On Hallowmas He Came Back | Woods of Melchisedech

On Hallowmas He Came Back

By S.W. Chilstrom

As the Good Book says:

"sancta ergo et salubris cogitatio pro defunctis exorare ut a peccato solverentur"

The thing once human was now more shadow-stuff than blood and bone. Nevertheless, it could dream and think, feel the cool air, hear the crickets chirping, and see. Above it was a great big, yellow moon and further on, a little brown hill crowned with a circle of oaks.

"It’s always on nights like these,” said a low bass voice matter-of-factly from behind.

The thing turned around.

Standing before it was a man, or at least one of man-shape; his appearance quite old, at least one hundred, but standing tall with a gnarled oak bough as a staff planted in the ground, clad in long robes, the sleeves violet, the hood black and the rest white and gold.

The man had a peculiar semi-smile as if he could either burst into laughter or tears, his blue eyes examining the shadow with curiosity.

"You’ve been dreaming an awful long time said the lemon to the lime."

"Where am I?" asked the shadow.

"Where, where, little bear, does he recognize not his own hair?"

"I don’t understand."

"Can he put words to his face? Does it have a name?"

"I don't remember."

"Does it remember how it died?"

“Died?”

“The Magician’s brood! There he waits in the little wood. All those years ago he saw it die---now father passes on to son, and so on.”

The old man pointed up to the oak grove, his fingertip grazing the bottom of the hunter’s moon.

"How can I be sure this is all real?" asked the Shadow.

With a wave of his hand the old man set the tip of his oaken staff aflame.

"I can tell the bear, tell it all the wheres and the whiles when the doomsday came and all its scares."

Placing his hand upon the shadow's bald pallid scalp, he whispered backwards, reciting dates; years and months and holidays, beginning with the day after Hallowe’en.

+++++++

November 1st, Hallowmas

A jack-o'-lantern was grimacing at them from the backyard windowsill.

The morning after trick-or-treaters had claimed their sweet bounties, Father and Sonny-boy sat eating breakfast at the dining room table. Father was reading the morning paper; Sonny-boy was reading a book titled ‘The Knight and the Cambion”. Mom was in the kitchen, frying eggs, a phone nestled between ear and shoulder.

"You might want to turn on the TV, hon" said Mom hanging up the phone.

"What for?" said Father sipping his OJ.

"Just talked with Irene. Says it's big news. Big- big."

Father set the paper down. “What about?”

"They say..." Mom looked to the crucifix on the wall.

“What, Polly?”

Sonny-boy’s attention was still fixed to his little green book.

Mom continued staring at the crucifix, her face turning pale.

Father scratched his freshly shaved chin and somberly walked over to the living room TV set pressing it on.

Channel 5 had their helicopter correspondent hovering over a mountainous spruce grove.

"And you'll see here folks," said the mustachioed newsman over the propeller's burr, "hundreds, thousands of devotees climbing up Mount Sancho, some still in their costumes from last night-ah-we are told we have footage from within the spruce grove now."

The camera flashed to a scene of a hundred or so people, the crisp golden hour sunlight trickling on them through the narrow rows of spruce needles.

Father watched the TV, quiet, like a living statue.

Mom bit her thumb.

The crowd yelled. “There he is! It's him! It's him!”

They rushed over to a man clad in white robes, his hair and beard white and long.

Just as they pushed and shoved to him, to grab and pull on his hand and foot and kiss him, the man was gone.

Vanished.

+++++++

Across the street from Sonny-boy's house, nine-year-old Booger and his teenage brother were in the kitchen watching the cartoon network.

Bugs Bunny in a tuxedo shot a man dead in the audience of his piano recital.

Booger's fat red cheeks were stuffed with Cap’n Crunch Choco Berries Cereal.

Big Bro puffed a cigarette, a flip phone to his ear.

Booger yawned. "Boooring. Old cartoons are boring."

Big Bro shook his head disapprovingly to Booger, then carried on yapping into the phone, "Yeah, yeah, Cassandra will be there with me. And Travis?... Ah tight, tight. Next Sunday at the Oak Grove then? Yeah,tight...yeah, gotta get the Boogerman over to school...yeah, later, dude."

Booger's beady gray-green eye's winced as if he had been forced to eat spinach. The cartoon network was off the air. A blue screen was displayed with a high frequency beep; a text loop crawled horizontally across the screen.

"Fix the TV! Andy, fix it!" said Booger with a mouthful of his chocolate flavored poofs.

Big Bro read the text to himself, the little cigarette dangling from his fingers.

"If you can't fix it yourself, then call Mom, loser," said Booger shoveling more Cap’n-Choco berries into his maw.

Big Bro read the text aloud, his voice trembling: "All families within a 90-mile radius of the coast are advised to stay indoors or seek shelter."

Booger made a face. “What’s that mean? No school?”

+++++++

A mile from from Sonny-boy’s neighborhood was an old, abandoned farm, and an empty dirt plot wherein stood a lonely scarecrow guarding the land from any evil-doers.

He watched from his post thinking of bygone days when the corn was tall and men and women and children sang inside the house telling ghost stories and hosting dances and markets during the harvest season.

Like the shadows of things-who-once-were-men he too once was made of bone and blood and brain and loved and hated and cast his eyes up to heaven in moments of grief and joy.

He could not remember who he once was or where he had come from and perhaps, he would think now and again, that he was always stuffed with straw and impaled on that pole; but some infernal bird’s caw would remind him otherwise; that he was forbidden from leaving his post and so he watched silently as the years went on and on, until help would come.

Beside the scarecrow’s field was a little yellow schoolhouse. Outside it, a group of children gathered around a flagpole.

A blue van was parked nearby, its doors painted with the huge face of a laughing clown eating a hamburger.

From out of that ‘Burgermobile’ sprang out a clown followed by a man in a yellow sports coat hauling a wheelbarrow full of paper wrapped delights.

The Clown was dressed from head to toe in red and white stripes like the flag flying proudly above; a garish red were his shoes, his hair the same hue, his red sleeves striped white, all squished in between a dark blue jump suit.

After the children recited their patriotic oath, the Clown scooped one of the wrapped food-stuffs from the barrow, revealing it to be a miniature cheeseburger.

"You can count on your pal Sal to always be servin’ up grins and Ha-ha-has to youngins- and their mas and pas!”

The man in the yellow suit motioned to the Clown, his ear to a cellular phone.

"Now who’s hungry?” said the Clown.

Kids clambered over one another to the burger barrow; the Clown narrowly dodging being trampled by a particularly hefty 9-year-old.

The man in yellow waved over again to the Clown, then whispered in his ear passing him a note.

Reading over the message, his painted smile barely subdued his frown.

"Our civic duty? Sheesh. They’re kids! How would they understand…"

“Just read it, Clown,” said the man in yellow.

Looking up to the flag flapping in the cool morning light, the Clown pressed a microphone to his mouth and said, "Kids, your pal Sal the Clown has an important, urgent message...I can't really believe I'm saying this but...the war is over! Our troops are coming home! And well, that's the good news, I forgot to say the bad part- Sal hates bad news! See, we just got word that war is over because, well, the Commander in Chief has resigned from office and-are you sure that's what they reported?" said the Clown to the man in yellow.

"And…his replacement will be crowned as the World Emperor, the King of Kings."

+++++++

November 2nd, All Souls' Day

Sonny-boy was playing Super Nintendo with Booger in the rumpus room when there came singing and the ringing of bells outside the front door.

Father had been watching the news cycle all day, new reports from the evening paper and the Channel 5 News shifting narratives and players with each hour. The coronation of the King of Kings was scheduled for three days later, and Father like most his fellow countrymen were still in shock that their commander in chief would so easily and eagerly abdicate to a foreign power, but more so that the country had, without any warning, dissolved overnight. Some local militias had taken up arms against these imperial insurrectionists, but whom the imperialists were nobody was quite sure. States fought with states, towns with neighboring towns. Soon those that raged against the foreign invaders took up the gray banner of the King of Kings themselves to war against so-called anti-patriots.

"You still say it's him that’s come back, do ya, Polly?" said Father his legs kicked up on a well-worn green ottoman in the living room. Booger and Sonny-boy squealed over some mishap on the Nintendo.

Mom shook her head. "We haven't seen much of him,but, gee, you would hope it's him."

"Hope? The Commander in Chief just lies down limp for some foreign king after going to war against the terrorists? Makes no sense."

"That's why it has to be him that came back. The Chief is a man of faith. He would bow to him if he ever returned."

"YOU SUCK!" howled Booger.

Father growled rubbing his temples. "Call Irene and get that boy out of here. Teaching our Sonny-boy to talk like that.”

"Irene’s out of town still," said Mom shaking her head. "Promised we'd babysit. His older brother isn’t around the house much these days, Irene says.”

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," said Mom.

"No...don't. These days, ya never know," said Father. He rose from his seat and crept to the front door, eye to the peephole. “Hoodlums out in droves these days.”

From outside came an ominous chant.

"Sounds like caroling," said Mom.

"Too early for caroling... and they’ve got costumes. Too late for trick or treating, kids! Halloween is over," said Father scratching his five o’ clock.

"Let's at least listen in, hon."

"Not tonight,” said Father locking the door.

Just as he turned the lock, he pulled his hand back as if he had touched fire.

The door creaked opened, unlocked from within seemingly by an invisible hand.

The couple looked at each other in shock.

At the threshold stood a group of thirteen carolers in black robes holding candles.

Singing, they said in unison:

"Have ye a cake for us to spare

Ring our Bells go kling-a-tong

would we gladly bid you a prayer

Ring our Bells go kling-a-tong

but if nothing is brought out here,

Ring our Bells go kling-a-tong

Our hallow-bells will still ring clear."

Ring our Bells go kling-a-tong

Light up a candle give up a Cake

Ring our bells go kling-a-tong-“

"-Again, Halloween is over, kids-"

“-The tide’s eight days for heaven’s sake! Ring our bells go kling-a-tong!”

Mom scampered back to the kitchen and pulled out a bag from over the microwave. "I may have a few tootsie pops left."

Father reached for the door before he sniffed the air, saying, "What’s that baking?"

“Maybe Irene sent a snack pack over here with Booger. You know that boy has an appetite."

To the left of the microwave on the counter she spotted a hot baking tray with thirteen golden scones bursting with a sweet black paste.

A red leather-bound book titled “Soul Cakes and other Treats for the Eight days of Hallowtide” was lying open beside the tray.

“That Booger must have had this delivered when our backs were turned,” she muttered in disbelief.

Putting on her oven mitts she carried out the tray to the threshold and passed out the thirteen cakes to the thirteen carolers; in return they did indeed sing a song for the souls of the household's dearly departed, then bowing their hooded heads, the pale faces unseen, ringing their handbells they marched to the next house in the block.

+++++++

About fifty miles down the nearest freeway from Sonny-boy’s, families were gathered in candlelight processions by a roadside cemetery lit by paper lanterns and moonlight.

Then came the Clown.

Behind him was parked the blue 'Burgermobile' van.

The man in yellow stood beside him with a cell phone to his ear.

“Here of all places? Hawking burgers?” said the Clown.

“Just say your lines, Clown” said the man in yellow.

The Clown approached a family sat around one Grandpa Willy’s tombstone, a candy-striped microphone to his painted grin.

"Turn those frowns upside down, says, Sal, the laughing, grinning clown! I'm here to turn white roses to sump’n less moroses! Let’s wear polka dots ‘steada sad, black clotheses! So free burgers for y’all! Compliments of Mr. Fall! Come one come all, tall or small, friends or foeses!"

Almost instantly, The Clown was hoisted up by a few burly men, his heavy red dangling shoes knocking together.

"Whoa, now, fellas, please…this is for a good cause! For the troops!"

The Clown was heaved and hoed over the cemetery's lychgate by the bouncers. Landing in a thorn bush he groaned.

The bouncers stared in warning at the bleeding clown for a moment and faded away like a gray mist.

+++++++

November 3rd

Devotees of the man in white robes who appeared in the spruce grove searched unsuccessfully for his whereabouts. Many claimed the sightings of the man were the result of mass hysteria after the fall of the country to the Gray Emperor. Others claimed he was the devil, the messiah, a wizard, a government hoax. Some chose correctly between these options, but few.

That day, the former Commander in Chief appeared on television announcing he and other ex-world leaders would attend the coronation of the King of Kings, the Gray Emperor in the Sequoia National Forest. The ceremony would be broadcast worldwide.

+++++++

That night Big-Bro's son Andy Jr. was conceived.

Irene would return home with Booger from Chonk-E-Cheese a few hours later. Polly had left message on her answering machine:

"Hi Irene...just wondering. Did you deliver a plate of hot buns to our house last night?"

+++++++

November 4th

The fat hunter's moon was shining golden and low that evening.

Many devotees called one another, if their telephone lines were still operating, reporting a sighting of the man from the grove flying like a hawk across mountain tops, now standing atop a little hill in the Southern County among oaks.

Mom and Irene drove out twenty minutes south to reach the hill, though many devotees had been walking for many more miles in all directions. Candles in hand, some crawling hands and knees, from the start of the trail it was about a mile to the peak aglow in the moonlight. Despite the foot traffic, the place was dead quiet other than the crickets.

The ladies said nothing but followed the candle bearers standing tall, each with a candle handed to them by a hunchbacked and shawled babushka. Trudging uphill they came upon a man in a red cassock and biretta, watching them with a fierce, stern gaze from the midpoint of the trail.

"Do you know if anything’s up there?" asked Irene.

"Indeed there is something," said the man in the cassock.

"Is it Him?" asked Mom.

"Him? There is only one who waits in moonlight,” said the man.

Perplexed, the ladies continued upwards and trod upon thorns and brambles their pant legs ripped, skin cut and bleeding.

"Polly! This is too much!" said Irene dabbing a handkerchief to a cut.

Mom stared back to the trail’s start. "You don’t think there’s nothing up there worth seeing?"

"Moonlight? What was that man yammering about? Had a weird accent too."

A sound like the roar of some jungle cat coursed through the air. Black warships raced up above, the ladies ducking, fearing their doom had come.

From their bellies they looked up. They had reached the peak.

Before them was a hooded figure in red robes holding a scythe. Its outstretched black wings curled up, eclipsing the golden moon and for a moment the whole world was without moonlight.

+++++++

In an Amphitheatre about fifty miles west of the Thorny Hill, two men were publicly executed, fed to mountain lionesses and the laughter and cheers of the crowd.

According to their captors, they were sentenced for not offering a sacrifice to the Cat God who reigned in that city. Either a bowl of warm milk or a child would have sufficed.

+++++++

November 5th

Before the great marble altar and bonfire flickering between mammoth-trees, his face lit as a red mask poking through the black curtain of night, he adjusted his gray tie.

The Ex-Executive smiled to the camera.

The cameraman gave him a finger point 'go' cue.

"My fellow countrymen, people of the world, of all continents, men of all races and creeds and truths, good evening.

The War on Terror under my administration's leadership has been a raging success. Our troops are back home and now supporting the cause to ensure our world is secure from internal threats who wish for nothing more than to divide our new united world. It is under these circumstances that I have decided to become that decider I have always been and make this decision-to pass the flame of freedom we possess as our Creator’s granted gift to another, to a new sort of leader, a man of such---potency, power, perseverance, the three Ps I call them, and that man, will not be a mere president, a presider, but a real decider,the leader, Emperor, King, Prophet and- I hear many of you worship as a divine light- rest assured, if he is invisible to your senses now, he will appear before long in all his glory. The rumors are not just idle chatter. He is real, he is here. He is come to save the world from evil-doers."

The ex-Commander in Chief turned to the black throne before him.

Placing a horned crown on the black head of the figure, he said, "I hereby relinquish my executive duties and offer them to you, O Lord."

"Emperor Omnipotent, bless us,” began a chant from the dark.

Emerging from the trees in full view of the camera were many prominent men and women of that age; politicians, generals, CEOs, celebrities, the man in the yellow suit, all joining hands singing their dissonant ‘kumbaya.’

The crowned figure rose from its seat and outstretched a long black arm towards the devotees.

Then it spoke in a ghostly voice like melting ice:

“Go forth, my faithful ones. Return to the woods, disrobe and unshackle yourself of the indecency of the old world and live a life of unhindered liberty at last."

Like billy goats they followed their master’s command, prancing and bleating under the treetops, while the horned one drank from a chalice his eyes a weird glowing green in that dark night.

+++++++

November 6th, Feria

The scarecrow watched on as the gray banner of the one enthroned and crowned in the Sequoias was hoisted outside the empty schoolhouse.

School children saluted this flag singing the new anthem. Afterwards the man in yellow ushered them all, twenty-two in total, into gray vans.

+++++++

There was a knock around six pm at Sonny-boy's front door.

Father rose first, rifle in hand.

There had been a television blackout since the coronation. Mom had not been back home since she went out with Irene.

Father approached the peep hole.

"Pete, it's your brother. I need help."

Father gritted his teeth. "I told you never to never come near my family again."

He cocked the rifle.

"Uncle Sal is here?" said Sonny-boy in a whisper, crouching behind the stairwell.

The man spoke, pleading.

"There's vans going around and these gray uniformed grabbers. You and the family are in danger. They’re picking up anybody, sending people off to the front lines and worse.”

"Then you're both a slimeball and a draft dodger, Sal."

"By the gray Emperor’s reckoning, yes. Been on the run for five days now."

Father opened the door.

There was the Clown: his makeup and suit smeared with dirt. He looked haggard and miserable, his eyes bloodshot.

"There's a new flag flying, Pete, the gray banner...Some are our neighbors, friends."

A van came flying into the street, a machine gun manned from the roof.

Father raised his rifle.

There was an eruption of popping and then stillness. Men in gray fatigues stormed the front door and searched the house, stepping over the bodies of the men they’d just shot.

+++++++

November 7th, Feria

Fires raged from the Northern coastal forests down to Southern County bay. The Channel Five copter had crashed that morning not far from the Coronation grove.

From the wreckage, both the pilot and reporter survived miraculously. In a daze from their flaming metal heap, they went on, trudging against the shade of dark trees, a dark red sky obscuring the time of day.

A few hours along the burning path they met a hooded man in long white robes.

He held a canteen.

"Water… please, just a drop," said the Newsman, his lips and tongue cracked and dry.

"Water, Father, wherefore bother-my name's odder," said the man waving his hand as if hailing them.

The pilot sighed. "Sir, if you don't have any, then that's-"

"-Drink, drink," said the old man passing the canteen to the men.

"Think, and drink, I saw the man, yes right over yonder brink."

After drinking a few gulps of the canteen, the Newsman finally said: "what man?"

"Wears all red, or black or gold, a nice young pup but with a long white beard.”

The Old Man blinked as if he had just been startled awake.

"Saw him, just now, or, no, was it some years ago? Sent from the Old Country and even by the High Hierophant, and he's up in the trees. Let his hair grow and grow and live with him in the woods, and one day, he leaves the leaves and the trees and comes back to his folk flying and falling! And…wait…just now he tells me there’s something he needs to tell the world. What was the word?”

The Old Man stroked his beard.

The pilot shook his head. "What a nut."

The Newsman sighed. "Thanks for the water, sir, but we-“

From his sleeve he drew a broad sword and swung it over the ducking heads of the men.

“-A nut you say! A screw loose? Drink, drink, then head up another mile to the ferry and vamoose!”

Then he laughed, his wrathful visage dissolving as he stroked his beard.

"That’s right... that word! Tide be hallowed! May the whole Hallowtide be abided! Eight days and one night!”

+++++++

November 8th, Feast of the Four Crowned Martyrs

Few stars flickered in that wild fire smoke-stinking eve.

Big Bro and Cassandra were locked in a kiss under an old oak tree.

Bleached blonde Travis flicked a cigarette from his fingertips down the little hill he and seven others were perched on.

The chums were all there:

Travis and Trevor, Brittany and Cleaver, Cassandra, and Kelly and Chris.

Big-Bro unglued his lips from Cassandra's and frowned.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

A few of the others were hollering.

"What are they yelling for?" said Travis nursing a green beer bottle.

Big Bro jolted forward, pulling up his drooping drawers, the biker chain at his belt swinging wildly. The fire from the cigarette was rapidly growing from the hill up the yellow grass and shrubs, its tendrils lapping at the roots of the oak grove.

Big Bro cried out to the gang. “Fire!”

Trevor whisked his portable CD player off the ground, the highschoolers stumbling downhill to their parked cars.

The road below was patrolled.

A van topped with a machine gun turret slowed to a stop.

Big Bro's eyes flashed back up to the grove.

Within the trees he saw a man in red, his eyes a mirror of the flames around them.

"Van Grabbers!" yelled Travis.

He was the first to be shot down, then Trevor and his CD player rolled downhill.

Kelly fell next with Chris as Cassandra and Big Bro fled back into the grove between machine gun fire and the blaze around them.

They saw faces pressed against the glass of the van- children. One with a fat face and frightened beady gray-green eyes.

"Look," said Big Bro. "The grabbers have Booger!"

The fires gnawed at the edge of the grove.

The man in red robes spoke calmly behind them.

"Attend to your brother, the lady will be safe, I assure you, Andy."

Big Bro believed whomever the old man was in that instant, and as the van grabbers drove off, he jumped in his jeep parked by the oak, speeding after, flying between fires, ash piling on the windshield like snow.

He followed the van till the machine gunner drove him rolling off the road.

For a moment upside-down he stirred and realized he was not dead.

Pulling himself up from the crash, bloodied, teeth missing, he opened up the door. He picked up a long tree branch, an oak bough, its tip aflame and wielded it, striking at the van grabbers.

Laughing at Big Bro’s primitive attack, guns pointed, they pressed their triggers. Then the miraculous happened. Lighting from heaven struck them. The grabbers all fell dead.

Big Bro limped over their charred carcasses with his flaming staff in hand.

He opened the van’s door. There were twenty women and children gagged and tied. Among them were Booger, Sonny-boy. Mom and Irene.

"Big Bro!" said Booger sobbing, hugging his brother. "Big Bro!"

A piece of glass from the wreck was lodged in Big Bro's neck.

"Get help, you guys," he said pointing back to the oak grove. "You'll be safe up there."

"Big Bro?"

There he dropped to the asphalt, the ash quickly blanketing him white, burying him by the little grove.

+++++++

A Hallowmas yet to Come

The next August, Andy Jr. was born.

Booger and Irene moved out into the desert with baby Andy and Cassandra after the war.

Andy grew up to be a big strong man, star football player, nothing like his father.

Sonny-boy and Mom made soul cakes every November 2nd afterwards according to the cook book that Booger certainly did not bring into the house.

Uncle Sal survived his gunshot wounds and years later joined the monastery of the Angel on the Thorny Hill.

In the years after the Coronation, the Country adjusted to its fractured state, most states becoming independent, with various forms of government though few with elected office. Many men still worshipped the king of the gray banner, cat gods, and all their impish cohorts even after the battle in the sequoias.

The battle became the talk of legend. It was commonly retold thusly:

A man in red robes, his great cape flapping like a bloodied war banner drew a great golden broadsword. With a single swing of the sword he drove the Gray Horned Devil from his throne and removed his crowned head from the neck. The ghost of the Gray Devil dispersed across the world but as a great green squall and the years after was hunted by the wild Old Man in red robes, though some said he was dressed in gold, or black or purple or nothing at all.

Then on Hallowmas, forty years after Big Bro’s death, a shadow woke from its fugue state in the ground and made a secret pilgrimage back to the Oak Grove, not knowing who it was or whence he came. Once at the Grove, the Slayer of the Gray One of the Sequoias told the shadow a tale of Hallowtides long ago (which you have just learned). After the story was told, the shadow remembered much of who he was once and sought out his son, his son's mother, his brother and last his mother's grave.

In his mother’s roadside cemetery he saw a hooded figure in scarlet robes, holding a scythe gleaming gold in the light of the harvest moon.

Then a man in a red cassock appeared. Before exiting the graveyard via a path invisible to mortal men, the two talked for a moment in a mellifluous language the shadow did not understand.

The Old Man called out. “Follow them fellows, fellows!” and began a rousing song. Carrying a candle, a great long taper in a golden candlestick, the Old Man was third in procession of those cemetery shades clad in black cowls, followed last by the shadow who was once called Big Bro.

He donned a black robe and drew its hood over his skeleton head.

The world became white hot to the shadows as fires burning near and far danced in the heads of jack-o’-lanterns and in ovens baking scrumptious golden soul cakes, and in bonfires in the hills and in the candles held in processions. In the flames he sang out, sang for relief, knocking on doors and ringing hand bells, the clanging and chanting spreading like a chill wind throughout the eve:

“Light up a candle and give up a cake,