Halloween Haunts: Sweets in the Darkness by James Chambers

Around this time of year, an image of Halloween comes to my mind.

It’s a Halloween that never quite occurred and likely never will.

It lives in my imagination, defined by oblong shadows stretching beneath Bradburyesque October skies, cast by comic book haunted houses stacked with impossible, Gothic architecture, cobwebbed porches, and ominous, arched windows. Children disguised in costumes worthy of a Hammer horror film—or at least a Corman sci-fi flick—rush along leaf-blown streets, clutching candy-swollen sacks. The chilly breeze lifts their voices, crackling with excitement. Hearts enflamed with celebration, they rush freely through the gloom. Jack-o-lanterns outnumber street lamps. Grinning pumpkin faces flicker with warm candle flame, laughing light at passing children. Dusk seems to last for hours, offering a never-ending supply of candy and an infinite canvas for mischief.

Adults walk in more reserved but equally fine costumes, trailing exuberant hordes of younger children. Or they sit on porches or stand behind doors left ajar, waiting to answer again and again the ancient question: Trick or Treat?

The air smells like sugar, pumpkin, smoke, and fear.

Inside the houses, all the electric lights are dimmed, and every home sports macabre decorations made and gathered since last Halloween. Paper skeletons and giant, garbage bag bats. Zombie scarecrows fashioned of old clothes and newspaper. Hanging ghosts made from frayed sheets. Scraps of cotton stretched across bare tree branches, spider web mimics. Little candles placed in upstairs windows like the eyes of watchful beasts. The handmade and imperfect decorations collectively generate an eerie realism as if the neighborhood has, for one night, been transported across the veil, and the world seems ripe with possibilities….

That for a single night we might become what our costumes represent. Hero or villain. Ghoul, ghost, monster, or myth. Princess, hobo, or dinosaur. Or something of our own invention that looks like no one and nothing else.

That spirits might walk among us or the dead play Ring-and-Run.

That shadows might coalesce and truly transform the world into a place where we laugh alongside death, find sweets in the darkness, rob horrors of their sting, and bask in the joy of living. The Halloween that lives in my imagination is a ritual to blunt the terror of death. It’s a conjuring to summon childhood fears and stare them down with our bravest face and our friends at our sides. At Halloween, the harvest is done and the days grow short. The season turns toward the long, cold dark of winter, and the world winds down to the uncertainty of sleep and death. At Halloween, we imagine ourselves sweeter than the bitter cold and lively enough to survive the days when the sun swings away from us. This Halloween is the holiday of imagination, a day on which we choose to celebrate—like mad scientists springing from secret basement labs—our most frightening dreams and creations. Not only do we celebrate them, but we look past their terror and darkness to anticipate the inevitable renewal, reacquaint ourselves with the need to own our fears, and remember the sweetness sometimes found in even the darkest of moments.

This vision of Halloween is hard to find among the jumbo inflatable jack-o-lanterns with goofy grins, the store-bought costumes, and bored parents tapping on their smartphones while their children gather candy—but most years I catch at least a whisper of it. A moment comes when the air turns, the shadows fall a certain way, and stray laughter comes drifting past a jack-o-lantern or a skull. I glimpse the world as I wish it to be rather than as it is.

And it feels like Halloween.

Welcome to Halloween Haunts 2014!

It’s time again to celebrate the season of the witch and the one night each year when the dead are said to walk the earth freely—time again to spend Halloween with the horror writers.

For the next thirty-one days, members of the Horror Writers Association will present to you their memories of Halloween, their favorite traditions, their thoughts on horror writing, and peeks into the terrifying worlds of shadow. Our contributors this year include Kenneth W. Cain, Catherine Cavendish, Greg Chapman, L. Andrew Cooper, Keith Deininger, JG Faherty, Lisa Morton, Billie Sue Mosiman, Gene O’Neill, Mark Onspaugh, Loren Rhoads, Armand Rosamilia, David B. Riley, David Sakmyster, Peter Salomon, Marge Simon, John F.D. Taff, Patty Templeton, and many others. So bookmark this page, join our Facebook event page, and don’t miss a day of the fun and chills!

If you’re a horror writer or horror reader who hasn’t yet joined the HWA, I hope you’ll consider doing so. The HWA offers writers many benefits, including mentoring, networking, market news, and professional resources. It presents the annual Bram Stoker Awards® and holds the annual Bram Stoker Award Weekend.

You can learn more about joining here: https://www.horror.org/joinhwa.htm. Or send questions to: membership@horror.org.

A special thanks to all of our contributors, whether they wrote a post or gave an interview, for sharing their Halloween anecdotes and traditions, suggestions for celebrating the season, and thoughts and advice about writing horror. It’s a great pleasure to coordinate and edit Halloween Haunts and to have a chance to work with so many of my fellow HWA members. Thanks, as well, to Rocky Wood, Lisa Morton, and Angel Leigh McCoy, whose continued support make this event possible. Thanks to Greg Chapman for drawing and designing our wonderful Halloween Haunts banner and to Doug Murano for his help in promoting Halloween Haunts on HWA social media. Thanks as well to Angelyne Bosch and Jeff Wells for their help in promoting this year’s event.

And now, the treats…!

GIVEAWAY RULES: In addition to their posts and excerpts, many of our contributors are offering e-book and print copies of their books for lucky readers who enter in each giveaway. If an author is offering a giveaway with their post, it will be noted and the format specified (print or e-book). Enter for the prize by posting in the comments section. Winners will be chosen at random and notified by e-mail. You may enter once for each giveaway, and all entrants may be considered for other giveaways if they don’t win on the day they post. You may also enter by e-mailing membership@horror.org and putting HH CONTEST ENTRY in the header.

TODAY’S GIVEAWAY: James Chambers is giving away one e-book copy each of Three Chords of Chaos, The Dead Bear Witness, and Tears of Blood.

Read an excerpt from Three Chords of Chaos (Dark Quest Books).

Read an excerpt from Corpse Fauna: The Dead Bear Witness, (Dark Quest Books).

Read an excerpt from Corpse Fauna: Tears of Blood, (Dark Quest Books).

JAMES CHAMBERS’ tales of horror, crime, fantasy, and science fiction have been published in numerous anthologies, collections, and magazines. Publisher’s Weekly described The Engines of Sacrifice, his collection of four Lovecraftian-inspired novellas, as “chillingly evocative.” His other works include the novella Three Chords of Chaos, The Dead Bear Witness and Tears of Blood (the first two novellas in the Corpse Fauna series), and the story collections Resurrection House and The Midnight Hour: Saint Lawn Hill and Other Tales. His stories have appeared in the award-winning Bad-Ass Faeries and Defending the Future anthology series as well as Allen K’s Inhuman, The Avenger: Roaring Heart of the Crucible, Bare Bone, Chiral Mad 2, Clockwork Chaos, Deep Cuts, Fantastic Futures 13, The Green Hornet Chronicles, In an Iron Cage, The Spider: Extreme Prejudice, To Hell in a Fast Car, Truth or Dare?, Qualia Nous, Walrus Tales, With Great Power, and many others. He is online at www.jameschambersonline.com.