L. Andrew Cooper

TAKE ONE At the end of October, you may approach an unfamiliar door. The door belongs to a stranger. When it opens, you show the home’s anonymous inhabitants trust, revealing yourself in fragile form, expecting a brief moment of hospitality when the strangers might, with equal or greater ease, offer a trick far more permanent. Your trust might astound someone unfamiliar with this custom, practiced by young children in Halloween cultures or—to foil the conceit before it becomes overbearing—by horror writers who dress up their personal nightmares in gore and the costumes of classic creatures to go dancing with neighbors…