It’s spooky season, which means I’m going to drag up a dead memory from your youth!
Picture yourself, age thirteen or fourteen. You’re in middle school or early high school. It’s late October, and everyone is just waiting for the holidays to get started. Teachers have put up bulletin boards with orange and green paper. That one dude is still wearing shorts every day even though it’s like 50 degrees outside. Like he’s too proud to just wear a pair of jeans.
You get to your English class and you pick up a handout on the way to your seat, not even realizing that the short story you are about to read is going to live rent-free in your mind for the rest of your life.
Here are some of the short stories that I have read and been haunted by since I was in middle school. If you too want to think periodically about them on a regular basis, I’ve included links to each one.
- “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Rohl Dahl
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I had to read this one in the eighth grade. For the longest time I could not remember the title, nor could I find the story online when I Googled the plot. When I think of strangely intense short stories, this is the first one that comes to mind.
It follows the story of Mary Maloney, who, after receiving some unspecified bad news from her husband, takes a frozen leg of lamb from her freezer and clocks him with it, killing him. Frightened that the consequences of her actions might endanger the life of her unborn child, Mary puts the leg of lamb in the oven, goes about her evening, and then calls the police once she has constructed an alibi.
When the police arrive, they search the house for a murder weapon or evidence of a break-in. After they have been searching for some time, Mary offers to serve the police dinner, and they eat the leg of lamb she used to kill her husband. It ends chillingly with one cop at the dinner table stating that he believes that the weapon is still on the premises, and the image of Mary giggling to herself in the next room. This one is quietly unsettling, and the simple imagery and dialogue give this short story an ungrounded feeling not unlike what one might associate with a nightmare. 8/10
- “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson
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I read this twice, once in the eighth grade, and once in the tenth. This is probably your token creepy English class short story. It centers around a small rural community’s annual tradition of getting everybody together, drawing a person’s name out of a box, and then stoning that person to death. The story describes the process and general (but cloudy and distant) history of the Lottery. Everything about it is perfectly normal, even somewhat boring to the people of the unnamed village.
It ends with the selection and execution of unfortunate Tessie Hutchinson as even her own family participates in the stoning. Perhaps the most terrifying quality of this story is how no one, not even Tessie, questions the tradition. It is upheld by elder members of the community, and the only reason Tessie protests against it is that she herself was chosen. What does this say about us, and the way we uphold traditions without stopping to question the damage that they might be doing to others? What about how quickly a community turns on one of its members for something random? Nothing like a disturbing premise that mirrors the worst aspects of society to wake up a 13-year-old at 9 am on a Monday morning. 7/10.
- “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe
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I can’t really remember, but I’m pretty sure I read this my freshman year of high school. “The Masque of the Red Death” tells the story of a rich ruler who turns his back on his people while a plague ravages the poorer citizens of his country. He locks himself and his rich friends in a huge palace where they party for some time, while, presumably, everyone else outside dies a horrible death from a bloodborne illness.
That is, until the physical manifestation of the Red Death crashes the prince’s party, and everyone inside also dies of the plague. The theme here is that when the rich ignore the plight of the poor, they too will suffer in the end. Another theme is that pride, money, and ignorance will not save you from illness. If you can believe it, this one has seen a resurgence in popularity lately. Can’t imagine why. 10/10.
- “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs
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I don’t know when I read it but I definitely remember having read it at some point. My heart says tenth grade, but my mind won’t be made up.
This one is about how a monkey’s paw with the power to grant the holder three wishes totally destroys the lives of an upper-middle-class family in the early 1900s. After wishing to receive 200 pounds, Mr. White is horrified when his wish is fulfilled through the death of his son. His wife begs Mr. White to wish for their son to be alive again, and Mr. White obliges, only to become horrified at the realization that his son, who has been dead for some time by this point, would come back as an undead monster. They hear banging on the door, but Mr. White wishes his son away again before his wife can let the monster in. A cautionary tale about what happens when we ask too much of what we don’t understand, the Monkey’s Paw is deeply disturbing and a little bit sad. 6/10.
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“Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe
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I either read this in the eighth grade or in my freshman year of high school. This is your classic week-leading-up-to-Halloween assigned reading. From a purely aesthetic perspective, it has everything you need for a scary story: an unreliable narrator, wine, catacombs, petty grudges. The narrator, who is called Montresor, establishes that he lowkey hates this guy he knows, Fortunato. He doesn’t say why, but Montresor is convinced he must get absolute revenge against Fortunato.
Montresor offers Fortunato a taste of some of Montresor’s amontillado (a type of vintage wine) and leads him down into the catacombs. Once down there, Montresor notices that Fortunato is very drunk. It is also suggested that Fortunato has some sort of respiratory distress going on. He continues to encourage Fortunato to drink unto the point of complete disorientation. Montresor then proceeds to trap Fortunato against the end of the catacomb hall and build a brick wall between himself and Fortunato, until Fortunato is sealed inside. Montresor is unhinged but calculated. He has clearly planned every aspect of this plan out in detail, but he describes it to the reader strangely, referring to Fortunato repeatedly as “my dear friend” and describing how he himself yelled to drown out Fortunato’s screaming. The imagery is so creepy and the prose reads like the confessions of a madman. 9/10.
So if you’re looking for some light reading this Halloween I recommend these. You could retell them at your Halloween Zoom meetings, forget their titles and try to find them at 2 am three years from now, pass them on to your literature-loving friends. It’s the perfect time of year to enjoy a little spooky fiction.