HALLOWEEN HAUNTS: Unsolved and Endless ~ Or How My Body and My Bicycle Became Cursed
by Sumiko Saulson
In horror, death is dust and rot, but ancestor spirits live and breathe, a part of nature. Our DNA, the building blocks that create us, carries them. Surrounded by magic, we skip and dance through little puddles of it as we wander down the street, forgetting, or never knowing, what clings to our feet.
The blood in my veins declared me pre-diabetic with an A1C of 6.0, while that in my poop demanded a colonoscopy. A mysterious shadow haunted my mammogram. My body had become a haunted house amusement park ride. Scary new things jumped out from every corner.
The lump on the side of my neck terrified my doctor with a seemingly instantaneous arrival. The last in a series of health issues peppered throughout January 2025, it disturbed me the most. The thyroid cancer fears were very real. Doctors warned me to be prepared for the worst. But the news was good: “Benign, surgery optional.”
I stopped drinking, and cut out sugar. I spent five months in physical therapy for issues with my knees, feet, and balance that made it hard to walk up three steps. By summer I was able to bike 20 miles, go to Zumba twice and the gym once every week. I lost 55 pounds and could now climb five flights of stairs or walk two miles with ease.
I quietly put thyroid surgery on the back burner, building my body up. By July, I was pushing it—now the size of a softboiled egg—off my vocal cords with my finger to sing certain notes, and coughing whenever I ate popcorn. I could no longer wait. In January of 2026, they removed my left thyroid node.
The day before surgery, I drove my car down the path that I was envisioning bicycling. I stopped by the deli across from the San Francisco Zoo, recalling my last time there. Wondering if I was ever going to get back into that kind of shape, I ate my delicious Reuben on rye, and I cried.
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Recovery started with gentle walks around my neighborhood. After two weeks, I returned to Zumba. After a month, I got back on my bike, determined to complete the ride to Land’s End, cooking to the Siouxsie and The Banshees song of the same name.
I’d sung it at home like a prayer as I prepared for surgery. As soon as I could start singing again, two weeks after surgery, it was back, an incantation filling my home with magic and mystery.
“Where the land falls to an end
This hidden tale begins”
I conjured every walk I went to at Land’s End, every bicycle ride, every car ride, every journey that took me there, all the time I spent there with loved ones both living and dead.
I got stronger and took five-mile bicycle rides, then ten, alone or with friends, often using the beautiful San Francisco Bay Trail along the water on both sides of the Bay. My friend, karaokegal on YouTube, made a special karaoke video of the song, and I started singing it. I dreamed of the day that I would return to Land’s End.
“Forever and eternally,
the cliffs around the crashing sea
Unsolved and endless,
wait for me, wait for me”
While I worked to get strong enough to come back to the sea, some malign force seemed to arise to impede my way.
A man, clearly on drugs and probably mentally ill—no shade; I am mentally ill myself—ran into the bicycle lane, hands outstretched like an airplane. In his altered state, he decided it was a good idea to reach out his hand when I swerved to avoid hitting him. Touching my bicycle threw me off-balance and I crashed into the curb, covering my still post-surgical throat with my hand.
My handlebar was bent and my seat was torn. It took another three months for my bruised ribs to heal. Riding your bike engages your core, but I kept riding until I realized I was re-injuring myself.
I was struggling, so my buddy suggested I get a geared bike so we could climb the hills better. I had been using a black single-speed bike that he made for me from parts, including from old bikes of his. It was a talisman of our friendship, but I could progress towards my goal faster with a geared bike. He scoured Facebook Marketplace until he found a blue 30-speed Trek road bike.
The new bike was beautiful, but carried its own curse due to late-stage capitalism. It looked pricier than my first bike, attracting more attention from San Francisco’s hordes of organized bicycle thieves and disorganized homeless folks. Someone tried to steal my water bottle off it, but another friend grabbed it from his hand.
Another day, a guy tried to steal my entire bike. A friend saw, so we approached him and asked what he was doing with the keychain filled with various keys he was trying to use on my lock. He swore he was just providing a service for people who lost their lock keys, helping them unlock their bikes, not stealing them. I said, “This is my bike. You’re definitely not helping me.”
My bike cost $150 used; new Treks cost $500 to $5000. Thieves thought I had money. Someone cut the strap of my bicycle bag while I stopped at a corner for the streetlight, stealing my wallet, house keys, identification and bank cards.
As if that weren’t enough, the seat kept punting me in a sensitive part of my anatomy. Five miles into a ride, I was in extraordinary pain. I had to repeatedly ask my friend to adjust the seat.
The first time we set out to make the ride, my friend was sick. Instead of getting ahead and then coming back to check on me like he usually did, we rode side by side, talking. We managed to get up the hill by the Golden Gate Bridge for the fourth time, past the beautiful coastal views down Lincoln. We didn’t make it to Land’s End; instead, we took an inland path through Golden Gate Park.
We made a plan to try again in a month.
The bike-demons in San Francisco weren’t satisfied with harrying only me. My friend got into an accident going up the hill towards the bridge; a motorist parked in a bicycle path and opened a car door into him as he tried to get around. He was still recovering from those injuries when we went for the ride.
But even as these curses lingered, the spells I was casting to make it to Land’s End pushed their way through the morass. Nearly five months after my surgery, I made it at last. Everything was perfect. We stopped to get some water there, and he ran into an old friend that had moved away and happened to be visiting. While they talked, my grandniece walked up hand-in-hand with one of my niece’s high-school friends. They ran up excitedly to give me a giant hug.
I was so excited to see them and to find out that my niece was there with four of her best friends. One had gotten married, with my niece and the other three in the bridal party. My grand-niece and my grandnephew were there, as well as the child of one of her friends.
It felt magical, like an end to a journey. And then my friend and I rode along the beach to the zoo. He told me that he was going to continue down Sloat to Ocean, and I could continue down that path if I wanted. I didn’t realize he was saying goodbye, until I got to Ocean and texted to ask where he was. So, I kept going on my own and made it most of the way around San Francisco—22 miles.
We were supposed to go for a ride again later that month, but it never happened. That was our last ride together. I don’t know why my friend decided not to go on rides with me anymore, but that final ride couldn’t have been more perfect. I was on my own, but I decided to make the full circuit ride around San Francisco anyway. It was 28 miles and took me 6 hours.
I felt accomplished, triumphant. It didn’t last.
The last month has been extremely difficult. Two of my friends were diagnosed with cancer, another friend lost her fiance and lost 70 lbs while she grieved, putting her in the hospital. A loved one lost part of their hearing. I felt myself bracing against the hits I feared would just keep coming. The bike’s curse reemerged; someone swiped the headlight.
Two days ago, my youngest niece had her first child. Everything had come full circle, from visualizing her pregnant mother running around Land’s End with me and my family to her having a child of her own. On the same day, my cousin lost his foot and part of his shin in a car accident.
On this very same day, I went to Zumba, but had a lot of trouble making the bike locker by Salesforce Tower work. Frustrated, I gave up and locked my bike up outside. When I got back after the hour-long class, all I found was my helmet, my tire pump, and a scrap of cut chain.
The bike that I used to get to Land’s End is gone. The bike I rode all the way around San Francisco, declaring to myself that I would do it alone, is gone. The bike that hurt my crotch when I first started riding it, that I tried so hard to adjust to, is gone. The bike that I rode while I wept openly is gone.
I made a police report. I asked if there was video footage. I will check the local swap meet for it. My reiki practitioner suggested that the bike rode off with all of the pain and trauma associated with it. That the ghost of my severed bike chain bound the demons to it, dragging them far away.
Do bikes have personalities? Can journeys be blessed or cursed? Do we live in a world of magic? Pushing sixty, it feels like a battle to stay healthy. Life, like a bicycle ride, has both a beginning and an end. Mine isn’t over.
My bike is gone, and there were tears splashing against my wrist while I told the story.
I’m back with my old bike. The one I rode when I started my fitness journey, decided that I could be out on the road having glorious adventures instead of staring at a wall on a stationary bike, and lost 55 pounds. The one I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, even though I’m afraid of heights. On this bike, I felt more powerful than any demon that might attack, and I crossed the bridge with a magical friend. I could do anything with. When that friendship ended, the grief was devastating.
The contentious new bike is gone, taking its bad mojo with it. Now that it’s gone, I remember the good times as well as the bad. It was the bike I climbed mountains with. Now I’m back together with my old bike, kitted out with new gear so I can ride it. It’s not good for climbing hills; it’s good for keeping my heart safe.
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PREVIEW OF RECENT FICTION
Last year, I wrote a poem about my old bike. It’s called “Metal”. The poem “Metal” was originally published in Dance of Necromance: Poetry Book of the Dead, released on April 1st 2026 on Mocha Memoirs Press. “Dance of Necromance: Poetry Book of the Dead” is an Afrosurrealist book of dark speculative poetry embracing themes of death, rebirth, sacrifice, communication with the ancestors, the mysteries that lie beyond, and perseverance in cursed times.
Metal
Shiny steel bottle
Sleek black matte frame
My legs straining against
An uphill climb
A memory
A fantasy
I accompany myself
Alone on a hill
Sweating, pushing
Moving forward
More precious than a photo
More thoughtful, more precise
I look at it and think of you
I can do these things
I can make this change
My parents already
Dropped my hands
And crossed the veil
One day I’ll follow
I look into a distant future
Pushing through a day
At a time, because life
Is a battle
A journey
A war
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BOOK GIVEAWAY! A copy of Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus signed by all three authors, Sumiko Saulson, Emily Loretta Flummox, and Mysterious A. Backup.
The pooetry chapbook Doodooality: Shots Fired from Uranus is about The Fecalarity, an event where human excrement becomes sentient. Fed up with the hubris of mankind, the sophont turds resettle in Uranus. The work of San Francisco karaoke metal band NypSlyp, Doodooality is constructed as a parody of a concept metal album.
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SUMIKO SAULSON is the BayCon/Westercon 2026 Poet Laureate, a Two-Time Bram Stoker Award® for Poetry for The Rat King (2022, Dooky Zines) and Melancholia (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press). Four-Time Elgin Speculative Poetry Award nominee for these and Doodooality: Shots fired from Uranus (Dooky Zines), and novelist whose short stories, poetry and articles have appeared in over 50 publications, including Weird Tales, Locus Magazine, Strange Horizons, Nightmerica: Corruptions of an American Dream, and This Way Lies Madness. Winner of the Afrosurrealist Writers Award. Their latest novel, Somnalia: The Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi (sequel to Happiness and Other Diseases) is available on Mocha Memoirs Press. Find them at @sumikoska on Facebook & TikTok, @sumikosaulson on Instagram or www.SumikoSaulson.com
