October 29

 

 

A strange whining sound from Roxie woke me in the morning.

It was earlier than my usual waking time, but the sun was already up, and I was surprised to realize I had slept.

But that sound—I’d never heard her make anything like it. She was in the living room, so I couldn’t see (or imagine) what would have caused her to act that way. “Roxie?”

She didn’t stop—she sounded almost like a small child uttering a string of nonsense syllables. The sound brought last night’s unease hurtling back, but the fact that it was already light outside was reassuring.

I got out of bed, ventured into the living room—and saw instantly what had provoked the sound from my cat:

Outside, on my enclosed, second-floor balcony, a large carved pumpkin rested. The jack-o’-lantern’s face was a small masterwork of carving skill, exuding vicious glee.

I picked up Roxie, trying to calm her, and together we stared at the sinister objet d’art beyond the glass. After a few seconds, I saw that the shadow around the base of the pumpkin wasn’t just dark. It was dark red, and thick.

The thing was oozing blood. And as I knelt so I could see through its empty grin, I saw there was something inside, something with fur.

Whatever was in there wasn’t moving, but it was still bleeding. The thin shape just visible through one eye socket might have been a tail, a pointed extension was possibly an ear.

A cat. Maybe still alive. Probably not, but…

If it was still alive, I couldn’t stand there and watch it bleed out. Yes, Ripley went back for the cat in Alien, and I’d risk a dangerous encounter now to check on an animal that wasn’t even mine. That’s one of the things about compassion—it trumps both fear and common sense.

Because I knew, at that moment, exactly what I was confronting. There was no question that the jack-o’-lantern and the bloodied animal were not the work of ordinary pranksters. For one thing, my balcony is difficult to reach, accessible only by going through my living room or coming down from the apartment building’s roof. The pumpkin was a large one, and would have been hard for even a strong man to carry down a ladder. And I didn’t want to accept that any humans were capable of inflicting gruesome harm on a small animal and then stuffing its corpse into a hollowed-out squash.

No, I trusted then that if I stepped outside, I might be facing vicious, inhuman things.

I locked Roxie in the bedroom, then went to the hallway closet and found the baseball bat stored there. It was a good, solid wooden Louisville Slugger, and had been given to me years ago as a gift after I’d called the police on a psycho who’d threatened a friend with it. It had heft to it, and gave me enough confidence to slide the glass door open and step out onto the balcony.

It was still early, but the day was already warm and clear, and it was hard to believe anything more threatening than a hungry squirrel would be nearby. I was guessing the sidh moved at night and had left this before vanishing at dawn, but I didn’t know that for sure.

And…there might be something hurt and alive inside the pumpkin.

I used the bat to reach down and knock the pumpkin’s top aside. A smell assaulted me, a thick, musky odor that I knew from an emergency visit to a veterinarian to fix an injured cat: The smell of fear and feline blood.

I bent over the pumpkin and looked in. I could see there was a small animal within: black, unmoving. A black cat. I poked at it tentatively with the bat, but there was no response. I went back in for a heavy towel and then returned. I laid the towel by the pumpkin, picked it up gingerly, and tilted the cat out onto the towel.

Now it was clear: It was dead. Its throat had been slit. Gore matted its soft black fur.

I understood then how the sidh had earned their reputation as savage pranksters: A black cat was not just a classic Halloween icon, it was also the source of one of the most common urban legends: that Satanic cults kidnapped black cats every Halloween and sacrificed them in diabolical rituals. There was no basis to that story whatsoever.

Until now, that is.

The sidh had slain an innocent cat to taunt me. The message was clear, and my response would be as well.

I took little comfort from the fact that I didn’t know this cat—it didn’t belong to a neighbor, it wasn’t a local stray I’d glimpsed from time to time. I wrapped up the small corpse in the towel and placed it in a plastic bag; later on, I’d find a nice patch of yard and bury it. I’d deal with the pumpkin and the blood later. I had something more important to do now.

I found ó Cuinn’s phone number and called him.

He answered on the first ring, and sounded wary when he heard my voice. “The little friends you called up are stalking me,” I told him.

“Can we meet somewhere?”

I knew he was worried about the police still possibly tracking him, but right then I didn’t give two fucks about him or the cops. “No. Just reverse this shit, Conor. I don’t care what it takes, get rid of them. Now.”

There was a pause before he answered, “I can’t.”

“What do you mean—you can’t, or you won’t?”

“I mean, I can’t. Look at the manuscript yourself—the banishing spell is only partial. That section of the manuscript is illegible.”

“You’re kidding.” I paced my living room, wishing I could reach through the phone and strangle ó Cuinn. “You called these things up before making sure you could get rid of them?”

“I…I really didn’t think they’d be a problem. What exactly are they…what—”

I cut him off. “They left a dead, mutilated cat on my balcony this morning, just for starters.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the work of pranksters?”

I had to laugh at how our roles had suddenly reversed themselves: two nights ago I’d walked out on this man when he’d told me we were both Druids, and now he was arguing in favor of human mischief while I advocated for the supernatural. “I’ve seen them, Conor.”

“Oh. Dear God. I never thought—”

I hung up on him. He was an irritating idiot. He was the fool in every bad horror movie who read the ancient spell out loud, who taunted the killer, who had sex while a madman lurked in the shadows. I’d solve this without him, then.

I brought up the manuscript on the computer, and found the banishing spell. He was right about that, at least: The beginning of it was there—it involved a rod made of ash and a spoken command—but the rest was lost.

I’d find another way, then. Could I still use logic against something that was essentially illogical? At this point, didn’t it make the most sense to accept the irrational, to just acknowledge that the supernatural did exist? But could that doorway be only partly opened? If the sidh were real (they were), what else was behind that portal? I’d met one goddess already—how many more were there? Was there one single God, watching impassively?

Unless He was going to intervene now, I’d have to wrestle with that question later on. Right now I needed to come up with some way to fight the deadly tricksters Conor had called up. I needed to think about practical magic, not impractical theology.

I tried to remember everything I could about Samhain encounters with the sidh, and later Scottish stories of fairies on Halloween. A few tales talked about silver or iron; one odd legend mentioned wearing your clothes inside out. Mostly the old folklore suggested avoiding them.

I pulled down some of my reference books and flipped through them, but everything that I found described ways to protect yourself from the sidh, not get rid of them. Or even hurt them.

But I knew there was a way—Mongfind had recorded one, but I only had part of it. A rod of ash…a command…what else?

I glanced out my balcony at the bloody jack-o’-lantern, and the sight of it triggered a realization: The sidh had carved the pumpkin in a recreation of their own faces. Their heads, in fact, with the oversized, round shape and glowing features, looked like living jack-o’-lanterns.

Was it possible that the classic Halloween jack-o’-lantern—that most beloved of the holiday’s symbols—had been based on the faces of the sidh? Or was there even more to it than simply remembering the sidh in folk art?

Before bringing Halloween to America^[16], the Irish had carved turnips into jack-o’-lanterns. Common wisdom held that the vegetables—with a candle placed inside—had been used to startle passersby on Halloween night, but now I believed they might have served another purpose:

What if the jack-o’-lanterns had originally represented the ultimate defense against the sidh on Halloween night? Were they perhaps used in Mongfind’s ritual? Were stories of Irish lads smashing their sculpted turnips on Halloween night indicating more than just sheer playfulness?

The baseball bat was made of ash…it would certainly be very effective in smashing a pumpkin…

Somehow I knew this was right. Maybe it was some part of the Morrigan, still residing in me; or my own intuition, telling me that the connections I’d just drawn were simply too strong.

Maybe it was Druid knowledge, buried deep within me. Magic encoded in DNA, like musical ability or language skills.

I would wait until evening, when the sidh were present again. I knew I’d be putting myself in peril, but I also thought it might be the only way to banish them—would they react to a command and a banishment ritual during the day, when they didn’t seem to be present?

No, I had to risk it. At sundown, I’d use the bat—my rod of ash—to shatter the pumpkin they’d left me as a cruel taunt, and I’d command them to return to their own world.

And if I was wrong and it didn’t work…then come Halloween, the sidh would make any human terrorists look like preschoolers.