The Lightning-Fused Lovers

A teenage guy takes his girlfriend out into the hills one weekend, determined on a bit of midnight action in the predicted storm. The two of them make their way to an isolated spot on the peaks, and wait for the rain to start. Overcome by excitement--and hormones--they strip off and get down to business.

The lightning storm moves on top of them. Bolts of electric light crack down through the sky . . . and by unfortunate chance, one strikes in the exact spot the teenage lovers have chosen for their tryst. Hundreds of thousands of volts course through the pair. The girl is killed instantly, but the boy survives, despite being in awful pain. Worse still, the electricity melted the latex of the condom they were using, fusing the two of them together.

Sickened and horrified, the boy vomited straight onto the girl's face, before passing out cold. When he came to a few minutes later he was no longer alone; a wolf had wandered out from the woods and was licking the vomit from the girl's face. The boy balked in disgust, but managed not to move. It wasn't long before the wolf got bored and left the scene . . . though not before taking a few quick bites at the back of the boy's head.

The night that followed was agonising. Despite the pain and the weight of his dead girlfriend, the boy managed to drag himself--inch by agonising inch--all the way back to the car park. That was where they found him in the morning, bloodied, filthy, barely alive, the corpse of his girlfriend fused agonisingly to his most sensitive of organs.

The Stoned Sitter

A couple are head out for dinner one night, leaving their baby at home in the capable hands of a teenage sitter. The first half of the night passes pleasantly enough, and both of them are thoroughly enjoying their meal, when the man's mobile rings. It's the sitter. She sounds . . . strange.

"The baby's asleep," she said, "and I put the turkey in the over like you asked."

"Turkey?" says the man. "What turkey?" Neither he nor his wife had any kind of turkey in the house.

"You left . . . on the table you left a turkey. You said to, um . . ." The sitter tails off, sounding uncertain. Then she hangs up.

Worried, the couple decide to cut short their dinner and head home. When they arrive they find the sitter curled up on the sofa, crying hopelessly. There's a distinct smell of marijuana in the air . . . and at first the couple think that's all it is. She smoked a few joints and got a little paranoid: careless, but nothing terrible.

Then they go through to the kitchen.

In a flash they see what has happened. Out of her head on the drugs, the babysitter became confused. There never was a turkey. Only their baby. Sitting on top of the oven in a metal dish is what remains of their child, his skin blackened and crisped and cooked.

The Death Car

A young office worker is in the market for a new car. He's mooching around the used-car salesrooms, searching for a bargain, when he spots a slightly-battered-looking BMW on sale for less than half its value. It's a deal he can hardly resist, and he finalises the paperwork later that day.

As he drives home, he's aware of a vague, sweetish smell pervading the inside of the car. Still, it's nothing that a good clean won't solve, and he's too happy with his new purchase to really care.

The next day he washes the car and vacuums and cleans the inside as thoroughly as he can. However, the smell remains. In fact, it gets worse as time goes on. After about a week he can hardly stand it anymore, and he takes the car back to the showroom to complain.

To his surprise, the dealer doesn't give him any trouble. "I knew this would happen," he says. "I just can't get rid of this damn car." He goes on to explain the history of this particular vehicle.

It just so happens that the car's first owner committed suicide inside of it, gassing herself to death in the garage of her home. Unfortunately, nobody was around to witness the woman's suicide, and so by the time she was found her body was long-since decayed.

"Ever since we got it," says the dealer, "that smell has stuck around inside the car. It doesn't matter what you do: change the seats, change the fittings . . . it makes no difference. Ever since we got it that car has stunk of death."

The Chicken-Footed Dancer

A Spanish woman is at the annual dance of her town. She's spent half the evening dancing and is resting for a moment against the wall. She watches the other dancers twirling and sweeping past on the floor. From among them steps a tall, dark-haired man who she's never seen before in her life. He saunters up to her with an easy confidence.

"Would you care to dance?" he asks, holding out his arm. The woman is tired, but for some reason she finds the offer difficult to resist. She takes the man's arm and allows him to lead her into the crowd.

Five minutes later the rhythm of the music is sundered by a scream. The dancer's grind to a halt and turn towards the source of the disturbance. It's the woman, and she's lying on the floor in a cold faint. Her partner is already pushing his way through the crowd towards the exit; he's gone in a flash before anyone can grab him.

Smelling salts are fetched and the woman is eventually roused to consciousness once more. She's deathly pale, and looks terrified. It's a long time before she can explain what happened, and when she does the listeners that surround her don't know whether or not to believe her. It was the handsome man, she tells them. They were dancing together, quite happily, when she happened to glance down. There, in the place where his legs should have been were a scrawny pair of chicken feet, thick horny claws and all.

The listeners withdraw in fear. This can mean only one thing; a man with the feet of a chicken can only be the devil.

The Halloween Apples

It's Halloween, and a bunch of children are out trick-or-treating with one of the kid's uncles. All night they've been making their way through the neighbourhood, banging on doors, collecting a sizeable pile of handouts. Towards the end of the night they stop on a corner to count up what they've got. Most of the kids seem to have amassed a good pile of sweets, along with a few small toys and a number of differently-sized apples from concerned members of the healthy eating brigade.

Satisfied, the kids and their chaperone start to head back to their home neighbourhood. On the way, the kids start in on their haul, munching their way through various sweets and snacks. They're almost halfway back when one of the boys yelps and drops the apple he'd been chewing on. Blood is dripping from his mouth.

Concerned, the uncle crouches down by the boy and inspects the injury. It looks like he cut his mouth on something. The uncle comforts the boy until the crying stops, then snatches up the apple from the pavement. There's something metallic stuck in there, he sees. Squinting closer, he sees to his horror that the metal thing is a razor blade.

The first thing he does is collect the apples off the other kids. With mounting horror, he sorts through the fruits, finding first one then another with a little telltale slash in its skin.

He's panicking now. So many people gave apples this year there's no way he can tell who the perpetrator might be. And who knows how many more of these doctored apples are out there? Thought whirl around his head, but one is most prominent of all: which of all the nice, normal-looking houses they stopped at tonight was the house of a lunatic?

The Microwave

It's raining buckets. A young blonde woman has left her umbrella behind at work and so has to run all the way from the bus stop to her house. By the time she gets in she's soaked to the skin. Worse still, she has a date set for that night. She needs to dry out her hair quickly.

She's heard from a friend that you can use a microwave to dry things out: towels and items of clothing and such. Surely it would work the same for her hair . . .

Her date arrives an hour or so later and knocks on the door. No answer, and he can smell something burning. He wakes her neighbour, who calls the blonde girl's brother, who comes around in his car. In the intervening time the smell of burning has only gotten worse. The brother lets himself in and follows his nose to the kitchen. And there she is, the blonde girl, his sister, slumped over dead with her head wedged inside the microwave, dark streams of steam and blood running from her eyes and mouth and ears.

It turned out that she'd forced the door control with a spoon so that the microwave would run, even with the door open. She died of a fatal haemorrhage within seconds.

The Elevator Angel

A young secretary works in a high-rise office building in the middle of the city. One night she's at the office late, catching up on some paperwork. When she finishes, finally, she packs away her things and heads for the elevator. It's almost ten o' clock and the building is eerily empty, just her and the security guards. She hits the button and waits for the lift to arrive.

Her mind is still on her work, but she's fairly sure she's the only one waiting on that floor. That's why she's so surprised when the elevator arrives and, just as she's about to step inside, someone barges past her into the box. She's so surprised that she stops dead, staring at the man who has pushed past her. He stands in the middle of the lift, smiling benevolently at her. He's not a worker, and he's definitely not a security guard. In fact, she's never seen him before in her life.

Before she can react, the metal doors scroll shut and the elevator starts to descend. The secretary just stands there, bemused. She takes a step back . . . maybe she should take the stairs.

Just then there's an almighty bang, and a rattling from the lift shaft. A siren sounds. A thud echoes up the lift shaft.

Later, down in the lobby, surrounded by police and fire officers, she tells her story. About the man who pushed past her, how she was seconds away from getting into the lift herself.

"You were lucky," says one police officer. The lift, he tells her, has plummeted all the way to the ground floor. If anyone had been inside, they almost certainly would have been killed.

"If?" says the secretary. "But there was someone inside. I remember; a man pushed past me just as I was about to get in."

The police officers just shake their heads. "No," they tell her, "that lift was very definitely empty." And when they check the CCTV tapes the story's the same: no stranger pushes past her. The whole time she was by herself on the floor, completely and utterly alone.

The Pile Of Leaves

An office worker is driving home one day in autumn. Thick piles of leaves cover the ground and the sun is bright and crisp. It's a good day to be alive. The man is looking forward to seeing his family when he gets home. He pulls into his drive, climbs out and goes inside.

After greeting his wife he checks the rest of the house, but his two little kids are nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, he asks his wife where they are and she tells him that, last she saw them, they were playing out in the front garden.

The office worker checks the garden. No kids. He's starting to worry now, and his search becomes frantic. He runs back inside and tells his wife that he can't find them anywhere. She comes out to help him search.

"I don't understand," she says. "They were just out here a moment ago. They were playing the leaves."

At her words, a horrifying idea occurs to the office worker. He runs to his car, crouches down and checks underneath . . . then recoils in horror. His worst suspicions have been proved true. It seems that his kids must have been waiting to surprise him, hidden in a pile of leaves in the driveway. Hidden there even as he arrived home in his car . . .

He gropes under the chassis for their little broken bodies, but it's already far too late.

The Corpse Worms

A young student meets a man at a nightclub and, one thing leading to another, ends up going home with him. The two spend the night together, drunkenly enjoying each other's company. In the morning they wake up with twin headaches, and quickly part company. The girl's embarrassed more than anything, so she doesn't mention the encounter to any of her friends. It was a stupid, alcohol-fuelled decision. Worst of all, she fears she might have caught something. She's itching horribly down there.

A week passes and, despite her hopes, the itching doesn't go away on its own. The girl makes an appointment at her local clinic and submits herself to her inspection. The diagnosis comes back: she has a colony of "corpse worms" living inside of her. It's treatable but, since the only place you can get corpse worms if off a dead body, the police will be wanting to speak to her.

She's taken down to the station and interviewed. There in the featureless interrogation room the whole humiliating story comes out. She tells them about the guy, and gives them his address. The police head off to investigate.

A week or so later, after she's been in and out of hospital a couple of times to be treated, she receives a follow-up call from the police. A young officer, barely hiding his disgust, explains that the guy she slept with was a hospital worker. It turned out that he'd been abusing the bodies entrusted to his care. At the time of their liaison he was, it seemed, a practicing necrophiliac.

The Solid Cement Car

A cement-truck driver is making his rounds one morning with a "wet" load. It just so happens that his second job of the day is in the same neighbourhood as his house. He decides to stop off and surprise his wife with a visit.

He pulls onto his street, and to his surprise sees that there is a car parked in his driveway. He stops up on the other side of the road, and looks  across to his home. There, through the living room window he can see his wife . . . and another man, a stranger. They're sitting awfully close. All at once, a dozen possible explanations rise up in the driver's head, but they're weak. Jealous rage floods through him.

He's never had the best temper, and so the cement-truck driver pulls up his truck alongside the stranger's car, climbs out and levers open the sunroof. He directs the chute towards the sunroof and pulls the lever. Wet cement torrents out into the car, filling it in seconds. His revenge complete, the man climbs back into his cement truck and drives away.

Later that day, the police arrive at the depot with a warrant for his arrest. He knows what he's done, and so he doesn't resist. But it's not until they get back to the station that the police fully explain what has happened. It turns out that the car he wrecked was a surprise present from his wife. The man he saw inside his house was the agent who delivered the car. He and the cement-truck driver's wife had taken it for a test drive, before returning to her house. He'd come inside to finalise the paperwork.

Bad enough, but the worse is still to come. When she took the car out for a test drive, the man's wife took their baby child with her. The poor thing was still inside the car, strapped into its child seat, when the cement-truck driver took his ill-planned revenge. He's not being arrested for destruction of property, but for murder.

The Tanning Salon

A woman is preparing to be married next month. She's excited about the big day, and the one thing she wants more than anything else it to have a nice, deep tan. To this end, she heads down to a local tanning salon. It's one of those self-service places; basically a small shop with a bunch of coin operated machines. She strips off, inserts her money and climbs inside. Twenty minutes later she emerges a little bit more brown.

But it's not enough. She wants more. A few days later she heads back for another session, and another the day after that. She's getting close to the tan she wants, but it's still not enough . . . and the wedding's getting ever closer.

The night before the rehearsal, she heads down to the salon once more. This time, when her time on the bed expires, she just puts more money in. Not once, or twice, but five times. By the time the salon's finally closing up for the night she's dizzy and dehydrated, but she finally has the deep-gold tan she wants. She heads home and falls into bed.

And there she stays, forever. Her family find her the next day, dead and shrivelled, organs cooked to perfection from the inside out.

The Itchy Head

One afternoon, an old man comes wandering into hospital, wearing his pyjamas and dressing gown. He looks confused, squinting about short-sightedly. When one of the nurses approach him and asks what is wrong, he tells her his head itches terribly. As a matter of fact, it has for quite some time.

The nurse takes him in to be inspected. It doesn't take long to work out what the problem is. His hair is crusty with dried blood. When she tries to clean it, his scalp peels away along with the hair and the blood. There beneath is a bloody hole, delving deep into his head. In the depths she sees the grey matter of brain. Not only that, but it's moving. Little white shapes wriggling madly away.

"Oh, God," says the nurse. The little white things, she realises, are maggots.

It's not long before the doctor's have worked out what's happened. The old man lived alone, and he's not in the best of minds. A cut on his head became infected, and the infection spread. Flies came along, landing and laying their eggs. Slowly, day by day, the infection ate away, worming down through flesh, through bone, deep into the soft stuff of his brain, until his whole head was open to the sky. The man was so frail that he never even knew; all he ever felt was that steady, stinging itch.

The Body In The Bag

A cat belonging to a young woman living in the city dies one day, of natural causes. The woman loved the cat very much, and wants it to be buried somewhere nice. Unfortunately she lives in an apartment with no garden, not even a communal one. As an alternative, the woman calls one of her friends--an artist who lives in the countryside. They arrange to meet at an out-of-town shopping centre, where the woman will hand over the body of her pet so that it can be buried out in the forest.

The woman wraps the body of her cat in paper and loads it into a boutique bag. She heads out to the shopping centre and goes to the food court, where she grabs a coffee while she waits for her friend. The artist eventually arrives, having been delayed by traffic. They chat for a few minutes, and then the woman goes to hand over the bag with the cat in it . . . only to find that it's missing.

They contact mall security and start a search, mostly to no avail. Someone must have taken their chance and stolen the bag while the woman went to the bathroom. The shopping centre manager apologises profusely to the woman, but there's nothing they can do.

Sadly, the woman and her artist friend head out to the car park. On the way they notice that there's some kind of commotion going on at the far end of the lot. They wander over to look. Lying there unconscious on the concrete, surrounded by a crowd of horrified onlookers is a large, middle-aged tramp. Lying there beside him is a familiar-looking boutique bag, the straggly head of the woman's cat poking out of the top.

The Deep-Fried Rat

A trucker pulls into a service station on the motorway. He's been driving all night and hasn't eaten since the night before. He needs some food, and so he heads for the fast-food bar and orders some fried chicken and chips. While he waits he glances around the place: it's not exactly sparkly clean--but then again he's been in some bad places in his travels. He takes his food and heads for a table.

He's about to bite into his chicken when something makes him stop. He pokes it with his fork,  inspecting the meat. For a moment all he knows is that it looks kind of weird . . . and then he flips it over and he sees the shape of it. He hurls it away from himself, almost vomiting.

The deep fried thing is not chicken at all. It's a rat, curled into a ball and slathered with batter. The poor thing must have fallen into the fryer, cooking itself whole in the remnants of a hundred meals-worth of grease.

The Sewer Workers

A group of sewer workers are down in the tunnels. They've been sent to clear out a blockage in one of the more far-flung pipelines under the city. The trouble is, they're working from plans that are way out of date. The further they go down, the harder it gets to be sure of where they are. At last, they come to a hatch in the floor of a junction.

"This is it, I think," says the foreman. "Let's head down."

They prepare their gear and open up the hatch, only to find that the tunnel beyond is narrower than they thought, and the ladder is long-since rusted. They can only send down one man to clear the blockage. A young workman volunteers for the job and is roped up and lowered down into the dark. A few minutes pass.

Then the man starts screaming.

Panicking, the others haul back on the rope. The guy down the hole sounds like he's screaming his lungs out. Eventually he comes back into sight, kicking and yelling, and they manage to get him over the lip of the hatch. He's shuddering violently, clutching at his clothes. His hair has turned a deathly white.

"What happened?" cry the other workmen. "What's down there?"

But the guy won't answer. He can't even speak. They shut up the hatch and manage to drag him back up to the surface, where he's carted off to hospital. But whatever the doctors do to him, he will not speak, will not say a word about what it was down there he saw.

The Carpet Store

A woman is out shopping for a new rug for her bedroom. She's wandering around a warehouse store, searching. She's looking for something exotic, something imported perhaps. She inspects some carpet samples and brushes her hand across a stack of rolled up rugs at the end of an aisle. Just then she feels a sharp pain in her finger, as though a pin or something was embedded in one of the rugs . . . but when she looks she can't see a thing. Sucking her finger, she leaves the store and heads back home.

A few hours later her neighbour discovers the woman lying dead in her kitchen. The police are called and the body taken down to the morgue. A pathologist examines her thoroughly, and eventually determines the cause of death. The woman was killed by the bite of an exotic spider.

It's a week before they track the woman's movements back to the carpet store she visited that day. And it's a week more before they discover the offending carpet. Imported from the Middle East, the thing is riddled with the husks of venomous spider eggs. The spiders themselves, however, are nowhere to be found.

The carpet is hauled away for further inspection, but the detectives know it's already too late. The spiders have spread already, and it's only a matter of time before the hatchlings start laying eggs of their own.

The Dead Grandmother

An American family are off on holiday; they're driving across the country: the mother, the father, the kids and the grandma. However, not long after they set off, the grandma succumbs to a heart attack and dies. She was pretty old, and they've been expecting it for a long time, so none of them are particularly shocked. It is inconvenient, however, as they're away from home, and don't know how to go about getting her buried in the state where they are. Instead, they decide to take her back home in the car, and bury her there.

The problem is, rigor mortis has already set in, and as such they can't fit her inside the vehicle with the rest of them. To get around this, they wrap her in a sheet and tie her to the top of the vehicle. Stuck up there, she looks like just another bundle, and they're satisfied that she won't be a problem. They all pile into the car and set off home.

A few hours later they stop at a service station and go inside to get some food. When they emerge, their car is gone. They search the car park, but it's nowhere to be found. They contact the service station security guard, and he lets them review the CCTV footage. They gather around and watch as a couple of guys in hooded tops saunter up to their car, slip the lock, clamber inside and drive off, without even realising that the corpse of the dead grandma is strapped to the roof.

The Abandoned Hospital

A small group of workmen have been assigned to clear out an empty hospital in the bad part of town. They're working in small groups, one in each part of the building. The men in the ward building are breaking down old pieces of furniture and carting out piles of trash. The hospital's been shut down for years, and the inside's pretty disgusting. There's dirt and dust and needles everywhere, not to mention rats the size of dogs.

About midday, the men break for lunch--all but one of them. His co-workers can't find him; he must have wandered off. They break for lunch anyway, call his mobile a couple of times (with no success), and decide to wait for him to turn up.

Towards the end of the lunch break, he does. He's behaving strangely though. His hard hat is pulled down over his face, his coat collar turned up. He doesn't stop to talk to his colleagues, but keeps his head down and heads quickly for the gate. His friends try to stop, to find out what might have happened inside the hospital, but he pushes past them and is gone.

It's puzzling, but they have a job to do. The workmen head back into the building and carry on with the clearing out. A few hours go by, and they've almost forgotten about their workmates strange behaviour. Then it happens. The foreman is checking ahead through the empty wards. Shining his torch into a dusty corner, he comes across a dead body. It's the man who they all saw leave the site earlier that day. Or the man who they all THOUGHT they saw leave.

The body is lying there on the floor. He's been stabbed, and his clothes have been taken. Whoever it was who went running away from the hospital earlier that day, it clearly wasn't him. 

The Halloween Hangman

It's Halloween, and some teenagers are out trick-or-treating. All in costume, they're hitting a couple of neighbourhoods, driving in between in a borrowed car. As they're heading down the highway, they pass by a lonely-looking farm. Strung up from the sign at the intersection leading to the farmhouse there's something that looks like a scarecrow. It's some kind of Halloween decoration: a hanged man. The teenagers stop in the road to take a few pictures with their mobile phones, then speed on towards their next target neighbourhood.

But a few weeks later, as they happen to be passing the junction again on a night out, they notice that the hangman decoration is still there. There're even a couple of crows perched on its shoulders, picking away. They stop and climb out of the car. One of the boys goes to take a closer look. He doesn't have to get too close to see that it's no decoration, but instead a real, rotting corpse, stung up from the sign like the victim of a lynch mob. The stench is terrible.

It turns out that the man had killed himself on the week of Halloween. He'd lived alone in the farmhouse, and so nobody had missed him when he went. Just like the kids in their car, everybody who passed him by thought that he was a Halloween decoration, and so he hung there, quietly decomposing for weeks and weeks and weeks.

The Roommate

A couple of girls are rooming together in the dorms at university. One night the quieter of the two girls decides to stay in and study, while the other heads out clubbing with her friends. They part ways, and the louder girl heads off with her friends into the town.

A long night later, after a good few drinks and a lot of dancing, the girl stumbles back to the dorms. It's long past bedtime, and the window of their shared room is dark. Her roommate must be sleeping. The girl's hand hovers over the light switch, but she decides she's not so drunk she can't find her way across the room in the dark. Doing her best to stay quiet the girl picks her way over to her bed. She falls into bed and in a few moments is sound asleep.

She doesn't regain consciousness until late next morning. She's got a rough hangover, and it takes her a while to pry herself out of bed. She sits there for a while, clutching her aching head, then grits her teeth and throws open the curtains. She looks over to her friend's side of the room, and sobers up cold.

Her roommate lies tangled in bloody sheets, clearly dead. Blood smears the walls, and written there on the wall are the words: "Aren't you glad you didn't turn on the light?" The killer, it seems, was there in the room when the girl returned from her night out on the town. It was only her drunken state and the darkness of the room that saved her from her friend's untimely fate.

The Stinky Shoes

An old guy has owned the same pair of shoes for ten years now. They're good solid walking boots, and pretty reliable in his opinion. He looks after them too, keeping them clean and waterproofing them whenever they need it. He even took one of them to be repaired when it got damaged. As far as he cares, there're no finer shoes in the world.

The only problem is that, lately, they've started to stink. He's tried everything; washing them, drying them, spraying them with a special deodorant. He even replaced the insoles in case they were the problem. Nevertheless, his shoes continue to smell terrible.

The old guy lives alone, and he isn't so mobile as once he was. The stinky shoes aren't a huge problem for him, but they still leave him puzzled. That is until one day, when he's in the bath. For the first time in a couple of weeks he takes a look at his feet.

The old guy's eyesight is pretty bad, so at first all he sees is a greyish blur around his toes. He gets out of the bath and fetches his glasses, and props his foot up on the bath to take a closer look. What he sees is a blackening of the flesh around his toes. His feet, long untended, have started slowly to rot away, hints of bone peeking through the decayed flesh. 

The Backseat Killer

A young woman is driving home one night, alone. It's been a long day at work, and she's tired. She needs to stop for petrol, and so she pulls into a filling station not far from her home. It's already pretty dark, and she hurries to fill up her car. As she is doing so the attendant wanders out from the shop and offers to help her. She thanks him but says she doesn't need any help.

At this she expects him to go back into the shop, but he doesn't. He stands around, looking distracted. He walks around her can, inspecting it. He looks at her tyres and shakes his head.

"Those tyres," he tells her. "The tread's all worn down. Looks like trouble to me."

Again she assured him that she'll be okay, but he doesn't seem to want to let her leave. She's already anxious at being alone on the road at night, and so when he starts insisting that she come into the shop with him so he can "show her something", she starts to get nervous. She goes to get back in the car, but at that point the attendant grabs her and, with one hand over her mouth, drags her back into shop.

She's struggling like mad to get away, but as soon as they're inside the guy releases her. He stands in front of the door.

"Listen," he says, "just after you pulled up I saw a man come running out of the shadows and climb into the back of your car. I didn't want to let him know I'd seen. I've already called the police; they'll be here any minute."

At first she doesn't believe him, but then, sure enough, she hears the wail of approaching sirens. The cops come screaming up, surround her car, and drag a man out of the back seat. Even from the shop the woman sees and hears the knife he was carrying clatter to the ground.

The Babysitter

A teenage girl is trying to make some extra money babysitting for a rich couple. She's already put the little boy to bed, and now she's downstairs watching TV and waiting for the couple to return.

Faintly, she thinks she hears a scratching sound coming from upstairs. She mutes the TV and listens hard, but it doesn't come again, and so she writes it off and goes back to her film. An hour passes and she's almost asleep before she hears it again, this time louder than before.

She mutes the TV again and listens. Maybe the little kid has gotten out of bed and is up to something. She decides to go up and check on him. She heads upstairs, but pauses at the entrance to the boy's room. Just in case he is still asleep, she doesn't want to wake him, so she goes in without turning on the light. She creeps over to his bed, and reaches down, expecting to feel his head on the pillow. What she feels instead is something wet and sticky. Some kind of mush. Gasping, she flicks on the bedside lamp.

The boy is still in bed, but where his head used to be there's now nothing but a bloody mess of brains and bone. It's as if his whole face has been torn away. The girl screams, and in panic turns to run towards the door. But she freezes before she's gone two steps. Standing behind the door is a man in a grey trench coat. His front is stained with blood, and where his left hand should be is a dripping metal hook.

The Hairy Old Woman

A young woman is out shopping at her local mall one day. It's getting late when she finally completes her purchases and heads back to her car, which is parked in the multi-storey just outside the mall. To her surprise, when she arrives she finds that an old lady is sitting there in the back seat. Puzzled, the woman taps on the window, then opens up the door.

The old lady seems to be a bit confused. After some questioning from the woman she explains that her son drives a car of the same make and colour as the woman's. She had been shopping with her son, but started to feel unwell, and so returned to the car to wait for him.

"I suppose I must have got the two mixed up," says the old lady.

"Oh dear," says the woman. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

The old lady thinks for a minute, then asks if maybe the woman can drive her around the car park until she sees her son's car. Not wanting to leave such an elderly lady stranded, the woman agrees. However, as soon as she climbs into the driver's seat, she senses that something is wrong. At first she cannot put her finger on it; it's just a vague, uneasy feeling. But when she looks closely in the rear-view mirror, she sees it. The old lady is not a lady at all, but a man. Once she realises this, the woman can see clearly that the lady's white hair is nothing more than a wig, and there's the tell-tale hint of stubble along his chin.

Terrified, the woman grips the steering wheel. Her mind races. Trying to stay calm she politely asks the "old lady" if she could get out and help her to reverse from the space. She watches as the man climbs out, acting all the while like a doddery old age pensioner. As soon as he's out, the woman locks all the doors and speeds away, back towards the mall.

She reports what happened to mall security. There's a thorough search of the car park, but there's no trace of the strange man. The police are informed; a report is filed.

Weeks later the woman is cleaning out her car. Looking under the seat where the man had been sitting, she finds a plastic bag. The bag is bloodstained. Wrapped up inside are a knife and a coil of rope.

The Hotel Bed

A couple check into a cheap hotel one night. They're given a room on the fifth floor, but when they arrive, the man notices a horrible odour permeating the room. They leave their stuff and return to the front desk to complain. Unfortunately, the hotel is booked solid, and so they can't be moved. Instead the hotel owner offers to give them a free meal in the hotel restaurant while their room is cleaned again. The couple accept.

While they enjoy their free meal, the cleaning staff change all the sheets in their room, vacuum, polish and run bleach down the drains. The couple return to their room late that night, after several drinks from the bar. To the man's annoyance, the terrible smell is still present. Now, however, he's too tired to care. They decide they will complain again in the morning, and the two of them go to bed.

By the next morning the smell is worse than ever. Annoyed, the man decides to track down the source of it himself. He pokes into every nook and cranny of the room, checking under the sink, around the window, under the loose carpet in the closet. Nothing. 

It's only when he lifts up the bed that he discovers the source of the smell. There's a slit there in the side of the box-spring mattress, from which the stench seems to emanate. The man pries it open and peers inside. There, wedged in between the springs is a dried and decaying corpse.

The Wedding Party

A young couple who have been together for a couple of years decide to get married. Luckily for them, the bride's father is extremely rich, and so they're able to hold the ceremony and the reception in a big old property he owns out in the countryside.

The big day arrives and the ceremony goes over beautifully. At the reception afterwards, the drinks are flowing freely, and both the bride and the groom are pleasantly drunk. The night wears on, and as it begins to get dark the groom comes up with an idea. It's the perfect time for a massive game of hide and seek, he decides. And so everyone runs off and hides, while the groom counts slowly to a hundred.

Over the next hour, one by one the guests are found. All except the bride. As time wears on more and more guests join in the search, poking into every nook and cranny of the house. She's nowhere to be found. The groom is beginning to worry. Eventually the police are called, and it becomes official. On the very night of her wedding, the bride has disappeared.

After a thorough investigation, it is concluded that, for reasons unknown, she must have run away. A search campaign is launched and closed. Her family wait anxiously for her to return. She never does. Her would-be husband goes on living alone, waiting, wondering what could possibly have incited her to leave him like that on their wedding day.

A year later, and the house where the wedding was held has passed on to new owners. A firm have been hired to do a full inventory of all the old furniture. It's one of the workers who makes the discovery. As he's searching through an old bookcase, he comes across a tiny, hidden lever. Curious, he pulls it, and the bookcase swings open, revealing a hidden room between the walls. There on the floor lies a dried and decaying corpse; it's the bride. In her search for a place to hide she stumbled upon the hidden room, only to be knocked unconscious by the bookcase swinging shut behind her. She lies as she did on her wedding night, when she suffocated in the dark only feet away from her searching friends.

The Dog In The Shower

An old woman is settling down for bed one night. She lives alone with only her pet dog for company. Tonight is just like any other night. She's lying in bed, dozing off to sleep. Her dog lies on the floor beside her bed. Lately she's been having trouble sleeping, and so it takes an age before she's finally able to drop off.

She wakes later, in the middle of the night. She's lying on the edge of the bed, her arm dangling over the side. Her dog's licking at her fingers . . . but it's not this that's woken her up. For a while she's not sure what it is that brought her awake.  She lies there while her dog licks her hand, listening, wondering. And then she has it.

Filtering through the wall from the bathroom, there is the steady drip, drip, drip of her shower. She must not have shut it off properly.

Reluctantly, the old woman gets up and leaves her dog and her bed. She puts on her slippers and wanders through to the bathroom. She clicks on the light . . . and screams. Hanging from the head of the shower is her pet dog. Its collar is twisted around its neck, and a steady stream of blood falls into the shower basin, drip, drip, drip.

The woman stands there, terrified. It dawns on her slowly: if her faithful pet dog is here, then what was it that lay on the floor of her bedroom, licking at her hand. What . . . or who?

The Haircut

A barber is at work one day when in comes a man with dreadlocks. The man has decided that his dreads have become too unkempt and dirty, and it's time for a change of style, so he sits down in the chair and the barber goes to work, hacking off his hair. It's a tough job. The dreads don't look like they've been washed in ages, and there's an awful smell coming off of them, but the barber's too polite to complain.

After about half an hour that barber is almost done. There's only one more really stubborn clump of hair remaining. He gets a new pair of scissors and gets to work, chopping away at the tangled net of hair. And as he works the barber starts to realise that there's something in there, something shiny, something weird. He bends down to take a closer look.

Then all of a sudden the man twitches violently. At first the barber thinks he might have cut the guy with his scissors, but that's not it. The man goes into a fit, jerking and convulsing in the chair. He slides to the floor. The barber backs away, frightened, and grabs the phone to call an ambulance.

Before he can the man goes still. All apart from his hair. The stubborn clump that the barber was hacking at is still moving, and as he watches something emerges from it. It's a spider, a massive, shiny backed tarantula, its jaws still dark with the dead man's blood.

The Voice In The Night

A young boy is trying to get to sleep one night. His parents are watching TV downstairs, but it's not the noise that's keeping him awake. It's the voices. The boy is sure he can hear someone whispering, indistinct but definitely there. He ignores it though; he's too old for nightmares. He pulls his pillow over his ears and tries to go to sleep.

But the whispering doesn't stop, and every so often he finds that he can hear a bit of it clearly. One moment he's sure he hears a faint voice calling, "Coming to get you. Ten miles away." A little while later he's almost certain he hears that same voice chanting "Coming to get you. Six miles away."

He glances out his window, but the street outside is empty. And it's not the TV, he's sure. When he hears the voice again, this time calling "Coming to get you. Two miles away," he starts to get a bit freaked out. But there's no way he's going to go crying to his parents over some silly noise.

He lies in bed, waiting. And the voice comes again: "Coming to get you. One mile away." He's certain that he hears it, and equally certain that it's not real. The boy is torn. On the one hand he's frightened out of his wits, but on the other he doesn't want to look like a scared little baby, even to his parents.

And then it comes again. "Coming to get you. Outside the front door." The boy sits up straight in bed, but before he can react the voice sounds again: "Coming to get you. In your hallway."

The boy doesn't care about looking scared anymore. He wants his parents. He gets up and runs onto the landing. As he's going downstairs he hears the voice one last time: "Coming to get you. In your living room." And he freezes dead. The living room. Where his parents are. For a long time he's too scared to move, but at last he forces himself to continue downstairs.

"Mum," he calls, as he pushes open the living room door. "Dad?" He enters and stands staring at his parents. They lie slumped on the sofa, lifeless and blue.

The Mystery Caller

A teenage girl is home alone one night, watching TV and waiting for her mother and father to get back. It's getting late, and the girl's starting to get sleepy, when the phone rings. Thinking it must be her parents calling to tell her that they're on their way, she runs to pick it up.

But it's not her parents. In fact, all the girl hears at first is heavy breathing.

"Hello?" she says. "Hello? Who is this?" But there's no answer; just more breathing. Eventually the girl hangs up and, feeling a little uneasy, goes back to the TV.

The phone rings again. This time the voice on the other end is laughing at her. "Scared?" it hisses.

"Who is this?" demands the girl, but the only answer she receives is more laughter. She hangs up, checks that the front door is locked, and goes back to the TV.

The calls keep coming. More laughter. "You're home all alone," says the voice. "All alone." The girl can't ignore it anymore. She hangs up and calls the police, telling them what is happening. The police promise to trace the call next time he rings. Reassured, the girl hangs up.

Sure enough, the creep calls again, and after a minute or two of listening to him giggle down the line, she hangs up. Almost at once, the phone rings again, and she snatches it up. It's the police this time; they've traced the call.

"You've got to get out," cries the operator. "He's calling from inside the house."

And at that very moment, the upstairs light flicks on, and the girl hears footsteps on the landing above her head.

The Security Guard

A young man is working as a security guard at a telephone relay station. It's not a bad job, but it gets boring sometimes. It's particularly bad during the winter months, when it's freezing cold as well.

With nothing else to do during the long nights, the young guy takes to exploring the station. One night he finds the keys to a maintenance catwalk that runs along above a satellite dish. He goes exploring, and notices that at a certain point on the catwalk, right above the centre of the dish, it's actually quite warm.

He spends the night stood on the catwalk, bathing in the warmth from the dish. He feels fine in the morning, and nobody notices, and so he starts doing this every night.

For a while things are fine, but then Christmas rolls around, and the young man draws the short straw. He'll be working on Christmas night. He's reluctant, but it's double pay. What the hell, he figures. And so he brings along a deckchair and a couple of beers and sets himself up on the catwalk to wait out the long night.

What he doesn't realise, unfortunately, is that the reason that the area of the catwalk right above the dish is so warm is because it is the focus of the dish's microwave rays. And what he also doesn't realise is that in order to cope with the greater seasonal demand over Christmas, the dish is transmitting at ten times the usual intensity.

When the cleaner comes in at six the next morning the station is quiet. There's a smell like roast turkey, permeating the whole area. Thinking that it must be the young security guard preparing some kind of Christmas roast, he wanders through to the kitchen, but there's nobody there. It's only when he goes out onto the catwalk that he discovers the truth. There lies the young security guard in his deckchair. The beers he brought along have exploded. The man is dead, thin streams of smoke pouring from his eyes and ears and mouth.

The Ant Nest

A student is staying in a shared house with a couple of his friends. It's not the cleanest of places, and at the moment they happen to have quite a severe infestation of ants. One night, the student falls asleep on the sofa. He was drunk the night before, and so it's a fairly heavy sleep. When he finally wakes, he's aware of a slight tickling sensation in his ear, but nothing more than that.

Thereafter, his health starts to go downhill. He suffers from near-constant headaches, cannot concentrate on anything or sleep, and occasionally passes out cold. His friends persuade him to go to the hospital, where an x-ray is taken of his head.

Before they can get the results however, the student collapses in the waiting room. The nurses begin the process of reviving him, but it's looking bad. While he lies there unconscious to the world, the doctors go to retrieve his x-ray results. They see then that there's something very badly wrong. They have their suspicions, but with just an x-ray they cannot be sure.

The student, still unconscious and barely alive is hauled in for emergency surgery. They cut his head open and take a look inside, expecting to find a tumour or a cyst. What they find instead is a tiny nest of ants, the busy little creatures scurrying here and there, feasting hungrily on the grey matter of his brain.

The Face In The Tiles

It's the boy who sees it first. He and his mother live by themselves in an old Victorian house on the outskirts of the city. One night, as the boy is finishing his chores, he happens to glance down at the floor. What he sees makes him scream and drop the plate he's drying. Staring back up at him from the floor tile is the very definite impression of a face. It sits there, immobile, as if made from stone, drawn into a terrible grimace. It looks as if someone is trying to push their face through the kitchen's tiled floor from beneath.

The boy rushes from the kitchen to tell his mother, but by the time she comes to look the face has disappeared. She writes off the strange face as the boy's imagination. That is, until it happens again. It's the mother who sees it this time; a grim, stony face peering up through the floor. There one minute and gone the next.

It becomes a regular occurrence. Neither the mother nor the boy can come up with an explanation for it, and it scares them both terribly. The boy starts having nightmares and the mother begins losing weight. At last she decides that something must be done. She hires some builders to come in and pull up the floor. All day she and her son wait anxiously in the lounge while the men work at pulling up the old stone tiles. Finally, thinks the mother, the face will be gone.

But around an hour into the work, there's a cry from the kitchen. One of the workmen comes stumbling out, looking sick. Before she can stop him, the boy has darted into the kitchen to see what they've uncovered beneath the floor. The mother has no choice but to follow.

There, in the middle of the floor, surrounded by chipped and broken tiles is a large, dark, hollow space. It's clear that the builders must have broken through to it as they pulled up the floor. The boy's standing by the edge looking in, an expression of sick horror on his face. As she goes to pull her child back to safety the woman glances down into it too. At the bottom lies a huge mass of yellow-white bones. It's a mass grave; the pile's surmounted by the grinning, hollow shapes of a dozen human skulls.

The Chicken Burger

A woman heads into a fast food place and buys a chicken burger. Sitting down at the table, she bites into her meal . . . then immediately spits it out again. There's something sour in there. Looking at it, there's some kind of whitish sauce coating the chicken. She didn't order mayonnaise. The woman takes her burger back to the counter.

The boy behind the counter takes back the burger and gives her a refund. He's puzzled though; he knows they don't even have mayonnaise in at the moment. He saves the burger and shows it to his friend after their shift is over. The friend pokes at the white stuff and wrinkles his nose.

He's heard of this before, he explains. The chicken that went into the burger must have been sick; a tumour or a cyst or something. The blister survived the slaughtering process intact and made it into the burger. When the women bit into it, she must have burst the cyst. "Yep," says the friend, "that white stuff is chicken pus."

The Lost Golfer

A group of executives are holidaying on an exotic island, enjoying the sun, sea and daily rounds of golf. Each morning they head out onto the green to play a few rounds before the heat of the day is up. One morning, one of the executives is having a bad game; he's way behind, and he can see that everyone else is getting impatient waiting for him to catch up. He tells them all to go on ahead; he'll catch up with them at the end.

So they do. They head on off around the course and eventually end up back at the clubhouse, where they have a few drinks and wait for their colleague.

He never turns up.

Eventually, worried now, they head out to search for him on the golf course. They find his clubs and his bag, but no sign of the missing golfer. They notify the authorities, and a full search is begun.

The police discover an alligator languishing in the shade just off the green. The creatures are common in this tropical part of the world, but they rarely come as far inland as the golf course, and they're generally safe; if you keep your distance they won't bother you. All the same, they decide to check. A vet is called, and he knocks out the gator and cuts open its stomach.

The first thing they find is the guy's mobile phone. The second thing they find is what remains of his left arm. The man himself doesn't turn up until late that night, when the searching policemen stumble across his body, lying dead of blood loss in the forest off the green.

The Jar Of Honey

A group of explorers are searching for ancient tombs in the heart of Egypt. Things are going poorly; they've made no discoveries so far, and a few of them have fallen ill. After another day absent of valuable treasure they start the short trek back to camp. Unfortunately for them, a sandstorm whips up out of nowhere and they're forced to take shelter under the nearest rock they can find.

But, once the six men have dived into cover, they realise that it's not just a rock after all. A dark stone tunnel leads down into the earth. It's exactly what they've been searching for all this time. Excitedly, they switch on their torches and head down.

At the very bottom they emerge into what can only be a treasure room. Priceless artefacts are stacked about the walls. Ecstatic at their discovery, they begin to sort through the treasure. One of them calls the others over and shows them what he's found. It's a jar of honey, still perfectly preserved after all these years. Priceless.

However, they find that the sandstorm is not about to die down anytime soon. They're stuck in the treasure room until it dies down. And they know that these things can sometimes go on for days. Still, the sit down and try to wait it out.

Hours pass, then a day, then another. They have canteens of water, but no food, and they're getting increasingly hungry. It's then that one of them suggests that they dig into the preserved honey; after all, it should still be safe, and it is a desperate time.

The others agree, and the six explorers gather round and start to eat the sweet honey with their fingers. It's delicious; all the better because they're so hungry. One of them coughs suddenly, and fishes out a hair. He chucks it aside, too hungry to care.

When they're about halfway through the jar, one of them digs his fingers into the sticky stuff and feels something solid. He reaches right in and grabs it; something round and soft. Curious, he pulls it out. The other explorers stare in horror at the dripping thing in his hand. It is a baby, dried and shrivelled, but still preserved by the honey in which it sat for those hundreds of years.

The Breakdown

One dark night a boy and his girl are driving along out in the countryside. They're making good time when suddenly the car starts to sputter. The fuel light blinks. They roll to a stop at the side of the road, and try as he might the boy cannot get the engine to start again.

After a while of sitting there in the dark, the boy decides that he's going to go for help. The girl begs him not to go; after all they're out in the middle of nowhere, and he's almost bound to get lost. But the boy's already decided that he's not going to sit there all night waiting for someone to come along. So he gets out and heads off up the road to find a phone.

The girl sits on her own in the car. After a while she starts getting pretty nervous, being all alone like that. She locks the doors, but she's still scared. In the end she climbs into the back of the car, lays down across the seats and covers herself up with a coat. At least that way nobody will be able to see her.

After a long time, when it's starting to get light, the girl starts hearing noises. At first it's nothing much, a few night time rustlings, but then suddenly there's this terrible banging on the roof of the car. Someone's out there for sure, and they're hammering on the roof something crazy. The girl doesn't know what to do. She's terrified to look but she has to know what's making that noise.

Before she can make a decision either way, there's the wailing of a police siren. She sits up. Not far off there's a police cruiser, and an officer with a megaphone. He sees her, and he yells through the hailer for her to get quickly out of the car and walk towards him.

"Just walk towards me," he says, "and don't look back. Whatever you do, don't look back."

So, puzzled and scared, the girl gets out of the car and runs towards the officer. All the while she can hear the banging noise still going on behind her. But, like the officer said, she doesn't look back. At least, not until she's reached him. When she figures she's safe she turns around to see what it was making all that noise.

There's a man on the roof of her car. Long beard, filthy clothes, drooling and jumping up and down. Crazy as hell. And in one hand he's holding something which he's banging again and again on the roof of the car. She recognises the thing he's holding at once. She should do; it's her boyfriend's severed head.

The Bite

A young girl returns from her travels abroad in South America, where she's been spending her days on an adventure tour, hacking her way through a jungle. Her family are pleased to see her, but her mother points out a worrying sore on the girl's cheek.

"Oh, don't worry about that," says the girl, "It's just a little bite."

But it's not just a bite. Over the next few weeks the wound gets worse. The girl doesn't really "believe" in going to a doctor. Instead she tries various creams and herbal applications, even homeopathy. Most important of all, she restrains herself from scratching. Sooner or later it will get better, she thinks.

So for weeks and weeks she leaves it alone, applies her creams, refrains from scratching. The wound gets worse. It turns swollen and red, and it gets itchier than ever. At last, the girl cannot stand it any longer. She reaches up and gives it a good, satisfying scratch.

But then the satisfaction gives way to pain, and she feels something slick under her fingers. She stumbles to a mirror. Blood is dripping down the side of her face. Mixed in there with it are hundreds of bright white maggots, wriggling and tumbling eagerly from the swollen flesh of her cheek.

The Brewery Worker

An industrial brewery is working overtime to fill a particularly large order. All the workers are in, and the place is busier than it's ever been. The machines are humming, the tanks churning. The order's due and the trucks are waiting to go out.

At last the order is complete and the trucks are loaded. Everything's signed off and the job is done. Most of the workers head off home, exhausted, leaving just the clean-up crew to drain the remaining tanks and close up the machines for the night.

It's the line manager who first notices that something's wrong. One of the worker's hasn't signed out, but he's not part of the cleanup crew, and he's nowhere to be found. Even as he's checking with the guy's co-workers, the line manager receives a concerned call from the missing guy's wife.

"Where is he?" she asks. "He should have been home an hour ago."

Seriously worried now, the line manager starts searching the plant. He doesn't need to, though. One of the workmen comes running up to tell him. The missing guy has been found, lying drowned at the bottom of the tank. He must have fallen in hours ago, at the beginning of the shift when there were too few people around to notice.

Horrified, the line manager quickly takes control of the situation. The police are called, and he runs to the boss's office to initiate a recall. It's too late. The shipment's already been transferred, and their bottles are mixed in with all the others, on their way across the country to a thousand different stores.

The Vanishing Hitchhiker

A doctor is driving home from work one night along a deserted highway. At the side of the road the doctor sees a lost-looking girl, dressed in a blue coat. She's hitchhiking. Taking pity, the doctor stops and picks her up. The front seat is taken up by his briefcase and medical bag, so the girl clambers into the back.

"Where are you headed?" he asks her. She tells him her address. It's not a big detour, and so the doctor decides he'll take her all the way.

"What are you doing out here all on your own?" he asks as he drives, but the girl just shakes her head.

"It's a long story," she says. The doctor figures that she doesn't want to talk about it, and so he doesn't press the issue. He drives all the way to the address she gave, then pulls up at the side of the road.

"Well," he says, turning around. "Here we are."

To his surprise, the girl is gone. All that remains is her blue coat, folded neatly on the back seat. Now the doctor knows it would be impossible for her to leave the car without him noticing, but what other explanation can there be? Maybe she just slipped out quickly and ran off? Whatever happened, she forgot her coat. The Doctor grabs it off the back seat and walks up to the door where the girl said she lived. He rings the bell.

The door is eventually opened by an old, grey-haired man. The doctor holds out the coat and explains what has happened, but halfway through his explanation the man starts shaking his head.

"What's wrong?" asks the doctor.

The man sighs. "The girl you picked up was my daughter, yes," he says. "And that is her coat. This has happened before, too many times. You see, my daughter is dead. She died three years ago. She was hit by a car at the very place where you picked her up."

The Blind Man

One day, not long after the end of World War Two, a young girl meets a blind man in the street. They get to talking, and after a while the blind man asks the girl if she could possibly do a favour for him. He needs a letter delivered by hand to an address in the town, but is having difficulty finding his way around. Perhaps she could deliver it for him?

Of course, the girl agrees. She takes the letter and sets off, but as she's about to leave the square she looks back and sees the blind man making his was hurriedly away through the crowd. Stranger still, he's now moving completely without the aid of his cane.

Suspicious, the girl takes the letter to the police. Several officers head to the address on the envelope. The door is opened by a grey-haired man who, on seeing the police at his door, dives past them and tries to make a run for it. He is arrested, and the police proceed to search the house.

Inside, in the basement, they discover an ice-box filled with bags of shredded meat. Lots of it. Is the man a butcher? A hunter? They burrow deeper into the ice-box. There at the bottom, wrapped in greaseproof paper is the body of a young girl.

It turns out the guy was a trader in human meat. He's taken away to jail. It's only later on that one of the officers thinks to open the envelope that the young girl gave them, the one that tipped them off in the first place. He slits it open. Inside is a handwritten note, saying simply: "This is the last one I'll deliver to you this week. Make her last."

The Cactus

The friend of a young woman has just returned from a trip overseas, and has brought with her a collection of gifts. The friend knows that the woman is very interested in plants and botany, and so she's made a special effort and brought the woman a rare type of cactus. Soon after her return they meet up, and the woman is delighted with her gift. She places it proudly on the mantelpiece.

A few weeks pass. The woman duly looks after her new cactus, watering it occasionally, and making sure it gets enough sun to grow. Then one day she notices something strange about it. She's not entirely certain, but it looks as though the skin of the cactus is moving very slightly. It's bulging out in some places, shifting.

Worried, the woman calls up her friend and tells her what she saw. The friend is deeply alarmed. "I've heard of this happening before," she tells the woman. "You've got to get it out of the house, quickly."

The woman wastes no time. She grabs the cactus and carries it outside. She's only just set it down in her garden when the plant bursts open. Something shiny and black pours out in a tide. At first it looks like liquid, but then the woman sees that it's moving, and she realises that it is in fact thousands and thousands of tiny scorpions.

The Sewer Dog

A Japanese family go on holiday one summer by the coast. While there they encounter a small, hairy old stray dog, which seems to take a particular liking to them. The children feed it scraps and it follows them around, almost like a pet. When the time came to go home, the children beg to be allowed to keep it. Reluctantly, the parents agree.

They take the little dog home in a cardboard box, give it a bath and brush its fur. They feed it, and that night let it sleep with the kids on the foot of the bed. At first it seems to be the perfect pet.

But a couple of days later the mother, who works from home, notices the animal behaving strangely. To her alarm she sees that it is drooling. Its eyes are wild, and it's turning around in distressed little circles. She scoops it back into its box and drives it to the vet's.

There, the vet gives it a thorough examination. He asks the woman where she got the animal.

"It was a stray," she tells him. "We adopted it. Please tell me what's wrong with him."

The vet looks at her sceptically. "First of all," he says, "it's rabid. It'll have to be put down. And second of all, it's not a dog at all. This, madam, is a sewer rat."

The Custard Powder

The Second World War is in full swing and food is in scarce supply. A British family are struggling to get by, and so write to their American uncle, asking for a little helping hand. No problem, he writes back, and thereafter, every few weeks a food parcel arrives at their door. There's plenty of good food to help them get by in this parcel, but the special favourite among the kids is the small tin full of custard powder that their uncle always makes sure to include. It's delicious stuff, and hard to find in wartime, and every time a parcel arrives the children are thrilled to know that they'll be having custard for desert that night.

The mother writes back to the uncle thanking him, and telling him how much the children love the custard powder. It's two weeks before the reply arrives, and when it does it's in the form of a small, ordinary-looking box. She opens it up to discover that it's full of a whitish powder--custard powder, she guesses, although the box isn't labelled. The uncle must have received her letter saying how much the children loved the stuff and decided to send an extra box as a special treat between food parcels.

That night she cooks up the custard as usual, but it smells bad. It's the wrong colour too, and when she presents it to the children they barely manage a few spoonfuls before they push their plates away. Maybe it went bad in transit somehow, she thinks. Sadly, she throws the rest of the spoiled powder away.

Two days later she receives a letter. With it is an explanatory note from the post office. It was supposed to be delivered to her along with the parcel she received a few days back, but it got separated in handling. Puzzled, she opens the envelope and starts to read.

It turns out that her uncle has died of a heart attack. As per his wishes, he was cremated and his remains shipped back to his relatives in England. The parcel, explains the letter, contained the old man's ashes.

The Choking Doberman

A woman returns home from work one day to find her pet Doberman sitting on the doorstep, apparently choking. Deeply concerned, she loads the wheezing animal into her car and drives quickly to a vets. After a quick inspection the vet there informs her that there's some kind of obstruction in the dog's throat. It will require surgery to remove.

While the vet books the dog in for surgery, the woman drives back home. She's concerned about her dog; what could he possibly have been choking on?

When she returns the phone is ringing. She picks up, and hears the voice of the vet. "Listen," he tells her, "I think you better call the police." He tells her that in the dog's throat he found three severed human fingers. Even as he says this the woman notices something; the hall carpet is spotted with a thin trail of blood. The trail leads from the doorstep, where she found her dog, up to the bedroom. But whose blood? And whose fingers? She lives alone.

Quickly, the woman leaves the house and calls the cops from her mobile. They race to her house and head inside. A minute later they're out again. This time they're dragging a man in a leather jacket with a stocking over his head. He's cradling a hand which is missing half its digits.

"Found him," says one cop, "He was hiding in your bedroom."

The Barrel Of Rum

A wealthy family have recently moved into a rather large old house. Left behind in the cellar they come across a number of massive oak barrels. The father is all set to have them chopped up and thrown out, but as he makes a quick inspection he discovers that one is still full. Well, he figures, why waste a good thing. He has the barrel tapped.

The whole family gather round as he extracts the first of the liquid from the barrel. It is amber-coloured, and gives off a strong fruity smell. After a thorough inspection, the father has a taste. "It's rum," he exclaims in delight.

And so the family start to enjoy their happy find. It lasts for months, through puddings, after-dinner drinks, nightcaps. At last, after several months, the barrel is all but empty, and the father sadly decides that it's time for it to be broken up and taken away like all the others. To save time and money he decides that he'll do the job himself.

Grabbing a hatchet, he sets about dismantling the barrel. It's a struggle to begin with, but eventually he manages to stave in the top. Peering down into the murky depths he sees something strange. At first he cannot distinguish what it is; some large and lumpy shape sitting at an angle at the bottom of the barrel. He goes to fetch a torch, and shines it down into the dark. What he sees almost makes him sick with disgust. The lumpy thing is a dead body, perfectly preserved after years left floating in the rum.

The Severed Arm

A young medical student is living in halls at her university, along with a bunch of other doctors-in-training. For one reason or another, this young nurse is not particularly popular. She's always bitching and arguing, and her flatmates have had enough of it. One night, they decide to sort her out. They'll play a trick on her, a nasty one. Maybe it'll scare her into being a bit nicer, or maybe it'll just scare her. Her flatmates don't really care; they're so sick of her by now that they just want some payback.

So, they get in touch with one of their friends who's doing work experience in a surgery. The friend agrees to secretly fetch them the severed arm of one of the patients at the surgery. Normally that kind of stuff would be incinerated, but the friend reckons she can sneak it out.

She does. Arriving back one night she presents to them a severed arm in a cooler bag.

So the flatmates hide away their surprise gift and wait for their young victim to get back home. She arrives, and is as bitchy and unpleasant as usual. They wait until she turns in, then quietly sneak into her room and place the arm beside her on the bed. They sneak out again. Now all the remains is for them to wait until the morning.

The next day they're all up extra early. They wait around outside her room, expecting any second to hear the girl's screams as she discovers the gruesome present. But there's nothing. They wait and wait, but even long after the time when she'd usually be up, there's not a sound from her room.

Getting worried now, they knock on her door. When there's no reply, they let themselves in. She's awake all right, and she's discovered the arm. But now her hair has turned pure white, and she's sitting on the edge of the bed with the severed limb in her hands, shaking softly. She looks insane, shocked out of her mind. Eyes wide open, she's chewing on the arm.

The Clown Statue

A rich couple are going out for an evening, leaving their young baby boy in the care of a teenage girl from the neighbourhood, who has offered to babysit. She turns up early and they greet her at the door.

"The baby is asleep upstairs," they tell her, "and you can help yourself to anything from the fridge." She looks like a pretty capable young girl, and so the couple head off to their restaurant without any worries.

Halfway through the meal however, the man receives a call. It's the babysitter. "I'm having trouble getting him to sleep," she says. "Would it be all right to move the clown statue out of the nursery, only I think it's upsetting him."

"Clown statue?" says the man. "We don't own a clown statue."

"Oh," says the girl, "but it's right by his bed. . ."

The man realises that something is wrong. He's about to tell the babysitter to take the baby and get out of the house, but then the line goes dead. He redials frantically, but gets nothing. He and his wife interrupt their meal, jump into the car and drive back home. By the time they arrive the house is silent. The babysitter lies limp on the sofa, her throat slit with a carving knife. The baby is nowhere to be found.

The Envelope

A woman was posting a letter one day, and happened to cut her tongue on the envelope. It hurt, but she thought no more about it until a couple of days later, when the cut began to swell. It was painful too. Hoping that it was nothing more than a passing infection, the woman delayed going to her doctor. By the time she finally gave in and made an appointment, the swelling was the size of the tip of her thumb, and she could barely eat.

The doctor took one look at the swelling and pronounced it infected. Deciding to treat it immediately, he applied some topical anaesthetic, and then reopened the cut with a scalpel. To his horror, out of the flesh of the woman's tongue came tumbling a small but living cockroach.

It took a while and a lot of questions to piece together what had happened. The envelope the woman used had been resting in a drawer for years before she got to it. In that time a cockroach must have happened by and laid its eggs there. They became stuck to the envelope glue, and didn't germinate until they found themselves in the warm, wet environment of the woman's tongue. Ever since she cut herself with the envelope, the roach had been there, buried, growing like a seed about to sprout.

The Hook In The Door

One night, a young guy and his girl are out in his car. They're stopped by the side of the road right out in the countryside, necking. They've got the radio on low, to give a bit of atmosphere. It's dark outside, but they're pretty cosy inside the car. Everything's looking good.

But then the song on the radio cuts out. It's a special announcement. The girl sits up to listen.

"Oh," says the guy, "give me a break."

But she frowns at him. "Listen." And so, rolling his eyes, he listens.

There's been a prison breakout, says the announcer. "A serial killer has escaped and is now being hunted by police in the local area." Back before he was put away, says the announcer, this man killed twenty people with a butcher's hook. "If you see him, contact police immediately."

Announcement over. The music comes back on, but suddenly the girl's no longer in the mood. She's nervous now. Wide-eyed she stares at the guy. "Listen," she says sharply, "what was that?"

"What was what?"

"I thought I heard something. A scratching noise."

"You're imagining things," he says, "Now come on."

But the girl's freaked out now. She pushes the guy away. "Listen," she says, "maybe we should get going." And whatever protests he throws up the guy cannot calm her down. She insists. She's terrified. She just wants to get home. Frustrated, the guy throws the car into gear and screeches off.

It's only when they get back to her house that they see. It only then that they understand what was making that scratching noise: caught on the handle of the driver's side door is a rusty and bloodstained butcher's hook.