The Village of Samhain

Samhain (sow-in); a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season, the origin of the holiday known as All Hallows' Eve.

It is cold, tonight. The wind sweeps raindrops and flame-coloured leaves over the street, the air is filled with the brightness of lanterns and chatter. Trick-or-treaters dart joyously from door to door. I can see them well from my perch. My, it is a sight, all of those costumes. A little red fire fighter splashes through a puddle beneath me, calling to his mother with excited impatience. I love kids. I might have had some of my own, once. But no time to ponder.

I slide off the tree branch I'd been lounging on and flit through the street, weaving above the people. I pause a couple times to watch, listen. It doesn't take long to find what I'm looking for. I slow and rise to float quietly over the heads of two middle schoolers. A witch and a vampire. Classic.

They hurry through the streets like everyone else, knocking on strangers' doors in their disguises to demand sweets, but something on them has piqued my interest. It rolls off them in waves, and as I follow them, I see the signs. Calling mean things to others, knocking pumpkins from porches, the like. Cruel brats. They’ll meet their reckoning tonight, I know. I can’t wait to watch the chaos unfold.

Perhaps I’ll have my own fun with them before someone else does. I dive out ahead of them, enjoying the feeling of the air, and slip into an alley. It’s a little filthy, but I don’t mind. It’s not as if I’m not used to it. I follow the winding little street until I find a good, dark nook to settle in. I’ve left those two delinquents far behind, but I know they’ll come to me. 

I shimmer into physical being and lean back, rolling out my shoulders and relaxing against cool brick. It feels good to be tangible sometimes. I run my hands over me to remind myself of my corporeal body. I like my hair, I remember. It’s thick and long, falling in a tie down my back and over my shoulders. I also remember the one thing I’ve never been able to figure out on my form. Gender. 

I, as a non-being, have none. I don’t remember what it was originally either. Eh, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much. If anything, appearing as the genderless, ageless being I am will only cause the mortals that see me more distress and confusion. 

Voices bring me back to the present. The brats come clattering down the alley. They’re loud, but I can sense their nervousness. They’re not sure of themselves, or what they’re doing here. All the better. People who are unsure are easier to convince. 

They come stumbling into view a moment later. It takes a moment for them to spot me, but they freeze one after the other once they do. I wait as they do the usual nudging and whispering before one of them pipes up. 

“Who are you?”

Confrontational, as I guessed. I gaze on them silently for a moment for effect.

“It does not make a difference, who I am. All that matters is that I exist. Sit down, children, let me tell you a story.”

They are hesitant, but their will cannot stand under my effect. They approach to sit cross-legged at my feet, and I begin my tale.

“Somewhere in the world, in a space between moving spaces, there exists the little village of Samhain. Now, Samhain itself isn’t all that interesting, long abandoned and mossy, the cobbles so covered in grime that the streets become like ice when it rains, that you’d slip and fall as soon as set foot on them. 

Most of the year, Samhain lies dormant, nothing more than a ghost town, hidden deep in marshy woods.”

I drop my voice to a secretive hush.

“The excitement, really, is on the flipside. You see, in Samhain there is a well. An empty, narrow, bottomless well, and this well acts as the one and only passage between this world and the next. A gateway, of sorts, that only opens for a short time, falling on the day some of you mortals now call “All Hallows’ Eve”. Or, rather, Harlen tells me it's "Halloween" now? These things move too fast, I swear.”

I break off with a laugh.

“On this day it floods with the bustle of all kinds of evil weaving their way through the annual shift flip. 

Spooks take a shift of one year, spent out in the world doing their assigned duty, haunting houses, hiding under beds, in closets, under bridges, in dark woods, the like. When the portal opens, they go back to their realm, and the next set of spooks take their place.”

The two are captivated, and I smile down at them, eyes glowing.

“All Hallows’ Eve is the way it is because it’s when the haunts are up and moving, transitioning from one year to the next. 

Departing haunts like to mess around, feeling light with their impending free time, so they have some fun before they go home, frightening trick or treaters or stupid teens in haunted buildings.

Arriving spooks are fresh and energetic, excited puppies darting around and scaring the life out of anyone they come across. It all sounds rather chaotic, doesn’t it? That’s the fun of it. Spooks thrive off of chaos. However, there does need to be some method to the madness.

Here’s where the four other commandments of human justice (or human punishment), Karma, Pain, Guilt, and Death, come in. They regulate the gateway, the shifts, and keep the worst of the chaos under muzzle (while of course, taking care of their own jobs as well). Fear, the fifth form of justice, is represented by the spooks, for obvious reasons.”

I pause once more to watch their faces. Open, hanging off my words. I can’t tell if it’s because of my spirit’s influence or my storytelling. 

“Now, you may be wondering why all of this happens.”

I wait for them to nod.

“Simple, really. It's because humans have the power to be terrible to the earth and the beings they share it with. Unfortunately, not all humans recognize the responsibilities that come with that, so someone else has to. Hence the commandments. The spooks' job just happens to carry out a little less subtly than the others.”

I shrug, shift my weight on the ledge and tilt my head.

“Maybe, you're asking why you've never heard of this before. (It's because you're human.) Maybe you’re even chuckling to yourself, wondering how anyone came up with something like this.”

I wrinkle my nose.

“Do you doubt me, mortals? I have bestowed you, of all pitiful beings, with this knowledge and you doubt me? That’s alright, most do. No one really believes the narrator. It’s all just a story, right?”

I grin toothily at them, gleaming in the low light.

“All I’ll say is, next time something unexplainable happens, or you are struck by one of the five commandments, think of this story, and doubt yourself just a little. Perhaps your reality really is more than what you can see, and maybe, you’ll think, that crazy writer was telling the truth.”

A dark hand reaches from the shadows and wraps around a scrawny ankle.

La Fine~

The rhyme (by me) that started it all-

Once upon a nightmare, there sat the little village of Samhain. And in this village, through the street, through the square, over the bridge and past the fair, stood a little well. But this well was no well, as it held not a drop of water, just a long narrow cell, all but on the night of Hallows’ Eve. On this night it came filled with the spookiest of spooks, flooding the village and climbing the stoops, for this town it had a secret, and a truth I now will tell, the village of Samhain was not a village but a well.

- Mirabella S.