Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction

by Grady Hendrix

As long as they belong to someone else, homicidal children can be a joy. They’re highly accomplished, respectful to those they’re not murdering, and when they’re finally arrested, you’re left feeling that much better about your own little underachievers, whose terrible table manners suddenly seem like a testament to their normalcy rather than your poor parenting.

Adopted or chemically altered children should be destroyed immediately because they cannot be reformed. No matter how hard you try, they probably will, at some point, go on a rampage and murder all your other children. Possessed children are usually pawns of a revenge-seeking spirit and, helpfully, often come with instructions for how best to lay the spirit to rest and return your child to normalcy, albeit with a few murders on the little angel’s rap sheet. Reincarnated children are tricky. Seek professional help.

As the famous French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet said, “What do little girls dream about? Knives and blood.”

Since time immemorial, humankind’s greatest natural predator has been the clown.

Marasco was a high school English teacher, so his illusions about human nature had long ago been stomped to death.

If social and political anxiety spawns zombies, then economic anxiety births haunted houses.