The Most Frightening Story Ever Told

The Winter Horses

Children of the Lamp series

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Philip Kerr

Cover art copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Schipper

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kerr, Philip, author.

Title: The most frightening story ever told / Philip Kerr.

Description: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, [2016] | Summary: “Scary-story enthusiast Billy Shivers helps out when the Haunted House of Books threatens to go out of business.” —Provided by publisher

Identifiers: LCCN 2015035400 | ISBN 978-0-553-52209-9 (trade) |

ISBN 978-0-553-52210-5 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-553-52211-2 (ebook)

Subjects: | CYAC: Haunted houses—Fiction. | Bookstores—Fiction. | Ghosts—Fiction. | Contests—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Books & Libraries.

Classification: LCC PZ7.K46843 Mo 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/​2015035400

ebook ISBN 9780553522112

Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v4.1

ep

This book is for Ava B.

Welcome to Hitchcock. It's an ordinary town of 250,000 people. When the town got started, in 1800, one of the first things its founders built was a beautiful public library so that people who couldn't afford to buy books could borrow them instead.

Let's go inside. Under a large onion-shaped roof is a big reading room, where Hitchcock's older citizens look at newspapers and fall asleep. And there are miles and miles of wooden shelves and on them lots and lots of books. The Hitchcock town library has over twenty thousand books, many of which have never been read by anyone.

One person who's read at least a hundred books in the library is the boy standing in Children's Literature. His name is Billy Shivers.

If Billy Shivers were able to talk, he would say “I'm very pleased to meet you,” but this is a library, and if he did say anything, the librarian, Miss Junker, would make a cross, shushing noise, point at a large sign that reads
SILENCE
and very probably remind him that “there's no talking allowed in the library.” So you'll forgive him if he just looks up from that book in his hands, smiles and nods back at you for now.

Still, silence is golden and, in this case, it's useful, too. It allows you a chance to look at Billy and see what kind of a boy he is. The first thing you'll notice is that he's tall, and kind of pale-looking—even a bit sickly, like he's been ill or something. But that's only to be expected of someone who was in a serious car accident.

Billy remembers very little about the accident, except that now he knows exactly what it feels like to be a thin layer of strawberry jam between two enormously thick slices of bread. Before the accident he was like any other boy his age, enjoying games and running around outside. But since the accident he doesn't do a lot of that. He gets tired very easily and doesn't care at all for loud noises. His eyes are more sensitive to sunlight, and he feels the cold more than he used to, so that he prefers being indoors to being outside. This probably helps to explain why Billy spends so much time in the Hitchcock Public Library. It's nice and warm there. That and the fact that he likes to read books. Lots of them.

Billy had always loved books. But after the accident his love of books grew stronger than ever. He just couldn't get enough of them. He loved the way a book could transport you to a different place in the space of just a few pages, like it was a kind of taxicab for the mind. Sometimes he would take a book and find a quiet corner to sit down, and the next time he looked up, several hours would have passed. Reading a book could make him forget who and what he was and that he had ever been in an accident at all.

Whatever subject you can choose, there's probably at least a hundred books that have been written about it. Billy could have remained in the library forever and he would never have run out of books to read, especially as the people of Hitchcock were always donating their books—most of them unread, of course.

At first Billy's favorite books were all about horses. Then his favorite books were all about space. When he'd read dozens of books about this, he went on to read several more dozens of books about detectives and murder. Next he decided his favorite books were about magicians and wizards. Billy wasn't much interested in books about sports. He much preferred watching sports to reading about them. In the same week that he grew tired of reading about wizards, he tried reading books about cooking, mountaineering, jungle exploration, spying, lions, Scotland and the history of music. But none of these books struck him as being particularly interesting. And then, quite by chance, he picked up and read a book about ghosts, then another, and another, and pretty soon Billy had come to the conclusion his favorite books were all about ghosts.

About the same time it happened that Billy became interested in reading about ghosts, his attention was drawn to a small, dog-eared poster on the library notice board. The poster had been on the notice board for a while and the event it advertised was long out of date, but it was only now that Billy paid any attention to it.

The poster read as follows:

You are invited to the Haunted House of Books on Hitchcock High Street, for a Halloween evening of chilling ghost stories and spooky tales. Not to Mention Our Newest Attraction: The Curse of the Pharaohs. Around midnight we will be joined by some creepy local authors who will be signing their Most Horrifying books…in blood. Free snacks and mulled wine, plus a ten percent discount on all cash purchases. For further details, telephone 555-6666, or email Rexford Rapscallion at [email protected], if you dare.

Immediately Billy was fascinated. It didn't matter that Halloween had been over for several months and that none of the creepy local authors would be present to sign their horrifying books. What mattered most to Billy was the idea of a bookshop that was haunted. What could be more wonderful? What could be more exciting? What could be more fantastic?

It won't have escaped anyone's attention who has ever been in a bookshop that books cost money. Sometimes a great deal of money. The book you are reading now cost a small fortune and, frankly, you ought to be very grateful to whoever bought it for you. Unless of course you paid for it yourself, in which case you must be stinking rich. After all, why pay money for something that you are only going to use once? Unless of course you think you might want to read the book again. Or unless you want to put it on a shelf with a lot of other books to start a collection of house dust, or just to show people how clever you are. Which is fair enough. But these days, who's got money to waste on books? Or enough space in their houses to give it up to having bookshelves?

Billy's family didn't have money to waste on anything at all and nor indeed did Billy, which was why the boy went to the Hitchcock Public Library to read in the first place.