A Terrifying Taste of Short & Shivery by Robert D. San Souci

Author:Robert D. San Souci
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307793676
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-04-19T21:00:00+00:00

Dinkins Is Dead

(United States—South Carolina)

Wadmalaw Island is one of the Sea Islands just off the South Carolina coast. Many years ago, a man named Theodore Dinkins lived there. He was so opinionated and stubborn, no one could convince him of anything.

He had lived many years, and so he grew old. He, however, did not believe it. “Old?” he said angrily. “Me? I’m not old.”

Yet he began to look old and to be old, to go to bed early and get up late, to be well one day and ill the next. But the worse he grew, the better he said he felt.

His doctor, his lawyer, and his minister came to see him. They told him he was dying; they wanted to help him make out his will; they wanted to help him make his peace with the Lord.

“I am not dying!” he shouted, and sent them away. But he really was dying.

When he was dead, the undertaker laid him out in his coffin. The sexton tolled the bell. The preacher read the burial service. His widow wept. All his friends said, “Death has convinced him, even if nothing else could.”

But death had not.

The next morning a friend from another town rode by the graveyard. He saw Dinkins sitting on the fence, looking a little odd but nothing too strange. “Hello, Tom!” Old Dinkins called.

“This is a surprise,” said the neighbor. “I heard you were at death’s door. To tell the truth, I heard you were dead and buried.”

“Do I look dead?” asked Dinkins.

“We-ell …” The neighbor hesitated. There was something about the old man’s look that bothered him.

“We-ell yourself!” Dinkins bellowed. “I’m not dead, and any fool can see I’m not buried.”

“Yes,” said the neighbor, riding on to avoid an argument.

Soon it began to rain. A traveling man from town came by. He was startled when a voice from the graveyard called, “Hello!” Reining in his horse, the traveler peered through the downpour. He saw an old man sitting on the graveyard fence. He couldn’t say what it was, exactly, but the look of the old man was … strange. “How do?” the traveler asked.

“Fine enough,” said the old man. “Coming from town?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s the news?”

“Old Man Dinkins is dead.”

“ ’Tain’t so.”

“But, sir,” said the traveler, angry that the old man had contradicted him, “I heard it from the widow Dinkins herself.”

“Clementina Dinkins?” said the old man. “Why, she never got anything right in her life.”

“Still and all, sir, you must admit she should know if her own husband is dead or not.”

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