Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark

A disturbingly animate symptom of death and decay, worms figure abundantly in Scary Stories, usually slithering in and out of a corpse. The undulating rhythms and rhymes of “The Hearse Song”—“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, / The worms play pinochle on your snout” (39)—mimic the oozing pullulation of maggots in a dead body. The paradox of lively (and disgusting) activity within the eternal stillness of death gives this morbid motif a uniquely upsetting quality. Likewise, the song “Old Woman All Skin and Bone” uses almost the same words and cadence, adding, “You’ll look like that when you’re dead!” (18). Much of the humorous, gross-out allure of these songs is the gruesome fact that they describe the inevitable fate of our bodies, one that “The Hearse Song” rubs in our faces: “They eat your eyes, they eat your nose” (39). Maggots slowly devouring our flesh while we are powerless to prevent it describes not superstition but natural law, which is perhaps why it must be laughed at. “The Dead Man’s Brains” even invites listeners to squish between their fingers the slimy worms “that ate the rest of him” in the form of wet spaghetti (55).