Scary Stories to Listen to in the Dark
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What childhood memory haunts the narrator?
I was 13 when it happened, and my brother Toby was 10. I'm 16 now, so I know that probably makes me sound like I'm still a kid, and maybe I am, but I'm old enough to understand when something from my childhood should have faded by now and hasn't. I remember a lot of normal stuff from when I was 13, like what shoes I wore to school, what games I was into, and how I thought my hair looked good when it absolutely didn't. Most of that stuff feels blurry and stupid now, but I remember that day in the National Forest so clearly that sometimes it feels more real than what I did yesterday. I remember the air before the rain. I remember the way Toby kept stepping on dry sticks and acting like he wasn't.
I remember the sunlight in that clearing, bright enough that there shouldn't have been anything scary about it. And I remember the deer standing there with its jaw hanging open, staring at us with tiny blue eyes that did not belong in the head of an animal. We lived in a small town back then, the kind of place where everybody knew each other's trucks and half the kids had the same last names as streets, hills, or creeks. I'm not naming it because my parents would lose their minds if they knew I was writing this, and also because I don't want people going there because they think it's a cool, scary place to check out.
What strange events occur in the National Forest?
It wasn't cool. It was just home, until it wasn't. The town sat near a big stretch of national forest, and everybody acted like that forest was normal during the day and something else at night. Parents hunted there. Kids rode bikes near the outer roads. People cut firewood where it was allowed. Hikers came through in the summer and acted like it was peaceful, But if you grew up there, you heard the other version too. You heard about the old logging camp that shut down after men started refusing to work past sundown. You heard about the missing dogs.
How does the narrator's relationship with his brother impact the story?
You heard about people seeing deer standing on the road shoulder in winter, too still and too skinny, with their heads turned the wrong way toward passing cars. You heard about the clearing behind East Fork Ridge, where birds supposedly wouldn't land, and where even hunters avoided leaving bait cameras because equipment broke or vanished. My dad used to say people in small towns tell stories because they're bored. My mom would say legends usually started with somebody getting drunk and scaring themselves. They weren't wrong about a lot of it. There were dumb rumors all the time. Somebody would see a coyote with mange and turn it into some monster by Monday morning. Somebody would find bones from a deer kill and swear it was something darker.
I didn't believe most of it when I was 13, at least not in a serious way. I liked hearing the stories because they made boring places feel bigger, but I also thought I was smart for not believing them.
What critical decision leads to a dangerous adventure?
Toby was different. He believed anything if the person telling it sounded serious enough. He had always been that way. He was smaller than other kids his age, skinny, with big ears he was still growing into. And he followed me everywhere, even when I told him not to. He trusted me more than I deserved. That is the part I have a hard time with now, because if I had said we were turning around earlier, he would have listened. The day it happened was in late spring, not summer yet, but close. School had maybe two weeks left. It was a Saturday, and my parents were busy with stuff around the house because my grandparents were supposed to come visit the next weekend.
What unsettling encounter do the brothers have in the woods?
My dad was fixing a section of gutter that had pulled loose during a storm, and my mom was deep cleaning everything like the house was being inspected by the president. Toby and I were bored and in the way. We had been told to go outside but not leave the property, which was the kind of rule kids take as a suggestion when they live near woods and think they know better. Our house wasn't inside the National Forest, but it backed up to private timberland that eventually met a forest boundary. There was an old foot trail everybody in our neighborhood used, even though I don't think anyone officially owned it or maintained it.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What childhood memory haunts the narrator?
0:22–1:41
2
What strange events occur in the National Forest?
1:41–2:18
3
How does the narrator's relationship with his brother impact the story?
2:18–3:13
4
What critical decision leads to a dangerous adventure?
3:13–3:56
5
What unsettling encounter do the brothers have in the woods?
3:56–5:29
6
How does the story escalate into a life-threatening situation?
5:29–6:20
7
What unexpected twist occurs during the delivery job?
6:20–6:58
8
What are the consequences of the narrator's choices?
6:58–1:06:35
Speakers
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