Cuatro cuentos cortos de terror en inglés con vocabulario y preguntas
Lectura original: https://relatoscortos.org/cuentos-terror-cortos-ingles-vocabulario-preguntas/
Estos cuatro cuentos de terror en inglés son originales y están pensados para practicar una lectura breve con suspense. Cada historia tiene principio, conflicto y desenlace. El vocabulario está escogido para lectores que ya conocen el pasado simple y pueden consultar algunas palabras nuevas; el nivel A2–B1 es una orientación editorial, no una certificación de examen.
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1. The Light on Platform Zero
Read the story
Mara finished work at eleven thirty. The city was quiet, and rain covered the windows of the train station. She checked the board. Her last train would arrive in ten minutes.
Then she heard a bell.
On the other side of the station, a sign that had always been dark was shining: PLATFORM 0.
Mara had used this station for six years. There were only four platforms, numbered one to four. But now a narrow passage stood open behind the old ticket office.
She walked down the passage. At the end, a little train waited beside a platform with no other passengers. The train had yellow lights and wooden seats. Its windows were covered in raindrops, although the roof above it was dry.
A man stood at the first door. His uniform was clean but very old.
“Are you going home?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mara said. “Does this train stop at North Street?”
“It stops where people need to go.”
That answer made her nervous. She moved closer to the window. Inside the train, a boy was sitting with a red schoolbag. Mara knew that bag. It had belonged to her brother Daniel, who had disappeared twenty years before.
The boy raised his head. He had Daniel’s face.
“Mara,” he said through the glass. “You can sit with me.”
She put one foot on the step. Daniel smiled, but something was wrong. He had not grown older. His hands were still small, and his hair looked exactly as it did in the last photograph of him.
The man in the uniform held out a ticket. It was blank on one side. On the other, Mara saw a date from twenty years ago.
“Do you have a return ticket?” she asked.
The man’s smile disappeared.
“No one asks that question,” he said.
Mara stepped back. The train doors closed without a sound. The boy pressed his palm against the glass as the train moved away into the dark.
The next morning, Platform Zero was gone. The passage was a brick wall again.
Mara still took the usual train home. In her pocket she found one thing she had not put there: a small, wet ticket marked ONE WAY.
Useful words
- platform: andén de tren.
- board: panel de anuncios o salidas.
- passage: pasillo o paso estrecho.
- uniform: uniforme.
- disappeared: desapareció; en «had disappeared», «había desaparecido».
- blank: en blanco, sin nada escrito.
- one way: solo ida, sin regreso.
Check your reading
- How many normal platforms does Mara know?
- Why is the boy on the train frightening to her?
- What question makes the man stop smiling?
Answers: 1. Four. 2. He looks like her missing brother, who has not aged. 3. She asks if there is a return ticket.
2. The Room Behind the Mirror
Read the story
On her first evening in the new apartment, Elena found a large mirror in the hallway. It was too heavy to move, so she left it against the wall.
At midnight, someone knocked three times.
Elena opened the front door. The hallway outside was empty. She checked the stairs, then went back inside.
Three more knocks came from behind her.
This time she saw the mirror move. Very slowly, the reflection of the hallway grew longer. At the far end of the reflected hall, a door appeared. Elena turned around. There was no door on the real wall.
A woman stood in the reflection. She wore the same blue sweater as Elena, but her face looked pale and tired.
“Don’t answer the next knock,” the woman whispered.
Elena’s phone rang. The screen showed her own number.
She did not answer.
The knocking came again, now so loud that the mirror shook. A voice outside the apartment called, “Elena! It’s your neighbor. Please open the door.”
Elena had met the neighbor that afternoon. The voice sounded exactly like his.
She walked to the front door and looked through the small glass opening. No one was there. Yet the voice continued, very close to her ear.
“Please. I know you are home.”
In the mirror, the pale woman held up a piece of paper. It said, THAT IS NOT THE FRONT DOOR.
Elena looked again. The door handle was on the wrong side. The apartment number had changed. Somehow, while she listened, the real hallway had disappeared from the other side of the glass.
She moved away from the door, took her keys and stayed in the kitchen until morning.
When the sun rose, the hallway looked normal. Elena opened the door and left the apartment. She did not come back for the mirror.
A week later, a moving company sent her a photograph of the empty rooms. Every object had been removed. Only the mirror remained.
In the glass, someone was still standing in the hallway, holding a blue sweater.
Useful words
- hallway: pasillo.
- against the wall: apoyado contra la pared.
- reflection: reflejo.
- whispered: susurró.
- neighbor: vecino.
- handle: manija o picaporte.
- moving company: empresa de mudanzas.
Check your reading
- Where does Elena find the mirror?
- What is strange about the front door at night?
- What remains in the apartment after the move?
Answers: 1. In the hallway. 2. The handle and number have changed, although the door looks familiar. 3. The mirror.
3. The Night Radio
Read the story
Ben repaired old radios in a small shop. Most people brought him broken speakers, but one Friday a woman left a wooden radio on his counter.
“It only works after midnight,” she said. “Please don’t turn it on before then.”
She paid in advance and left without giving her name.
Ben waited until a few minutes after midnight. Then he turned the dial. At first he heard music, followed by a voice reading the local news.
“Saturday, October twenty-fourth,” the voice said.
Ben looked at the calendar. It was now Saturday the twenty-fourth.
The speaker described a road accident that had not happened yet. A van would hit the wall of the old cinema at seven in the morning. Ben laughed nervously, switched off the radio and went to bed.
At seven, a loud crash woke him. From his window he could see a van against the cinema wall. The driver climbed out, shaken but alive.
That night Ben turned the radio on again. The same voice described another event. A fire would begin in a bookstore near the market at half past two. Ben called the owner, who checked the building and found a damaged wire before anything caught fire.
For the first time, Ben felt useful. He began listening every night. Sometimes he could warn people. Sometimes he could only wait.
On the fourth night, the newsreader spoke more slowly.
“Tomorrow morning,” the voice said, “a man named Ben will be found alone in his radio shop. The door will be locked from the inside.”
Ben turned the dial, but the voice returned on every station. It began to describe the coat he was wearing and the coffee beside his hand.
He pulled the plug from the wall. The radio continued speaking.
Ben picked it up and carried it into the street. He left it in a metal bin, walked to a hotel and spent the night there with the lights on.
In the morning he returned to the shop. The door was still locked, as he had left it. No one was inside. But on the counter lay the same wooden radio.
A new paper label had been tied to its handle: REPAIRED. PLEASE COLLECT AFTER MIDNIGHT.
Ben never opened the shop again.
Useful words
- repaired: reparaba (en el relato) o reparado (en la etiqueta final).
- counter: mostrador.
- dial: mando o selector de emisora.
- newsreader: locutor de noticias.
- damaged wire: cable deteriorado.
- plug: enchufe.
- collect: recoger algo.
Check your reading
- Why does Ben think the first report is impossible?
- How does he help the bookstore owner?
- Does the radio stay in the bin?
Answers: 1. It reports an accident before it happens. 2. He warns the owner, who finds a damaged wire. 3. No. It appears again in his shop.
4. The Fifth Chair
Read the story
Every winter, four friends met at Clara’s house for dinner. They had done this since university. The table was small, and Clara owned exactly four chairs.
This year, when she returned from the kitchen, there were five.
The extra chair was black and made of old wood. It stood at the end of the table, between the window and the wall.
“Who brought that?” Clara asked.
Her friends shook their heads. Nobody knew.
They tried to carry the chair outside, but it was much heavier than it looked. They left it in the hallway and went back to dinner.
A minute later, the chair was beside the table again.
The friends stopped talking. Their soup was getting cold. Clara counted the chairs, then the people. Four people. Five places.
A soft voice came from the empty chair.
“Someone forgot to invite me.”
Clara wanted to run, but Daniel, the oldest friend, held her arm.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The voice laughed. “You know.”
On the chair appeared a small notebook. Its cover was stained with water. Clara opened it and found five names written on the first page: Clara, Daniel, Ruth, Mark and Iris.
Iris. Clara had not heard that name for years. Their friend Iris had died in a lake during their final summer at university. After the funeral, the others had stopped speaking about her. Each year they met and pretended their group had always been four.
Clara sat down in front of the empty place.
“We didn’t forget you,” she said. “We were afraid to remember.”
A little water ran down the legs of the black chair. The voice answered, so quietly that they almost missed it.
“Then say my name.”
“Iris,” Clara said. The others repeated it.
The chair was suddenly empty in a different way. It looked like ordinary wood. When Clara touched it, it was dry and light.
They carried it to the window. For the rest of the evening, they told stories about Iris: funny stories, difficult stories, memories they had kept to themselves.
In the morning, the black chair was gone. On the table lay a note in Iris’s handwriting, the same handwriting they remembered from university.
Thank you for leaving me a place.
Useful words
- extra: adicional, de más.
- shook their heads: negaron con la cabeza.
- hallway: pasillo.
- stained: manchado.
- funeral: funeral.
- pretended: fingieron.
- handwriting: letra manuscrita.
Check your reading
- How many people come to dinner?
- Who is Iris?
- What changes after the friends say her name?
Answers: 1. Four. 2. A friend who died years earlier. 3. The chair becomes dry and light, and it later disappears.
Cómo aprovechar estas lecturas
En la primera lectura, intenta entender quién está en peligro y qué decisión toma. En la segunda, vuelve a las palabras del glosario y localiza en qué frase aparecen. Las preguntas se refieren al texto: no necesitan imaginar una continuación.
Las cuatro historias usan lugares y amenazas distintos —una estación, un apartamento, un taller y una cena— y no son traducciones de cuentos ya publicados. En todas, los protagonistas toman una decisión y el episodio tiene un cierre, aunque permanezca una pequeña inquietud propia del terror.
Historias y apoyo de lectura: Shyvirelle. Textos originales en inglés; nivel orientativo A2–B1, no certificado.
Sigue leyendo en Cuentos de Terror Cortos.