Scared Out of My Shorts: A Collection of Eleven Wicked Tales

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He lets Billy go, only for Billy to be surrounded by police officers waiting for him outside for the reign of terror Mordecai caused in his Devil costume.

A terrified Billy puts his hands in the air but pees his pants, and the disgusted police officers shoot him. Beach and Caitlyn Casey Ruggieri are lounging around Nelson's house, smoking pot. As Nelson goes to greet a girl trick-or-treating, the group is alarmed when the girl stabs Nelson multiple times in the abdomen, gravely injuring him.

Panicked, Maria goes to her car to drive Nelson to the hospital, only to be attacked by four kids in costumes.

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Maria flees, but the injury causes her to drop dead on the house's pool. By this time, Nelson has succumbed to his injury and dies as well. James tries to find help, only to have his face burned by yet another trick-or-treater, and she completes her attack by stuffing his mouth with rat poison, killing him. Caitlyn, the only adult left, flees to the backyard, where she hides in a shack. It is then revealed that Caitlyn, Nelson, Maria and James are all psychopaths and have been kidnapping kids and gouging their eyes out for their amusement. The group of kids finds the shack, which turns out to be the place they tortured the previous kids, and cornered Caitlyn.

A girl, whose one eye has been gouged by the adults, executes Caitlyn with an axe on her head. The teenager hands Alice a drawing of a demon and warns Alice that the Demon will "spill the blood of the wicked where the wicked have harmed the weak". Alice dismisses the picture, and begins to chase the teenager away with the other bullies to the other side of the city, where the teenager stops by a burnt-down trailer car. In a flashback when Alice, Bart and Isaac were kids, they set the house on fire, which belonged to the teenager, complete with his parents inside it.

When the bullies show up they recognize the teen as Jimmy Henson and proceed to beat him up and prepare to light him on fire, Bart and Isaac are attacked by an unseen force. When Alice turns around, a creature known as the Demon of All Hallow's Eve has shown up, looking exactly like Jimmy wearing his costume as we learn in a flashback that the picture Alice dropped was actually instructions on how to summon it.

As Alice is killed by the Demon, blood violently splashes on Jimmy's face, who smiles in satisfaction. As Lynn Alex Essoe prepares to leave her mother's Lin Shaye Halloween party after hearing her mother recount a ghost story about a girl named Mary Bailey who was mocked her whole life for her disfigured physical appearance and now as a ghost takes the eyes of those who look at her, she encounters strange occurrences on her way home.

First her car uncharacteristically breaks down in the middle of the road, forcing her to finish her trip by foot. While walking, she senses that a shadowy figure, the one from her mother's story, is following her. Terrified, she runs into the safety of her house, and believes the figure has not followed her to her house. As Lynn settles to a couch to watch a film, her dog suddenly gets nervous and leaves the room. Lynn smiles and leans back to the couch, only to find out that Mary is sitting beside her. We later learn in "Bad Seed" that she succeeded in taking Lynn's eyesight but the police dismiss it as "hysterical blindness".

Bobbie is distraught by the fact she has no children of her own, to which Jack tries to cheer her up by dressing their dog as Gretel. This leads things to get heated and ends up with Bobbie suddenly turning into a red demonic witch and clawing Jack's face with her long, devilish nails. Even though everything goes normally, with Bobbie excitedly performing a skit to the delight of the children, something feels uneasy between the couple every time there's children on their front porch.

Finally, when a boy also dressed as Hansel is visiting the couple's house alone, Bobbie prepares to lead him inside, but Jack, aware of his wife's intent, alert the boy's mother, who's looking for him. Bobbie then appears to transform into the witch from Hansel and Gretel who eats children , and when Jack reveals he's secretly had a vasectomy to prevent a pregnancy, she becomes distraught and furious. She drags Jack into the house's oven, which resembles more like hell , and ends up melting herself. Boris Dana Gould has proudly finished his Halloween-decorated house. But when children are about to greet his house, they are scared away because of his neighbor, Dante James Duval has set-up a rock and gore-oriented Halloween decorations on his house, complete with loud rock music blasting from the speakers.

Boris walks up to Dante's yard to ask him to turn the volume lower, but Dante and his colleagues just laugh at him and mock his decorations. Enraged, Boris wrecks the sound system and halts the music, but Dante exacts revenge by planning to throw a huge bucket of blood to Boris' slick Halloween decorations. As Boris runs up to stop Dante, the latter splashes the blood on the former instead, and declares a war.

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Spectators begin to crowd as the two fight, placing bets and egging them on until the police come. Boris charges Dante towards a sharp piece of standing wood, killing both of them instantly, shocking the crowd. The girl runs to a barn where she discovers several of the killer's victims, among them her friend, Casey. The killer hunts her down to the barn, and when she manages to escape and flee, he kills her by throwing a spear through her chest. As the killer celebrates the slaying, a UFO beams down a small alien that tries to trick-or-treat. The killer proceeds to stomp over the tiny alien, seemingly crushing him, but the alien instead turns into goo and possesses the victim's body, chasing the panicked killer into his barn.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (novel) - Wikipedia

The possessed girl and the killer then proceed to attack each other with sharp objects, which eventually concludes with both of them decapitating each other. The alien then leaves the girl's decapitated head to teleport back to his spaceship , taking the killer's head with him. After succeeding doing so, the kidnappers tied up a still-masked Rusty into a chair and call his father. However, the father seems overjoyed that his son has been kidnapped and promptly hangs up the phone. Hank calls him one more time to discuss the ransom, but the father coldly tells them they can have his son.

Exasperated, the kidnappers find out that the son is actually a deformed monster that clings to the people near him. They try to sink him in the river, but he comes back to their lair. Hank calls Jebediah once more, only to be told that Rusty has been holding Jebediah and his wife hostage for five years as he would not leave them, and thanked the kidnappers for taking him away from them.

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Hank and Dutch once again tied Rusty and set him on fire, but as Hank comes back from buying food, Rusty, who has gotten hungry, has eaten Dutch's entire body up to his head. They run away and then hide and wait. Cooger riding backwards on the carousel as the music plays backwards , and when he steps off, to their shock, he is twelve years old. They follow young Mr. Cooger to Miss Foley's house, where he pretends to be the nephew she was expecting. Jim tries to talk to with him, because he wants to ride the carousel, but Will stops him.

Jim takes off in the direction of the carnival. When Will catches up, Mr. Cooger is riding the carousel growing older, and Jim is about to join him. Will knocks the switch on the carousel and it flies out of control, spinning rapidly forward. Cooger ages over years before it stops, and Jim and Will take off. They return with the police, but Mr. Cooger is nowhere to be found. Inside the tents they find him all set up as a new act, "Mr.

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Electrico", a man they run electricity through. Dark tells the boys to come back to the carnival the next day. Will tries to keep his father out of the situation, promising him that he will tell all soon. That night, the Dust Witch floats by in her balloon to find Jim and Will. Will lures her to an abandoned house and destroys her balloon with a bow and arrow. They later both dream of a bizarre funeral for the balloon, featuring a giant, misshapen coffin. The next day the boys find a girl crying on the curb and realize she is the former Miss Foley made young again but also totally blind.

They assist her to her house, but when they return they're cut off by a parade. The carnival is out searching the streets for the two of them. The boys hide, and Will's father spots them hiding under a storm drain in front of the cigar store.

The boys convince him to keep quiet. Dark later arrives to talk to him. Holloway pretends not to know the two boys whose faces are tattooed on the man's hand, but when the Witch comes and begins to sense the boys' presence he blows cigar smoke at her, choking her and forcing her to leave. Dark then asks Charles Holloway for his name, and Will's father tells him he is the town library's janitor.

That night Will and Jim meet him at the library where he has done research into his own father's ministerial notes. The carnival arrives once a generation, and leaves in the midst of a giant storm. Dark appears and the boys hide in the book stacks. He discovers both of them and crushes the janitor's hand when Mr.

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Holloway attempts to fight him. The tarot witch casts spells on the boys to mesmerize them and also tries to stop Mr. Just before he is about to die, Charles Holloway looks at the Witch and begins to laugh hysterically. His laughter wounds her deeply and drives her away. He then follows Mr. Dark to the carnival to rescue the boys. At the carnival Charles Holloway triumphs over Mr.

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Dark, finds his son in the mirror maze, kills the Witch with a smile on a bullet, and destroys all the mirrors in a matter of minutes, all through the use of laughter and cheer. Then he and Will search for Jim. Cooger turns to dust and blows away before he can be saved by the carousel. Jim runs to the merry-go-round, and rides it forward.

Will tries to stop him, and grabs onto his leg. They both end up going for a ride before Will jumps off and rips Jim away from the machine. Jim falls into a stupor, close to death. A child comes begging them to help him, but Mr. Holloway recognizes the boy as Mr. He holds the boy tight and kills him with affection, because Mr. Dark cannot survive in such close contact with someone so happy. The carnival falls apart as Will tries to revive Jim. They save Jim by singing and dancing and laughing, their happiness bringing him back from the edge of death.

Something Wicked This Way Comes can be interpreted as an allegory of the struggle between good and evil , with the human characters Will, Jim, and Charles on the side of morality, and Mr. Dark and his carnival on the side of sin and temptation. As in many other fictional works revolving around the same concept, good prevails in the end, not with supernatural or physical powers, but with purity of heart. Jim represents good that is always on the verge of giving into temptation, while Will, though he has crises and doubts, is the part of us that resists giving in.

As in Dandelion Wine , Bradbury infuses the novel with nostalgia for his childhood. However, Dandelion Wine embodies the idyllic memories of youth, whereas Something Wicked This Way Comes superimposes folk-tale and supernatural elements over a small-town Americana setting in order to explore the dark undercurrents that surround the transition to adulthood. The carnival's main allure to its participants is its ability to change age easily against natural causes.

Jim wants to become an adult by riding the carousel forward, and Charles Halloway initially considers riding the carousel backwards. Even Will is somewhat tempted by the offer for a free trip to adulthood. Charles, however, quickly sees that a ride on the carousel can have unforeseen circumstances, because despite age being changed instantly, the carousel would not change the mind.

Or if they turned me into a boy of ten this instant, my brain would still be fifty and that boy would act funnier and older and weirder than any boy ever. Because of this, a person who rode the carousel would be reformed only physically, with the same sins and emotions contained inside. Moreover, his new physical form, created unnaturally, would alienate him from his family and peers, leaving him with nowhere to turn except for the carnival.

Charles best personifies this theme; while he is middle-aged in body, he is still youthful in mind and spirit. At first, he sees the two conflicting personas within him as irreconcilable and longs to be physically young too, but his active participation in toppling the carnival proves to him that mental fitness and perception of one's age is more important than physical health.

Will and Jim can be said to have aged prematurely in the novel; the horrors of the carnival force them to grow up fast to be able to deal with its tricks on a knowledgeable level. Furthermore, Will and Jim do take a brief ride on the carousel before Will pulls Jim off, and they are never shown reversing this process before Charles destroys its machinations. Thus, it can be stated that they, in fact, grow up slightly. In this case, though, Will and Jim have also matured emotionally, too, having had their first encounter with evil.

This enables them to grow more proportionally in both physical and emotional status. The novel also conveys the theme that the power of people, objects, and ideas have over you depends on the power you instill in them with your own mind. Because of this, the carnival is able to easily take advantage of the common human fears of aging, death, and loneliness which everyone has or relates to.

Charles Halloway is the character who learns the most about this; he initially views death as unpleasant and it thus becomes a sinister force to him that the Mirror Maze magnifies. However, Will's words of love help him to see that age does not matter if one focuses instead on the knowledge and affections gained with it, and as his fear vanishes, so does the Mirror Maze.

He also is able to defeat the Dust Witch once he realizes that she does not have ultimate control over him. With his belief in her powers gone, he turns the tables on the Witch by instilling the same fear in her of his smile that he used to have of her magic. Self-centered desires and wishes are portrayed as the base of human malice and unhappiness because they blind people to the blessings of life with an unattainable dream. The novel's main example of this is Miss Foley's seduction by Cooger's promise of youth that causes her to fail to see his deception as her "nephew," and lose her rightful place in society.

It is implied that the counter-force against this is acceptance of one's faults and an enthusiastic pursuit of the everyday joys of life, signified by Charles' spontaneous running with Jim and Will at the end of the novel.

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