by John Hornor Jacobs
So far I’ve progressed through five of the seven ages of Halloween. I’m forty now, a father of two girls, and broaching the midpoint of my life. But I think back on the forty Halloweens I’ve seen and it’s important to remember the stages, those watermarks toward adulthood and beyond.
No other holiday marks your progress through life like Halloween does.
The Surly Teenager
What follows agrees with the spirit of Halloween more than the actual idea of it, as if the restless ghosts and demons loosed upon the world invested themselves in one age to cause mayhem and havoc–the surly adolescent. Desperate to be adult, they put aside all things Halloween, but by this abrogation, they embody it. They become truly frightening, reckless, and wild. Dress in blacks and greys and browns, ski-masks on their heads, they fill sacks with toilet paper, shaving cream, and eggs.
The more daring siphon vodka or whiskey from their parent’s bar into empty water bottles and filch cigarettes from the local drug store. The most daring carry condoms for the best and remotest of all possible night’s outcomes.
They roam the streets on October 31st, the leafless trees above them scrabbling at the overcast sky, mindless but for hormones and the gossip fueled existence of schoolmates, a pack of miscreant dogs. They meet girls and laugh and smoke and take hesitant puffs from cigarettes and worry if their father will smell it on their breath when they finally make it home, but that is hours away because, after all, it’s Halloween, and the liberties the parents allowed them when they were candy fiends still holds some sway.
They laugh in alleys, and keep away from suburban-lighted areas. They pair off, more likely than not, boy to girl, girl to boy, and explore each other’s bodies but really testing what it feels to be adult, alcohol and tobacco on their breath. But the time grows short, and the girls might let them put hands up their shirts, but they’re damn sure not going any further…and the night grows old.
They take up their bags and walk with bright steps to the house of the girl they like the least, not present – author of some perceived slight – and wreath its single, enormous oak tree with roll after roll of toilet paper tossed in white ghostly arcs. They dress the car standing in the drive with shaving cream, never knowing that the cream will permanently mar the paint-job and send one man on a course toward litigious vengeance. No, they have no idea any of the trouble that follows them. They’re just revel in the sound of eggs smacking almost silently on the front door and bricks, bright silent explosions of albumen and yoke.
This was me. Stupid me.
TODAY’S GIVEAWAY:
John Hornor Jacobs is giving away one unabridged audiobook edition of Southern Gods. To enter post a message in the comments section below or e-mail memoutreach@horror.org. Winners will be chosen at random. Contestants may enter once to be considered for all giveaways, but multiple entries are permitted.
Excerpt from Southern Gods
Prologue
1878, Rheinhart Plantation
The black thing walked from the forest and took the shape of a man. Wilhelm watched it through the window, from his sickbed.
At first the creature shuffled, a thing of gristle, all angular joints and thick sinew. It moved erratically, in a herky-jerky fashion that reminded the boy of a circus performance; each limb’s movement was prolonged, drawn out, as if for dramatic effect. The legs lifted, paused, wavered, and then placed themselves, each one moving independently of the others. It was hard to tell if its appendages ended in hands, or hooves, or claws. Even in the slanting afternoon light, its features were indistinct, blurry. The creature moved into the stubble of the empty field and stopped.
The boy thought it might be wildschwein—one of the vicious boars that foraged the dark wood and edges of fields—until the thing shifted. Its skin became mottled, rippled, and then faded back to black.
It rose. The black creature looked as though its spine had cracked and reorganized itself, and a man stood where the creature had. But it was still black. Still inhuman. And faceless.
It turned and looked at the boy.
