The Face

Excerpted from Spooky Indiana

Retold by S.E. Schlosser

The medical student toppled into love as soon as he set eyes on Sheila, the beautiful new transfer student. She had masses of long black hair and eyelashes so long they got tangled in her curls when she leaned over her desk. The medical student had a withdrawn nature, though not by inclination. He’d learned the hard way that people avoided him when they heard about his insane father; locked away in an asylum. But he had to overcome his taciturn nature or risk losing Sheila to one of the other fellows that panted after her. So the medical student volunteered to tutor her Sheila in one of her classes. After that, it was easy. Sheila toppled into love with the medical student as madly as he was in love with her. They went everywhere together, hardly bearing to part for classes.

The medical student lived in a bubble of joy, until the day he saw Sheila speaking to a good-looking fellow who lived in the same dorm. They were laughing together over something one of their professors had said in history class, and a shaft of sheer jealousy pierced the medical student's gut. How dare she laugh with another man? He confronted his Sheila with her perceived trespass, and she stared at him incredulously. “You’re crazy!” she said. He winced, reminded of his father, and shouted insults at Sheila until she stalked off in a rage.

They made up over dinner, and things were fine for awhile, until the medical student saw Sheila borrow a pen from a handsome blond fellow at the library. That set him off again. They hissed angry words at each other until the librarian kicked them out. The medical student huddled on the narrow bed in his dorm room until black anger gave way to common sense. He called Sheila and apologized. She accepted his apology, and they were back together.

The medical student was scheduled to take Sheila to a local dance on Friday night, so he rushed back to the dorm to dress in his best. As he turned to leave, the medical student noticed that a scalpel had fallen out of his medical bag and lay haphazardly on his desk. He thrust it carelessly inside the bag and to went to pick up his girlfriend and escort her to the dance.

Bleeding Sink

An excerpt from Spooky Montana

retold by S.E. Schlosser

I found it extremely annoying that one of the bathrooms on my dorm was permanently closed. Especially since the cause was an urban legend. An urban legend, I tell you! According to the story, years and years ago some bloke got himself massively drunk at a bar in downtown Helena and had passed out in the bathroom on the fourth floor. Apparently, he hit his head on the sink as he fell, and his blood had spattered the sink as he slid senseless to the floor and silently hemorrhaged to death. His death was considered a “sad accident” by faculty, staff and townspeople. But that was no reason to shut up the bathroom for decades! I completely discounted the story of the bleeding sink. That was just an urban legend the students circulated to explain the locked door.

“I’m sick of sharing a bathroom with you disgusting lot,” I grumbled to my roommate. “I’m going to break into the fourth-floor bathroom.”

My roommate’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know that bathroom is haunted?” he exclaimed. “The bloodstains on the sink are as fresh today as they were when the accident happened back in the 1960s, and sometimes you can hear the boy moaning as his life ebbs away on the bathroom floor!”

“Romantic twaddle,” I snapped. “My granny lives in a haunted castle in Scotland with ghost stories that would make your hair stand on end. She’d laugh at me if she found out I ignored a perfectly good bathroom because of a few bloodstains. Besides, the maintenance staff told me the bathroom was shut up pending renovations. No big deal!”

“You’ll be sorry,” my roommate said darkly. I ignored him. He was just sore because I’d lumped him in with the disgusting lot of fellows who mucked up the bathroom on my floor. You’d think someone would teach them to pick up their dirty clothes and clean the sink once in awhile.

When the dorm quieted down for the night – which wasn’t until late – I hurried up to the fourth floor with a bit of wire I’d purchased at a local hardware store. My little brother and I had become expert lock-pickers over the years, since our mother had a bad habit of locking her keys into the house or the car at least once a week. With all that experience, the lock on the bathroom door gave me no problems.