spooky

It happened during the winter of 1973, when evenings rang out stillborn from far across the weathered moorland, and snow fell hard and heavy and clung atop the peppered veins of nature__ tough bracken, all picture-postcard like.

Just because something isn__ good doesn__ mean it__ bad.

...in the middle of the field, Harry suddenly stopped and looked back. Mr. Chad was all alone in the creepy woods. He could take care of himself...couldn't he? Of course he could, he was a teacher.

Would've been useful when I was about eight," I said. "I used to have wicked nightmares." I did, too: stupid dreams about being chased by Elmo. A psycho Elmo with eyes like that Chucky doll. I'd wake up screaming and Vicky would come running in and ask what the nightmare was about. I never told her. I was too embarrassed.

At least I rescued your poor hot dog.

Why__ you want to kill yourself? Didn__ you feel anything, or didn__ it hurt you?_ Mandy questioned, looking puzzled. __es, I suppose it did, _ it was strange, it was sharp, that__ all I can think of to describe it_ and cold, but not cold like ice, more like_ I don__ know, like something much worse, something horrible_ and it seemed like the ground was falling upwards, becoming the sky_ for a moment it made me consider that it was just a dream, that I was on some sort of drug, and then I remember being overjoyed to see the sky was still above me, then just really sad, really tired_ and then I don__ remember much else about it,_ Alecto told her, glaring straight ahead at the sky with narrowed eyes. __ don__ mind, I__ not supposed to mind, anyway. Mearth already told me that eventually I would want to be dead, that it was inevitable_ still, I sometimes wish that I could have done something good for other people in my life, it might have made up for all the bad stuff I__e done.

I__e seen how cigarettes went from being advertised in every type of media to being something found to be deadly_ they can__ kill me no matter how many of them I smoke but I__e seen humans die from smoking them_ if I were you I would stop smoking them.___hy should I? You smoke __m all the time, you chain-smoke cigarettes,_ Mandy pointed out.__eah, I started doing that back in the Sixties_ for reasons you likely saw on those VHS tapes_ but I__ not a person, I__ Pollution, things like that aren__ dangerous to me but they are to you,_ Alecto told her. __t__ not a good idea.

_Do you think there__ somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?_ Mandy blurted out.__ou mean when you die, where will you end up?_ Alecto asked her. __I wouldn__ know_ back to whatever void there is, I suppose._____e thought about it_ every living thing dies alone, it__l be lonely after death,_ Mandy sighed sadly. __hat freaks me out, does it scare you?___ don't want to be alone,_ Alecto replied wearily. __e won__ be, though. We__l be dead, so we__l just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness.___ don__ want to be any of that either though,_ Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. __hen we die, we__l still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything__l just be nothing!___ou__e real though, at least that__ something,_ Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.

Come ye viewless ministers of this dread hour! Come from the fenny lake, the hanging rock, and the midnight cave! The moon is red _ the stars are out _ the sky is burning _ and all nature stands aghast at what we do!

I thought that there could be no revolt against nature. I accepted the landscape without dreaming that, behind, there still prowled large skeletons without fur. With just one sign, I thought I was able to make them rise up outside their refuges...

No harm," he said as he danced on, cutting the air. Only now, the snowflakes began to bleed as he cut them. Battle of white and scarlet..."Oto-san, what can I do?" I wept in the dream, my tears freezing to my cheeks."Dance," he said, his face still and calm, his blade whistling through the air. Blood flew from the tip of the sword, painting characters of death and disaster across the white ground.Dancing.

People are often wary of reading or watching anything in the horror genre because in their minds, it's just senseless gore, death and violence. Well, I can tell you from avid experience, that's not what horror is about. The horror genre teaches us that sometimes really bad things happen to really good people, but that hope always prevails in even the darkest of situations. That's a very important lesson, no matter how frightening you think the teacher is, and to be in the top of her class, all you need to do is to go in with an open mind.

Much later, Alice would wonder what might have happened if she had gone to bed when she was supposed to.

But I love Halloween, and I love that feeling: the cold air, the spooky dangers lurking around the corner.

You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it's got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It's hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch "Station SNAFU" on your logic. Relays in the tank take over an' whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin' comes on your logic's screen. Or you punch "Sally Hancock's Phone" an' the screen blinks an' sputters an' you're hooked up with the logic in her house an' if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today's race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin' Garfield's administration or what is PDQ and R sellin' for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big buildin' full of all the facts in creation an' all the recorded telecasts that ever was made__n' it's hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country__n' everything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it an' you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an' keeps books, an' acts as consultin' chemist, physicist, astronomer, an' tea-leaf reader, with a "Advice to the Lovelorn" thrown in. The only thing it won't do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, "Oh, you think so, do you?" in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don't work good on women. Only on things that make sense. (1949)

Like a forest rose the huge peaks above the slumbering village, measuring the night and heavens. They beckoned him. And something born of the snowy desolation, born of the midnight and silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of the night, something that lay 'twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the vast wintry spaces down into his heart-- and called him. Very softly, unrecorded in any word or thought his brain could compass, it laid its spell upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the surface of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the winter's night appalled him....-The Glamour of the Snow

It took a pair of ghosts to open my eyes.

Perhaps there is a beast...maybe it's only us.