The Dead Boys by Royce Buckingham
Teddy just moved to a new town, where his mother will be starting a job at the nuclear power plant. Next door to his house there’s a tree that years ago sucked up some toxic waste, then developed a taste for 12-year-old boys. Teddy keeps meeting kids his age, who talk and dress funny. Albert runs from a bully and floats down the river. Walter jumps into a ditch and gets buried. When Teddy tries to show the police, suddenly the landscape has changed. Quickly Teddy figures out that the boys he’s been meeting have been missing for years, and they all have something to do with that tree…
This was a creepy little story that was unexpectedly chilling. That tree was so gross sounding and so many times I wanted to yell at Teddy to run away. While the ending wasn’t especially realistic (like toxic boy-eating trees are realistic?), it was an interesting and terrifying idea that puts Little Shop of Horrors to shame! After all, trees can get much larger than a Venus flytrap. Imagine a carnivorious Whomping Willow!
Work in Progress 