Small Horrors: A Collection of Fifty Creepy Stories by Darcy Coates

Author:Darcy Coates [Coates, Darcy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Black Owl Books
Published: 2016-12-04T08:00:00+00:00

Their beds still hadn’t been reconstructed, so Avery and Zoe slept on their mattresses on the floor. Even though this new house had twice the rooms as their old city apartment, they chose to continue sharing a bedroom.

Avery slept uneasily. Sometime after midnight, a dull light brought her back to awareness, and she rolled over to see Zoe had pulled her blankets up over her head and was reading a book by torchlight.

“What’re you doing?” she mumbled.

“Shh.” The blankets shifted as Zoe settled farther down. “I couldn’t sleep. Just reading.”

Avery scrunched up her face. The boxes containing their books were all downstairs, and she knew Zoe couldn’t have walked over her without waking her. “What book?”

“None of your business.”

“I’m serious. Tell me.”

Zoe, looking irritable, flipped the blankets off her head and held up a narrow dark volume. “I found it in the cottage, okay? Now go to sleep.”

“Zo! Are you crazy?” Avery sat up and scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Put it away! What if it’s cursed or something?”

“Jeeze. I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d flip out like this.” Zoe rolled her eyes and shuffled around to face Avery. “It’s not cursed. But listen to this. It’s a book on spellcraft. Herbal potions, incantations, hexes, stuff like that. I think Grandma Pearl really was a witch.”

Avery knew her voice was getting so loud that she risked waking her parents, but she couldn’t keep the urgency out of it. “Then you shouldn’t be meddling with it.”

“No, listen,” Zoe insisted. A manic light had entered her eyes. “It says a witch can never truly be killed; her soul just passes into a new body. When a witch dies, her conscience and powers are transferred to the next-born child in the family.” Zoe pointed to herself. “Grandma Pearl died just two months before we were born. I think… I think she might have passed her powers on to me.”

“You are crazy!” Tears pricked at Avery’s eyes. She snatched the book out of Zoe’s hands and flung it across the room.

“It makes sense, though! Think about it—why did Grandma Pearl leave her house to our family? It’s so that she could give her home and her witch’s hut to her new body. I feel like if I can just study a bit, learn how it works—”

“Keep talking, and I’ll scream,” Avery threatened. “I’ll scream and wake Mum and say you’ve been telling me horrible lies. She’ll ground you for years.”

Zoe’s lips twisted. She carefully shifted back onto her haunches. “You’re such a brat.”

“You’re not a witch. But you are freaking me out. I want you to leave that hut and all its junk alone,” Avery spat, and rolled over before Zoe could argue any further.

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