Happy Autumn to you, Happy Autumn to you, Happy Autumn dear readers, Don’t forget to go “Boo!”
Wait…I didn’t mean for you to “boo” the song, or “boo” me for that matter. I meant to make a ghost sound because Halloween is just around the corner and… Oh, nevermind!
It is Oct 1 and I’m here to tell you what I have planned at this blog to celebrate the Halloween season.
It all begins with a narrative I wrote concerning the coming of October. This spilled out pretty darn quickly from brain to screen, so it hasn’t gone through an extensive editing process. A little odd maybe, some awkward grammar here and there perhaps. But I think it’s alright.
Later this month, I want to review two haunted house movies that have come out recently and somewhat recently. Both have the root word “Haunt” in them.
Lastly, toward the end of the month, I’ll present a short story. It involves trick-or-treating, urban legends, and cemeteries.
How’s all that sound? Sounds pretty damn awesome, right?
Since today is the first of October, let’s get right to it.
I present to you:
It all happens on an empty field. A prairie where nature is allowed to run her course. The grass is tall and there are dips in the land collecting water. Frogs splash around and add ribbits to the night.
There are houses on either side of the prairie. They are identical and evenly spaced apart. They are accompanied by cul-de-sacs and maze-like lanes and courts. Those that dwell in the cookie-cutter houses parade about in their fenced-off yards, petting their pink flamingos and warming their upturned noses under tiki lights. They spit at the early setting sun, pounding their asses into lawn chairs to hold down summer. Folding their arms, hearts shielded from the telling breeze of early autumn. Lemonade seltzers between their shaking thighs. Oh my.
At least there are trees here and there. Does anyone look at them? Does anyone care?
Albert Jenkins knows what’s up. He’s the only one. A loner by trade, but he’s never lonely. No more lonely than the huddled asses sheltered in their confines in lonely groups of two, three of four. Two lonely + three lonely + four lonely = lots of loneliness. Remove all the extra asses to decrease the loneliness down to one. One who is more than ready to say “bye-bye” to the early setting sun. (“Bye-Bye sun, hee hee, Bye bye,” Albert says) Albert knows The Spirit is only one. The only one. The One Outside. Her will shall be and its best to open your own spirit to her inevitable ways.
Albert knows. Albert knows.
The thirtieth of September fades away and come October first, while the divided dwellers log onto their devices after dinner, Albert connects instead with the network configured by The One Outside. He has always been one to look toward the sky but this evening he does so with his back pressing into the Earth. The tall grass of the prairie threatens to cover him up like a discarded body from someone’s car trunk. But that’s okay, she will always see him. She looks at him from all directions, down, up, across, and out. Mostly out. Outside of time and space, beyond that blue substance that we call sky.
“Hear me please, my Only One! To you on the Great Outside, hear my cries!”
Albert hopes The Great Spirit will hear his pleas that originate from the inside. But of course she will.
“Let October come not with hesitation, but mightily. Allow it to flourish in every single atom. In every living cell. Birth its spirit generously, and let it carry in its essence the seeds of the hallowed. Eve be early, for the Hallowed are always welcome. Prepare us for Halloween!”
The One Outside hears him. She hears him indeed.
This evening, the early darkness is welcomed, if by no one else than Albert. This single welcoming is enough for The Great Spirit to double down on her duties. To pull the veil across the sky with greater speed. To hesitate not with the coming of the night.
The nighttime skies as of late had been rather sparse of celestial bodies. Not tonight. The One Outside does her thing, pressing the tip of her finger against the firmament, burning into the black veil of night a crescent moon. So much more spectral than a moon of full light. Shaped like the Grim Reaper’s scythe, hiding its fullest essence in darkness. With a wink she twinkles into being the stars. One million bright reflections of just one of her eyes. One blink yields a legion of flickers, and thousands of her eyelashes rain down in flutters. They come to life in the form of bats, crossing the moon in their flight and spiraling downward.
Albert smiles, and the long grass blades that surround him curl and retract. Poised like snakes in the moment before an attack, they allow him to have a clear view of the sky. His heart welcomes the descending bats, for what kind of Halloween season would it be with an empty sky void of creepy moons and scary bats?
There is more. The bats aren’t the only dark animation to decorate the night. Conjured from the shadows that cover most of the moon, silhouette witches on broomsticks flee the silvery glow. They are gigantic incarnations of the wall-hanging Halloween decorations in the days of yore. Albert sees them in the moonlight. Of the shadow and from the shadow, they make their descent. So far away yet Albert sees them all.
The bats have arrived, diving in steady arcs from tree to tree. The silhouette witches, shrunken to the size of the wall-hanging decoration they resemble, have finished their descent as well. Beings of pointy hats and noses. Their broomsticks like wild projectiles curving and dipping.
“Look at them go!” Albert cries as he takes delight at the hundreds of scattering witches. And go they do, beyond the trees in the distance, over the rooftops of the cookie-cutter house dwellers. Down into their chimneys, through the crevices in their foundations. Of the shadow and from the shadow, to return to the shadow. They hide within the darkest corners of the houses, their distinct shape dissolving as they blend in uniformly with the blackness. Unseen, yes. Unfelt, no. The dwellers will know. The dwellers will know.
And the blades of grass on their finely-cut lawns laugh. From blade to blade, they pass along what sounds like a possessed doll’s chuckle. Blade leaning into blade, the maniacal chuckles pass beyond the property lines and into the grass of the no-man’s-land prairie, until the blades of grass surrounding our man Albert strike at him with their tiny little tips and Albert is overcome with a fit of mad giggles as he receives a tickling of knowledge.
He knows what has happened. He knows the witches haunt the homes of the dwellers. And, he knows of “the beats.”
Existing in the shadows since the dawn of time, the witches possess the ability to echo the wildest beats nature has ever known. From the crashing of tides to the eruptions of volcanos, carrying with them the tromps of the mighty dinosaurs, the silhouette witches merge these beats into a wild but capturing rhythm that overcomes these dwellers. In spasmatic movement, they flee their premises of shallow dreams in a mad, hypnotic craze. Moving unnaturally, limbs contorted, bones snapping and breaking. they arrive at the prairie and continue on with their “Autumn Dance.” Tear marks appear on their bodies and foul innards and toxic entrails spill out. Clots of blood drip in pulps. Broken bones fall from their sources and litter the lands.
Albert hears this dance and all the accompanying footsteps. He prays to The One Outside for their redemption.
“Give them a second chance. Salvage from them what is good. Let what is bad be eaten by the earth!”
The One Outside grants his wish. To the prairie she speaks in a silent tongue that only the ground understands. It is a salutation that calls for a response and the earth dares not commit blasphemy through inaction. With utmost respect, it opens not one but several mouths.
Hundreds of chasms unfold across the prairie with deafening roars. The One Outside hears these roars and she is pleased.
In deference to the mouth’s hungry roars, the silhouette witches cease with the rhythms and the Autumn Dance comes to a halt. The broken people see these foreboding chasms and hear the mighty roars. They are the shivering, hyperventilating ones, now crazed with fear, for they see all that which has spilled from their bodies coagulating together into sluggish blobs. The foulest elements of their beings, sprouting sluggish arms, pull their remains forward. Part skeleton, part blob, they crawl in a path toward their fates. Toward their graves.
These “Path-Etics” hover at the edges of the mouths. The earth’s gravity, measured in hunger, strengthens and the Path-Etics are sucked inside the mouths. When every person present has fed the worst parts of their being to the earth, the mouths close and their lips pucker into mounds of satisfaction to form burial sites.
Now, this quaint October scene upon a prairie is blessed with a Halloween staple – a cemetery. Yay for Halloween.
The terrified ones still have more to give. The One Outside draws a hearty breath. In doing so, she sucks the cancerous components of their souls out of what remains of their skins. A horde of homeless souls hover outside the bodies that once kept them so protected. Attached to nothing, their forms threatened out of existence by the whims of chance and change, these banished ghosts wail into the night.
“Save us! Keep us whole and give us a place to be!”
The One Outside looks down upon Albert. He gently nods his head. All the stars twinkle as she returns his nod with a wink, sending delightful shivers up his spine. The ground too shakes. It has been blessed by the Spirit as well and the tremors are felt over yonder by the grounds that behold the empty dwellings where the witches hide. Overcome by such a blessing, the grounds turn soft, permeable and willing. All the houses, garages, lanes and courts sink deep into the soupy grounds, never to rise again.
Out of nowhere, looking down upon the prairie, a new house has formed. A dark, mysterious mansion with a crooked terrace, loose shutters and broken windows. To this house the lost souls are banished. They take up residence immediately, taking their sorrow with them for company.
The overall setting looks quite different than it did twenty minutes ago. The sky is in full night time mode. The moon is menacing. Both bats and witches are out and about, for the witch silhouettes fled the houses when they were sinking into the ground. Only one house stands – a house of lost souls.
And yet there is still the matter of the community of former cookie-cutter house dwellers. They have lost the toxic, bile-ridden parts of their body; converted to slime, buried in graves. They have had the toxic parts of their souls removed from their essence. Though several hundred stand, there is very little left in each. It’s amazing how much toxicity consumes a person, leaving behind only a small percentage for goodness. Whatever is left stands bewildered upon the grounds. Old and young looking aimlessly in all directions. Bodies weak from depletion. The aftermath of a spiritual lobotomy. They are practically zombies.
Albert knows there is a plan for these folks. The One Outside has granted all his wishes so far. She is not about to leave the people in such a dismal state. From outside the boundaries of all that is known, She whistles a haunting melody, sending it inside a wind. The wind falls upon the land, stripping leaves from the trees to make for a picturesque autumn setting. It seeps into the soil, dropping deep, deep and deeper. The song that is inside her heavenly breath is meant for “the slithering one” that lurks deep within the earth. It alone will take in its seductive call.
Still lying with his back upon the ground, Albert’s spine feels the vibrations of the waves created by the snake-like entity. It is awake. It is the One True Root from which all living things grow. It unites all roots as it slithers among them. It passes undetected from host to host, extracting life out of every seed and cell. Its branches are infinite. It is everywhere all the time.
Tonight, The One True Root is potent like never before. The Spirit’s voice penetrates its scales and echoes throughout its elongated body. It stimulates each and every branch. Tonight the branches rise to the surface and break through the earth’s floor. They slither around every single person that stands on these grounds. They burrow into their skin and deposit seeds. New life forms sprout from within their bodies. Vines break through their stomachs, tendrils squirm out of their noses. Yellow and orange flowers break out everywhere. Green leaves unfurl throughout the entire surface area of their skins.
Firmly rooted to the ground, these people never need to move again. This is their place. It’s out with the old and in with the new. The new is coming through, breaking through their heads like hatchlings cracking through their eggs. Their new heads are big, round and orange.
The graveyard that was once a prairie is now a pumpkin patch as well. Halloween, here we come.
But the setting is not yet complete. For the first time since the beginning of this October transformation, Albert stands on his feet. He knows what he must do on behalf of the members of the community. He must empty the little bit that exists within their hollow heads. Rid them of preconceived notions. Using a pocket knife, he slices into the pumpkins and pulls out their guts. Continuing on, he carves eyes into the pumpkins’ heads so that his former neighbors may see their new environment. Next, he chisels out noses below the eyes so the former cookie-cutter house dwellers might smell autumn’s aroma, maybe for the first time ever. Below the nose he cuts out mouths, not so they can speak but so they can smile at their brand new lives with appreciation.
The final task. Albert points to the sky. The One Outside blows him a kiss and it descends to the earth in a ray of light. The light strikes Albert on the finger, causing it to glow. “All around the neighborhood, I’m going to let it shine!” Albert says, quoting a song from his childhood. Into each and every pumpkin he inserts his glowing finger. A portion of the glow remains inside every one.
It is the best neighborly gesture ever. By the power and grace of The One Outside, Albert lights souls into existence. The light inside each pumpkin absorbs whatever portions of the old souls that have been left behind and transforms them into something fresh, something new.
It’s October at its finest. Gone are the tacky houses and the artificial people they hid. In its place is a graveyard, a pumpkin patch, a haunted house, and brand-spanking new spirits as fresh as pumpkin pie! The witches and bats make fine spectators and they take in the scene as well. Albert is mad with glee! The One Outside appoints him the caretaker of this October Garden and he accepts this position proudly. He turns to look at all the lit pumpkins. Oh how they smile! They love it. Everyone loves it. October is going to be a great month. The best. Happy Halloween!