Happy Halloween!
In recognition of my favorite day, below is a story I wrote about a special Halloween from my childhood.
And yes, every bit of it is true. 🙂
But before we move onto that, I just want to point out just how unique Halloween 2020 is.
~ Tonight is a FULL MOON
~ It’s also a BLUE MOON (the second full moon of the month)
~ The moon is in TAURUS, which is significant to me (cuz that’s what I am!)
~ Most significant of all (at least to me) – 10-31-2020 is a NINE DAY. When you add up all those digits, they add up to a nine. And I’m kind of a freak for the number nine (see this blog post about why).
And one last item – today I’m doing a reading and appearing in an interview at the International Vampire Film & Arts Festival, being held virtually this year. Last year, Watcher: Book I of The Chosen, won the Silver Stake Award. The festival offers academic discussions, films, and literary readings on all things vampire, and you can attend for free.
So with no further rambling on my part, here is my true Halloween story.
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Halloween.
My earliest memories of our favorite holiday revolve around waiting impatiently in my homemade costume for the evening to get dark enough to go trick-or-treating. The frenzied rush from house to house with my friends, amassing our candy hoards in pillowcases, was fraught with laughter and squeals of childish terror during the spookiest night of the year.
When I was twelve, my family moved from our little Orange County suburb in California to a semi-remote canyon just thirty minutes away. We might as well have moved to the moon, as far as I was concerned. There were only two other homes in the area that was my new neighborhood; neither one had children and were both located nearly a half-mile from my house.
But I don’t recall minding much. My brothers and I adopted the trees and hills as our new playground, and though I missed my two best friends, I filled my time climbing the oaks, catching lizards, reading, and riding my horse.
Until Halloween.
And we had no neighborhood in which to trick-or-treat.
Yet that Halloween is my all-time-favorite.
Because I spent it in Sleepy Hollow, and saw with my own eyes the horror and madness of the Headless Horseman.
Sleepy Hollow, a tiny community nestled in the middle of Carbon Canyon, was about two miles from my house. At that time, there were no more than a few hundred people tucked away in the surrounding hills. It had a 50’s era gas station with a single pump, a small grocery store, and a smaller church. The nearest school, miles away in the outskirts of Chino, meant that us canyon kids spent hours on the school bus each day.
Halloween in Sleepy Hollow turned out to be a special day for the locals. The volunteer fire department opened its bay doors to the community’s children, its lone fire truck displaced by a cauldron filled with water and floating apples, pin-the-tail-on-the-devil, and other Halloween-themed games. Orange and black crepe paper streamers crisscrossed the open-beam ceiling from which white tissue ghosts dangled; cardboard witches and skeletons and bats festooned the walls.
Costumed kids of all ages darted and scampered through the transformed Halloween wonderland, their laughter echoing into the cool night air outside. I hung back, feeling a little too old for such antics – and a little disappointed to have been robbed of my trick-or-treating.
But there was an undercurrent of excitement beneath the kids’ play, an intensity woven throughout the normal thrill of the evening, and I began to notice the adults shared it. Expectant looks into the outer darkness were followed by tentative footsteps easing outside, stopping at the farthest reaches of pooled light beyond the open doors. Quiet mutters caught my attention, and words like “time” and “which way” piqued my interest even more.
As I slipped through the restless forest of adults gathering at the night’s edge, their murmurs grew louder, more excited, and children’s names rang out through the cool air.
I heard hoof beats, traveling at a fast trot, their metal shoes resonating against the asphalt road.
And the bearer of those hoof beats came into view.
He was midnight black, huge, with a wild mane and billowing tail.
But it was his rider who stole my breath.
His rider, dressed in a long, black coat, with a grinning pumpkin for his head.
They thundered up to the waiting crowd, he and the horse, and the horse reared, and with a maniacal laugh, the rider tore the pumpkin from his shoulders and dashed it to the ground at our feet.
And with another demented cackle, he and the horse galloped off into the night.
I’ll never forget that Halloween.
And over the years, as I’ve escorted my children – and later, grandchildren – through crowded suburban streets filled with Disney and comic book characters in pursuit of candy treasures, I think back on my canyon life, and that night in a tiny, hillside community, and wish for simpler times.
© Roh Morgon
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~RM
