Chasing the Boogeyman

by Richard Chizmar

Maybe that’s what grieving is all about: never forgetting what we’ve lost.

I believe that most small towns wear two faces: a public one comprised of verifiable facts involving historical timelines, demographics, matters of economy and geography; and a hidden, considerably more private face formed by a fragile spiderweb of stories, memories, rumors, and secrets passed down from generation to generation, whispered by those who know the town best.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys…” Of all the breathtaking passages of lyrical wonder that Ray Bradbury has gifted readers with during his lifetime, those eleven words from the opening of his seminal novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes, may very well be my favorite.