"Here There Be Tygers" is a short story by Stephen King

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

. It was originally published in the Spring 1968 issue of Ubris magazine, and collected in King's Skeleton Crew

Skeleton Crew

Skeleton Crew is the second collection of short fiction by Stephen King. The first collection, Night Shift, was published seven years prior in 1978. Different Seasons, a collection of four novellas, was published between the two in 1982. Skeleton Crew was originally published in hardcover form by...

in 1985. This story is extremely short, and written from the perspective of a boy who believes a tiger is lurking in his school bathroom.

The title references the phrases used by medieval cartographers

Here be dragons

"Here be dragons" is a phrase used to denote dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of the medieval practice of putting sea serpents and other mythological creatures in uncharted areas of maps.-History:...

 when they put warnings on unexplored portions of their maps. The phrase was also used in King's later story "The Reploids

The Reploids

"The Reploids" is an uncollected short story by Stephen King. It was published in the 1988 book Dark Visions.-Plot summary:Edward Paladin shows up in place of Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show, but all is not what it seems...

." In the movie version of

The Dark Half (film)

The Dark Half is a 1993 horror film adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name. The film was directed by George A. Romero and stars Timothy Hutton as Thad Beaumont and George Stark, Amy Madigan as Liz Beaumont, Michael Rooker as Sheriff Alan Pangborn and Royal Dano in his final...

 King's novel The Dark Half

The Dark Half

The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, published in 1989. Publishers Weekly listed The Dark Half as the second best-selling book of 1989 behind Tom Clancy's Clear and Present Danger. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 1993.Stephen King wrote several books under a...

, the story Thad's mother looks at is a copy of this story.

As King noted in the foreword to Skeleton Crew, this is one of the first stories King ever wrote. It was written when King was a high school student.

Plot

Charles is a third grader. He really needs to go to the bathroom and his "mean" teacher Miss Bird asks him if he has to go before she allows him, embarrassing him. ("Very well Charles. You may go to the bathroom and urinate. Is that what you need to do? Urinate?") Arriving at the lavatory, he peeks around the corner, and sees a tiger lying on the bathroom floor. He stands at the door, too afraid to enter. Eventually a child named Kenny Griffen comes to get him. Charles begins to cry and Kenny leads him in, saying that he made up the tiger. Charles escapes out of the bathroom, and when he forces himself to go back in, he sees the tiger has a torn piece of shirt on its claw. Charles decides to relieve himself in the sink, but Miss Bird catches him. She goes around the corner to find Kenny, and Charles leaves the bathroom. He returns to his classroom and begins reading Roads to Everywhere.