Even More Scary Stories

The Drum

Two girls live in a country home and, while playing outside, they meet a mysterious traveller. She's another girl, and she's banging a drum featuring mechanical people on it that the sisters envy. She tells them she'll give them the drum if they "are really bad" and report back to her about it the next day. The girls throw tantrums and vex their mother, but the next day the girl says it isn't enough and that they have to be worse. Their badness escalates until their mother starts threatening to leave with their baby brother, saying they'll instead have a "new mother with glass eyes and a mechanical tail" in her place. Long story short, this repeats for a few days until the nomad girl reveals that it was all a cruel joke on her part and that she never planned on giving up the drum. The girls go home, but when they get there, their mother and brother are gone.