SCARY STORIES OF GHASTLY HORROR FOR YOU TO READ AND SHARE

THE FUNHOUSE

Brian was crazy about the carnival. It came to his town at the middle of every summer and he never missed a year he hadn't gone to it. He knew every one of its rides and attractions by heart: the Ferris wheel, the Merry Go Round Carousel, the Tilt a Whirl, the Octopus, the Scrambler, the Bumper Cars, the Gypsy Fortuneteller, the shooting gallery, throw a dart and get a poster game, even the freak show. But Brian's favorite attraction was the funhouse.

He could always spot it from the midway: a black building that looked like a clutter of giant shoe boxes of different sizes lying end to end. The weather-beaten black exterior was decorated with garish drawings of victims being chased by all sorts of creatures into the mouth of Hell. There was a drawing of a graveyard, populated by ghouls and decaying corpses feasting on the rotting remains of the freshly dead. The monsters were painted in slashes of bright red, green, and black that seemed to glow brighter than any of the midway lights. The people being chased away looked like they were screaming at the top of their lungs.

Brian liked nothing more than to be one of those people. He knew the layout of the funhouse by heart, and had for some time.

But this year, something new had been added.

The end of the funhouse walk was lit by a solitary overhead strobe light bulb. Brian had spied a flutter of movement near the bulb. He had nearly reached the hall's end when he heard a loud creak, and something bulky dropped down from the ceiling. The light flared bright with shocking intensity, and Brian found himself standing face to face with a corpse dangling from the end of a noose. Hands slack at the sides suddenly reached up to grab him.

AWESOME!

Brian thought that he might be able to convince some friends to come and see the thing, before he remembered that tonight was the last night of the carnival.

Then, he thought about how cool it would be to actually steal the corpse. He could just imagine the looks on his friends faces when they walked into his bedroom and saw a corpse hanging from the inside of his door!

WICKED!

Brian was scheming so hard that he didn't look where he was going on his way out and nearly tumbled over the man who ran the funhouse. The guy was a freak too. With misshapen muscular limbs and had a hump on his back that threw his whole posture out of alignment. The guy fixed him with an evil look. He was gargoyle-faced.

Brian knew most of the carnival workers But he had never seen this man before. He was as new as the corpse in the funhouse-and about as ugly! From the look the guy gave him, it seemed as though he knew that Brian was thinking he belonged inside with the rest of the horrors. Brian felt a tingle of fear until the creep turned back to taking tickets from the next group of funhouse victims.

Brian walked the fairgrounds for a few hours, killing time while he waited for the carnival to close. All the while, his thoughts were on the funhouse and how he might steal the dummy.

At midnight, a voice came over the public speaker system telling the crowd that the carnival was closing down, and to please start heading home. Now was Brian's chance. When he'd left the funhouse, he'd seen the back door: just a loosely hanging piece of black canvas. It would be a cinch to sneak inside during the confusion of everyone leaving the fairgrounds. He could have the dummy in his hands in a few minutes and take it out through the front gates with him. Lots of other people were carrying huge stuffed animals, and no one would suspect that the dummy wasn't something he'd won at one of the games. The freaky creep that ran the funhouse probably wouldn't know that his dummy was missing until the next town they set up in-and then it would be too late for them to come back looking for it.