Here we are already, in the final week of this year's fund drive.

With Halloween coming up in two days, we in the fiction department decided to use this week's reprint to offer a classic scary story: M. R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad." Originally published in Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), the first of James's short story collections, this piece is perhaps his most famous—at least it's the one that most folks seem to associate with his name. As for M. R. James more generally, beginning with Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, he is said to have redefined the scope and focus of the ghost story

"Well," Parkins said, "as you have mentioned the matter, I freely own that I do not like careless talk about what you call ghosts."

The thing is, a time travel movie is pretty much always surreal.

The boys turn into swans and fly away.