October 1, 2023
Autumnal Passage
“It isn’t October,” a friend once said, “until I see Stuart post that Ray Bradbury quote on Facebook.”
Welcome, Readers, to my favorite month of the year.
The quote in question is the preface to Ray Bradbury’s 1955 short story collection OCTOBER COUNTRY and remains, in my opinion, one of the most perfect paragraphs, let alone establishing devices, ever written in English. Though most of the stories had already appeared elsewhere, namely the Arkham House limited edition collection DARK CARNIVAL (copies of which, on Amazon, start at $750), and a number would appear again in what is one of my personal favorite Halloween books, FROM THE DUST RETURNED (a fix-up Bradbury completed in 2001), OCTOBER COUNTRY remains the prime jewel in Bradbury’s horror oeuvre, though all of them are set in the majestic crown of SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES, a novel which, while not necessarily inventing the small town adolescent horror story as a genre, is the one against which all such stories are judged, from THE CRUCIBLE to IT, THE HOUSE OF SEVEN GABLES to HOCUS POCUS. All of which are plays/books/movies you should take in if you happen to be an October Person.
Of course, if you happen to be an October Person, you probably already have.
About a year ago this time I read another recent entry to the genre, Quan Barry’s WE RIDE UPON STICKS, an update of THE CRAFT (Andrew Flemming’s 1996 high school horror film about teenage witches featuring a career defining performance from Fairuza Balk) set in 1980s Salem. The flock of teenage girls that were the center of that city’s infamous Witch Trials are now members of a high school field hockey team, more or less led by a direct descendant of Ann Putnam, the girl generally named by history as the most vehement accuser of her neighbors, and paradoxically the only one to make a full public confession and apology, decades after the last “witch” was hung. Enigmatic and aloof, Abby is a dark horse heroine whose personal (and largely off-screen) wrestle with her sinister legacy ultimately proves her (and the team’s) salvation, but each of Barry’s characters is a distinct and deftly drawn portrait of an archetype of adolescent femininity, including an effeminate boy who (SPOILER) will ultimately turn out to be, well… not a gay man (and as if to help underline the distinction, Quan includes several gay male characters), even though that is what most of the other characters assume her to be. United by their common love of field hockey- and a determination to be the winning team- they of course stumble into the occult (what else would teenage girls do?) in a manner that is almost directly lifted from THE CRAFT, but avoids that film’s inevitable Good Witch/Bad Witch showdown (not that Flemming’s finale isn’t awesome, because it is, and remains one of the few films with snakes I can actually sit through). In a refreshing move for fiction focused on young people (especially written in the last ten years), it is actually their parents who sort of save the day, mostly by taking responsibility for their children who are still children (even if they have started smoking and drinking and having sex) and whose neglect and implied social invisibility is the real motivator- both to win field hockey gold, and to more or less worship Satan. Woven into the whole is a subplot about questionably cast Korean American Sue Yoon as Tituba in the high school’s production of THE CRUCIBLE, who somehow manages to not only make it acceptable, but brilliant, finding insight to a character often relegated to the “problematic” bucket of American theater. Archly hilarious, this may have been the part of the book which personally resonated with me the most, if only because something similar happened when my own high school cast an Indian American woman in the role.
Also set in the 80s (hmmmm… is it that more books are finally coming out by authors my age who are hitting the prime of their careers… or is everyone just trying to cash in on the success of STRANGER THINGS?), Grady Hendrix’s MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM sells itself as an 80s teen exploitation horror flick in novel form, but it’s less gleeful nostalgia romp (even with the non-stop references to the pop music of the time) or genre indulgence (in spite of a multitude of allusions and nods towards ROSEMARY’S BABY, REPOSSESSED, THE OMEN, and of course, THE EXORCIST) and more long-term character and relationship study, tracking the friendship between homely/poor Abby and beautiful/rich Gretchen, who are able to retain their sense of the other one’s true self no matter what happens to them or how they change. Though sprinkled with moments of real pathos amidst all the quirk and comedy (the relationship between Abby and her mother receives very little stage time but is wrought with a deep and genuine sense of how poverty and misery often accumulate together as a family slips out of the American middle class one setback at a time), the meat of the novel ultimately comes after the literal demon has been banished but the everyday ravages of distance, time, and loss emerge to challenge the bond formed when Abby first teaches Gretchen how to roller skate. The book ultimately positions their friendship as the thing that is always truly at stake, much more than either young woman’s immortal soul.
Being set in the 80s and focused on teenage girls named Abby coming up against the supernatural aren’t the only things MY BEST FRIEND’S EXORCISM and WE RIDE UPON STICKS have in common. Thematically, both use the backdrop of quaint smaller cities and bucolic (more or less) childhoods to contrast their heroines’ overwhelming sense of alienation in spite of, on the surface, lives of relative privilege and comfort. Even EXORCISM’s Abby’s poor Southern trash homelife (the book is set in and around Charleston) comes with parents who are decent human beings and her friendship with the much wealthier Gretchen allows her access to experiences that make her childhood somehow, regardless of being unpopular and financially insecure, still seem romantic compared to her rather drab adulthood. But the point of both novels seems to be that even with suburban luxury and peaceful environs, young people often still feel alone, misunderstood, underestimated and undervalued, except by one another, and it is in these bonds they both discover themselves and, because these are horror stories, pathways into the supernatural paved with their own desire to belong and given their lives purpose. You know, Ann Putnam Syndrome.
Ray Bradbury’s FROM THE DUST RETURNED, however, is told largely through the eyes of Timothy, a ten year old boy who is raised in a haunted house on the hill above Green Town, Illinois (Bradbury’s frequent stand in for small town America and the setting of both DANDELION WINE and SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES). He is the foundling son of the Elliot Family, who might be vampires, sorcerers, ghosts, or any combination of the three (and more). An outsider by birth (he is found on the doorstep by the Elliots, who initially assume he may be an offering from the town to keep them away), Timothy struggles with a desire to be a part of The Family, while also realizing his mortality is essential to helping them preserve their own strange magic. Though he often spends evenings in the attic conversing with his mummified Many Times Grandmere, and horseplays with his bat-winged Uncle Einar, his closest relationship is with Cecy, the novel’s other main character, an immortal teenage girl who spends most of her life asleep, astral projecting into the minds of others. Amongst these is Ann, a girl from a distant town, through whom Cecy becomes romantically attracted to thwarted suitor Tom. In the novel’s epilogue, Tom is lured to Green Town by a message given to him by Ann, which ultimately brings him to Cecy, their mutual fate left to the reader’s imagination. In a twist on the adolescents vs. the supernatural trope, Bradbury gives us, with both Timothy and Cecy, young people who in their efforts to find belonging and purpose, must ultimately seek the mundanity of the natural world, and willfully reject magic that, while dark, is certainly benevolent.
Though I greatly admire and enjoyed both STICKS and EXORCISM, FROM THE DUST RETURNED is, for me, the perfect Halloween book and I’ve now read it probably six times. This is partly because of its structure, as it is a novel composed from previously published short stories which Bradbury had been writing about the Elliots for over fifty years, and which makes it easy to digest in pieces, thus ideal as an end of day read during a busy autumn. It is mostly, however, due to its lyrical writing and enchanting tone and how it manages to capture the whimsicality and caramel apple sweetness of Halloween without losing the darkness and somber undertones of autumn and a holiday so centered around death. Bradbury’s best work is characterized by his unrepentant love for weirdness and his sincere belief in a world where one can be a monster, but still be human, and a human who loves monsters, while still being scared of them. And though Evil is real in FROM THE DUST RETURNED (as it most certainly is in EXORCISM and STICKS) and must ultimately be defeated by Cecy in what basically amounts to a telepathic sniper shot, it is mortal and myopic, threatening in its ignorance of the complexity that renders vampires as emotionally vulnerable as little boys, and makes us all seek something eternal in a very temporal world. DUST reads like a hot cocoa and nostalgic conversation with someone you haven’t seen in a while, on a windy, rainy day, with Loreena McKennitt’s THE VISIT on in the background. And if that don’t say Halloween, I don’t know what does.
Oh, and…
...that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain...
PS. For all the books in this article, I have included a link to ordering them through Abe Books. Abe is a great resources, and I would encourage you to consider using them, and not Amazon, for all your book purchasing needs!
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Stuart