Spooky Halloween Fiction

I'm being very vulnerable right now (posting fiction publicly)

I have written a short Halloween story for you. I hope you think it’s spooky. I was planning to use this as a frame narrative and include several more short stories inside of this one, but as usual, I didn’t get around to writing the other ones, and it’s now Halloween, so the time has come to post. It’s something a little different from what’s been on this substack before, but it’s what I actually want to do and am going to try to do more of. Happy Halloween!

---

You push aside the beaded curtain with a gloved hand and step into the darkened room, grateful for the break from the bitter cold wind. You stand in the doorway for a moment, letting your eyes adjust to the dim candlelight. When you spot the table (small, round, velvet tablecloth) it takes you a moment to resolve the jumble of shapes you make out in the chair into a human form. Impossibly old, you think maybe it’s a corpse left here for you as a practical joke. A halloween joke. You’ve almost convinced yourself that this decrepit form couldn’t possibly contain a living soul, a mind, a fellow human being, when it proves you wrong. 

The left hand moves slowly, the ashen skin (is it skin?) contrasting brightly against the bloodred velvet tablecloth. It moves like an automaton whose mechanism has been left to rust for a hundred years or more and is only now waking up, remembering how each tendon stretches and snaps over bone. 

You wish it could be an automaton. No, this creature is too gleeful in your discomfort, too knowing, too filthy to be anything other than human. The yellowed nails (closer in resemblance to talons than fingernails) scrape as they drag across the table towards you. You stand frozen in fear in the entryway. 

The hand draws nearer. You think you’ll make a break for it, through the beaded curtain. Nearer now. Your skin is clammy with fear-sweat and your heart is climbing into the back of your mouth. Nearer still. Too late. The journey has ended. 

The hand gestures to the seat opposite. It is not a request. If you wish to obtain that which you came for, you will sit in the ramshackle wooden construction. You appraise the chair. It may as well be made of matchsticks. But you’ve come this far. You can’t leave emptyhanded. Not when you’re so close.

You sit. The chair protests loudly, creaking and shuddering disconcertingly, but you think if you don’t squirm too much it should hold. For a while, at least. How long could this possibly take, anyway?

Before you can react, the left hand grabs hold of your right. You try to pull back, but it seems possessed of a supernatural strength. It recedes, pulling your hand onto the tablecloth. It feels dirty under your skin, the normally smooth velvet defiled by decades of dust and who knows what else. 

“The future. In your palm.”

The voice, when you realize it to be a voice, reminds you of the whispering of wind through willow trees. There is no softness, though. It is a sharp wind. It is a sharp voice. 

“No, I didn’t come here for a palm reading.” Your voice, intended to be strong and commanding, instead made plain your fear. You hated it for that. So much for a strong first impression. 

“Well, what then? Cast the bones? You don’t strike me as the type for entrails. Don’t have the strength of will. Oh-h-h… I know… you want the cards.” You make yourself lift your gaze from the safety of your own hand to see the creature who had so confidently told you your will.

You don’t find it to be a pleasant sight. No one does. Her hair- twenty or thirty strands at most- hangs in greasy gray ropes over her face. All you can think is of not enough skin stretched over too much skull. It seems like if she were to open her mouth too wide, the whole charade would end and her very face would split open, revealing the grinning corpse beneath. 

She is right, of course. It is as if she had plucked the word out of your mind with her bony fingers. You came to hear your future. 

“Very well, you shall know what you will know. But a word of caution: what I show you cannot be unseen. You cannot forget that which the cards will reveal.”

You scoff. You knew this, of course. The texts you had tracked down had been honest. Their authors had been where you are now. They had made the same pilgrimage as you, down the dark alleys and into the decrepit basements that housed the books which housed the answers. The tomes had often contradicted each other, but on one point they had all been sure- this place, this room which had revealed itself to you, it housed the only true oracle.

“I am well versed in your tricks, crone, so detain me not. I wish for you to cast the cards.” This time, your voice comes out just how you want it to: commanding, haughty. 

She acquiesces. Relinquishing your hand, she reaches under the table into some hidden crevice and draws out a deck of cards. Placing them on the table in front of you, she shuffles them in a blur of unidextrous agility. In a flash, she selects three and discards the rest, returning them to the unknown depth from which they came. 

You view the three cards now lying on the velvet cloth with a mixture of suspicion and apprehension. Your fate is cast, your future is certain. It remains only for the cards to be revealed, and your end to be known to you. 

The crone is watching you. You can feel her eyes searching for a connection, to siphon your fear into herself. She feeds on it, you imagine. It is what animates this corpse, this un-being, into her arcane duty. You don’t give her the satisfaction.

She relents. She fingers around the edge of the first card. The leftmost. 

“Past,” she intones, and turns the card.

Six. The Lovers. How ironic.

“Present,” she croaks.

Zero. The Fool. Your heart beats with apprehension. You want to rip the third card out of her claw and burn it. Fold it into a tiny square and throw it into the river. Lock it in a chest and throw away the key. Never look. 

Yet, another part of your brain needs to know. You admit to yourself what you have known all along, what has driven you to this city, to this alley, to this room: that you will never be able to rest unless you know your future. 

Your heart beats a staccato tattoo against your ribcage. She knows this. She smells it. Tastes it. Finally: your payment is due. Nothing is free, you knew this when you sought her out. You feel the light in the room fading from the edges and intensifying in the middle until all you see is the card, shining like the sun. Impossibly bright. To look is to burn, and you can’t tear your eyes away. You don’t want to. You want to look- to know- to burn. You hear the witch’s laugh now. Like glass on glass. Sharp. Painful. It fills your ears. It fills the room. 

All is black.

You weren’t stupid. You did have a backup plan, an “in case of emergency”. You gave the address to a friend, and told him that if you weren’t back by morning, he was to come find you. He walks down the street now, his boots leaving tracks that are quickly covered by the falling snow. It’s coming down in fat, wet flakes now, obscuring the landscape that you knew so well. 

Here, he turns down the alley. The very alley in which you strode last night, confident in your mastery of those things which cannot be mastered. He stops in front of a doorway. He checks the scrap of paper in his pocket- checks it again. No, he thinks to himself, that can’t be right. I must have gotten the numbers wrong. There is no building with this address. 

A consult of the city records will soon confirm it: there has never been a building with that address. Is it possible, asks the city clerk, that your friend got the numbers wrong?

Yes, says your friend. He’s always doing that. He laughs, to cover his nervousness, and leaves. Back into the cold and snow. He stays a little longer in the city, foreign to him, checking down alleys and asking passersby if they have seen you. They haven’t. 

Eventually, he gives up and begins the long walk home. You’ll probably be waiting for him there, he figures. 

Leaving by the front gates, he walks back up the hill and down the other side again. The snow continues its work, covering and cushioning. Your faithful friend thinks as he walks of the fire he will soon see burning in the hearth of your cottage, and the smoke that will be gushing from the chimney, and he is heartened to think of you, just a short walk away. Just a short walk home.