The Thing

The Thing is a scary story about two young boys who see something horrible in a cornfield at night. It is based on a Nova Scotian folktale in the book “Bluenose Ghosts”. A version of this story appeared in the book “Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark”.

There were two young boys named Trevor and Will. They spent most of their summer vacation hanging around town, looking for things to do.

One hot August night, the boys were sitting on a fence by the main road. There was a cornfield just across the road. Suddenly, Trevor spotted something in the field. In the darkness, it was difficult to make out, but he thought it looked like some kind of weird animal.

He nudged his friend and pointed in the direction of the strange-looking figure. Will said he could see it too. He wasn’t sure, but mysterious thing seemed vaguely human.

The next thing they knew, the thing was gone. The boys craned their necks and scanned the field with their eyes. Out of the blackness, came the thing. It slowly walked over to the edge of the field before disappearing again.

Trevor and Will looked at each other, puzzled.

“What was that?” asked Will.

“I have no idea”, replied Trevor

No sooner had he said that than Trevor felt a clammy hand on his shoulder. He turned around and found himself staring directly into the hideous face of the thing. He let out a yell of terror and surprise.

The rotting skin on the thing’s face was coming off off in places, revealing the bone underneath. For a moment, it just stared silently at Trevor with its dark sunken eyes. Then, it suddenly grabbed hold of his arm. Trevor felt its fingernails dig into his flesh as he wriggled out of its grasp.

The two boys leaped off the fence and ran down the road, screaming in horror. They didn’t stop running until they reached their homes. They tried to tell their parents and friends about the thing they had seen that night, but nobody believed them.

When Trevor woke up the next morning, the scratches on his arm were still there. After a few days, they got worse and worse. Trevor got sick and his parents took him to see a doctor. After examining his arm, the doctor told the boy it was infected and gave him some pills to take.

Unfortunately, Trevor’s condition got worse and worse. The infection spread to his entire arm and it wasn’t long before his flesh was rotting and falling off. He was taken to hospital but no matter what the doctors did, no treatment seemed to work. The infection spread throughout his whole body. Trevor was confined to bed and started to waste away.

It seemed like he was beyond help and as the days went by, he steadily grew worse and worse. His anguished parents could only sit at his bedside and cry as they watched their beloved son slowly rotting away before their eyes.

On the day that Trevor finally passed away, Will came to the hospital to visit him. When the boy walked into the hospital room and saw Trevor lying in bed, he was horrified. His friend looked exactly like the thing.