26-Oct-2018
A Hanged Man and a Grudge
Thick mist rolled over the orange pumpkins and between their wandering vines. It hovered close to the ground, spreading as if searching, but for what for I could never say. Yellow light from the nearby modern gas lantern caught edges of the mist frosting each swirl as it crawled outward.
What I could see that no one else could was the ghostly whisper of the gallows that had once stood where the pumpkins now lay. Tall and crooked, I could almost hear the creaking of the wooden beams as the limp forms of the hanged had swung back and forth. Back and forth.
I never saw the crowds that used to gather, their appetite for death more sinister than any criminal, but I never forgot their cheers as each of the damned were brought to the noose, and then sent to their deaths.
And for what? A bit of food? A stolen wallet? All to feed our families?
Was there truly any reason for a person to face eternity in the hell that I did? That we did?
The others rose from the ground, leaving the mist undisturbed. They looked around at the pumpkins then turned their attention to me.
We didn’t need to speak. This had been our existence for more generations than any of us cared to count. I nodded, and the others began prowling through the patch, sniffing the pumpkins and the ground. Relishing in the scent of live humans. Taking in the energy of the children who had come earlier. Their innocence. Their joy.
I didn’t bother. I’d already gathered what I needed.
I always sat close to the surface of reality, those bustling around brushing my awareness and filling me with energy.
Energy that I converted into hate.
Hate for those who had taken what was mine. Hate for those who hadn’t stopped them but had stopped me from taking what I needed to keep my family alive.
My wife. Our children.
Our baby.
Her little cries still echoed in my mind, and even now I squeezed my eyes shut and balled my hands into fists in order to try to exorcise the noise from my mind. But it had been seared into my conscious as I’d been dragged away from my wife—heavy with our third child, holding our baby and covered with sores from a plague.
She’d deserved to live. Our children had deserved a chance at life. Deserved to grow strong, marry and have children of their own.
Instead, I’d been hanged and they’d died. Horribly. Alone.
A low growl came from my throat, and the others skittered away.
I looked down at the pumpkin at my feet. I’d spent years working out who had sent me to the gallows, and more years hunting down their scents. And now I had them. The man’s great-great-great granddaughter had come by in the afternoon. She’d squealed at the sight of this great, round, orange pumpkin with its twisted stem and pronounced lines. She’d hugged it and made her mother promise to come and get it tomorrow.
Hundreds of years had gone by since my death, but I would never forget and I would never forgive.
The others had begun to disappear, their translucent forms melting into their chosen vessels.
I glanced at mine, and another growl escaped. The few others who didn’t have enough energy to leave, sunk back into the ground.
This pumpkin would take me to their house. Into their lives.
The young girl would be giddy, and then she would begin to fear. Fear that something was amiss. Fear that there was a monster in her closet or under her bed. Fear that she was not safe.
Her parents would tell her not to worry, but they would be wrong, and the little girl would be right.
The parent’s wouldn’t realize the truth until far too late.
I smiled and willed myself into the pumpkin, my intangible form bleeding into the sinewy fibers.
At last, someone would pay. At last, I would be able to rest.
