The Devil's in the Detail

The Devil's in the Detail

The black cats in our town are becoming a bit of a nuisance. 

We first noticed them shortly after our little writing group – there are two of us, in a town of about 30 households – decided to enter this week’s short story competition. It’s coming up to Hallowe’en, and the theme is “I’ve got goosebumps”: The prompt says: Whether you celebrate Hallowe’en or not, late October is an interesting time, full of contradictions. On the one hand, you’ve got chunky sweaters, auburn leaves, tea, grinning pumpkins, the flicker of candles. On the other, the looming threat of winter, darkness hiding just under the surface of all this cosy festivity.

If you’ve seen the website, you might have noticed that I’ve inserted an apostrophe in Hallowe’en and changed the spelling of “cozy” to cosy, which is the way we do it down here in the southern hemisphere. I know it’s a small point, probably pedantic to the point of being obsessive, but these things matter. 

Apart from the arrival of the cats, followed by the even stranger-looking dogs, we have  sensed changes in the air that can only be pinned down to this northern influence infiltrating the south. It’s now spring here, heading into summer, and the weather had begun to get warmer and more settled. Our chunky sweaters have been packed away, and the new spring leaves are green. But since this northern hemisphere influence came into my inbox it has been getting cooler again. The winds have been swirling, kicking up dust that finds its way into our houses even when all the doors and windows are closed. The dust puzzles us too, because we’re also having frequent showers that have a real bite, pushed along by a chill wind. Until now, dust and rain have been incompatible bed-fellows. The temperature plummets the moment a cloud scurries across the sun, and these clouds seem to be in two minds: keep their own company and do their own thing, or bind together in one dark, cold, gloomy mass.  The end result is the same: sudden plunges into the dark and cold.

As I’ve said, ours is a small town, about thirty houses and a small church that most people would think of as “fundamentalist”: a label we happily embrace. We’re nestled in a valley on a winding and narrow road along the top edge of a steep and dark gorge that ends at a long-disused quarry less than a kilometre from the town. We live in an older time, and we like it that way, although some of us have embraced a few modern conveniences, such as the internet, which allows us to keep track of how far the world is slipping into the devil’s hands. 

Normally we keep pace with the big outside world when it comes to seasonal changes, but now we’re skirting around the uncomfortable truth that the larger town at the junction with the state highway and our little road is becoming warmer and dryer in keeping with the seasons, while we seem to be sliding backwards into winter. Most of us have packed the shorts, sandals, short-sleeved shirts and sun hats of summer away again, and retrieved our winter outfits.

But most of the kids and teens, and some of the under 50s who still feel and act as though they are teens, are already wearing their witches and wizards hats and gowns, and some have donned their capes and those creepy skin-coloured gloves with overlong finger nails that look disturbingly real. 

My ageing friends and I know there is something deeper going on. There’s something in the air, some force gathering, invisible and dark. Some of us who feel too old to enter into the spirit of things, or are usually confident enough to stay home and opt for the trick rather than the treat, are having second thoughts: perhaps we should engage with the somewhat macabre festivities, to ward off the bad things that may happen if we don’t. But that might be a token gesture at best. I suspect that the “No Trick-or-Treaters” signs on people’s letterboxes will be seen as a dare to do exactly that. People are locking front gates that are usually left swinging in the wind: “to keep those stray dogs out” one friend told me. They’re not local dogs. They look different. Longer and leaner and meaner. And not fully dog-like, if you can see what I mean. There’s something about their eyes: in the dawn and evening light they look to have a green tint, with red pupils. “Just a trick of the light in the rising/setting sun”, we tell each other, trying to convince ourselves.

The dogs are frightened of the black cats that arrived a few days before them. Oh, they snap and snarl and growl, the way dogs do, but they make no attempt to take the cats on, and the cats just walk on through the packs of dogs without paying them any attention at all. “Spooky”, one of my friends says. I was minded to disagree with him, but after I saw one of the cats apparently walk right through one of the dogs without the dog reacting in any way, I began to feel spooked too. 

The other thing I’ve noticed – well, to be frank about it, a friend drew it to my attention – more kids than usual are carving pumpkins this year. And, for the first time in my experience, when I asked my neighbours’ teenaged children why they were doing this, I was given the right answer: “every pumpkin represents a soul trapped in purgatory” they said, almost in unison. I felt a chill in my spine, and then was shaken to the core when the oldest, a boy approaching 18, said “mine doesn’t represent a soul. There is a soul trapped in the pumpkin, and I’m carving doors and windows to let it out. It will be freed when we burn the pumpkin on the bonfire. It’s the soul that’s bringing all those strange animals into town. They will disappear when they’ve eaten all the released souls.”

I took a few moments to compose myself, and then turned to the other two, girls, identical twins, 16. They spoke in unison: “Yes,” they said, “our pumpkins contain the souls of our grandparents. We’re not carving windows. Just etching patterns on the outside, to look like windows. We want to burn them on the fire, because they were so mean to us.”

I recoiled again, and then asked “do your parents know about this?”

“They know we’re carving pumpkins,” the older boy said. “And why we’re doing it. We’re all going to be dressed as skeletons. It’s a family tradition. Our grandparents came from Yorkshire, and that’s what they do there.”

I asked if they did this every Hallowe’en, despite knowing they didn’t. They said no. Usually they went trick or treating, dressed as clowns, but this year was different. 

When I asked them how it was different, one of the twins mumbled that this was the year of the big purge, or something like that. The older boy told her to shut up, and said to me “Just wait and see. You’ll find out on the day.”

That’s the point when I accepted – in my mind, anyway – my friends’ feelings that something wasn’t quite right.

Despite the growing unease in town, preparations for the main event, a large bonfire in a public park, continued at a steady pace, and I helped where I could. People were encouraged to bring their spring tree prunings to add to the flames. “There’ll be lots of smoke,” one of my friends said. “Most of the prunings are still green.”

“It all adds to the flavour of the evening,” his wife said. “We can always stand upwind while we watch the fun.”

On the big day itself, the number of strange cats and dogs seemed to swell. There was a moaning sound in the wind that no-one could identify, and the temperature had plummeted to mid-winter levels. “Never heard wind like that before,” was the common refrain when the matter was raised. The trick-or-treaters moved through the small town at dusk. Their behaviour was unusually aggressive. They complained that the treats were “miserly”, and some of their pre-planned tricks crossed the line into sheer vindictiveness. All the windows on one house were broken by a fusillade of stones fired by catapults, injuring the elderly male occupant. Doors were nailed shut in several houses, and the occupants beaten when they tried to climb out the windows. I tried to suppress my thought that these houses were all occupied by people who had recently been accused of “backsliding” by our new Pastor, a fire and brimstone man I always thought was a bit extreme, even for our fundamentalist town. As the ill-feelings escalated, our local police officer, over-whelmed, sent out a call for reinforcements from the big city. He then helped people who had carved pumpkins to place them on the bonfire. The wind was gaining strength. The local fire brigade told the organisers that the bonfire should not be lit; our police officer agreed, and ordered everyone to go home. An angry crowd gathered around the bonfire, and someone – a very tall figure dressed as Satan – put a flaming torch to it. The wind picked up and fanned it into a violent blaze. The fire brigade could only stand and watch: the pumps on the fire truck wouldn’t start.

The strange cats and dogs started circling among the gathering crowd. The burning pumpkins began to emit shimmering and glowing streams of light that sounded like they were squealing with glee. Until the cats and dogs moved in. We tried to stop them, but our grasping hands and kicking feet passed right through them. Every soul was claimed by a cat or a dog, which then vanished. 

The fire spread into a grove of trees, leaped across the road into a house, and, fanned by a strengthening wind, ripped through our small town. It was an hour before neighbouring fire brigades and police arrived. No-one was hurt in the blaze, but only the church and all but one of the thirty or so houses survived. The twins’ house and the adjacent church were spared. I was among the first to reach them, having rushed through town to see if my house still stood. The twins and their brother were there. 

“Our grandparents saved the house,” the twins told me. “They managed to sneak past the cats and the dogs and kept the fire from our house. It was their way of apologising for treating us so badly. But then the dogs and cats tracked them down and ate them.”

“And where have the cats and dogs gone?” I asked.

They looked at each other, puzzled. “They’re always here,” the brother said. “Waiting for souls. They usually take only the bad ones the moment they die. This year they wanted everyone. They prefer to be invisible, but we decided they should show themselves this year.”

It took a few moments for this comment to sink in. I was stunned, to be frank. I recall stammering a bit, trying to ask them what they meant. 

“You wouldn’t understand,” the twins told me. “So don’t even try.”

“Yes, just go away and forget about us,” said a deep voice behind me. I turned to face him. Turned away, horrified. What I saw was the spitting image of an illustration I’d seen in my child-hood Bible. A portrayal of Satan but still, somehow, recognisable as our Pastor.

“All of you should leave,” he said. “We are fallen angels, brothers of Satan, the soul harvesters, and this is our realm. Your people have been intruding here for more than a hundred years. We’ve decided it is time for you to go. Call your people together and go. There’s nothing left here for you. We won’t allow you to rebuild here. Anyone who stays will die before their time and fall into my fire.” 

By this time a small crowd had gathered around us. They started shouting at the twins and their brother. They demanded the Pastor take his costume off and reveal himself.

The angel faded away and our Pastor materialised – the only word I can use to describe his arrival – in his stead. There was a sudden roar, a violent wind, kicking up the smouldering embers and scattering them over our small group. There were shouts and howls of pain as people tried to brush the embers off.

The Pastor raised his arms, transforming back into an angel, then dropped them abruptly. The ground beneath us heaved and swayed. Several people fell over. Others started running. Some limped and hobbled, still clutching at burning flesh.

The Pastor-Angel turned to me. “They will all suffer until it is time for me to take them. You I will spare so you can tell my story, to serve as a warning to others. You must persuade them to rebuild closer to the town on the main highway. This place is mine, always has been, and always will be.” 

I hope I have made a good start in telling this story. I’m working hard at it, because our Pastor-Angel told me his name is Penemuel: a fallen angel who corrupts mankind through writing. He seems satisfied with our little church, which has become his home. I pray there every day, attend service every Sunday, and have set up rosters for towns-folk to provide meals and cook and clean for him. A tent camp has been set up on a new town site, gifted by our brothers in the highway town, and work has already started on a new church and new houses.

As a community, we are unsure about celebrating Hallowe’en next year, and our elders have postponed formal discussion until we are more settled.  I, however, am sure the devil in our midst will insist we do, and that my own life depends on it.