the traditional devices of horror fiction, usually
with far less success.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Ray Bradbury(1962)
Although Ray BRADBURYhas been a prolific writer
since the 1940s, he has only occasionally written
novels, and of his supernatural novels, only this
one was not written for children, although the
chief protagonist is a child. The premise of the
story has been used in one form or another in a va-
riety of fine stories before and since, including THE
CIRCUS OF DR. LAO(1935), by Charles G. Finney,
The Dreaming Jewels(1950), by Theodore Stur-
geon, and later in Blind Voices(1978), by Tom
Reamy, and The Magnificent Gallery (1987), by
Thomas F. MONTELEONE. The setting is a typical
small midwestern town, a common time and place
for Bradbury, whose residents have their lives
changed forever when a traveling carnival arrives
unexpectedly.
The carnival of Mr. Dark is not a source of
merriment and joy, despite its gaudy signs and lav-
ish promises. The carousel can add or subtract
years from your life, and the other attractions also
have their hidden dangers. As the people who at-
tend begin to disappear, only the young protago-
nist, who has spied on the carnival’s personnel,
suspects the truth, that the carnival is an elaborate
trap, and typically it takes a while before he con-
vinces one of the adults, his father, that he is
telling the truth.
Intermingled with the melodrama is a subtler
story. The victims of the carnival are not so much
coerced as seduced. They are overcome by the evil
chiefly because of their own shortcomings, their
wishes to be young, or wealthy, or powerful, or just
to be loved. Although Mr. Dark and his minions
are eventually foiled, they are symptoms of a
greater ill that Bradbury and the reader know can-
not be so easily remedied. A portion of the novel is
based on a much earlier short story, “The Black
Ferris” (1948), which is sufficiently different to be
an interesting sidebar to the novel. A reasonably
loyal motion picture version was released in 1983,
but the tension and atmosphere of the novel did
not transfer to the screen particularly well.
“Sometimes They Come Back”
Stephen King(1974)
Memories of unpleasant encounters with school-
yard bullies are common in our culture, but it took
a writer like Stephen KINGto explore the really ter-
rifying possibility that we might not be free of them
even in maturity. The protagonist of this early story
is a high school teacher, Jim Norman, recently re-
covered from a nervous breakdown, who watched
four thugs murder his older brother when he him-
self was only nine years old. Although the incident
is far in his past, he has never been able to escape
it and is on the verge of experiencing it all over
again.
One of the classes he is teaching is a typical
parking lot for jocks, malcontents, and oddballs, a
reading class whose participants really do not want
to be there and whose teacher is hard pressed to
maintain his own interest. Norman is particularly
unhappy with one student, Chip Osway, who
makes veiled threats and is constantly belligerent.
Osway becomes a relatively minor problem when
one of the other students is run down by a hit-and-
run driver and replaced in class by Robert Larson,
a supposed transfer from Milford High School. Lar-
son is the spitting image of one of the boys who
killed Jim’s brother, and his presence and attitude
revive old fears.
When a second student dies, her seat is filled
by another transfer from Milford, another disre-
spectful troublemaker and also a duplicate of a sec-
ond member of the gang of killers. Jim is convinced
now that this is not a coincidence but cannot ex-
plain how the young thugs could remain the same
age until he checks with a retired policeman and
discovers that three of the foursome were killed in
an automobile accident not long after the murder.
Sure enough, another death is followed by the ar-
rival of the third member of the gang, and they
make no secret of the fact that they are back from
the dead to complete some unfinished business:
that Jim was supposed to have died as a child.
When Jim’s wife is run down and killed by a
hit-and-run driver, he is driven to an experiment
with the occult. He performs a violent, forbidden
ritual in order to defeat the threesome and send
them back to hell, but even as they disappear, he
realizes that his victory might not be permanent,“Sometimes They Come Back” 331