You stand before a deep tunnel. The beam of your flashlight barely penetrates the darkness beyond the opening. You cannot know what secrets—or dangers—lie within, but you are curious, and so, cautiously, you enter. At first you can still see the last rays of sunlight behind you, but soon the pathway begins to split and twist. There is scratching movement in the shadows around you, whispering voices in a language you cannot understand. The walls close in, something draws near. You want to turn and run but can no longer remember which path leads back.
And that’s when your flashlight goes out.
Like this tunnel, the terrifying stories in this collection grow darker with each step. Around each twist and turn you’ll encounter lost ghosts, insatiable demons, deadly prophecies, possessed children, ravenous monsters—and, for those who reach the final pages, unspeakable horrors too terrible to describe.
J. A. White is the author of the Thickety series, the Shadow School series, Nightbooks, Gravebooks, and Wish Monster. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, three sons, and the ghost of their hamster, Ophelia. When he’s not making up stories, he teaches a bunch of kids how to make up stories. He wishes dragons were real because it would be a much cooler way to get to work. You can visit him online at jawhitebooks.com.
Yang Jialun is a freelance artist and the creator of the graphic novel Blood Eels as well as the illustration collections Dirtyiron Sketchbook I and II. He lives and works in Shanghai, China.