Scary stories

The Pillow

The Pillow
is a scary story about a young girl who is struck down by a mysterious illness. It is inspired by an old horror story from Uruguay written by Horacio Quiroga.

There was a young girl named Alicia who moved, with her parents, to a new town. They rented a big, old house that was sparsely furnished. Alicia slept in the downstairs bedroom while her parents slept upstairs.
After they had been living there a few weeks, Alicia's parents noticed that she was growing very thin. As the days went on, her health seemed to get worse and worse. Then, the poor girl came down with a mysterious illness and was confined to her bed.
The doctor came to examine her and he told her parents that she was suffering from anemia. All she needed was some rest, he said, and soon she would be as good as new.
However, despite what the doctor said, Alicia's condition continued to get worse and worse. Her skin was grey and pallid, her cheeks were sunken and there were dark circles around her eyes.
Her parents were distraught and had no idea what to do. While Alicia slept in her bed, her mother and father paced back and forth restlessly, wondering what could be the cause of her mysterious illness.
Day by day and hour by hour, the poor girl grew worse and worse. She was so weak, she could barely move. Alicia was fading fast and the life was ebbing from her veins. She was deathly pale and her body was shrivelled and withered. She started to have hallucinations and began screaming out in terror and babbling incoherently in a weak voice.
Finally, Alicia lost consciousness and died. Her parents were inconsolable. They held a funeral service and buried their beloved daughter in the town cemetery.
The day after the funeral, Alicia's mother was stripping the sheets off her daughter's bed when she noticed something on the pillow. There were two red stains in the white material. When she picked up the pillow, she noticed it was unusually heavy, so she called her husband to come and take a look at it.
As the parents examined the pillow closely, the mother suddenly let out a scream. She felt something moving inside it. The father fetched a knife and slit open the pillow, emptying the feathers out on the floor.
As the parents watched in horror, something crawled out of the pile of feathers, slowly moving its hairy legs. It was a monstrous black spider, so swollen with blood that they could scarcely make out its mouth.
Night after night, as Alicia lay in bed, this hairy abomination had been stealthily sucking all of the blood from her body and slowly draining her life away.