Nightmare Fuel: A Collection of 50 Horror Stories

Watch

The river may not have looked wide, but it was certainly deep. A wicked boatman was ferrying a thief boat across the river. One day, a man from the city crossed the river in his boat, and took off his luxurious mechanical watch to wind it up. The boatman noticed this and feeling envious, he jumped off the boat to join the city man. The boat drifted away, and the city man panicked. The boatman seized this opportunity to attack and kill the city man, tying him to a big stone and throwing him into the river. The wicked boatman then put on the city man's watch and continued to ferry people across the river, using the corpses of his victims as a means of transportation.

Several days later, the boatman accidentally dropped the watch into the river and desperately tried to retrieve it. He couldn't find the watch, but instead, he found the corpse of the city man. Twelve years later, the boatman stopped ferrying and spent his days fishing in the river. On one such day, he fished out a metal object that turned out to be the very same watch he had dropped into the river years ago. To his surprise, the watch was still ticking. He wondered how it could still be functioning after all these years when suddenly, the head of the city man popped out of the water. The man's face was pale, but he smiled and said, "I wind it up underwater every day!