Something Wicked This Way Crawls
Laura Finney
10/18/2026
I love to be scared. Not truly scared. Not ‘I'm being audited again’ kind of scared. More of the ‘Carol Anne, how’d you end up in the TV set?’ kind of scared.
October lends itself so well to this sort of thing. Even as I write this, there’s a thick gloom hanging over the valley outside of my window. I can’t help feeling we are but a length of rope and a candlestick away from having to concoct an alibi.
And for me, there is something deeply comforting about being frightened when I know for a fact there is nothing to fear. Clearly, from my viewing preferences – “Murder, By Death,” “Clue,” “Rear Window” – I lean toward scary light. I can occasionally dip my toe into more heart-stopping options – “Psycho”, “The Shining”, the six o’clock news – but only when I’m feeling especially brave.
Why do I enjoy being afraid? Perhaps it’s because fear is so much more enjoyable when it comes with an off switch. In reality, the things that frighten us, that wake us up at 2 a.m., rarely have the decency to resolve themselves within two hours. Those fears linger. They sit in your chest and send electrical currents throughout your body and commandeer your nervous system.
But a good movie gives our anxiety somewhere specific to go. There’s the problem, right there, coming down the hall. We know exactly what to worry about and it isn’t something we’re expected to fix. Nobody is asking us to deal with Norman Bates. We can just sit under a blanket and yell at Janet Leigh to stay out of the shower.
And perhaps there’s a little satisfaction in feeling superior to these characters. Strange noises in the basement? I’m not going down there. I’m bolting the door, pushing a chair in front of it and selling the house. I would leave the moment the walls began to bleed. I don’t care how much we’ve spent on renovations.
Of course, it’s easy to be smug about other people’s survival instincts when the danger announces itself with ominous music and the well-timed flash of lightning. But what happens when the stalker arrives without music or stormy weather? What happens when the creature is so insidious that the victim doesn’t even know that they’ve been hit?
We’ve all experienced that scene in the movie when the victim takes a sip of their drink and notices an unusual taste. They look at the empty glass. They look at their host, unsure what to do with the suspicion they now feel. And in that terrible pause, they realize something that the audience has long known. In fact, they have been screaming, “Don’t drink it!” at the movie screen for several minutes.
I would like to believe that I would have caught on sooner. But apparently, I am perfectly capable of starring in one of these scenes without even recognizing the genre.
In my case, I thought I was out for a walk. Bad things don’t normally happen on beautiful early summer mornings. There were no shadows slipping between the trees. At no point did the birds suddenly stop singing. In fact, even if you were to watch this on a movie theater sized screen, I don’t think you would have caught the moment I went from a woman enjoying the scenery to being the scene of the crime. I certainly did not.
By the time I found the lone star tick settled on my appendix scar, I was indignant, certainly, but hardly frightened. I grabbed my tweezers, removed the tiny bloodsucker and stuck her onto tape for later identification – then considered the matter closed.
There. Handled. The sort of decisive action I’m always recommending to people in scary movies. And then I went about my life.
Because surely if anyone had reason to feel that the situation was under control, it was the woman holding the murderer on a piece of Scotch tape.
Unfortunately, I had mistaken arrest for victory.
I went about my summer, blissfully unaware that the tiny creature’s plans were proceeding beautifully in her absence. In other bloodsucker movies, the victim’s fate was instantaneous. So, one can see why, having survived the initial meeting, I might have been feeling rather smug.
Nothing seemed amiss. I continued walking, making plans, eating cheeseburgers with the confidence of someone who believed she was still authorized to do so.
But the tick had chosen the long game.
Her clever plan was already in motion. My immune system was attending a series of meetings to which I had not been invited. It was quietly busy reclassifying red meat and dairy as deadly threats while keeping me in the dark.
Every time I reached for the charcuterie, the audience screamed “Don’t take the gouda!” But like any respectable horror movie character, I ignored every warning and helped myself to more cheese.
The audience could hear the music building. They could see the lightning illuminating something dreadful on the horizon.
Because they understood long before I did: it wasn’t what the tick took.
It was what she left behind.