Greetings, ghastly specian, and welcome to October.

     I’m sorry for my lengthy absence, but producing material before my vacation was a priority.  Publishing material during my vacation was not.  I do apologize and certainly plan for a regular production frequency henceforth.

     Now I know uncountable readers are parched for Kaga’s moonlit desert dessert, but let us not abandon our frightening Octoberian obligations.

     Autumn is far and away a most discernably fabulous time of year, even if you don’t agree, and it concludes, to some extent, with a hastened, if not nearly forgotten, holiday.  Yea, even the profiteering consumer locales replace their ghoulish décor with boughs of holly before our archaic new year’s evening gala hath commenced.

     But do not fret, fellow foul friends, as there are among us those who relish in Autumn’s delight, and we champion candious celebrations.  So brandish thine turnips and prepratorilly harvest boxes of fruitsnacks.  This is:

 

Harvest
Foreshadowing Fan Fiction

 

“It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.”

-Voltaire

 

     The Inn at Brynnwood and 11^th was a decrepitous wooden mansion—a relic lost amid misfortune while endeavorous profiteers ventured the land around it for fairs, shops, churches, and banks.

     Had I any sense about me, the damp odor dawdling around the hardly-lit foyer would’ve put me off in search of some newer structure.

     But I was tired . . . and the rain.  It so drove me to shelter that I cared not to return to the falling treachery behind—the cobblestone roads outside ran with minor, muddy tributaries, gathering for a midnight flood.

     And so I did not leave, but meandered the crimson carpetway to a tall oaken desk with an ancient librarianesque crone seated behind it.  She scowled over her spectacles as I took a dribble of ink to the occupant roster, which was yet empty.  Beneath ‘evenings,’ I inscribed a 1.

     “Dollar fifty.”

     “Very well.”  I produced the precise charge, and her trembling appendages carefully retrieved it.  She then lumbered to the wall behind her and struggled for the highest key of the lot.  “I’ll settle for a lower room, if you like.”

     “I care little where you sleep, but if you’d prefer a roof and a sound window, particularly amid so precarious a gale, then leave me to my charge . . . our highest room is the soundest of them all.”

     “As you say, madam.”

     The woman prepared a lantern, having infernally caught my gaze as she whispered the match into submission.  She moved from behind the desk and fought the lantern into a forthright stead.

     “If you’ve gathered your things, you may follow me.”

     There were no lights about the place, save our meager lamp, which illuminated our cavernous ascent, ever beyond the mansion’s many doors.

     “Each of these rooms is unfit?” I beckoned, hoping to stay our venture.

     “So enough, lest you welcome an evening shower.”

     My momentary misinterpretation of her meaning proved a revitalizing contemplation, which dissolved facing our final flight.  This last stairway was snug and smelled foul.  I climbed the spire, trailing the dim-lit profile of the lantern-clad woman before me.  Our steps produced a carol of horrific creaks until the last.  Beyond a small landing was a lonely door.

     “Here is your room.” She said, unlocking the door, handing me the key, and hanging the lantern.

     “Do you not require it for your descent, madam?”

     “I shall light another.”

     I’ve no idea whence she produced said replacement, but she’d done so ere I’d fastened the door.  I watched the warm light spill into the room to my boot tips, linger for a moment, and slowly fade away.

     I peered through the keyhole swiftly enough to watch as the light moved down the stairwell until I was sure the woman was gone, after which I secured the lock and tossed my key under a pillow.

     The air was cold and damp, but there was no sign of the rain invading what I imagined to be the attic.  I arranged my effects, kindled a stout candle, and produced my log to record the evening’s strange affair.

     I fell a few dribbles of laudanum into my brandywine and ventured a relaxing conclusion to a troublesome journey.  Once I’d finished with my journal, I extinguished the light and swam into a pleasant trance.

     I woke amid thunder and reached for my pocket watch to find I’d slept for only a few hours.  But then, as I considered my forthcoming struggle to reclaim sleep, I discerned the faint climbing of stairs amid the rain’s clatter.  Was the woman returning?

     I retrieved my key, hastily reignited my candle, and moved to the door.  Sure enough, someone was climbing the stairs.  I fastened my ear to the door.  The stairwell creaking turned into a shuffle across the landing right up to my room and then stopped.

     I fetched a knife and prepared to confront who could only be the old woman.  I rotated the key and the doorknob began twisting with an overwhelming strength.

     “Holy Hell!”  I fought the knob to a halt, waited, and then, knife at the ready, opened the door.

     Nothing . . . no one.  I blinked to a reassured conclusion.  There was nothing.

     I returned to my bed, but did not extinguish my candle.  Despite my opiatic hallucinatory potential, my childlike fears had rekindled into a wretched fright.  Nevertheless, I soon resubmitted to a slumber.

     POP!

     My eyes shot open.  Something was in my room.  There was still light, but I could not turn my head . . . nay, I could not even move.  I glanced down to watch the blanket slowly retreat from my chest.  I gulped, which was met with a heavy breath.  What was happening . . . where was this nightly fiend.  Then . . . the candle extinguished itself.

     Finally I heard the lighting of a match and a soft whisper.  The light approached until the partly illuminated, wrinkled face of the old woman peered down into my eyes.  She brought her hand to my face and I tried to close my eyes, but I could not.  She ran her nails down my cheek and onto my chest whereupon she began unbuttoning my top.

     “Your heart is excited.” She crackled, and began producing a number of tubular vessels from a large cask.  She forced the hoses of one with a blue liquid into my neck.  I dizzily watched the liquid darken as my blood mixed with whatever the vessels contents were.

     “I trust you cannot feel this, young man.  Please stay alert.”

     This perceivably feeble old woman then effortlessly raised me to a seated position against the headboard and ran her middle finger down my breast.  I watched as the nail grew into a wicked device which she used to open my bowels.

     Nauseated, I glanced upward to the woman’s face.  To my astonishment, as she did her work, I watched her elderly facade dissolve into that of a young girl, gleefully removing my organs and gently placing them into glass cylinders of black liquid.  I could do nothing.

     “Please pay attention.” She requested with a sweet youthfulness, pushing her thumb into my chin.

     Her eyes widened and skin paled until she resembled no discernibly earthly thing I’d encountered amid my distinguished taxidermic tenure.

     My laudanum washed into an overwhelming sadness at my life’s imminent conclusion, and at the hands of so foul a creature.

     “Aw, don’t cry.  It will soon be over.  You’re being ever such the big boy.”  Her voice was echoing into a hardly human, atmospheric monotonal-reassurance.

     I watched, but could not feel, as my heart was plucked from my chest and placed, with my lungs, into one of the cylinders.  How could I be conscious?

     “One more to go.”

     This monochromatic, wide-eyed fiend made no expression as she severed my head at the neck.  With a clutch of hair, she pulled me from my body and rotated my face into her empty gaze.  She now produced not even English, but the hums a whale might comprehend, and slowly submerged my head into the bloodied vial of blue liquid.  I could do nothing as my ears filled and vision muddied.  I was kept conscious by some magic and entrusted with only the most minimal faculties, ever to gaze through my amphibious reservoir at the shelves of poor fools before me.

     Happy October Everybody!

-Matt

Copyright © 2016 Matthew Bell. All Rights Reserved.

Title quote by Opeth.