It's tempting to think that people who enjoy scary things over and over--from skydiving to roller-coasters--simply enjoy the thrill, the exhilaration, the pounding of their own hearts. But there is a simpler explanation: fear is addictive.

This simple truth is at the heart of Sheri Holman's Witches on the Road Tonight. The more frightening we find something, the more some of us will be drawn to it and the more frequently we will want to relive it. There is a fix to be gotten.

Holman's Eddie Alley is imprinted with fear from his earliest childhood. While he seeks, as a campy horror host on local television, to take off its edges, to stake a claim over it, and make it benign, the horror at what he finds in himself brings it back once and again. Fear is the legacy passed from Eddie's mother--long believed a powerful witch in Appalachia--that Eddie tries to harness, just as his own daughter does after him. But Eddie's worst, most desperate fears are internal and these are the demons that Holman's dark and intricate tale seeks to unravel.