Horrid Horace

                                              HORRID HORACE.

            Plants and shrubs raise their heads from buds of green. While fields and gardens flourish from the warmth of the sun. There is no noise from passing traffic. All is peaceful apart from the slight movement of the trees. Joe and Mary Peters have moved to Mill Cottage to make a new start with their two children Horace aged eleven and Maria seven.                     

         Horrid Horace lies in bed laughing as he wets the bed, it feels cold and sticky on his leg. A new school a new start let the fun begin. Sister Maria’s mommy’s little sunbeam.  She will have a surprize, when she opens the small white box left at the bottom of her bed. It will contain a dead field mouse lying on a bed of green grass. Oh, the screams and shrieks when she tells mom and dad.

           Why did I pull Juliet’s plaits?  Throwing green paint from dads potting shed at her party dress. The new neighbours will not be inviting me to any more birthday parties. Those girly parties are for my prissy little sister Maria. A smile comes to Horace’s lips, they will move house again no doubt starting over again.

              At his last school Horace had chased the headmaster around the class room, throwing blue ink at him. Served him right for thinking he could outwit Horace, no one could for he was the son of the devil and proud of it. They said, that Horace has behaviour problems. Over the years they have tried talking to him all those doctors and the social worker Alice, who suggested they live in the country and adapt to a cleaner life style. What does she know? Maybe they will all get tired and leave Horace alone they will never win.

            Horace smiled when, his parents argued he was the apple of his mothers’ eye she saw no wrong in Horace she put it all down to growing pains. Getting up from the bed he wiped himself on the duvet. Leaving the wet bed for his mother to deal with pulling on his track suit and trainers. He made his way downstairs soon it would be Halloween this year they would have a surprise at the village hall all those old biddy’s and stupid kids.

      He would fart in the barrel of apples taking down his pants, and drop Freddo into it. The pet frog he kept in a bowl in dads potting shed. Homemade cakes would be thrown on the floor and stamped on, girls would be bitten on the neck, and balloons taken from snotty little kid’s hands, would be burst. Oh, Horace could not wait to get started.

  If Mother Mary, thought that the Dracula costume would keep Horace happy, she was mistaken. He had already been in trouble for stealing red paint from the village Hardware Cabin, to throw at the trees on Halloween eve. His parents just looked at the shop owner’s embarrassed and paid out for his misdemeanours. That’s, what his father called them.

    Horace began to sing,” Caldron hot, Caldron cold, make me, a bowl of witch’s blood, frogs’ legs and dirty dishes.” It was still early morning as Horace walked down the lane past Mill Cottage no one was awake. Suddenly there was a rustle in the bushes the birds had stopped singing their early morning song. A sack was put over his head. Horace had become air bourn was he going to be reborn, was this his Halloween treat? Would he return at the stroke of midnight to celebrate Halloween? What about his parents? His sister Maria? He could hear humming; long boned fingers were digging into the sack.

    Once the sack was removed Horace stood in a dark room that smelt damp. Figures moved about laughing and smiling with protruding eyes and noses tall lanky figures they shone bright in the dark. There was steam coming from a large pot on the floor of the room. A strong smell of garlic, leaves were being put into the pot and red wine. Horace wet himself this was real he had a feeling a sick eerie feeling that he was going to end up in the pot with the green slim. He tried to run he was grabbed by two men with Skelton masks they had a knife an apple was put in his mouth his eyes bulged. He was pushed into the pot of hot slim.  more people were entering the room. Men and women approaching the large pot chanting,

              Prince of darkness

              Come to guide us,

              With your horns,

               Of fire.

               Son of Satan,

               Master,

               We adore the.

         A human head appeared with a goat figure, throwing red blood over Horace. Horace  recognised same of the faces there was prissy Juliet, her mom and dad, the man from the Hardware Cabin, what was happening? There was Old Sykes the headmaster who Horace had chased around with his own cane, before throwing the blue ink. His father and mother had moved into a village full of witches and ghouls. There were others he did not know, about twenty of them still chanting.

     Horace was lifted from the pot, an owl hooted. Then there was the creaking of a trap door Horace landed on a floor covered in moss. He was alive he had lived to tell the tale. Horace felt his body it was just bones, he had become one of them the living dead. 

   He had appealed to the master.” What do you want my boy” he had said, “aren’t you happy roaming around scaring folks, watching over the dead taking a baby from its bleeding mother’s womb, rebirth sacrifices, Halloween?” Horace watched as the clock struck twelve a rat run by, Horace picked it up, eating it as the blood curled in his mouth.  Other bones of corpses rattled as they clawed their way through the earth. 

    The master sighed he had been there at Horace’s birth the good Dr John Gently, looking after sick children he was sure that Horace was a chosen one. It was very rare he made a mistake, should he let Horace become human? There would be a sacrifice there had to be? When the pumpkin pies had been cut, the apples caught and eaten from the bowl. Candles flickered and Halloween costumes on the children and adults shone in bright colours, Horace would appear, as the wind howled. In his bed, he would think that it was all a dream. His mom and dad would cosset him. His sister would stay on earth a little longer.

           At seventeen Horace’s sister Maria would be with her friends and like the old custom for many years, At Halloween, she would look in the mirror and see the good doctor himself has her husband. Like the good doctor he was he would be most charming to lure and court her. A doctor during the day looking after sick children. Luring his victims to his castle in Budapest, in his spare time. John, they would say “I’m scared? What are you doing?” Has he run a candle down their leg? Biting into their alabaster neck, watching as they wilt like dead flowers. To become a part of the living dead after they had hung themselves from a church steeple or the balcony of their flat.

    The lure and taste of blood was too much to resist. The thrill of choosing one’s victims, the lonely lady whose boyfriend had stood her up. “What’s an attractive lady like you doing on your own, let me buy you a drink.” He was always a good listener ready and waiting to make her his. John Gently had roamed the earth for years as a son of Satan. The thrill of the clock striking, the shaking of bones, sacrifices to Satan always gave him a thrill.

        Horace was sweating the wind was howling outside his bedroom window. He felt strange odd. Had he seen all those strange people? Horace felt his wet cheek, he had been crying. There was skin on his face and hands. A smile came to his lips he was still Horace not a ghoul. Looking up at the window he shrieked there was the masters face at the bedroom window. “Horace, darling what’s the matter his mother had said, entering Horace’s bedroom. “There’s a man at the window, I want to see Maria my sister?” “Horace calm down. I’ve never seen him like this Joe.”

       “What’s up boy, his father had said, you just had a bad dream its Halloween.” “Don’t frighten him any more Mary had scolded her husband. Later they had remarked that since that Halloween experience Horace had become a different lad. He was polite and he had stopped pulling girls hair. He didn’t wet the bed. He had even started going to Sunday school with Maria. 

        Horace, Mary noticed was not keen to go trick and treating with the other children at Halloween. It was an effort to get him to dress up in a Halloween costume. Strange odd Mary thought different to how Horace was a few years ago. The strange thing was he liked to look at the old graves in the cemetery and talked to them as if he knew the inhabitants. He would grow out of it like the story about ghosts carrying him off.

               At twenty- three Horace had gone away to college, Maria had grown into a real beauty with brown eyes and tumbling brown curls. She talked none stop about a doctor she had meet on her nursing course at the local hospital. A Mr John Gently, who seemed keen to take her to Paris for Halloween? He was a lot older than Maria. There was no worry he seemed to be a most charming and educated man. Horace, when they had told him about Maria’s plans to go to Paris, had felt a strange sensation down his spine. Now he knew that it had not been a bad dream he had, as a boy. He had lived the life of the living dead.

 Dr John Gently now had his sister he had to accept fate or change back into a ghoul at the stroke of midnight. He knew that Gently would not change his plans; it was fate the unknown the afterlife. There was only one thing for it pray to god and remind Maria not to remove the gold cross Horace had given her, from her neck. She had promised, to wear the cross. Driving with Dr John Gently she had replaced the cross with a cameo John had bought her.  Johns Jaguar had skidded off the road. No one had really understood why or how his sisters’ body had been found swept out to sea. Johns body was never found.

     No one did a deal with the devil every Halloween Horace would feel blood in his throat and would haunt the earth looking for his dead sister. He would become the living dead once more. The trees would rustle owls would hoot and Horace would become a ghoul looking for victims while haunting the earth. Hanging between the living and the dead. He would watch over his parents. When the window shutters shook it would be his sister trying to get her life back, if a plate broke or an ornament moved. Mill Cottage had been blessed and holly water thrown over it. It was all too late the seed had been sown the day that Horace had become a son of Satan.