A Tree Of Night by Truman Capote, 1948
The magic trick:
Slowly building a haunting tone
This one is textbook tone building. Returning home from a funeral, Kay gets on a train in the Deep South at night, and things get weird from there. She sits down next to an old woman and man who tell her strange stories and are maybe trying to harm her. Maybe they’re ghosts? Maybe the entire train is haunted? Maybe Kay is a ghost?!
The story is just opaque enough to make the reader start analyzing possible meanings and metaphors. But it’s all straightforward enough at the same time to be enjoyed for its horror-esque surface-level pleasures.
And that’s quite a trick on Capote’s part.
The selection:
When the lights came on again, Kay was massaging her wrist where the woman’s strong fingers had left a painful bracelet mark. She was more puzzled than angry. She determined to ask the conductor if he would find her a different seat. But when he arrived to take her ticket, the request stuttered on her lips incoherently.
“Yes, miss?”
“Nothing,” she said.
And he was gone.
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