The Boy In The Boat

Every foster lasted only two years, maybe less.  The boy chose a memory from each to keep.  The earliest were smells.  In one, wet paper - books floating in a flooded living room, tangerines.  When he was older, he remembered animals.  There was one that let him have a pet mouse.  Lifespan:  less than a year.  In another, an awful dog clamped down on the ankle of his bad foot and dragged him in circles on the living room rug while the other foster kids laughed.  He's going to cry!  Look, there go his eyebrows, he's going to cry! they shrieked with delight.  The boy was snail-soft, turtle-meat soft; he couldn't keep his eyebrows from arching just before tears came.

Lesley Bannatyne, from Unaccustomed to Grace

Image from visionsoflightandday.

Text source (Still pushing this book [I won't stop until you buy it]).

High School Smells Like Canned Corn

     Your brother brings you a flier about a thing.  His gift to you.  They need kids.  Some Halloween mansion.  Your mother rolls her eyes.  Because she rolls her eyes you go.  And because your brother.

     You sit with other kids in a fake mansion.  They talk you through what you signed up to do.  They show you where you stand.  Hide in a secret pocket in a hallway.  Hear people coming toward you.  Wait until they've gone past you.  Jump out and hit a metal bucket with a crowbar.  Scare them so they piss themselves.  

     They give you a black cape.

     They give you a crow mask.

     In the parlor with a pipe.

     In the dark you see with your eyes closed is the same dark you see when you open them.  You suck in sweet rubber of your mask.  Adjust to gray-on-gray, fake cobwebs against chipped drywall.  Load your greedy eyes with dark, your ears with buzzers, your nose with chainsaw smoke.  A kid comes around the corner, a stripe of red exit sign light scissoring across his neck.  

     The crowbar's weight in your hand feels adult.

-Lesley Bannatyne, from Unaccustomed to Grace

Image source.

Buy the book here (I'm really pushing this book!)

  

Corpse Walks Into A Bar

I‘m all alone around closing time and Sid the owner is back in the kitchen loading highball glasses into the dishwasher and this corpse stumbles in and starts going on about how I gotta bury him. The juke is pumping heavy metal because that’s what Sid likes and it’s just me in the bar so he doesn’t care. Well it’s not just me and that’s the problem here.

“You’re none of my business,” I say to the corpse. “I don’t know you. I don’t know your people.”

“A decent person would honor a dead man’s request,” the corpse says. “A decent man would help a pal,” he says.

“You’re not my pal,” I say, eyes steady on my glass. “And I’m not a decent man.”

“You don’t have to be a decent man to do a decent thing.”

“Right.” I grab my jacket and head for the door. The corpse lets out this long spew of rot breath and starts to wail. I mean, really wail, like he’s crying for the sadness of everyone that ever lived, for the mothers that lost their babies right inside their own stomachs, for the little kids that wandered into swimming pools. I mean a deep, shin-splitting, gut-twisting kind of cry.

By Lesley Bannatyne, from her new book Unaccustomed to Grace.

Read the short story here.

Buy the book here (totally pushing this amazing collection of short stories).

Underlake

A neighbor's 22-ft. sailboat sank because mice had eaten the foam insulation over the winter, and the first time it launched water flooded the hull and dragged the nose under.  The rest of the boat followed, drowning gracefully, like a ballerina taking a bow.  It was probably still there somewhere, Nan thought, upright on the lake bottom, sails full up.  Down past the cold layer, where the toothy, prehistoric pike trolled, down, down, to the dark vanished world, resting in the underlake, lazily rocking its mast while people went tubing and skiing, touching the surface of the lake with their slightness like water bugs.

Lesley Bannatyne, Underlake

Text source (my highest recommendation).

Image source.

Now Reading: Witches' Night Before Halloween

Finally purchased this wonderful book by my friend (and leading authority on Halloween) Lesley Pratt Bannatyne.  Wonderful artwork too, by Adrian Tans.

Click here for her website with a terrific list of Summer reading...

How Do You Tell Your Neighbors That Their Halloween Decorations Are Too Scary?

An interesting question posed in a short article in the Chicago Tribune in which my good friend Lesley Bannatyne was interviewed.


Click below:

Witches' Night Before Halloween

Twas the night before Halloween and all through the cottages
The witches were stirring their brews and their potages
Their cupboards were bursting with hoptoads and newts,
And they'd shined up their pointy-toed, fancy dress boots.

The witchlings were snoring all snug in their beds
With visions of moist, creeping things in their heads.
"Nice night," whispered Mad Maud to Potbelly Pat,
As she snuffed out the torches and took in the cat....

Lesley Bannatyne

Images by Pherit.

Excerpt from Witches' Night Before Halloween.

Halloween Resources

Speaking of history...
Some wonderful articles by my friend Lesley Bannatyne.

It's Halloween: The Jack-o'-Lantern Story: Uncut and Uncensored

Halloween. A History

The H Word

Great article by author, Halloween Guru, and friend Lesley Bannatyne.

Halloween—old Halloween of folklore, I mean—was tied to the quickening dark, to seasonal change, to death, to the movement of mythical beings (fairies, witches, dead souls) through the night. These facets, too, are the playing fields of horror in film, art, and literature. You’d think Halloween and horror would have made perfect bedfellows from the beginning. But the Halloween we know now has been invented and reinvented many times over the past few hundred years. It’s always been spooky and otherworldly, but until fairly recently, it had little to do with horror.

Click below to read:

Lesley Bannatyne Interview

At the always-interesting TheoFantastique.

Click below:

Why Halloween Matters

A neat way to start off the new year.

Click HERE to read a really nice article by Halloween Nation's Lesley Bannatyne.

Cabinet Of Curiosities

Author Lesley Bannatyne caught me on a non-antisocial non-misanthropic day and the result was an interview for her website.

Click below for the Cabinet of Curiosities at
iskullhalloween.com:


And click here to order her book Halloween Nation from Amazon.

Halloween Nation

Included within the book are tons of wonderful commentaries by an enormous amount of Halloween buffs. One in particular:

"...In the city, there was a lady - she had her kitchen upstairs - and we'd knock on the door, trick-or-treating, and she'd throw pennies and nickels down. We'd run and grab them. But she was up there putting them on the stove. She was a nasty, nasty lady. We got an empty milk bottle and passed it around and all the boys donated a bit [of pee] and we left it at her door. Next morning the bottle was gone. We like to imagine that some time that day she opened the door and the bottle tipped in."

Tom Landry, retired Halloween prankster.


Click here to order.

Halloween Nation

I managed to get my Halloween hands on Halloween Nation, the latest book by Lesley Bannatyne. Started reading it last night and love it. It felt like I was watching a Halloween special made by someone who understands what Halloween means to people like us.

Click below:

Halloween Nation: Introduction

Very cool to see that amazon now has a few sample pages to read of Lesley Bannatyne's soon-to-be-released book Halloween Nation. Extra cool that her introduction mentions her experience at Eric Lowther's Haunted Overload attraction.

Click below to check it out.

Halloween Nation

Upcoming book by Lesley Bannatyne. Looking very forward to owning it. Awesome to see Haunted Overload on the cover.

America's leading authority on Halloween presents interviews with spooky rock groups, amateur vampires, haunted house creators, champion pumpkin carvers, and more, all in the quest of explaining the nation's unique love affair with this holiday. The collection of essays and interviews explores the pop culture phenomenon that is Halloween, and why we celebrate it the way we do today.

Click below for more information.