MicroHorror

The earth was black with blood: slaughtered livestock swung from hooks in the killing shed. Big John and others worked their knives, cleaning, skinning beasts.

Turnips and tatties were stacked in clamps. Necklaces of onions dangled from the barn’s beams. Each apple that hadn’t been crushed into cider was wrapped in dry straw and stored in trunks, or placed out like marbles up in the eaves near the hay pile.

Bonfires were heaped in the bottom field. I’d gathered branches, the windblown dead limbs, with others, and we’d arranged them into two stacks. We’d scrambled up and down, heaving up wood, cracking twigs with our clogs, scratching legs as we ran down laughing, jeering at the ones looking up, those littler than us.

When darkening came the fires were lit by men in masks. Orange sparks blew westwards, twigs cracked again. Every villager walked the cleansing path between the burning heaps. Old Maggie was pushed in a cart; her hollow cheeks appeared deep and black as rock pools, her cackles shrill as herring gulls’. Her eyes glinted around the merry crowd, then she laid a hand upon the one pushing her and said, “There’s an extra amongst us.”

Word went round and those who could count counted the throng; some used a finger that they pointed at each person, counted aloud. Those without the counting swung about, tried to guess who was the stranger behind the masks.

“Maybe it’s an ancient come about us at Winter’s birth. Do not fear, this is their evening, they walk amongst us,” Echo said.

Most turned back to the trestle where a roasted boar was now showing its ribs.

“The ancients are here with us tonight, but this is no ancestor that sneaks through the smoke. Look.” Maggie grabbed my arm as I went to find my little sister. “Look down there abin the copse. See the folks stood in front of the old oak?”

I looked towards the rowan wood and through the gloom. After a while I could see lines of people stood as thin as the birch trunks in the Hare field. But I did not look towards Hare field.

“See?” Maggie’s fingers dug into my arm. “See the tiny ones wriggling on the floor?” Not waiting for an answer she continued, “That’s the unborn, the unwanted ones that were poisoned, or stabbed in the womb with knitting needles, or just withered because they weren’t meant for this life.”

I saw many. They looked like the skinned rabbits that would be put onto the embers before the storytellers started. I felt for the paw I’d ferreted from the midden pit, had delved in about the entrails and had it in my pocket. Us boys had all fished one from the pile of guts and waste that the foxes would feast on before the dawn came. It curled cool against my fingers, had stiffened now. I rubbed my thumb against its soft fur, traced the slight scratch of its claws. Its pads had the feel of smooth blisters.

“I’ll be stood there next Samhain, beside my Joe,” Maggie whispered.

“Will I see you?” I asked.

“You will indeed; you have the sight.” Maggie’s fingers released my arm, her hand dropped to her side and she sighed, “Now, Fingal, go seek the stranger.”

I looked again at the gathered departed and left Maggie staring at those she would soon be stood beside.

I wove in about people I knew by their clothes or stance. Snatches of conversation came as I walked by: all the accents the same, but the pitch or a pause of a word gave my ear their name. Some masks had slipped, lay on collars, or the ground. Some villagers were missing, lay giggling in the hay pile, or under hedges with their wenches. I stepped over legs, until I came upon a robed man with no face beneath his cowl.

I watched as he walked down towards Maggie, laid on her cart.

• Copyright: © 2009 Caroline Robinson

Opening the door, I paused on the threshold sure there was someone standing in the half-gloom waiting.

This is a cold place crouched in the shadow of the Ben, the outside haar seeming to follow me in.

I coddled the Rayburn to life with the paper I’d read on the train and went to fill the kettle from the burn. The cloud slunk low concealing jagged peaks as I scooped the kettle across the water, holding it by its blackened spout. A late dragonfly hovered then zigzagged away, its metallic blue a flare amongst all the brownness as I hunkered on the spongy bank. A shadow undulated across the peaty surface and a face that wasn’t mine stared out. Letting go of the spout, I sprang up and met a woman’s gaze on the opposite bank as the kettle gurgled down into the murk. She was old and stooped, carrying a crook which she upended and fished into the burn.

Laughing lightly she landed the filled kettle at my feet and unhooked her crook from the kettle’s handle.

“Lucky you were passing,” I said.

“You wouldn’t have dropped it if I hadn’t.” She turned away and was gone. I stood a few moments listening, but all that I heard was the unending water and echoing bellows of deer in rut. Walking back the way I had come, for company I whistled a song my father had taught me.

The peeling cottage door stood ajar, damp footprints curved into the kitchen. I entered as slow as a stranger, finding the old woman seated beside the stove–legs akimbo, her crook propped against the mantelpiece. I clanked the kettle on the hob where it hissed at first, and then I asked, “Would you like a cup? Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea would be grand.” She twisted to one side, retrieved a bottle from inside her clothing and bumped it down on the table. She tipped a generous measure into each mug as I placed a chair in front of the hearth and joined her facing the stove. We sat sipping in silence and then both flushed and spoke at once. We stopped and started a few times until I persuaded her to tell first.

She replenished our mugs, folded back into her seat and told me my life so far. I listened with the ears of someone who has just heard their own voice on a tape recorder. I wanted her to continue, but I also didn’t. She stopped, pulled herself from the chair and went outside. I lit candles, placed them in the empty wine bottles Connor and I had drained in the spring. And I waited. At first I thought she had melted into the haar and was nothing other than my imagination, but the half-filled whisky bottle stood proud as my witness.

A mouse darted across the soot-spattered hearth as I heard a rustling scrape in the hallway.

She came in clutching a bunch of dried broom, the empty husks of seedpods rattling.

In the heat of the August sun, before he went, Connor and I had lain naked in the ferns listening to the seedpods exploding.

She split the bunch into two and sweeping the floors we laughed as if exorcising our demons. We swept the whole house down from the attics, across the landing and down the stairs, gathering balls of dust, dead spiders, mouse droppings. Back in the kitchen, I went to place the kettle back on the heat; when I turned round she was gone. I laid my head on the table beside the empty bottle and wept like a hungry lamb calling for its mother.

• Copyright: © 2008 Caroline Robinson