Disclaimer: this story is based on the scary story about the "Thing" that Fern tells Arthur, Buster, and Muffy in one of the Arthur episodes. The first part is just a recount of Fern's original story. The rest I made up, except for some ideas that were taken from D.W. Anything that has any relation to Arthur or any other TV show, movie, book, etc. is not mine unless it is obvious that I made it up.
The Beginning (as told on the show)
My story is true.
It's about my uncle. You see, he's anentomologist, a person who studies insects and bugs, that kind of stuff.
It was a dark and stormy night, and my uncle and an old professor, a friend of his, were in the lab, unpacking from a recent expedition to the Congo. They'd found a variety of strange insects on their expedition, like the giant Congolese Pinchapod, with two-foot pincers! But that's not the scary part.
While the two comrades were unpacking, my uncle noticed that a certain crate that neither he nor the professor had touched—was open. But my uncle didn't worry about it too much—until later.
When it was time for the professor to finally go home, he realized that he could not go out in the rain without an umbrella, for he didn't have one. So he and my uncle searched the lab for an umbrella. Suddenly, the professor saw something lying on the floor—something that looked just like an umbrella. It had a long wooden handle with a large green gem on the end of it. The professor noticed that when the gem caught the light, it glinted. Almost as if it had blinked. Almost as if it were an eye.
The professor picked up what he thought was an umbrella and headed for the door. He slowly opened the umbrella as my uncle quietly unpacked more crates. Suddenly, the umbrella burst open into what appeared to be a creature with wings that were lined with hundreds of writhing stingers! As my uncle quickly dashed toward the door, he heard a loud, bloodcurdling shriek. Then, he heard what sounded like a satisfied slurp. As my uncle finally approached the door, the creature flew off into the stormy night.
The old professor was never seen again.
The Continuation
Chapter 1: The Dream
My Uncle Robert had never had a decent night of sleep since that fateful night when old Professor Prigend had suddenly disappeared. He claimed to have had nightmares about a strange umbrella-shaped creature that had devoured the professor whole. He even said that he'd seen visions of bats that looked like the supposed creature—bats whose wings were lined with writhing stingers and whose eyes looked like large emerald green gems that glinted in the moonlight. Uncle Robert had always had a knack for imagining things and making up wild stories, so of course, barely anyone believed his claims. But despite what others thought, Uncle Robert always insisted that his story was true, that his dreams and visions had been the awful results of a horrible and terrifying incident.
Some people thought that after Professor Prigend's disappearance, Uncle Robert, or Dr. Walters, as most called him, went a little crazy in his mind. It was well known by the people of Crown City and Elwood City that the professor and Dr. Walters had been best friends, and that if anything had separated the two of them, each would have gone mad in the absence of the other. It was quite believable then, that Dr. Walters should have experienced something close to madness after the loss of his dearest colleague and companion. Some people also thought that Dr. Walters was greatly guilt-stricken by the fact that he had not been able to save the professor from a mysterious abduction. Thus, many citizens of the cities believed that Dr. Walters had become obsessed with his guilt and had gone mad as a result. But anyone who had close contact with my uncle during this tumultuous time knew that he was not mad, nor obsessively overpowered by guilt. Anyone who truly knew him also had some sort of sense that these events that he dreamed about and often spoke about had indeed happened and that these events terrorized him very much.
One night, a night that was just as stormy and dark as the night of the professor's disappearance, Uncle Robert was visited by a particularly vivid and frightening dream. He was standing in the lab, which had now been abandoned for ten years. Cobwebs dusted the corners of the walls, windows were shattered, books were ripped and scattered across the floor, and several containers and the remains of dead bugs remained atop the tables. It was nighttime, and the lab was almost pitch dark, save for the eerie white moonlight drifting through the broken windows. My uncle stood still for a moment, staring at the grim and gloomy place around him. Suddenly, random images of memories began to play before his face like flashing frames on an old film reel. There was his mother, baking the professor a cake for his birthday. There was the professor, leaning over an enormous cicada in the lab and carefully examining it. There was he himself, frantically trying to capture a moth that had escaped from one of his specimen jars. There was his mother again, this time with the professor, trying to dump water on his own head so as to wake him up and send him home to bed. Then, as suddenly as the images had appeared, they vanished before Uncle Roberts eyes, leaving him half-dazed and utterly heartbroken.
My uncle was about to sigh when he heard a soft creaking sound coming from outside the lab. It sounded just like the creaking he had heard that certain night, ten years ago. My uncle froze in terror, scared to encounter the very thing that had ruined his life and his career. But, as he tried to back away from the direction that the sound was coming from, his feet surprisingly carried him toward it. Uncle Robert furiously struggled to move his feet backwards—he wriggled and twisted, and tried to pry his feet off the floor with his hands and place them a few paces behind him—but no matter what he did, he continued to move toward the creaking sound. My uncle slowly moved across the lab, trying as much as he could to drag his feet across the floor. With each unwilled step, the sound became louder and louder and louder until it was almost deafening. Then suddenly, as my uncle approached the foyer outside the lab, the creaking noise morphed into a high-pitched scream. It was a scream that was louder and more ear-splitting and horrifying than the bloodcurdling shriek that my uncle had heard ten years before. The scream shot through Uncle Robert's ears like a thousand bullets, and it seemed to sear and burn my uncle's skin with every vibration. As the scream continued, my uncle began to cry out in unison with it, covering his ears and writhing in immense pain. He desperately tried to crawl away from the scream and toward the back of the lab, but an invisible force kept dragging him toward the horrible noise. The invisible force continued to pull Uncle Robert out into the hallway, and it finally succeeded, despite the wild thrashing and kicking of my uncle's legs.
Uncle Robert could now hear only a loud ringing in his ears. He had no idea if he had gone deaf or if the screaming had stopped. All he knew now was that the Thing, that creature, was somewhere nearby, and that he was right in its path. He was going to be its next victim. My uncle again tried to wriggle his way back into the lab, but that same invisible force kept on tugging at him. All of a sudden, an even louder shriek than the previous scream split through the air and shot its vibrations through my uncle like bolts of hot lightning. He yelled in pain and terror as his entire body began to shake and his head burned as if it were on fire. Then, as if the invisible force had moved it, his head snapped around and he stared right at a creature, a thing, the Thing—a thing so horrible that he could not bear to look at it any longer…his head felt as if it had burst open…everything began to swirl around him…he saw the stingers…he saw his mother…
Suddenly, Uncle Robert bolted upright and his eyes shot open. He panted and heaved heavily, then looked up and was surprised to see his bed.
He was on the floor, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets.