Hi!
I've always been an avid reader, and as a kid in the 80s I devoured YA/Children's short horror fiction anthologies by the dozen (obviously, Alvin Schwartz's SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK were at the top of the list!) I still have a handful of them, but I'm trying to track down one in particular. There's a chance it came from a Scholastic book fair… I can't remember any of the other stories in this particular volume, but the tale forever etched in my brain was about a pair of brothers left with a sitter for the evening while their parents went out. The younger brother, the story's protagonist, notices a light come on in their backyard shed. He is terrified for some reason, and alerts everyone else. One by one the sitter, the sitter's boyfriend (I think), the older brother, and, after their return, the kid's parents all stick their heads out the window to look and are pulled off into the night. I believe the story ends with the kid sitting alone in the house, staring at the window.
I'd kill to know what this one is. I've been looking for years!
I remember reading this story, but I can't for the life of me remember the title of the book it came from. I THINK it had blowing autumn leaves on the cover though, and it was fairly new when I was in elementary school(late 80's early 90's).
Hope this helps, at least a little. All I know for sure is that the story gave me nightmares for weeks.
I know it is not in the Scary Stories or the Slithery Corpse/Dripping Head series, as I recently purchased all of those books again so I could enjoy the original artwork again. Hmmm… I'm stumped, but I bet it's something good.
Man, these horror anthology story Name That Trauma's are always murder. I was thinking that it might have been in the "Shadows" series as it ran through the end of the eighties and the mysterious nature of the threat would be right in the wheelhouse for the series, but alas, I reviewed a list of the stories and nothing is ringing a bell.
but Shadows wasn't a YA anthology, isn't it?