It's Halloween, the Day We Celebrate Superstitious Mumbo-Jumbo!

Back to Our Primitive Terrors!

Deceased Cousin Edouard has decided to celebrate the holiday this year, but is having trouble leaving his grave.

Remember the time when we were apemen and cat women living in tiny villages in the midst of dense forests infested by ferocious wolves, grizzly bears, saber-toothed tigers, woolly mammoths and demented laughing hyenas who snickered and guffawed as they devoured their terrified, screaming victims after first squirting them with ketchup?

Oh no, not you. You’re all snug and smug rolled up in your comfy cashmere rug from L.L. Bean, ensconced before the TV gaily watching ill-matched cop partners chase ritual-sex-killer thugs around Oslo or Stockholm.

But I… I remember it all, for that is my gift. I remember the bitingly cold, late-autumn nights, the eerie howls in the dark, and the terrible scratchings above as the giant birds of prey relentlessly pecked and clawed at our flimsy roof tiles, hoping to break through and pluck a helpless babe from its crib while we older ones crouched around the ebbing fire, praying the logs would last till far-off dawn.

And I remember when it began. I remember the blithe spirits that had danced with us in the golden-moonlit clearings when the harvest was good. The elves and sprites and fairies, and occasional gremlin, those wee forest folk who shared their knowledge of how the stars could reveal our fate and how we might avoid unwanted pregnancy and lower back pain.

They were our friends, mostly, though fond of tricks and practical jokes involving outhouses, and cute as any of Disney’s animated creatures.

But then came the priests who told us we were no longer pagans, the King had decreed it. Paganism was out, in fact illegal, a rackable offense. There was now only one great spirit to beseech, all knowing and ever present, albeit never visible, a perfect God who resided in the sky. There was also something about an even more perfect Son—to be honest, I never really got that bit.

And the wee folk? They had never really existed, said the priests. We ourselves had conjured them up mentally after celebrating the harvest too much with cider and ale. That’s right, you got it, the spirits arose from the downing of spirits. Okay, we said. If you insist. Whatever. For they were educated men and we but ignorant clods.

But the wee spirits were still out there. And so were their enemies, the larger, meaner spirits who previously had kept mostly to the denser, darker woods, living off the wee folk and the woolly mammoths. (One WM could feed and clothe an entire coven for two months) I speak of witches, demons, zombies, werewolves, vampires, yetis, bigfoots, wraiths, banshees, golems, dybbuks and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Or is it bigfeet?

Now, as the little ones died off, decimated by the monsters but more so by the lethal type of despair that comes from being informed you are no longer relevant or necessary, the big, nasty ones crept ever closer to our farms and villages.

We didn’t know that then. We sensed that something scary was going on but what it was we knew not. We knew only that change was coming.

The village priest—we had one now, Father Zingling, a smart young fellow fresh from the seminary, and we built him a nice little church with the modern new building material, bricks—had given us a slew of new holidays with which to worship the new god. They were much like the old holidays and fell at about the same time.

But we kept one oldie, though with a twist or two. This was All Hallows Eve. On that night, we thanked Jesus (it used to be someone else) for his bounty. We did a little folk dancing, intoned a chant or two, and marched in a traditional torchlight parade to the village cemetery. There, the graves would pop open and our deceased loved ones would climb out of them and join the procession. Then we’d all go to our homes for a great, jolly, noisy feast after which the living and the dead sat around the table reminiscing, toasting each other’s health, them that had any, and telling the old jokes. There was much laughter and a bit of weeping as well. Just before dawn, everyone would hug and kiss goodbye, and the dear departed would depart, shuffling back to the graveyard and crawling into their coffins, where they’d rest for another year. Although the relatives didn’t always smell very good, and my dead first wife always bickered with her successor, this was a joyous holiday indeed.

Until it was banned. Father Zingling said he was sorry, but the interdiction came right from the top and nothing could be done. My cantankerous nephew Ignatz ended up in the stocks for the day after shouting, “Dead Lives Matter!”

Another year passed, much faster than normal. The harvest was the most meager in a long time. The elders decided that All Hallows Eve would be observed October’s last day as ever, but in secret. We waited for nightfall, slipped out of our homes, came together at the village outskirts and walked the dark path to the cemetery without the usual torches.

As we approached the graveyard, a light rain began to fall. The attack came without warning. As the graves burst open in the dark, we could not at first make out that the dim shapes lurching toward us and fastening upon us with their rotting limbs and broken mouths were not our loved ones but the deadest of the dead things known as zombies. From the woods beyond came their allies, the demons, witches, hyenas, dybbuks, etc., some turning on each other in their growing frenzy.

The wail of the banshees drowned out our screams and cries for mercy.

Staggering home, the badly frightened survivors barricaded the entrances as best they could while the wolves tried to blow down the doors and the demons and dybbuks rattled the windows and then took to raping one another, for they were easily distracted.

Eventually, a ragged formation of militia arrived, pounding drums, shouting oaths and waving rusty, old swords and axes that had hung on the walls of their homes for ages. The creatures snarled their defiance, but slowly turned and began melting back into the woods after a bolt from a militiaman’s crossbow stopped a charging werewolf cold. The dawn was breaking.

Father Zingling told us at the mass funeral service a few days later that we were not alone; there had been similar monster outbreaks all over the place. They were tragic, he said, but this was the cost of progress. A thing called modernity was coming, and would bring many benefits such as universal literacy and toothpaste, but there would be some disruption, and probably a loss of innocence.

“I’m afraid you’re just gonna have to get used to it,” he said.

We tried. But the monster attacks continued even though we bricked up all the graves in the cemetery and built a new one with a wall around it. Even though we stopped observing All Hallows Eve and faithfully went to the church and amen-ed the Latin prayers we didn’t understand.

But then the vagabonds came. Three dirty old wagons brought a dozen of them or more, nomads who told fortunes, cast spells and cured various ailments—for those who could pay. Father Zingling warned us against them, saying they practiced the black arts and worshipped the devil. But I thought, who would better know the weaknesses of the monsters afflicting us than the devil?

I went begging from house to house till I reckoned I had enough money.

“Candy,” said the woman with a derisive laugh. “You didn’t know that? Everyone knows that. The fucking monsters love candy. They’ll do anything for a Hershey bar. How could you not know that? You yokels are pathetic.”

She wasn’t beautiful or even pretty, but her features were striking. She wore silver hoop earrings and her black hair fell in abundance over her shoulders as she stood leaning against the wagon. Her face was rouged, and blue shadows encircled her dark eyes. None of the village women looked like that. I had given her half the coins I had. She held out her open purse and said, “More.”

“The children,” she said, as I gave more. “Let the children bring them the candy. They won’t take alarm and run away then, but will accept the gift. And then you’ve got yourself a deal. Every year, you give the candy, they stay in the woods. Mostly.”

“You’re sure they’re really that crazy about candy?” I said.

She gave me a look that was too worldly for me to fully understand, but I’d guess it was utter disdain mixed with incredulity. “I can’t fucking believe you don’t know this,” she said. “How do you assholes manage to even breathe without assistance? Yes, they’re really that crazy about candy. Just make sure you’ve got some tootsie rolls in the mix.”

She flounced her ruffled skirts, or possibly the other way round, and walked away.

The next year, not without trepidation, we sent our children round the village to gather sweets. The women made them costumes that would resemble the zombies, golems, etc., thus further disarming the already candy-besotted monsters.

Not having enough money to buy sufficient tootsie rolls to ensure monster civility, I learned from an old confectioner to make my own. This was the beginning of a thriving candy business that would eventually make me a wealthy man.

The sight of our lovely little boys and girls distributing sweets to the suddenly placid werewolves, vampires, etc. was heartwarming in the extreme and the feeling of relief when the drooling creatures gobbled down their Mallomars, Milky Way bars, M&Ms and of course, tootsie rolls, without going homicidal, was so intense, the occasion became enshrined as the holiday of Halloween, which in our language means Night of the Zombies, Demons, Etc. Getting Hooked on Sugar.

In fact, if not for that damned pied piper showing up and leading our children to the river, where they all drowned, it would have been the best holiday ever.