You don’t have
to look any further than kids’ campfire stories to realize that the best scary
stories are timeless. Good horror can seize you by the throat no matter how
much time has passed since its inscription. Perhaps that’s why, autumn after
autumn, year after year, readers return to the works of Edgar Allen Poe, a 19th
century master of the macabre.
When Mario asked
me to be part of this project, I knew I wanted to revisit “The Masque of the
Red Death.” Even though this story was written in 1842, it continues to be
hauntingly timeless, touching on the same horror themes that scare readers
still today. Better yet, enough time has passed that it’s now in the public
domain, and anybody can read it for free.
In 2016, it may
often feel like the world is ending, and that’s a theme we visit often in
contemporary fiction. I can think of at least two modern bestsellers that
explore the idea of a plague that eradicates society, prompting an apocalypse: The
Stand by Stephen King, and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
Poe’s “Masque,” however, is one of the earliest. In this story, the Red Death’s
excruciating pain is matched in terror only by its guarantee of death.
