The Ghosts of Halloween Past
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This story involves consensual sex between two men. If you don't want to read about behavior of this type, look elsewhere. If you shouldn't read this for legal reasons or because you are deemed too young, go away.
Spoiler Alert(?): I don't know if it counts as a spoiler if it is more than 180 years past the publication date, but I have used the first and last lines of Edgar Allen Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart." If you haven't read it, go read that first. It is brilliant.
On a note unrelated to this story: I have a bunch of different stories I am currently working on. They are mostly relatively long, so I am going to hold off on posting any of them until I have them mostly written so I don't have very long pauses between chapters. I do also have a few ideas that I will write when I need breaks from the other stories and post them as one-offs.
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When people think of old New England, they think of the quaint towns just off the seaboard. While Concord, Mass., and Yarmouth, Maine, are one part of New England history. They don't tell the story of inland. The ghosts of a history that has been consumed by the forest
Once, much of the northern expanses were fields. Small farmsteads dotted the land, tough men and women eking out lives through toil and sweat. Now, their hard work has been covered over by the forest reclaiming its territory. Driving through northern New England, you will see nothing but trees. But if you walk through the woods, you can see the scars of earlier times. A network of stonewalls, built to demarcate fields -- and deal with the rocks that were tilled up -- still crisscross the woods. There are also rock-lined pits, the cellar holes of old farmhouses and barns. If you know how to look for it, you can see the hands and lives of the early European settlers, and white Americans, raked through the landscape.
I moved back north to be able to focus on my writing. I found a house just off a dirt road on a nice plot of land. It was affordable. It ran the odd combination of being a bit rundown but still well cared for. It was an old building -- an outbuilding of a farm that was converted into housing when the main farmhouse burned a half century ago. The farm was already diminished before the fire, and soon after, most of the family moved away, leaving just one member who refused to leave. She had stayed in the building that was now my home for nearly forty years. She cared for the house, but what is one woman against the forces of the forest and time?
I moved in the early spring, and once the mud dried up -- and I bought good bug spray -- I began to explore my surroundings. One of the first things I found was the cellar hole of the old farmhouse and, just beyond, two gravestones. Maybe there had been others, maybe not, but now, there were two.
When I approached, they were lichen covered and impossible to read. Out of respect -- and more than a bit of curiosity -- I did some quick internet research about cleaning old headstones. One sunny day, with a breeze to keep the bugs at bay, I took a bucket of clean water, a soft brush, and a cloth to try to clean these two stones up some. I had writer's block, and it was something to do to keep busy and not worrying about my lack of words on the page.
Soon with some elbow grease -- gently applied -- I had cleaned them both off. They were matching stones, each with stylized wings across the top and a simple rose vine border. They read:
HERE LYETH Ye BODY OF Mr. ELEAZER CARTER WHO DEPARTED MAY Ye 25 ANNO DOM 1812 IN Ye 26th YEAR OF HIf AGE. PREPARE BE TO FOLLOW ME
HERE LYETH Ye BODY OF Mr. HEZEKIAH MVLLIGAN WHO DEPARTED JVLY Ye 30 ANNO DOM 1865 IN Ye 81th YEAR OF HIf AGE. MEMENTO MORI
Most of the carving matched, except for the date of death and age on Hezekiah's stone, which looked to be chiseled in a different hand. Zeke's headstone was also not quite symmetrical, with one of the two swooping arcs of the top seemingly worn lower than the other.
Throughout the summer, my walks regularly took me past Eleazer and Hezekiah's graves. As with most people who live alone, I developed some odd habits. One of them was that I started to talk to them. At first, it was just a quick greeting as I passed by, but it soon grew. It may have been macabre, but they became my sounding board for ideas for my writing. I would take drafts and sit with them to read them out loud. I found myself wondering about my friends Eli and Zeke, as I had begun to call them.
I went to the local historical society to see if there was any information about my two neighbors. Lydia, the lovely woman who served as the local historian and librarian, took me back into the archives and pointed me in the right direction. I spend most of the day sifting through old records and trying to decipher old cursive. Lydia would occasionally come to help out or try to figure out some 300-year-old handwriting.
I could only find one datum point on Eleazer Carter beyond his headstone. We found a note that there was an E. Carter, son, the twelfth child that Sarah bore to Abraham Carter, born in October of 1786. (Yes, the fecundity of this couple is a lovely biblical irony.)
There was not much more about Hezekiah Mulligan. The Mulligan family had owned the farm where I lived. There was a reference to the Mulligan family having one son and three daughters, but that was all I could find. The farm was sold in 1865, and there were no more records of the Mulligans in the area. Hezekiah must have been the last Mulligan to survive.
A few weeks later, I received a phone call from Lydia. She said she had had a tickle in the back of her mind about Hezekiah. She found a letter written in 1865 by a local man to his sister. While there were several mundane topics in the letter, there was also this anecdote, which Eliza read to me over the phone:
"... Last Sunday, Old Man Mulligan did not appear in Church. It was the first time in anyone's memory he had not been in his seat. Mr. Tanner and Dr. Bean went calling on him, but when they arrived, they found his body, spirit departed, in repose upon his bed.
"But the queerest part of the whole incident was what they found clutched in his hands. As I am sure you remember, it was cause to set the village women gossipping when Old Man Mulligan wore a brown jacket to town rather than his uniform of black and white. But in his cold hands, he clutched a square of lavender fabric. It was the only piece of colored cloth they found in his entire house. No one could believe he had it -- except Miss Jane. She just smiled when she heard and wouldn't say more. -- Of course, we all know the old spinster is addled in the brain, so none have paid her heed..."
On the night of Halloween, without the prospect of trick-or-treaters, I was struck with a bout of nostalgia. I thought back to my university days and a tradition that my group of friends had started during our first semester. Each Halloween, just before midnight, we would gather and enter the cemetery on campus. We would huddle between the graves and take turns reading spooky stories. Each year, we finished with the same Edgar Allen Poe pieces. First, we would pass a copy of "The Raven" around, each reading a stanza before passing it along. Finally, Jenny, the girl who had dragged us all out here in the first place, would read "The Tell-Tale Heart."
I went to my bookshelf and found my copy of "The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe" that Jenny had given each of us for graduation. While I felt a bit silly, nonetheless, I grabbed a lantern and headed out to Eli and Zeke's graves.
I flipped open the book to "The Tell-Tale Heart" and began to read:
"True! -- nervous -- very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad?..."
The story mesmerized me. Poe's masterful twists of language always entranced me. His rhythm and repetition drove the story and made it perfect to read aloud. I found myself swept into slight madness in my recitation.
"...`here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!'"
As I finished reading, the first light of the waxing crescent of the moon broke over the tops of the trees and washed a cold light upon the small clearing. To my surprise -- was it my imagination? -- atop the two slate stones were wisps of bluish fog. Moonlight reflecting through something. Mist? But it was not the gossamer expansion of mist. Rather, a slow coalescence of a form. Soon, two men sat upon the headstones. As I looked at them, I noticed that the form on Hezekiah's stone faded in the yellow light of my lantern. I snapped it off, and the two men sharpened into translucent form.
On Hezekiah's stone sat the spirit, who I can only assume was Zeke, an old man, stooped of shoulder and face etched with years of hard work against time and nature, opponents who could never be beaten. His left hand appeared to be bandaged. Eleazer was his opposite -- a young man, sitting straight with smooth skin and a mop of curls that must have always been tousled.
Zeke looked at the younger man and smiled. With childlike wonder, Eli reached out to touch Zeke's wrinkled cheek. His hand, expecting the gentle resistance of flesh, found none. He stroked through the cheek. Silently, he giggled. He began to poke and prod at Zeke's face in the way a baby gropes the face of an adult. Soon, his actions took on a more focused tone, and I noticed that Zeke was changing beneath Eli's ministrations. Zeke expanded from his sunken state until he again appeared a young man, face smoothed of its future. He, too, was handsome, not with Eli's cherubic innocence but with a proud, taciturn strength--a man of the land.
A tear welled up within me, and I sniffed. Both of the men snapped their heads towards me, Eli half trying to hide behind Zeke's transparent body.
I extended my hands out, palms up, to show my peaceful intentions. Glancing at each other, Eli and Zeke reached out, each placing a hand above mine. They looked at me with a question that I could not read. I just stayed frozen. They smiled and nodded and simultaneously touched my upturned hands.
Searing, leeching cold shot through me. I drew back reflexively. My eyes struggled to focus, and my lungs stopped as if wrapped in a noose of ice. I would have thought my heart had stopped if not for the pounding that felt so loud it might taunt the ghosts before me. Slowly, the burning cold turned to a duller pain and settled in as a chill. I have always heard the saying `I was chilled to the bone." This was deeper. I was chilled in my bones and in my soul.
But the immediacy of my torment blunted, and I was able to focus on the two men before me again. The two transparent forms had turned to face each other. The silver forms had taken a tinge of color. My eyes were drawn to Zeke's hand. He did not have a bandage about it but rather a lavender cloth. He looked down at it, a soft shade against the stark black and white of his attire and the deep tan of his skin from hours working under the sun. He carefully unwound it and reached out to tie it around Eli's neck. As the cloth settled around Eli, he stiffened.
Eli raised a hand to brush his thumb across Zeke's lower lip. I could see the flesh pulled by the pad of Eli's finger. Eli immediately brought his hands to cup Zeke's face. While still transparent, they had attained a level of corporeality. After centuries, they could once again touch.
Zeke reached out a practiced hand and brushed a curl from Eli's brow. A small, shy smile cracked on Eli's face as he looked up at the taller man. His fingers found the buttons on Zeke's shirt and slowly opened the collar, exposing the top of his broad chest. As Eli slipped the suspenders from Zeke's shoulders, the strips of cloth doubled, a translucent strap remained while the newly found corporeal form shifted from his torso to hang about his hips.
As Eli reached for the waistband of Zeke's pants, Zeke took Eli's hands between his own. Zeke carefully untucked Eli's shirt and pulled it up over his head. As with Zeke's suspenders, the shirt pulled apart, leaving a gossamer shadow around Eli's torso. The shirt Zeke removed dissipated into the night air.
It was jarring. I could clearly see Eli's chest, smooth and pale, with his nipples pointing out and a flat stomach and the hint of abs. I could see his taut waist disappearing into his pants, but I could also clearly see his shirt still covering his upper body.
Zeke continued to strip him tenderly, and soon, Eli stood both fully dressed and nude, but for the lavender cloth tied about his neck. His ass was a perfect handful for Zeke's large hand as he stroked the nude form of his lover, worshiping the skin before him. Eli's cock grew and jutted straight out from his hip. In a different moment, it might have been funny to see his erection sticking through the ghostly pants that still appeared on his legs, but the moment was too reverential for laughter.
Eli's head dropped back as Zeke's hands pulled his ass cheeks apart, and his fingers slipped into the deep crevasse between the two white mounds, paler even than the rest of his body in the moonlight. Zeke's mouth moved to the edge of Eli's extended neck and lightly bit him where his skin emerged from the neckerchief. Eli's hands frantically worked to undress the man ravishing him. He pushed the pants off of Zeke's hips, and as they fell to his ankles, they melted into the silver light of the night.
Soon, both men were in the liminal, phantasmal state of nudity, wrapped in transparent clothing. Zeke's broad pecs, capped with tiny nipples and a light dusting of hair between them, and muscles built of hard work were a contrast to the more nubile body of his partner.
Zeke reached out and grabbed the weightless hips of his lover. Eli's legs came up around Zeke's sides as Zeke positioned Eli's hips so that his cock lined up with Eli's hole. Incorporeal and eager for each other, no preparation or lubrication was needed. I watched Zeke's erection sink within Eli. As with their clothes, I could still make out the phallic form, even as it was buried deep in Eli's body.
As their mouths met, Zeke began to rock slowly, moving his cock in and out of Eli's hole. Their kisses were hungry. Zeke's thrusting slowly picked up pace and power. Untethered from the constraints of gravity, they flowed apart and crashed back together, tethered at the hips and lips.
Soon, Eli arched back, releasing a silent scream of pleasure as he pulled away from Zeke's mouth and wrapped his legs tightly around Zeke's waist. His violent action toppled them, and they started to slowly tumble and cartwheel in place. With his legs locked, Eli's began to take control of the fuck. His hips shifted and danced as he worked himself on the cock rooting him to his lover.
Zeke pulled Eli back up to him, slowing their rotation and taking back control of the moment. His actions were firm and insistent. Floating at hip height, Zeke climbed atop Eli and started to fuck him hard and deep. Eli squirmed and flailed as Zeke drove into him with primal lust. They both had a need for each other and for release. Their desire had flared into a bonfire that propelled them forward. The passion of centuries apart expended in moments too short.
I watched as Zeke's cock swelled within Eli, and he thrust so hard that they ended up on the ground across their graves. Pearly white streams erupted from both of their cocks, Zeke's fusing into Eli's form and Eli's drifting to diffuse in the silvery moonlight.
After the release, they collapsed together, gently kissing. Zeke stroked Eli's hair as he curled up, exhausted, on his grave. Eli faded back into the earth. Zeke stood and looked down at the grave as his form shrunk back into that of an old man, touching his hand where the purple fabric had been. He looked at me and smiled a wry, sad smile. An acknowledgment that they had just shared with me what had never been shared with anyone in life. He leaned against his headstone, elbow resting in the worn swoop of the top of the headstone, settling into a position that I could tell he had been in many times before. He, too, began to fade, first to silver and then simply to nothingness - never taking his eyes off of the earth Eli had sunken into.
I returned to the headstones the next night and the night after and every night for the next two weeks, but Zeke and Eli never joined me -- never got to see each other again. I tried reading stories -- both Poe and others -- to see if my voice could re-evoke them, but it was all for naught. Legends claim that the veil between life and death is thinnest on All Hallows' Eve, and doors are opened for the spirits to re enter our world. Perhaps they had taken advantage of Samhain's blessings -- perhaps it was all just my imagination running wild -- but as November came and went, it seemed that Eli and Zeke still lay at rest each night, alone.
For several days after Halloween, I had a chill deep within me. I know not what they took from me that evening. But I would gladly pay that unknown price again to allow Eli and Zeke another evening together. Maybe next Halloween the two lovers will once again have a moonlight rendezvous.