I awake on the couch, unaware of the hour.
Eventually rising, I see moonlight coming in the front windows.
It’s time.
Time for my annual Halloween walk.
Finding a sweater, putting on shoes, I anticipate the cool pleasant evening.
Children may still be out, but perhaps it’s too late.
It makes no difference.
As soon as I open my door, the breeze brings change.
Things are not as they were.
The street is my street, but the glow from the lamps is odd.
Yellowish, like gaslamps.
Greenish.
No one is about.
I step from my porch and set out.
All is eerily silent around me.
My feet crunch leaves, and I hear my breath.
A sudden gust brings paper curling around my ankle.
I bend to grasp it.
In charcoal scrawl, a line of doggerel:
Home awaits, but you must win it;
Find it first, and then get in it.
Suddenly, all light is gone.
A dark cloud must have covered the moon, but what of the lamps?
In blackness I stumble on, the crunch beneath me the only sound, except my breath.
Then, the cloud passes.
I am on a hill, above a valley.
Stones and dead trees here and there.
And then, sounds.
A distant yowling, growing closer.
A hooting.
Owooo!
Like a wolf – there are no wolves.
What must I win to; what must I find?
My home must be behind me, but I dread looking back.
Where is this hillside?
How have I come here?
Again, the darkness.
Another cloud, perhaps.
In the blackness I see nothing, but then…
Green.
Two bright green dashes, near my feet.
Light returns again.
It is a cat.
Black, of course.
My guide.
I don’t know how I know this.
It brushes my legs once, then sets off.
I follow.
When the light returned, I saw I was in the valley below the hill.
Trees loomed darkly overhead.
Their dead branches splintered the moonlight.
I had stopped feeling the breeze, but I could hear it.
Following the cat, I treaded over leaves and stones.
Dry streambeds.
More than leaves crunching down there.
Turn.
Turn again.
Following.
And then, the Fantasy.
Dark again.
Cloud, moon.
Dimmer light, and I am not alone.
Rank upon rank of them.
Arms raised, heads lifted.
Skeletons.
Their bones gleam whitely.
Dark returns, but I can see the bones, phosphorescent.
I am paralyzed, but my guide strides through them.
Home awaits, but you must win it.
Light returns, dimmer.
I start again.
My arms brush them, but I feel nothing.
Their heads turn as I pass, so close they could bite me.
Or kiss me.
Dark again.
Light.
Then they are gone.
It’s even dimmer.
I begin to know where I am.
I begin to understand.
I see it ahead.
The cat nuzzles it.
Before it, the fresh turned earth.
Find it first, and then get in it.
I don’t feel the damp or the cold.
The light had almost faded away, anyway.