Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories #[nn]

In "The Lake," a man returns to the shore where he once played with his childhood friend Tally, now grown and married to Margaret. Years after Tally’s mysterious drowning, the lifeguard reveals a shocking truth, forcing him to confront the past he thought he’d buried. As he rebuilds the unfinished sandcastle, the weight of memory and loss settles in the quiet tide.

In "The Coffin!", a man's desperate bid to cut funeral costs backfires in the most chilling way when his self-designed coffin—complete with music, eulogy, and burial mechanics—takes a life too literally, leaving his brother's fate sealed in a machine that never stops working.

In "Let's Play Poison!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, Mr. Howard returns to teaching after a traumatic past, only to find himself haunted by the memory of a student’s death and the children he now sees as less than human. When he discovers kids playing a game on the sidewalk that mirrors a grave marker, his fear spirals into obsession—until a skull appears outside his window, and the line between punishment and possession begins to blur.

In "What the Dog Dragged In!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, a quiet bond forms between blind Betty and the kind stranger Roger Cartwright, who returns her injured dog Jerry. As their friendship deepens, Jerry begins to bring back more than just scraps—until one fateful day, he drags something far too heavy to ignore.

In "A Strange Undertaking...", Ezra Deepley, a quiet undertaker wronged by the town’s elite, finds himself at the center of a chilling reckoning when a deadly epidemic claims the lives of those who once wronged him. As he takes grim satisfaction in their final rites, he soon realizes that death may not be the end of their grudge—and the dead have a way of remembering.

In "A Work of Art!", a mortician disillusioned by the soulless routines of his trade crafts a robotic successor to carry out his final rites with the dignity and artistry he believes the profession deserves—only to face the unsettling question of whether a machine can truly honor the human spirit.

In "A Lesson In Anatomy!!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, young Stevey, fleeing his father’s dissection lab, stumbles upon a mysterious stranger in the woods. Eager to impress, he spins wild tales about science and secrets—only to uncover a truth about the man that upends everything he thought he knew.

In "The Silent Towns," Walter stumbles upon a deserted Martian settlement eerily quiet except for the sudden, haunting ring of a telephone. When he finally answers, he connects with a woman named Miss Selsor—only to be struck by her appearance, leaving him to reckon with the strange, unsettling reality of being the last man and the last woman on a dead world.

In "There Will Come Soft Rains...", a silent, self-sustaining house carries on its routines long after its human inhabitants are gone, a haunting echo of life in a world that no longer remembers them. The story unfolds through the house’s automated rituals, each one a quiet testament to a civilization that outpaced its own ethics.

In "The Million Year Picnic," a family journeys across a silent, ancient Mars, their boat gliding past the ruins of a civilization long gone. As they explore a forgotten canal, the children gaze into the water and see reflections that surprise them—faces that aren’t their own, but unmistakably theirs.

In "Mad Journey!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, Jo, a quiet lab worker at Rodney Simon’s aerospace firm, stumbles upon a mysterious gas that, when refined and combined with oxygen, could power a rocket beyond Earth’s pull. Simon, eager to push boundaries, redirects the mission from the Moon to Venus—setting off a chain of events that test the limits of ambition and the unknown.

In "Home To Stay!", a young boy’s heartfelt wish for his father to come home for good takes a shocking turn when a falling star streaks across the sky—only to reveal the truth behind the father’s long absence. As the family waits in quiet hope, the line between dream and reality blurs in a moment that will change everything.

In "Zero Hour," Mrs. Morris stumbles into a quiet mystery when her daughter and a friend begin playing a game about a Martian invasion—only to find that children across the country are doing the same. As the game's eerie details echo in real ways, she starts to wonder if the line between childhood imagination and something far more urgent has vanished.

In "Outcast of the Stars," a devoted father dreams of sharing the cosmos with his children, though his meager means keep him earthbound. With every scrap of savings, he transforms a broken prototype into a dazzling illusion of flight—just enough to spark wonder in their eyes, even if the sky stays out of reach.

In the year 2963, astronaut Jerome Kraft lands on a distant planet with a mission to catalog life forms and four years of supplies—only to find himself stranded when his return rocket is destroyed and all records of his arrival erased. As he uses his advanced knowledge to heal the sick and feed the hungry, the people of the planet come to revere him as their divine Savior, a belief that puts him at odds with the high priest, who sees such miracles as heresy. When the priest demands Jerome stop helping the poor and serve only the wealthy, he refuses, setting in motion a legacy that will echo across millennia. Years later, a new expedition discovers a civilization that worships a symbol of sacrifice—remnants of the man who walked among them, not as a god, but as a man with a different kind of power.

In "A Sound of Thunder," Mr. Eckles joins a high-stakes safari through time, paying top dollar to hunt a T-Rex in the prehistoric past. Guided by a strict protocol and a chilling warning about altering history, he steps onto a path where even the smallest misstep could unravel the future—though the real danger may lie not in the dinosaurs, but in the choices made along the way.

In "King of the Grey Spaces!", two boys dream of space travel after watching a rocket launch, their youthful ambition leading them to apply for the Interplanetary Patrol. Years later, as they wait for their call to join, Chris receives a revelation that upends everything he thought he knew.

In "I, Rocket," a once-mighty warship now abandoned and rusting recalls her glory days under Captain Lamb, her loyalty tested by betrayal she alone witnessed. Told from the ship’s own perspective, the story unfolds with quiet intensity as memory and metal intertwine.

In "The Black Ferris!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, two boys stumble upon a sinister carnival attraction: a ferris wheel that can reverse or accelerate time with each spin. When a man exploits the wheel to become a child and infiltrate a kind old woman’s life, the boys race to stop him—only to find their own fate entwined with the wheel’s eerie power.

In "The One Who Waits," a group of Earthlings lands on a quiet planet marked by a hauntingly silent Soul Well—where forgotten things that once had flesh linger in endless waiting. The story unfolds with quiet dread, as the travelers confront a place that feels less like a destination and more like a memory made manifest.

In "The Screaming Woman!" from *Home to Stay! The Complete EC Ray Bradbury Stories*, young Jo stumbles upon a haunting mystery while walking to get ice cream—her only witness to a woman’s voice pleading from beneath the earth. As she tries to make sense of the eerie song that echoes through the lot, she learns of a long-buried romance between her father and a woman named Helen Nesbitt, whose song now seems to rise from the ground itself.

In "The Long Years!", a small crew of Earthlings arrives on a desolate, war-scarred Mars and stumbles upon an isolated scientist living with his young children. As they learn the truth behind his quiet life, they uncover a heartbreaking secret buried beneath the red dust—his family was lost long ago, and what remains is a fragile, loving illusion built from memory and machine.