Read Frightful Fairy Tales for Free Online

in the window shocked her. A large wolf with piercing black eyes stared in through the windowpane. It threw itself at the glass, shattering it, and howled in pain, leaving streaks of blood running from the shards. Its jaws held the remains of something recently slaughtered.
     
    She screamed and backed away against the far wall. The sight before her was so frightful, her mind could barely comprehend it. Then, as abruptly as it had come, the wolf vanished. The house was silent save for the ticking of the clock. The window was black, open, and ominous. Ivy sat by the fire in her rocking chair, holding a kitchen knife in her hand and ceaselessly staring at the window until her husband’s return.
     
    As traces of sunlight transformed the black sky outside into lavender, Blackie finally returned home. "Where on earth have you been?" asked Ivy. Then she noticed the fresh blood on his clothing. "What gruesome deed have you performed this evening?”
     
     “I’ve done nothing,” he replied. “I was mixed up in a row, and someone popped me in the nose. I come home to finally find some solace and instead what do I get? A nagging woman!”
     
    "I was almost killed by a vicious wolf!" she retorted quickly. "While you were out carousing, who was here to defend me? I could have been killed. And then where would you be?” She said this to affect him, but she did not expect him to fall to the floor sobbing.
     

    "I’m sorry, Ivy. I love you. I did not mean for our lives to be this way.” She began to stroke his matted hair and soothe him. She was deeply saddened and confused. They went to bed and fell asleep but nightmares of the shape-shifting dancing couples in the kingdom under the Black River plagued her sleep. Her whole adventure there seemed as if it had all been a dream. Perhaps the lie she had told her mother was actually the truth and Blackie was actually just a rough sailor who had rescued her from the deep. Nothing seemed real anymore or had any sense to it.
     
    The next day the entire community was shocked. A wandering traveler had been found near the woods behind a neighboring pasture. A pack of wolves that came down from the mountain had ripped him apart. Many people suspected demons to be the actual cause, for they could attest to hearing a blood-chilling howling that was strange, not like that of a wolf.
     
    Ivy, among others, was thrown into a panic-their house was so exposed, and a pack of wolves would find it a very attractive target. So she became outraged the following evening when, despite this news, Blackie insisted on going out drinking with his comrades again instead of staying home and putting her at ease.
     
    "If you leave this house,” she threatened, "I won’t be here when you return." He merely glared at her before he shut the door. She threw a plate, shattering it, against the door and sat down and cried. She wanted to return to her mother’s house but her anger toward her husband was nothing compared to her fear of the wolves finding her alone on the dark road away from their home.
     
    Ivy locked the window again and sat by the fire nervously embroidering and rocking. She jumped as the clock struck midnight. On the final toll, her heart stopped as she heard the howl of the wolf once more. Plaintive and frightening, the noise grew louder. Ivy ran to get the knife. The wolf was outside her house again. It sounded unearthly, like the devil himself had come straight from hell to open her veins.
     

    The great black wolf’s head appeared suddenly in her window again, its sharp, white, adept teeth glinting behind the paneless window. Its eyes looked human. “Go away!” she screamed. She was surprised when it obeyed. Moments later she heard it crashing against the door, howling. Something about its call seemed familiar. Ivy’s mind struggled to recognize it, but when she did, she blocked it out of her perception. The connection she made was much too hideous to bear.
     
    In a panic, she