“I hope a bear eats her.”

After finishing The Slithering Corpse & Other Sinister Stories I had to jump right into the next Twisted Tales collection, The Dripping Head & Other Gruesome Stories. Neither collection is quite as solid as Scary Stories for Sleep-Overs, and in fact both feel like the runners-up lists for those anthologies–the stories that didn’t quite make the grade. But Twisted Tales is still a lot of fun and will definitely scratch your spook itch if you’re a young reader itching for spooks.

Like the previous volume, The Dripping Head & Others leans hard into shock value rather than clever twists. But the tales in this volume don’t veer off into left field like many of the stories in the other one, and as a result they feel just a bit more polished. Nearly all of them ended in a satisfactory way that didn’t leave me scratching my head.

You should still read The Slithering Corpse & Others, though.

This volume is a lot gorier, too, if geysers of blood and mangled faces are your bread and butter. I haven’t read a YA book this violent since Paul Zindel’s Loch.

I think the Twisted Tales stories are shorter than those found in Sleep-Overs, actually, which explains why they aren’t quite as fleshed out. They tend to get right to the point, so a lot of sections feel rushed or rely on “tell, don’t show.” But Welch doesn’t miss a beat when atmosphere and dread counts, and the key scenes take their time making your skin crawl.

The artwork is still provided by Scott Fike, with similar mixed results and a similar Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark vibe. Some illustrations are scary and awesome, and others just look like school talent show fare. The cover for this volume is definitely not as impressive as its sister volume, although the color palette is a more eye pleasing mix of black, red, and green.

If you only read one Twisted Tales book, either one will do, but I think this one bothered my inner storyteller a lot less, and contains a lot of fun, interesting, and downright nightmarish ideas. Several stories feature monsters and villains that are bursting with character and personality, not simply forces of nature to be feared and avoided.

As usual, this is the part where I pick each story to pieces while adding my own two cents, so if you don’t want spoilers, go grab a copy of this book and read it yourself first. If you agree or disagree with my takes, or the morals I inject into each one, post a comment and get a discussion going!

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The Dripping Head

SUMMARY: While making a mess of a new shipment at his parents’ antique store, Ryan discovers a small and suspiciously padlocked journal that piques his interest. It is part of a lot they received from the family of a man who recently passed away in Malaysia. Ryan’s mother cuts the journal open for him, and they both take note of the dedication hand-written on the inside cover: “For Mona.” Ryan proceeds to read the man’s life story, including the tragedy of his wife who died giving birth to their child, and shortly thereafter became a pananngga lan–a flying Malay vampire that consists of a disembodied head with its organs trailing behind it. The monster was sealed away in a tomb after a long battle, and the author of the journal says that as long as Mona’s name is locked away, so too is the monster.

Little does Ryan know, the moment he read the dedication, the pananngga lan awoke. Wracked with hunger and madness, it escapes its tomb and takes flight, seeking the idiot who brought it back to life. It trails Ryan all the way to the antique shop storeroom, where his parents have left him alone, and Ryan has left the window open. The unfortunate boy gets a brief, horrifying glimpse of the creature setting upon him before careening into mind-numbing insanity himself.

MY THOUGHTS: I love this story. It’s short and simple, and the final image of the insane undead woman’s face leering at the boy from the open window just before he loses his mind is the stuff of nightmares. Great opener for the anthology as a whole, and the only real downer is the silly illustration of the monster that accompanies it, which does no justice to whatever horrible image your own imagination cooks up while reading it. I wish they’d instead used an image of the old padlocked journal, or an oblivious Ryan with a creepy shadow looming over him.

The highlight of this story is the perspective jumping between the oblivious Ryan and the raging, unearthly thing he’s just awoken. Mona’s conscious existence is pure torture, and only by killing and eating her summoner can she return to her eternal rest. It’s a great look into the mentality of the kind of monster you find in these stories, and it makes you fear, loathe, and pity the monster.

MORAL: If it’s locked, leave it that way.

~

The Stranger

SUMMARY: Dora and her family are startled by a news story about a 100-car pileup on the freeway that killed an untold number of people. The story leaves Dora’s head fuzzy, as if it reminds her of something she can’t put her finger on. The next day at school Dora notices a strange pale man in a dark coat stalking her, but nobody else ever seems to see him: he always vanishes when she tries to draw attention to him.

On the way home from the movies with her family, Dora sees the man again, this time standing in the middle of the road. Again only Dora seems to see him, and just as the car is about to run him over, she returns to the present…to the 100-car pileup, where she and her family sit dead or dying in one of the many crumpled cars. Everything she just witnessed had been her final death visions, as the pale man finally comes to collect her soul and take it to the afterlife.

MY THOUGHTS: This one isn’t bad, and if you’ve never read a story like this before it’s a decent take on the “he/she was dead the whole time” horror story trope which has been used many times since Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” I’m so familiar with the premise that I saw the ending coming by the end of the first paragraph. Not the best version of this trope I’ve ever seen, but it’s not the worst, either.

MORAL: Stay off the freeway.

~

School Games

SUMMARY: Brent, Chunk, Patrick, and Dan take to the monkey bars on the playground after school every day for a quick bout of Lone Survivor, where they hang from the monkey bars and use their feet to knock their opponents to the sand below. Each time they play, they put a new spin on the game to make it interesting, but this time they’re bored and are struggling with ways to reinvent their game. Patrick, the most imaginative member of the group, proposes that a giant salamander lurks under the sand beneath the monkey bars, and every hundred years or so it awakens and hungers for flesh. In short, if you fall off the bars, you have to bury yourself in the sand and play dead until the game is over.

Ironically, Patrick is the first to fall…and is promptly mauled and eaten alive by the salamander he just made up. Now the remaining three boys are trapped on top of the monkey bars, trying desperately to think of a way to get to the safety of the nearby asphalt. Dan is bitten in half during one attempt, leaving Brent and Chunk to cook up their own plan: imagining the salamander away. The plan works, and they make it to the street without being eaten…until Brent remarks how grateful he is that the monster didn’t have legs to chase them with, which it immediately grows.

MY THOUGHTS: I’m fond of this weird little tale. The other Twisted Tales featured a number of stories with a solid start and an unfitting ending that came out of left field. This one’s whole premise comes out of left field, and runs with it in an entertaining and frightening way. And it ends on a humorous note that suits the story perfectly: there’s really no better way to end it.

MORAL: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

~

On the Radio

SUMMARY: Hallie’s dad collects and fixes old radios. Any he can’t fix get dumped in the garage. His latest acquisition, a handsome and immaculate two-foot-tall set, disappoints him when it refuses to work, so he leaves it in the garage. Strangely, when Hallie turns the dial, it suddenly comes to life in the middle of an episode of a melodramatic soap opera about a young girl who lost her eyesight and voice in a car accident. The radio only works for Hallie, even when not plugged in, and no one believes her when she says it’s working. She finds herself strangely obsessed with the radio drama and tunes in on a daily basis.

The more she listens to the program, though, the raspier her voice gets, as if she’s coming down with a cold. One night she has a vivid dream about the disabled girl’s grandfather promising she’ll get better, shortly before grabbing Hallie and threatening her to help. The next time Hallie tunes in, she hears the young girl speak for the first time…with the now mute Hallie’s voice! And now the girl’s vision is beginning to clear up, too, just as Hallie’s own vision begins to fade…

MY THOUGHTS: The story’s composition is a bit rushed, and I can’t help feel that it would be even more effective if Welch had had the page count to take his time a little more to develop everything and draw out the tension. But even in its bite-sized state, the story is chilling and a lot of fun, and would have been a nice addition to the Sleep-Overs series if Welch had written a second outing. The dream with the frantic grandpa especially freaked me out.

MORAL: Go outside once in a while.

~

Talk to the Animals

SUMMARY: Todd and Curtis join a school field trip to the local zoo, which is facing permanent closure due to lack of funds. They feel bad about the zoo’s imminent demise, but rather than, I don’t know, starting a fundraiser, they instead plan to sneak in after it closes and explore the exhibits at night, so they can tell the story of their adventure for years. They have no trouble sneaking in that night, and while trying to decide where to go first, they make a pit stop at the animal hospital.

As they sneak around the abandoned hospital, they witness a doctor emerging from a trapdoor in the floor tiles, and wait for him to leave before climbing down the trapdoor to see what sort of hidden wonderland lies beneath. There they discover hideous animal-human hybrids that make such an ungodly racket that the mad doctor who created them returns to add the boys to his menagerie.

MY THOUGHTS: Stands out to me as the weakest of the anthology. The sequence where the boys explore the zoo late at night is moody indeed, but the payoff better suits a Mighty Max scenario than a scary story anthology. I was hoping for something more, but then again, I’m not sure where else it could have gone. I think the mad doctor was trying to make animals out of humans because of the lack of funds, but surely genetic engineering costs far more money and resources than scooping up elephant poop.

MORAL: Zoos are gross.

~

Mirror Image

SUMMARY: It is the grand opening of the Wonders of the World Carnival, and Loren is joining her friends Natalie and Stephanie for their last hurrah before she moves away and is forced to start her life over. The fun house is closed for cleaning, so the girls head for the roller coasters and other rides. During their excursion they notice a creepy carnie keeps stalking them (presumably, anyway: it’s never actually confirmed), and in a desperate attempt to avoid him they duck into the closed down funhouse.

While wandering the hall of distorted mirrors, the girls argue about whether they were overreacting. When Natalie wanders off and never comes back, Loren and Stephanie suspect that their stalker has caught her and killed her, especially after they find the trail of blood leading to one of the mirrors. Loren’s suspicions are incorrect, however, and she soon discovers the reason the funhouse was closed for cleaning: namely the thing that lurks in the mirrors, mauling and devouring unsuspecting carnival patrons.

MY THOUGHTS: It’s weird, but I like it. The creepy stalker dude is a great red herring, and that he inadvertently chases the girls into an even worse situation is delightfully ironic. I don’t know if the thing in the mirrors is the best conclusion for this tale, but it’s definitely scary, and I like that it ends on Loren tensely awaiting her inevitable doom. We don’t see the monster get her. We don’t need to.

This actually plays out a bit like “A Light at the End of the Tunnel” in the previous Twisted Tales, where the ending came completely out of left field. Somehow what didn’t work in that story, actually works in this one. It helps that a sense of mystery and eeriness is built up around the hall of mirrors, including the fact that the whole fun house is closed for unexplained cleaning-related reasons. I have to wonder if someone witnessed a killing or two and quietly closed the attraction until they could figure out what to do about it.

That might have made an even better story, actually. Something like “The Crate” from Creepshow, but with a funhouse instead of a crate.

MORAL: Don’t judge a book by its creepy cover…?

~

Crack Up There

SUMMARY: The TV room in Eugene’s house has had a crack in the upper corner for years, and he never thought much about it until his sister Cindy finally got her own room. Now every night the crack glows and a long, black, worm-like tentacle slithers out of it, groping around his room for something to eat. Sealing the crack with plaster doesn’t keep it away, and nobody takes Eugene’s fear and loathing of the crack seriously, even after his hamster mysteriously disappears.

When Eugene and Cindy are forced to swap rooms so the parents can actually get some sleep, Eugene is at once relieved to get a respite from the crack and its inhabitant, and scared for his sister taking his place. She seems perfectly fine the next morning, though, and begins to have doubts about the whole thing. Maybe it only wants him? Maybe he really is going crazy? When he tries to sleep in his own room again, however, he is shocked to see a giant black finger poking through the crack now, and as he flees the room, he runs into “Cindy” in the hallway, whose tentacles grapple and devour him.

MY THOUGHTS: It’s a spooky cover of the old “monster under the bed” cliche, and it’s not altogether a bad one. Welch wrote a similar story for Sleep-Overs that is far more effective, called “Shadow Play,” which is one of my favorites from that anthology. The bit with the sister was a fun twist: I’d fully expected her to be missing the next morning.

MORAL: Listen to your kids.

~

A Jarring Experience

SUMMARY: Gary wants to go see the mummy exhibit, but the tour guide is only taking his class to see the boring exhibits. Teachers never seem to let their students look at the things they actually want to look at or do the things they want to do (and frankly, I concur). During his mopefest he meets and befriends Alex, a weird mop-headed kid who shares his interest in mummies and ancient civilizations. Alex helps Gary hatch a scheme to ditch his tour group via pulling the fire alarm, and explore the supposedly haunted Egyptian exhibit without the hindrance of dullard grownups!

The plan works, but while Gary explains the gruesome mummification process (organs are removed from the body before embalming and placed in canopic jars like the ones on display), the boys are caught and chastised by a museum guard…who is promptly dragged into a coffin and devoured by a living mummy. Before Gary can compute the horrific sight he’s just witnessed, Alex reveals that he was the first mummy to regain his fleshy form by eating museum patrons and placing their organs in his own jars. He then proceeds to demonstrate on Gary.

MY THOUGHTS: This one is pretty fun, too, and not just because I’ve been nerdy for Egyptology since childhood. Alex is a devious little monster, going as far as faking ignorance of the mummification process and even acting grossed out by it, playing up to Gary’s vanity as an Egyptology snob just to lure him into a trap. The final scene of Alex casually preparing to harvest Gary’s gooey bits for himself is terrific: it makes you shudder, but also makes you smile just a little bit.

MORAL: Stick with your tour group.

~

The Write Stuff

SUMMARY: Molly is staying with her Uncle Steve and Aunt Joyce for three weeks while her parents are on a European excursion. Uncle Steve is a professional author and Molly loves hearing about the weird and scary stories he cranks out for publication. This particular night however, as Molly drifts off to sleep, she wakes in a deserted nightmare version of Uncle Steve’s house floating in a black void of nothingness. Everywhere she turns, she runs into a horrible, baffling monster of some kind, which sets upon her before abruptly vanishing.

It turns out Uncle Steve’s writing is influencing the dream world Molly has found herself trapped in. As Uncle Steve struggles and revises his manuscript, the monster in Molly’s nightmare house changes, attacks, and abruptly ceases to exist. When Uncle Steve settles on a smoke monster that smothers people, Molly takes one look at the new monster as it slithers toward her and writes it off as another false alarm. Sadly, this time it’s not. Uncle Steve is committing to this draft.

MY THOUGHTS: While this story is kind of weak, the way the premise is handled is delightful. Molly starts off understandably scared and horrified by her surroundings, and by the inexplicable monsters popping up everywhere. By the time she gets to Monster #3 she’s become jaded and resigned, and doesn’t put up a fight, which hilariously results in her actual death.

There’s no explanation given for her uncle’s writing influencing Molly’s fate, as far as I can see. She just goes to sleep during his writing session and wakes up in her own personal hell. Does this normally happen at Uncle Steve’s house? Was it the Witching Hour? Who knows. It stands on weak, wobbly legs, but the story is still a fun read, even if I think it should have just ended on Uncle Steve declaring his most recent revision is the real deal. We didn’t need to see Molly’s fate at all. It would have been funnier if it were simply implied by Uncle Steve’s commitment to the new monster.

The drawing for this story is an amazing depiction of a genie-like smoke demon emerging from the fireplace and smothering poor Molly. It’s a sight to behold.

MORAL: Don’t hang out with creative types.

~

A Family Outing

SUMMARY: Nicholas’s family outing in the snowy wilderness with Mom, Dad, and his sister Lynn takes a turn for the disastrous when the fog rolls in as thick as cotton. Dad had been planning this excursion for months, and everyone is disappointed to have to hike back home on the second day…but at the same time, nobody’s crazy enough to spend another night in such chilly weather, where the fog is so thick you can’t see five feet ahead of you.

The family hikes close together in single file so that nobody strays from the group. Nicholas takes up the rear, following his sister’s shape in the fog, which he loses more than once when he carelessly stops to tie his bootlaces. After an abysmally long hike, Lynn suddenly stops and waits for Nicholas to catch up…only for him to realize the shape he’s been following is a hungry wendigo, using mimicry to lead him on a detour away from his family.

MY THOUGHTS: I think A Family Outing scared me more than any of the others. It takes its time establishing the rapport between the family members, and steeping you in the ambience of the foggy mountains. The wendigo reveal is absolutely chilling and leaves you wondering how long he’s been following the thing as it imitated his sister’s voice. It probably led him a mile down the wrong road while his oblivious family hiked on, never the wiser.

The story doesn’t actually end there. It goes on a bit further, but I half-wonder if it should have wrapped with that reveal instead of the gory finale we actually get. Either way, between the atmosphere and the scares, this one’s a winner. There’s not too much buildup to the wendigos themselves apart from a brief sentence about Nicholas trying to scare his sister with tales about mountain demons, but the story takes its time, and it pays off.

MORAL: Don’t leave the house. A popular moral from the first Twisted Tales!

~

Photo Finish

SUMMARY: Amy’s grandpa has just passed away to an unexplained wasting disease, and now her family is sorting through the belongings he’s left behind. Among them is an old fashioned Polaroid camera that spits out finished photos after you take them, a treasure Amy is excited to claim as her own. Immediately she sets about taking selfies with it, and photographing her classmates at school, while occasionally feeling guilty about enjoying her dead grandpa’s camera so much.

Soon she begins to fall ill to the same disease as her grandpa: she wastes away, her limbs twisting into hideous shapes that leave her bedridden and paralyzed, barely able to speak. One day an argument between the unwitting parents yields a horrifying revelation for Amy: many other kids and faculty at her school have come down with the same affliction…in other words, everyone she photographed with her new camera. Amy desperately calls on an unafflicted classmate, and before her jaws become paralyzed and useless, she pleads with her to burn all the photos, thinking it will release everyone from the curse. The classmate reluctantly obliges…and causes Amy and all her photographed victims to burst into flames.

MY THOUGHTS: This story would fit perfectly in a Junji Ito horror anthology. It’s just the right balance of horrifying and bonkers. We never learn why the camera is cursed. Maybe sometimes you never get all the answers, although we sure get an answer to why Grandpa checked out in such a gruesome manner. I am left wondering why there isn’t widespread news about this strange wasting disease, though. Maybe Grandpa was a landscape photographer.

MORAL: Lay off the selfies.