Halloween Bedtime Stories

'T IS THE witching season in the good town of Cambridge. Trees are turning Halloween colors. Pumpkins gape from neighborhood porch stoops and all the folks on the streets you find, from the youngest ragamuffins to the oldest, tenured curmudgeons, are sporting their naughtiest Jack Nicholson smiles.

But Halloween can be a lonely time too. While your schoolchums are busy doing the Monster Mash at a Mather House bash, or mixing exotic witch's brews in 10-speed blenders and plastic-coated cauldrons, you may find yourself all by your lonesome, with nothing to do but nurse a paltry patch of goosepimples.

Stranded on the spookiest night of the year, what better way to trick those Hallowed Eve blues than by treating yourself to a good gothic read? We ain't talking Stephen King pulp or Amityville schlock, but serious, tried-and-true, capital "I" Literature. If you intend to read your way through the most macabre and bone-chilling of Holiday vigils, get in store a shelfload of works guaranteed to keep you white-knuckled, wired, and wide-eyed.

Submitted for your approval...Eleven American Literary Tricks and Treats, sure to see you safely through from midnight to dawn. So throw open the curtains to the pitching wind, shut the door tight to any curious visitors, and tuck that cover up firmly about your neck. And no caffeine allowed, in this Halloween challenge. It'll only make your hands shake and tremble all the more...and in the end such stimulants won't be needed.

MIDNIGHT. Buried Child, Sam Shepard. "There ain't nothing a man can't do," we're told in this Pulitzer Prize winning drama. Infanticide, self-multilation, heavy-drinking, cornhusking. One-hundred proof Halloween horror-potion. And who couldn't cuddle up to a play whose most quoted line is, "You ain't never seen a bitch eat her puppies?" Hello, my name is Sam Shepard. This is my closet. And these are my skeletons.

1:00. A Good Man Is Hard To Find, Flannery O'Connor. These short stories have nothing to do with Halloween, but as anyone familiar with O'Connor can tell you, they fit the occasion perfectly. The title piece is particularly horrifying, and if someone named the Misfit comes begging candy at your door, call HUPD P.D.Q.!

1:30. "Yours," in An Amateur's Guide to the Night, Mary Robison. A wise, poignant pumpkin-carving story from Harvard's own writer-in-residence. Apart from letting you cool down after the macabre O'Connor, "Yours" reveals a more human side to the Halloween season. And Robison finds a beautiful metaphor in the dying flame at the heart of every jack-o'-lantern.

2:00. "Frescoes from the Past," in Life on the Mississippi," Mark Twain. For a reason nobody knows, Twain decided not to include this as a chapter in Huckleberry Finn. The tale is perhaps too completely black; it evokes throughout a strange mixture of gut-laughter and gut-fear. One thing for sure: having read it, you won't think the same of Huckleberry Finn, or its avuncular author, again. Not for abjurers of dead baby jokes.

2:30. "A Rose for Emily," in Collected Stories, William Faulkner. Just what is the secret of Miss Emily's past? And what exactly has become of her mysterious lover? And what, may we ask, is that awful smell coming form the attic of Miss Emily's...Wait a minute! Don't wanna give it all away, heh heh. But this is a story to put chest on your hairs, and it beats plowing through Absalom, Absalom!, another potentially potent 'Ween read.

3:00. "Franny Loses a Fight," in The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving. All Hallow's Eve, Irving-style. Giant spikers. Heart attacks. Tortured children. A tragic rape. But there's the usual dose of good humor here, and Irving's spirit shines through bigger than the State o' Maine itself. This is Halloween candy to sink your wisdom teeth into, the Snickers bar in the bag of Golden Delicious apples.

3:30. "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," in The Sketch Book, Washington Irving. From one Irving to another, and this one is utterly different.

But both Irvings share a delight in the grotesque, and Ichabod Crane is to Halloween, after all, what Scrooge is to Christmas. This is must mid' o' the night reading, a story you can feel down deep in your Brom bones.

4:00. Poe-pour: "Hop-Frog," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Raven" and "The Bells," in any good anthology, Edgar Allen Poe. By the Master of Disaster, the Big Daddy of Supersonic P-P-Pulse Rate. Each piece is guaranteed to knock a couple years off any poor pup's life. And "The Bells," especially, is a terrific way to round off your Poe-portion. Find yourself getting sleepy? Little Weak? Sorta drowsy? Recite "The Bells" aloud into a tape deck, pop your recording into an industrial strength ghetto blaster, and let-errrrrip, full volume, for dozing neighbors. Run-DMC's got nothin' on Poe...though they might make a mean team. "The TIN-too-NAB-yoo-LAY-shun of duh BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS BELLS! HUNH!."

5:00. The first and last 25 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. Because it's not every novel that has its young heroine dressed like a ham for a Halloween pageant, because Lee creates the archetypical American neighborhood and has the good grace to let you explore it, kid-like, by the light of midnight streetlamps, and because Boo Radley, with his taste for live squirrels and last-minute heroics, is the embodiment of Halloween itself--a big, lurking Boogie Man, with a heart of gold.

6:00. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James. Because now, after a long and taxing night, it's time to get some sleep.

Daniel Vilmure '87 is the author of Life in the Land of the Living, a novel published this month by Aflred A. Knopf. This article first appeared in The Crimson last Halloween.