Read Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories for Free Online

bathroom for two hours.
      His parents pounded on the door and threatened but he wouldn't come out.
      Finally he unlocked the door and sat down at the supper table. He had a bandage on his thumb and a satisfied look on his face.
      The morning after he went to the library. It was Sunday. He sat on the steps all day waiting for it to open. Finally he went home.
      The next morning he came back instead of going to school.
      He found Dracula on the shelves. He couldn't borrow it because he wasn't a member and to be a member he had to bring in one of his parents.
      So he stuck the book down his pants and left the library and never brought it back.
      He went to the park and sat down and read the book through. It was late evening before he finished.
      He started at the beginning again, reading as he ran from street light to street light, all the way home.
      He didn't hear a word of the scolding he got for missing lunch and supper. He ate, went in his room and read the book to the finish. They asked him where he got the book. He said he found it.
      As the days passed Jules read the story over and over. He never went to school.
      Late at night, when he had fallen into an exhausted slumber, his mother used to take the book into the living room and show it to her husband.
      One night they noticed that Jules had underlined certain sentences with dark shaky pencil lines.

      Like: "The lips were crimson with fresh blood and the stream had trickled over her chin and stained the purity of her lawn death robe."

      Or: "When the blood began to spurt out, he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight and, with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound…"

      When his mother saw this, she threw the book down the garbage chute.
      In the next morning when Jules found the book missing he screamed and twisted his mother's arm until she told him where the book was.
      Then he ran down to the cellar and dug in the piles of garbage until he found the book.
      Coffee grounds and egg yolk on his hands and wrists, he went to the park and read it again.
      For a month he read the book avidly. Then he knew it so well he threw it away and just thought about it.
      Absence notes were coming from school. His mother yelled. Jules decided to go back for a while.
      He wanted to write a composition.
      One day he wrote it in class. When everyone was finished writing, the teacher asked if anyone wanted to read their composition to the class.
      Jules raised his hand.
      The teacher was surprised. But she felt charity. She wanted to encourage him. She drew in her tiny jab of a chin and smiled.
      "All right," she said. "Pay attention children. Jules is going to read us his composition."
      Jules stood up. He was excited. The paper shook in his hands.
      "My Ambition by…"
      "Come to the front of the class, Jules, dear."

      Jules went to the front of the class. The teacher smiled lovingly. Jules started again.
      "My Ambition by Jules Dracula."
      The smile sagged.
      "When I grow up I want to be a vampire."
      The teacher's smiling lips jerked down and out. Her eyes popped wide.
      "I want to live forever and get even with everybody and make all the girls vampires. I want to smell of death."
      "Jules!"
      "I want to have a foul breath that stinks of dead earth and crypts and sweet coffins."
      The teacher shuddered. Her hands twitched on her green blotter. She couldn't believe her ears. She looked at the children. They were gaping. Some of them were giggling. But not the girls.
      "I want to be all cold and have rotten flesh with stolen blood in the veins."
      "That will… hrrumph!"
      The teacher cleared her throat mightily.
      "That will be all Jules," she said.
      Jules talked louder and desperately.
      "I want to sink my terrible white teeth in my victims' necks. I want them to…"
      "Jules! Go to your seat this instant!"
      "I want