The Most Frightening Story Ever Told by Philip Kerr

exactly what happened.
    One moment everything was normal, and the next moment there was an enormous clap of thunder—frightening enough for anyone not expecting it. Then a bolt of lightning lit up the room and several electrical machines filled with a strange sparking blue light that seemed to transmit a deafening current into the body of the monster on the table. The monster’s enormous hand lifted, at which point the mad scientist lurched toward it and began to shout hysterically.
    “It’s alive,” he raved. “It’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive!!!”
    Mr. Crane paled and took several steps back as the lights dimmed and the sheet covering the monster fell away onto the floor as it sat up on the table. As monsters went, this one was top-shelf; green, with a sort of crack in its square skull, and hooded eyes, the monster was only vaguely human. Frankly, this monster strongly resembled a
thing.
The monster growled unpleasantly, like a bad-tempered dog, and pointed straight at Hugh Crane.
    “IT’S ALIVE!” screamed the scientist.
    “Wow,” said Billy. “Awesome.”
    Poor Mr. Crane had seen enough. He let out a howl that could have come whooping out of the monkey house in a zoo. The next second he turned and ran out of the room and down the curved staircase. Halfway down he slipped and descended the rest of the stairs on his behind, like someone sledding down a bumpy hill who has forgotten to bring a sled.
    Mr. Rapscallion and Billy followed him out onto the gallery above the stairs just to see that he was all right.
    At the bottom Hugh Crane picked himself up and, seeing Mr. Rapscallion laughing, shook his fist at him furiously. “I thought you said the room was safe, you madman,” he yelled, crossly.
    “The room
is
safe,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “I didn’t say it wasn’t frightening.”
    He carried on laughing and chuckling and chortling and giggling for at least fifteen minutes after Hugh Crane had raced out of the door of the Haunted House of Books.
    Finally Mr. Rapscallion sat down on the stairs, and when he had finished laughing, he let out a breath and sighed.
    “Crane’s right, though. One day this place probably will be his. I’ll have no alternative but to sell. I already owe him money. And I just don’t make enough money to keep the shop going, Billy. I have to pay the electricity bill, the telephone bill, the gas bill, insurance and taxes. I can’t even afford to employ someone to help out around here. A book clerk. Every time I see that bundle of cash in Crane’s hand and get the smell of money in my nostrils, I think that maybe he’s talking sense. That maybe I should sell.”
    “No,” said Billy. “You can’t sell. I love this place.”
    “It’s unfortunate that more people don’t seem to agree with you,” said Mr. Rapscallion. “But the figures don’t lie. There just aren’t enough people buying books to make this place break even. Let alone make a profit.”
    “But what about kids? Kids would love this place.”
    “Tell that to my daughter. Altaira hates this shop. Hates books. Not just books about ghosts and horror. I mean she hates
all
books. The only reading she does is when her dumb little friends text her with one of those messages that look like they were spelled by a moron from another planet.”
    “There are lots of other kids,” said Billy. “Father Merrin said you started this place for kids. Where are they?”
    “They used to come. But not anymore. Tastes change, I guess.”
    “Maybe you have to try to get them back in here. Have you tried?”
    “Have I tried? Have I tried? Only all the time, Billy.”
    “What about Halloween? I saw your poster in the public library. It’s what persuaded me to come and check this place out. How did that go?”
    “Halloween?” Mr. Rapscallion let out a sigh. “Last Halloween was the worst. That was nothing short of disastrous. Let me tell you what happened here last Halloween.”

“Halloween used to be our best