The Point Horror line made every day feel like Halloween, but the Scholastic series had only a few books specifically set around the October holiday. The first of these seasonal offerings, Richie Tankersley Cusick’s 1989 book Trick or Treat, centers around a teenager who’s deathly afraid of her own home. As everyone else around her is doubtful of her misgivings and claims, or they’re simply too unavailable to help, the main character counts down the days until something inevitably dreadful happens on Halloween.

Martha Stevenson’s life is turned upside down when her father first elopes, then relocates his daughter to a small town called Bedford. The Chicago-raised teen is not the least bit happy about the sudden move to the middle of nowhere, or her having to get used to a new family. Making the transition even more uncomfortable is the fact that her stepmother Sally bought them a creepy old house outside of town. Of course Mr. Stevenson loves the place; he’s a writer fascinated by macabre things. Martha, on the other hand, is wary — she describes the house as something out of a dream, “not quite real, not quite safe….”

As her behavior early on would suggest, Martha is a handful. She is anxious, moody, and most of all, insecure. In other words, she’s a typical teenager. Yet with a fanciful and morbid father like hers, it’s no wonder Martha feels so uncertain about everything. Her biological mother only died two years ago, and now she’s expected to accept all these big life changes without being given an actual say in them. It’s not long after she’s dropped off in Bedford does her father go on a weeks-long honeymoon with Sally. This leaves Martha with her older stepbrother Conor, who is practically a stranger. Martha is indeed exhausting to be around, but given everything that’s happened already, and what’s to come, no one can blame her for being jumpy and emotional.

Martha has not even unpacked her boxes when an anonymous caller rings her up, hisses “trick or treat” and then directs her attention to the scarecrow on her porch. Someone managed to stab a knife into the side of the decorative scarecrow’s head, all while the Stevensons were still moving in. Conor establishes himself as the voice of reason — as much as someone can reason away such a strange occurrence — and assures his stepsister this is all a part of some pre-Halloween prank. The two opt not to tell their parents about the incident, though they obviously should have.

“There was a murder in your house. Everyone knows the old Bedford place is evil.”

The old saying “Houses aren’t haunted, people are” doesn’t apply to Trick or Treat. The problem squarely lies with the old Bedford place, as the locals call it. On top of the adjacent cemetery in the woods, Martha learns the house itself has a dark history. Not even that old of one, according to Martha’s new boyfriend Blake Chambers. He explains the century-old house belonged to the town founders’ heirs, and a year before Martha moved in, their daughter Elizabeth was murdered there on Halloween night. As if the coincidences weren’t already stacked to the ceiling, Blake’s cousin, Elizabeth’s friend and Martha’s new friend Wynn adds that Martha reminds them so much of the late Miss Bedford. “She was small like you … and her hair was blonde. Even about the same length. You’re just so much like her,” Wynn tells Martha.

Elizabeth’s murderer was reported to be her ex-boyfriend Dennis, whose own body was never recovered after he apparently took his own life that same ill-fated Halloween night. Based on the evidence placed before her, Martha naturally suspects Dennis has been alive this whole time, and he’s the one terrorizing her. To what end, though, Martha doesn’t know. What she does know is she doesn’t want to stay at a house full of secret passageways — which were once “used to hide runaway slaves” — and near a graveyard. Sadly for poor Martha, the house is as much a character as she is, and without it there is no story. For this book to work, she has to stay at the old Bedford place and confront the ghosts of the past.

After a month of growing dread and paranoia, Halloween arrives. Conor is sick at home with a cold while Martha eagerly leaves for a costume party at the school. She welcomes any reason that gets her out of that house. Apologetically, Martha leaves Conor to rest, only to then later hurry home when Wynn allegedly sees Dennis at the school. Assuming he’s on his way to the house, Martha rushes in to save her stepbrother. From there Trick or Treat turns into a deadly game of hide and seek as Conor and Martha use the house’s passageways, then the Bedford mausoleum at the cemetery to conceal themselves from the unseen threat lurking on the property. Martha has since jumped from Dennis to Blake when trying to pin down her tormentor. Both were romantically involved with Elizabeth, though neither is her murderer. 

The book ultimately resembles any horror movie where the pathetic culprit is trapped in a repeat cycle of self-torment and delusion. While dressed as Death, Wynn is revealed to be both Martha’s stalker and Elizabeth’s murderer. Previous dialogue hinted at Wynn’s feelings for Dennis — she defended him when others labeled him a killer — and her resentment toward Elizabeth. Yet when Elizabeth and Dennis reunited on Halloween after breaking up, Wynn was equal parts heartbroken and enraged. She planned on killing Elizabeth, but she didn’t mean to hurt Dennis. Unable to cope with his death, Wynn did what anyone in her frame of mind might do; she stored his body inside the mausoleum. And when someone who looked like Elizabeth moved into her old room, Wynn’s latent jealousy and anger rose to the surface.

And Martha’s hand flew to her mouth, stifling her scream, as a silhouette slowly materialized out of those deep black shadows in her room….

With the parents conveniently gone for most of Trick or Treat, Martha came to depend on Conor, even if she didn’t want to admit it. Martha disregarded her stepbrother — she repeatedly corrected others when they called him her brother — whereas Conor constantly looked out for his stepsister. Despite his supposed aloofness, something Martha was once both annoyed and fascinated by, Conor is a stand-up guy with a knack for taking care of people. He’s always there to help Martha, whether she’s being stalked inside an empty and dark school, or she’s looking for someone to listen to her increasingly wild suspicions. By the end, Martha finally acknowledges Conor is indeed her brother.

Other authors might prefer to contain the potential terror of Halloween to the night of, but Cusick spreads that feeling over several weeks, building anticipation and methodically breaking down Martha’s mental state in real time. The end result is a chaotic yet engrossing whodunit tinged with gothic influence and inspired by Old Hollywood psychological thrillers. There was certainly no need for a Halloween setting here, however the holiday unquestionably adds something special to the story.

There was a time when the young-adult section of bookstores was overflowing with horror and suspense. These books were easily identified by their flashy fonts and garish cover art. This notable subgenre of YA fiction thrived in the ’80s, peaked in the ’90s, and then finally came to an end in the early ’00s. YA horror of this kind is indeed a thing of the past, but the stories live on at Buried in a Book. This recurring column reflects on the nostalgic novels still haunting readers decades later.