First Dark by Elizabeth Spencer, 1959
The magic trick:
Blending the protagonist and a ghost story
“First Dark” is such a good story. It evokes such a creepy mood. Perfect then to kick off our week of scary stories leading into Halloween.
The first page just sets the table perfectly. There is a ghost. That’s always a good start. But there’s also an intriguing protagonist, a man who grew up here in small-town Mississippi, but left and now comes back every weekend. There is mystery there too.
But mostly, as a reader, you can quickly put the pieces together and see the ghost and this man caught in between their pasts and potential futures. It’s not so much that the two things feel like a writerly manipulation or literary device to shout out in sophomore English class. The ghost and Tom blend to further the creepy mood. Even the people in this town who aren’t ghosts seem to be caught up in some kind of strange liminal space. It’s a classic slice of Southern Gothic.
And that’s quite a trick on Spencer’s part.
The selection:
When Tom Beavers started coming ack to Richton, Mississippi, on weekends, after the war was over, everybody in town was surprised and pleased. They had never noticed him much before he paid them this compliment; now they could not say enough nice things. There was not much left in Richton for him to call family – just his aunt who had raised him, Miss Rita Beavers, old as God, ugly as sin, deaf as a post. So he must be fond of the town, they reasoned; certainly it was a pretty old place. Far too many young men had left it and never come back at all.
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