‘About ten yards in front of him, crawling along the floor, was a man’s hand. Eustace stared at it in utter amazement. It was moving quickly in the manner of a geometer caterpillar, the fingers humped up one moment, flattened out the next; the thumb appeared to give a crablike motion all the while. While he was looking, too surprised to stir, the hand disappeared round the corner.’

Terror lurks where you least expect it!

This is a collection of hair-raising horror stories that are bound to make your flesh creep, written by the undisputed masters of the genre. Selected and compiled by Ruskin Bond, these are stories by Rudyard Kipling, W.F. Harvey, Marjorie Bowen and Thomas Burke, among others.

From a ghostly animated hand and the walking dead to haunted cemeteries and dressing tables—these tales will send a chill down your spine. Featuring phantoms, beasts and monsters, The Beast with Five Fingers makes for the perfect read when the moon is up!

AUTHOR OF THE BOOK

Ruskin Bond has been writing for over sixty years, in the course of which he has come to be known for his signature simplistic and witty writing style. He is the author of several bestselling short stories, novellas, collections, essays and children’s books; and has contributed a number of poems and articles to various magazines and anthologies. At the age of twenty-three he won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for his first novel, The Room on the Roof. He was also the recipient of the Padma Shri in 1999, Lifetime Achievement Award by the Delhi Government in 2012, and the Padma Bhushan in 2014.

Born in 1934, Ruskin Bond grew up in Jamnagar, Shimla, New Delhi and Dehradun. Apart from three years in the UK, he has spent all his life in India, and now lives in Landour, Mussoorie with his adopted family.