Dead Lines

Strong dialogue in last week's episode ("Infected") was rarer than a zombie cure, but Sunday night's "Isolation" more than made up for that lack:

Hershel: We just went through something terrible.  Everything we've been working so hard to keep out, it found it's way in.
Rick: No.  It's always there.



Michonne: I'm in.
Hershel: You haven't been exposed.  Daryl has.  You get in a car with him--
Michonne: He's already given me fleas.



Rick: Whoever it was that did this, they're not going anywhere.  We'll find them.
Tyreese: Today?  Right now?  Because I'm not feeling the urgency.  All I see you doing is pumping water.  In fact, what I'm picking up is, murder is OK in this place now.
Rick: No, it is not.  But we have to save lives first.  We have to keep this place going.
Tyreese: You worry about that.  I'll worry about what's right.



Bob: You really want me coming along?
Daryl: [holds up a sheet of paper]  What's that word?
Bob: Zanamivir.
Daryl: Yeah, we need you.



Hershel [to Rick and Maggie]: Listen, damn it.  You step outside, you risk your life.  You take a drink of water, you risk your life.  And nowadays, you breathe, you risk your life.  Every moment now you don't have a choice.  The only thing you can choose is what you're risking it for.  Now, I can make these people feel better and hang on a little bit longer.  I can save lives.  That's reason enough to risk mine.



Rick: [admonishing] We decided to do that tomorrow.
Carol: We don't know if we get a tomorrow.

Countdown: The Top 20 Joe R. Lansdale Works of Short Fiction--#3

[For the previous entry on the Countdown, click here.]


#3. "The Shadows Kith and Kin"

This 2007 title story is a bit of a departure for Joe R. Lansdale, both tonally and stylistically.  But the end result is the same: one incredible read.

Relentlessly bleak, and choppily narrated (often stringing single, short-sentence paragraphs), "The Shadows Kith and Kin" drops us inside the mind of a Charles Whitman-type sniper.  The narrator--unemployed, living with his in-laws, married to a woman threatening to divorce him--is plagued by existential angst and feelings of emasculation.  One restless night, while sitting out on the front porch, he is approached by a faceless, "tar-covered human shape" that intones "You are almost one of us" before returning to the crowded shadows.  The narrator is visited (or so he believes) nightly thereafter by the strange shades: "More than one now.  And they flutter tight around me and I can smell them, and it is a smell like nothing I have smelled before.  It is dark and empty and mildewed and old and dead and dry."  These occult entities, defined by "an absence of being" more than an "absence of light," form "the empty congregation," a legion of failures with whom the narrator immediately senses kinship:

The sad empty folk who wander through life and walk beside you and never get so much as a glance; nerds like me who live inside their heads and imagine winning the lottery and scoring the girls and walking tall.  But instead, we stand short and bald and angry, our hands in our pockets, holding not money, but our limp balls.

Not long after encountering the shadows, the narrator (who counts shooting a gun as one of his few talents) is moved to murder his whole family.  But even as he resides in his isolated home with their moldering bodies, waiting out a freak ice storm, he knows a more spectacular act of violence is required of him before he can truly join his shadow friends.  In the story's climax, the narrator ascends the phallic clock tower on the campus of the college he dropped out of (and where he then worked as a janitor before being fired).  A
"future-stealing machine," the gunman proceeds to deliver a series of "hot lead announcements" to the unsuspecting students below:
"Telegram.  You're dead."  All the while, the narrator is cool, displaying an unnerving lack of affect.  He casually describes the assassination of an attractive coed ("The young woman falls amidst a burst of what looks like plum jelly") and compares his various victims to the minnows he once stomped to death as a child (after the bait failed to catch him any fish).

The story hints at biological (faulty brain wiring) and environ-mental (an abusive and gun-loving father) explanations for the narrator's aberrant behavior, yet maintains a strategic ambiguity as to whether a deranged psyche or an actual supernatural influence spurs the narrator's shooting spree.  Either way, the conclusion is absolutely chilling.  "The Shadows, Kith and Kin" evinces the banality of evil, as an envious and discontented loser wreaks bloody havoc on anyone unlucky enough to fall within his sights.  Lansdale, who himself attended the Austin campus of the University of Texas, hearkens back to Charles Whitman's infamous crime, yet pens a tale that (perhaps most frightening of all) is perennially timely.

Short Story Spotlight: "We, the Fortunate Bereaved"

Dark Harvest meets Pet Sematary meets "The Lottery" in Brian Hodge's "We, the Fortunate Bereaved" (anthologized in Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre). But this is not to suggest that Hodge's narrative is derivative in the least; the story is stunningly original, and presents a masterful mix of American Gothic and Halloween themes.

The isolated rural community of Dunhaven isn't like other towns, and its Halloween rituals are undeniably unique.  October's closing night "brought more than just trickery and mischief.  In Dunhaven, genuine magic, dark magic, pierced the veil on All Hallows Eve."  Each Halloween, a scarecrow figure stationed in the town square animates with the spirit of a resident who died within the past year.  According to custom, the particular returnee is determined by the personally-significant memorabilia left at the foot of the scare-crow's cross.  Right up until the time the eldritch effigy climbs down from its post, it's unknown which decedent will be communicating with his family from the beyond.  This uncertainty supercharges the town--and the story itself--with tension and suspense as the night of the visitation approaches.

Hodge extrapolates brilliantly from this premise, dramatizing the emotional toll the situation has on the survivors of the annual decedents and exploring whether such postmortem reunion is truly a blessing or a curse.  The author also shows the effect the rite has on Dunhaven as a whole, inspiring "a deep legacy of secrecy" and turning the town insular ("the last thing [the townspeople] wanted was a tide of incomers desperately seeking assurance of life after death, driving up the property tax base in the process").  But the most intriguing development of all is the "sabotage" and "subter-fuge" that attends the Halloween event.  Some Dunhavenites pull out all the stops--to ensure their loved one will vivify the scare-crow, or to prevent the revelation of incriminating deeds.  As the protagonist Bailey notes, "the dead had secrets, and sometimes the living had a powerful interest in making sure both stayed on the other side, unseen, unheard."

An incredible sense of anticipation builds as the narrative takes readers through Halloween day and evening.  When the climax finally occurs, Hodge provides a pair of terrific plot twists (you might think you know how this story will end up, but you'll likely be wrong).  Ultimately, the narrative reminds us that masking is not just germane to Halloween but to everyday life, with the veil of civility disguising heinous natures.

"We, the Fortunate Bereaved" is an instant classic, and as good a piece of Halloween literature as I have ever read.  It perfectly embodies the subtitle of Halloween: Magic, Mystery, and the Macabre, which (as I attested in my earlier review) is an enjoyable anthology overall, but is worth owning for this amazing autumn tale alone.

Kingly Trivia

In keeping with this week's theme, a quartet of scarecrow-related questions:


1.The original hardcover edition of Nightmares & Dreamscapes features a scarecrow on its front cover.  What is written across the front of the scarecrow's shirt?


2.In the Dark Tower series, what is the name used to describe the scarecrow-esque effigies ritualistically burned on Reap bonfires?


3.In Under the Dome, which murder victim does Big Jim hide by disguising the person as a scarecrow decoration on his front lawn?


4."Mr. SWAC" is a scarecrow that ends up bisected on Dome Day in Under the Dome.  What does the acronym "SWAC" stand for?



Correct answers appear in the Comments section of this post.

Dark Passages: "The Companion"

Like many other terrific Joe R. Lansdale works, "The Companion" (1995; collected in Bumper Crop) did not make the Top 20 Countdown, but the story is worth citing for its featuring of a wicked scarecrow as the antagonist.  As can be seen from the passage below, Lansdale (who authored the piece with his children, Keith and Kasey) gives some unique touches to the familiar figure, creating a special sense of menace and mystery:

As Harold approached the scarecrow, he was even more taken with its unusual appearance.  It was dressed in a stovepipe hat that was crunched and moth-eaten and leaned to one side.  The body was constructed of hay, sticks, and vines, and the face was made of some sort of cloth, perhaps an old towsack.  It was dressed in a once expensive evening jacket and pants.  Its arms were outstretched on a pole, and poking out of its sleeves were fingers made of sticks.

From a distance, the eyes looked like empty sockets in a skull.  When Harold stood close to the scarecrow, he was even more surprised to discover it had teeth.  They were animal teeth, still in the jawbone, and someone had fitted them into the cloth face, giving the scarecrow a wolflike countenance.  Dark feathers had somehow gotten caught between the teeth.

But the most peculiar thing of all was found at the center of the scarecrow.  Its black jacket hung open, its chest was torn apart, and Harold could see inside.  He was startled to discover that there was a rib cage, and fastened to it by a cord was a large faded valentine heart.  A long, thick stick was rammed directly through that heart. (127) 

When Harold removes the pinioning stick, the soulless straw man comes to life and pursues the boy with deadly intent.  With "The Companion," Lansdale proves that R.L. Stine isn't the only writer who knows how to give goosebumps to young-adult readers.