Or did I simply dream it up? Because I’ve tried to find a hard copy of this before, and no one I’ve asked has ever heard it.
The setting is Chinese, I think, but Asian in any case. A group of people including a small boy is going to spend the night in a huge temple for whatever reason. The group settles down for the night but, awed by the immense space, this boy chooses to crawl inside a small cabinet and sleep there instead.
In the morning, all those who’d slept out in the ‘open’ of the temple were dead, but the boy escaped – either because he was overlooked or maybe because whatever got the others couldn’t fit into the little cabinet.
Now that I’ve typed it out, it does seem unlikely: what the heck moral are you supposed to draw from that? Claustrophila is good?
Possibly relevant fact: my parents had a large collection of books of fairy tales they read to us when we were children, including a bunch that were named by color (The Red Book of Fairy Tales, The Green Book of Fairy Tales, etc.) I’ve looked through several of these ‘colorful’ books in the library in search of this story without luck, but that may be because I haven’t found the right color yet.
Anyway, I’d love a steer to a collection that includes this story, but failing that, has anyone else even HEARD this story before?
Those colour fairy books were edited by Andrew Lang. You might be able to find a list of the stories in each book somewhere. I had a few of them but I don’t remember that story.
I remember the story as The boy Who Drew Cats. I think he got into trouble for his habit of drawing cats when he should have been working, but the abbott told him to trust in his talents. It was rat-like goblins that killed the other people. The boy drew cats on the walls and that night, his cats fought and killed the rat goblins, thus saving the temple/village from the rats. The moral would be something like everyone has a useful talent and you should trust in your own abilities.
That’s it! Exactly! <does happy dance> I’ve been tormented by that partial memory for so long, it was a pleasure to finally get to read the full story again.
Also, so_da_ne, thanks for the name of the author of those books. I’ve downloaded the full set (? ten anyway) from Project Guttenberg, and look forward to rediscovering many more of the tales that warped my early years.
This was one of the stories told at the scary stories storytelling celebration I went to just before Halloween. I’d never heard it before, but it is a neat story
Glad I could help. Most of the time in these sorts of threads, I am baffled. That one just happened to stick in my memory too. I think I read the cat version myself, and had a cat phase–that may be why. I love a good happy dance
