Halloween
By tyson
- 666 reads
Halloween
In the year 1976 the south of England experienced one of the hottest
and driest summers on record. A casualty of this spell was an ancient
beech tree that stood in the grounds of Eastfield, a former country
seat of a belted earl that had been sold after the war, and was then in
use as the senior boarding house in a boy's preparatory school. It was
at this time that Halloween was first celebrated at the school.
It was Halloween in the year of the great drought. Boys were emerging
from the shrubbery like maggots out of cheese. Their shrill voices
punctured the stillness of the night with spikes of sound. Humped in
the middle of a circle of logs around a blazing fire sat a darkened
figure. The flame light leapt towards the stygian recesses of the cowl
it wore, but fell back to leave that cavernous emptiness unpenetrated
and mysterious.
Shepherded by the bearded housemaster, the children sat on the logs and
simmered noisily. The arrival of hot punch and ice creams caused a
brief flurry of activity, only for the company to subside into the
intense business of consuming them.
Throughout all this the figure sat mute and motionless. Occasionally a
boy would pause in his chatter and give the spectre a curious look, but
the evening had been full of such apparitions which later turned into
masters or matrons. Soon he would doubtless do the same.
Suddenly the cowl twitched, and a voice crusted with age began to
speak.
"Ah! I have tales to tell. Dark stories of long forgotten demons; dread
lays of the birth and death of gods. Tremble ye who listen and despair.
Upon this very spot but one year hence there grew a tree gnarled and
bent by the passing years. Beneath its shade dwelt the denisons of the
forest. Under its cover generations of woodland creatures had burgeoned
and decayed. The lore of the wood folk told that, under its cover, no
animal need fear the hand of mortal man. As the ages passed the reason
for this had become obscured in the miasmic vapours of time forgotten.
Deep within the fibres of the tree their dwelt a god. Formidable in his
youth, he slumbered more as age encroached - even the gods grow old. No
longer did youths and maidens offer their lives on All Souls Day to
renew his spirit. At length, only the creeping things that ran across
him from time to time in their burrowing knew that he was there at all.
So it was that, in the year of the great drought, as the great god
slept his abode died about him.
It was the banshee wail of the chain saw and the blows of the woodman's
axe that finally woke him. By then it was too late. His hold upon the
world lay quartered upon the ground. A disembodied wraith, he was
condemned to wander the world until such time as, once again, children
would sit in druid circle about him on the eve of all hallows day. But
now the time is come. Behold the great god Thar return in
splendour!"
With that the figure rose. Deep within his cork bark face burned eyes
of fire, transfixing the cowering boys. From his sleeves twigged hands,
tipped with thorns, stretched out and out to pierce their jugulars. As
their blood touched the ground the children felt their feet prickle
roots and their blood turn to sap.
The god's new home was to have many mansions.
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