Ask the Bones Read online

  That was too much even for a prankster like Jorge. He vowed that if anyone were to jump ship, it would be Ding Dong. Jorge knew that neither his tattoos nor the snake in his new glass eye had driven Ding Dong away.

  So Jorge went ashore at the very next port to look for something more powerful. And that was where he found an artist who was a magician with molten glass.

  This glassblower had made ghost ships with sails like cobwebs. He’d made glass islands that looked like monsters’ hands ready to drag sailors into the depths of the sea. But most astounding of all were his glass eyes.

  They sat on the shelf, side by side, looking at Jorge as intently as he looked at them. But Jorge didn’t want any of the ready-made ones with ravens and rats in their centers. So he told the glassblower what he needed and sat down to wait.

  The glassblower lit a flame, heated the glass and blew, creating the evilest of evil eyes, layer by layer. Rings of green and purple and black encircled a little red spot in the middle. And that red spot seemed to stick out, making even the glassblower shudder. He cooled the eye and handed it to Jorge. “Never take it out and stare at it,” he said. “Just wear it all the time.”

  Jorge paid him and rushed back to the ship. He saw Ding Dong aloft, splicing a ratline, so he climbed up the rigging himself. Then he stared at him, face to face, eye to eye.

  Ding Dong nearly went mad, but he couldn’t turn away. The evil eye seemed to hold him in its spell. He stared back, horrified, and then fell silently to the deck below.

  Now either that evil eye scared Ding Dong into falling and he died from the fall, or that evil eye killed him outright. Jorge needed to know which. He hadn’t planned to kill him.

  The captain and the crew thought it was an accident, and Jorge didn’t change their minds, but he couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t eat. He had to know if his glass eye really had that much power.

  So he went down to the galley to ask the cook if he could borrow his mirror. Then he climbed up into the crow’s nest at the top of the mast, the only place on the ship where he could be alone.

  He held the mirror in front of his face and stared directly into his evil eye.

  Some say that a monster wave hit the ship just then and that’s why Jorge fell onto the deck and died. The glassblower said that it wasn’t the fault of the wave at all. But there’s only one person who can tell you for sure. And that’s the man who bought poor Jorge’s eye, years later, from the secondhand shop where his mates sold it.

  And that man with the evil eye is walking around here somewhere—right now!

  Beware!

  Sources

  THE HAUNTED FOREST

  From Folk Tales of Central Asia, by Amina Shah (London: The Octagon Press, 1970), pp. 109-17.

  THE MURKY SECRET

  From The Doctor to the Dead: Grotesque Legends and Folk Tales of Old Charleston, by John Bennett (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1946), pp. 223-31.

  NEXT-OF-KIN

  From Spanish Legendary Tales, by S. G. C. Middlemore (1885), reprinted in Folk Tales of All Nations, edited by F. H. Lee (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930), pp. 895-902.

  THE BLOODY FANGS

  From Japanese Fairy Tales, by Lafcadio Hearn and others (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1918), pp. 29-35.

  ASK THE BONES

  From A Mountain of Gems: Fairy Tales of the Peoples of the Soviet Land, translated by Irina Zheleznova (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1962), pp. 184-87.

  THE FOUR-FOOTED HORROR

  From Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills, by William Lynwood Montell (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1975), pp. 166-67.

  BEGINNING WITH THE EARS

  From the Israel Folktale Archives, no. 8335, collected by Moshe Rabi from Hannah Hadad. A variant is IFA 3380, collected by Yakov Zemertov from his mother, Juliet, of Iraq. Previously unpublished.

  FIDDLING WITH FIRE

  From A Treasury of American Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the People, edited by B. A. Botkin (New York: Crown Publishers, 1944), pp. 727-31. A variant is found in A Treasury of Southern Folklore: Stories, Ballads, Traditions, and Folkways of the People of the South edited by B. A. Botkin. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1949), pp. 538-40.

  THE LAPLANDER’S DRUM

  From Demonologia; or, Natural Knowledge Revealed; Being an Exposé of Ancient and Modern Superstitions, by I. S. F. (London: John Bumpus, 1827), pp. 338-55, 381.

  A NIGHT OF TERROR

  From Ha-Sippur ha-Hasidi (The Hasidic Story), by Joseph Dan (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), pp. 229-35.

  NOWHERE TO HIDE

  From Folk Tales From Russia, translated by Olga Shartse (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1990), pp. 146-53. A variant is found in Georgian Folk-Tales by M. Wardrop, reprinted in Folk Tales of All Nations, edited by F. H. Lee (New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., 1930), pp. 493-96.

  THE HANDKERCHIEF

  From Folktales of China edited by Wolfram Eberhard (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 131-33.

  THE MOUSETRAP

  From Icelandic Folktales and Legends by Jacqueline Simpson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 169-70.

  THE SPEAKING HEAD

  From Pe‘er Mi-Qedoshim (The Glory of the Holy Ones) (Lvov: 1864). Also found in Anshei Ma’aseh (The People of the Story).

  THE DRIPPING CUTLASS

  From Gumbo Ya-Ya: A Collection of Louisiana Folk Tales, compiled by Lyle Saxon, Edward Dreyer, and Robert Tallant (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945), pp. 275-76.

  THE BLACK SNAKE

  From Otsar ha-Ma‘asiyyot (A Treasury of Tales), Volume 5, edited by Reuven ben Ya’akov Na’ana (Jerusalem: 1961).

  THE HAND OF DEATH

  From Of the Night Wind’s Telling: Legends from the Valley of Mexico, by E. Adams Davis (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1946), pp. 201-6.

  THE INVISIBLE GUEST

  From The Fairy Mythology, Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries, by Thomas Keightley (London: George Bell & Sons, 1878), pp. 240-57.

  A TRACE OF BLOOD

  From Mules and Men, by Zora Neale Hurston (Philadelphia: J.P Lippincott Company, 1935), pp. 290-92.

  THE BRIDAL GOWN

  From Semitic Magic: Its Origins and Development, by R. Campbell Thompson (London: Luzac & Co., 1908), pp. 71-72.

  THE GREEDY MAN AND THE GOAT

  From Russian Fairy Tales, collected by Aleksandr Afanas’ev, translated by Norbert Guterman (New York: Pantheon Books, 1945), pp. 550-52.

  THE EVIL EYE

  From A Treasury of New England Folklore: Stories, Ballads, and Traditions of the Yankee People edited by B. A. Botkin (New York: Crown Publishers, 1947), pp. 421-23. Reprinted from Liverpool Jarge, Yarns, by Halliday Witherspoon (Boston: Square Rigger Company, 1933), Yarn 10. Also from A Sailor’s Treasury: Being the Myths and Superstitions, Legends, Lore and Yarns, Cries, Epithets, and Salty Speech of the American Sailormen in the Days of Oak and Canvas, by Frank Shay (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1951).

  Arielle North Olson is the author of three picture books. She reviewed picture books for the St. Louis Post Dispatch for twenty-six years.

  Howard Schwartz, a noted folklorist, is the author of over twenty books for readers of all ages. He has won the Aesop Award of the American Folklore Society.

  David Linn has illustrated three scary story collections, because, he says, “There simply isn’t enough terror in my life!” His oil paintings have been widely exhibited.

 

 

 
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