A Halloween Tale

The last two year I have wanted to write a Halloween Tale, however, my laziness got the better of me.  Then this year, I never even thought about it until today.  I have just been so busy with the new role at work and focusing on pushing through paper. 

In my time I have realized I have a very macabre side.  I think as a child with an overactive imagination I was always terrified of this.  I used to hold on to the head board every night before going to sleep because I thought he classic ghouls and goblins were all around me just staring at my bed.  I couldn’t watch scary movie commercials.  When the Stephen King book club would come on that commercial was the worst.

In High School I went through an Edgar Allen Poe phase and that was really my first dive into the macabre.  Well, so I thought, but of course I wrote tells much earlier than 16 about Skip Norris, a.k.a. the Killer Cabbage Patch Kid, and his sidekicks the Killer Cows.  Which were ghost stories told late on Friday nights at sleepovers under the sheets with the flash light!  Wooooo, wooooo! 

It is no wonder with my love of Poe and the Skip Norris (Bloggers Note: Skip Norris was a good 5 to 10 years pre Chucky!  I am not saying my idea was stolen, I mean look at any fucking doll, they are mega creepers right! I mean really look at them!  Ewwwww!)  that sooner or later I would turn to Stephen King and he would be the literary master I look up to the most.  I mean fucking King is the master!  He doesn’t get enough credit for being a great writer.  The man can paint pictures with his scenes.  I always feel like I am in the story with his characters.  Fucking love me some King!

So that comes back to a Halloween Tale and honestly, I don’t think I have one that I can crank out in the next 20 minutes before work goes off the hook busy.  I’d love to tell the story of the insane miniature clown that terrorizes a fat man at his home.  I’d even love to revisit my first murder scene I ever wrote, and CAROL, I am still pissed you through this out!!!  It was during my Poe phase and basically a man goes insane one Halloween Night and chokes his girlfriend to death in the shower and the sits over her dead body and laughs.  Both stories would take too paint the right images. 

Sure I could bang out in a few paragraphs a man choking his girl to death.  Easy.  However that isn’t scary.  The actually choking no, it’s the buildup and the insanity that follows that terrifies.  I have found over the years it’s what you don’t see either on screen, or in a book that holds the attention.  The bloody body might show a scary picture in the head for a second but the buildup.  That’s what does it because it makes the imagination create the horror.  King again in my mind isn’t a master of horror but of suspense.  What is in the corn?  What is in the wall?  What is the wolf like thing with the piebald side lurking in the woods?  What does it want?

So alas, I have no tales to spin? 

 

I am walking through a grave yard.  I am feeling like I am going to die.  I am just walking to be walking, I am not even sure why.  I fear something out there.  It’s calling out my name.  I am not sure what it is, but I know there will be pain.    I know for sure I am terror bound.

I notice the grave yard is cold, so, cold.  It is unnaturally cold for this time of year in Indiana?  Why am I here?  What am I doing?  I am compelled to go forward.  I can’t turn around.  Ka wills me to this time and this place. I hear it.  I hear it over and over again.  I hear my name.  It is a low rasp.  Nothing more than a mire whimper.  “Kooddddyyyyy, Kooddddyyyyy” 

As if with someone else’s feet I move forward.  Like a puppet on a string I am pushed forward.  Step after step, I move towards the unknown calling.  The calling of my name, I have no idea what it is.  It is low.  Barely even audible.  My bowels clinch; I feel my bladder start to loosen and still the calling.  Always the calling: “Kooddddyyyyy, Kooddddyyyyy” 

SNAP and my heart jumps into my throat.  My breathing gets heavy and I look down and there is only a twig under my feet.  The calling has me out of my mind.  It start to get louder the further I walk.  It is more persistent than it has been. 

Breathing is out of control.  I am pretty sure I just pissed myself in fear.  My bowels could let go at any second.  I keep being pushed forward by the will of time and space.  My heart is thunder.  There is no turning back.  My breath drums in my head.  The voice is rapidly saying my name over and over again.  “Kody, Kody, Kody, Kody!!!”  It is inside my head brum dum drum, brum dum drum.  “Kody, Kody, Kody, Kody!!!” 

I step and I am falling.  I am falling down and down again.  I land on soft velvet.  I smell old wood.  My hand touches a pillow.  I open my eyes and I am in a bed.  A small bed, it is not very wide.  No, it is not bed.  Not a bed at all it is a coffin.  I am in a coffin.  I am in a fucking coffin.  Brum dum drum, brum dum drum.  “Kody, Kody, Kody, Kody!!!”  Brum dum drum, brum dum drum.  “Kody, Kody, Kody, Kody!!!” 

I scream in madness. I don’t know what to do, I am not ready.  It is not my time.  Not now, not NOW, I scream into the lonely night. 

I start swinging my fist.  My first are lighting fast.  I am punch at the velvet and the pillow. I grab the pillow and I throw it out of my way. I punch and punch.  I am hammering. I punch through the velvet to the wood. I punch and I punch again. 

A hand on my shoulder, I come out of a trance.  It is hot.  It is so fucking hot. I look around; it isn’t Halloween, but summer. It is summer in Indiana and the humidity sticks to me.  I almost suffocate from it.  I look down at the ground.  I see concrete.  I am still on my knees but not in a grave but on the sidewalk in downtown during midsummer festival.  People all around me staring with mouths open.  I feel pain. Pain in my hands, they are covered in blood from punching on the concrete. 

 

See no story to tell…