s on the house,” he said quickly, then added, “for saving the dawn.” He fled before they could answer.

After two days of high temperatures and intense boredom, he remembered the three books. Sam pulled out the one with the Mummy on the cover, because it looked the most innocuous. It was entitled the Ninth Pan Book of Horror Stories. He wasn’t the least bit prepared for what he found inside. The first three stories involved emasculation, murder and burning at the stake. In his fevered state Sam felt he was not only watching the characters’ suffering, he was experiencing it along with them. He flung the book at the wall and then hid it again, wishing he could burn it like Jinnot, the young girl in the third story who was burned alive.

And then— A child’s laughter echoed from inside. Small. Sweet. But ice-cold. Aarav’s blood turned to stone. “Who’s there?” he asked. No answer. Just that laughter again. And then— From the darkness behind the door, two faintly glowing eyes appeared. At the height of a child. But they weren’t human. Completely still. Completely cold. Like a painted image. Then— It stepped out. Aarav raised his flashlight. And what he saw became the greatest terror of his life.

I hoped the walls were soundproof, as I didn’t want to overhear any funny business between Silas and his girlfriend. Climbing onto my bed, I reached for my bedside drawer, pulling out a large book with thick pages and a brown cover. It was a book on vampire origins, and basically everything one needed to know about them. Bill had gifted it to my mom as a moving-in present, thinking she might need it living with two vampires under the same roof. If only he knew Mom didn’t read books. Even when I was a kid, she’d make up my bedtime stories on the spot. She found it funny to tell me horror stories before bed.