Zusatztext Praise for Ghost Story The terror just mounts and mounts.Stephen King The scariest book I've ever read...It crawls under your skin and into your dreams. Chicago Sun-Times Not since Edgar Allan Poe has an author taken such liberties with his readers' nerves...A masterwork of horror. Cosmopolitan One of the most frightening novels you will ever read. The Dallas Morning News The best thing of its kind since Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House . Newsweek Superb horror. The Washington Post Book World Informationen zum Autor Peter Straub Klappentext #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub's classic tale of horror! secrets! and the dangerous ghosts of the past... What was the worst thing you've ever done? In the sleepy town of Milburn! New York! four old men gather to tell each other stories-some true! some made-up! all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever... Zusammenfassung #1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub's classic tale of horror! secrets! and the dangerous ghosts of the past... What was the worst thing you've ever done? In the sleepy town of Milburn! New York! four old men gather to tell each other storiessome true! some made-up! all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever... ...

Praise for Ghost Story

“The terror just mounts and mounts.”—Stephen King
 
“The scariest book I’ve ever read...It crawls under your skin and into your dreams.”—Chicago Sun-Times
 
“Not since Edgar Allan Poe has an author taken such liberties with his readers’ nerves...A masterwork of horror.”—Cosmopolitan
 
“One of the most frightening novels you will ever read.”—The Dallas Morning News
 
“The best thing of its kind since Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.”—Newsweek
 
“Superb horror.”—The Washington Post Book World

Auteur

Peter Straub

Texte du rabat

1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub's classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...

What was the worst thing you've ever done?

In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories-some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.

But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever...

Résumé
#1 New York Times bestselling author Peter Straub’s classic tale of horror, secrets, and the dangerous ghosts of the past...
 
What was the worst thing you’ve ever done?
 
In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories—some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives.
 
But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever...

Échantillon de lecture

• 1 -

 

What was the worst thing you've ever done?

 

I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me . . . the most dreadful thing . . .

 

• 2 -

 

Because he thought that he would have problems taking the child over the border into Canada, he drove south, skirting the cities whenever they came and taking the anonymous freeways which were like a separate country, as travel was itself like a separate country. The sameness both comforted and stimulated him, so that on the first day he was able to drive for twenty hours straight through. They ate at McDonald's and at root-beer stands: when he was hungry, he left the freeway and took a state highway parallel to it, knowing that a drive-in was never more than ten or twenty miles away. Then he woke up the child and they both gnawed at their hamburgers or chili dogs, the child never speaking more than to tell him what she wanted. Most of the time she slept. That first night, the man remembered the light bulbs illuminating his license plates, and though this would later prove to be unnecessary swung off the freeway onto a dark country road long enough to unscrew the light bulbs and toss them into a field. Then he took handfuls of mud from beside the road and smeared them over the plates. Wiping his hands on his trousers, he went back around to the driver's side and opened the door. The child was sleeping with her back straight against the seat, her mouth closed. She appeared to be perfectly composed. He still did not know what he was going to have to do to her.

 

In West Virginia, he came awake with a jerk and realized that for some seconds he had been driving in his sleep. "We're going to pull up and take a nap." He left the freeway outside of Clarksburg and drove on a state road until he saw against the sky a red revolving sign with the words PIONEER VILLAGE on it in white. He was keeping his eyes open only by will power. His mind did not feel right: it seemed that tears were hanging just behind his eyes and that very soon he would involuntarily begin to weep. Once in the parking lot of the shopping center, he drove to the row farthest from the entrance and backed the car up against a wire fence. Behind him was a square brick factory which manufactured plastic animal replicas for display-for Golden Chicken trucks. The factory's asphalt yard was half-filled with giant plastic chickens and cows. In their midst stood a giant blue ox. The chickens were unfinished, larger than the cows and dully white.

 

Before him lay this nearly empty section of the lot, then a thick cluster of cars in rows, and then the series of low sandstone-colored buildings which was the shopping center.

 

"Can we look at the big chickens?" the girl asked.

 

He shook his head. "We're not getting out of the car, we're just going to sleep." He locked the doors and rolled up the windows. Under the child's steady unexpectant gaze he bent over, felt under the seat and drew out a length of rope. "Hold your hands out," he said.

 

Almost smiling, she held out her small hands, balled into fists. He pulled them together and wound the rope twice about her wrists, knotted it, and then tied her ankles together. When he saw how much rope was left, he held out the surplus with one arm and roughly pulled the child to him with the other. Then he wound the rope about them both, looping them together, and made the final knot after he had stretched out across the front seat.

 

She was lying on top of him, her hands bunched in the middle of his stomach and her head on his chest. She breathed easily and regularly, as if she had expected no more than what he had done. The clock on the dashboard said that it was five-thirty, and the air was just beginning to turn cooler. He hitched his legs forward and leaned his head back against the headrest. To the noises of traffic, he fell asleep.

 

And awakened it seemed immediately, his face filmed with sweat, the faintly acrid, greasy odor of the child's …