This is my kind of sweet, tame Halloween tale. Not too scary, but a little creepy. And with an environmental message on the side.
The story begins:
"The marsh brooded on the outskirts of town. We children sometimes played there during the day, poling flat-bottomed boats through the dark water, choked with swamp hyacinth, stranding ourselves on any of the hundreds of tiny islands. By day the marsh was a place of filtering, shifting patches of sunlight, cypress and live oak bearded with Spanish moss...
At night the lanterns took over."
Three kids (Bronwen, Phil, and Noel) live in Lantern Marsh, a town near a beautiful marsh. All of them are intrigued by the marsh, but Noel is obsessed with the marsh and its lights. Every night the lights hover above the marsh. The teachers say that it is caused by marsh gas, but none of the kids believes that.
Noel also despises a local businessman, Mr. Prudhomme, who owns half the marsh and wants to take it over and develop the land. Years later, when they go off to college, Mr. Prudhomme very nearly succeeds at doing this, but Nick carries through on his promise to stop the development. The ending is mildly creepy.
I read this story in Halloween Horrors. That book is a 2010 reprint of October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween, ed. by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish, published in 2000.
I also read a few more stories from this anthology, but none of those engaged me. They were not bad, just not the type of story I enjoy. Some combine horror with sadness, some were bland and somewhat silly. I will probably put this book on the shelf and try more stories in it next year.
