Review: Don't Go Near the Pumpkin Patch
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 4, 2014
Halloween provides a great backdrop for horror stories, so leave it to the up and coming master of the macabre, Adam Light, to come up with a perfect Halloween story to trick all the little treaters in anyone's household... and spook any older readers as well."Tommy Rotten" is a sort of urban legend, campfire tale of a young boy named Tommy Rachen who disappeared without a trace on Halloween night years earlier near an overgrown pumpkin patch on one of the older houses in a suburban neighborhood. Naturally, the story springs up that he (or his ghost) is still there, waiting to do bad things to kids on an upcoming Halloween night. What Light shows readers right off the bat is that the urban legend is true and what's left of Tommy is indeed waiting for visitors.Into this creepy scenario comes a group of kids nearly too old to be out trick or treating, being chaperoned around by 16-year-old Carol, who wants to be anywhere else but on babysitter duty. When they come close to the supposedly haunted patch on their candy patrol, Carol decides to have a little fun with them by steering them very close to the patch.Adam Light is a master at efficient story construction and in the course of about 20 pages he gives readers a crash course in adolescent psychology and sets up a remarkably suspenseful scenario, as Carol gets very, very close to something very, very bad. To cap it off, Light hits readers with a terrifically ghoulish ending. The key to the story is its tone... an oddly detached, spooky calm that mirrors the deceptive calm of the nighttime scene near the patch where trouble lies just within. It's a story telling style that fits the natural cadence of the human voice, a perfect bit of creepiness to read aloud on a dark night.For most readers, the effectiveness of this story will depend on the atmosphere in which it is read. Go over it during a lunch hour at a crowded restaurant and it will probably seem an amusing trifle, but savor it in more secluded surroundings, or read it to some impressionable youngsters, and it feels much creepier. I'm usually reluctant to give too high a rating to a short story for which the author charges, but this is the type of story that can be read (or told) over and over again to good effect. Tommy Rotten is the stuff that urban legends are made of.