One of my favorite scary short stories is actually a chapter from Ray Bradbury's semi-autographical book Dandelion Wine. It's the 1920's, small town Illinois, a hot summer night, and three young single women are walking home from the movies, knowing full well that a murderer, dubbed "The Lonely One," is on the loose, and he's targeting, who else, young single women. You blog readers who are former high school students of mine might remember the story because it was in your sophomore lit. book.
Lavinia Nebbs escorts her two friends to their homes and is now heading to her own home--but to get there she must walk down into a park's dark ravine, something like 122 steps, and then back up. The once-brave Lavinia suddenly becomes rubber-legged, as her imagination starts to get the better of her. Are those footsteps behind her? Is someone following her? Hello!? Shadows in the trees dance about her. Is someone hiding in them, ready to leap out at her? What is that she hears? Her heart pounding? And just when Lavinia finally arrives home safely, quickly locks the door behind her, and turns on a light, she realizes that "The Lonely One" has been waiting for her all this time in her living room. Someone clears his throat.
The story is best read in the dark with a flashlight, but I eventually decided not to trust lusty 15 year olds to keep their hands to themselves, so it was lights back on for the sophomores. Even though Ray Bradbury is a master at descriptive writing and builds suspense with every paragraph, the behavior of teenagers in the dark is scarier than anything he could imagine.
1 comment:
Thinking back to my sophomore year and who I was dating at the time, and I'm pretty sure I'd have been fine with the lights off. Can't say the same about all of my girlfriends though!:-)
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