Halloween Haunts: A DREAM OF VIOLENCE & BLOOD
Rosemary Thorne
The first night Lucy slept in the independent town of Cazalia, (Toledo, Spain), she dreamt of a blue bird.
Cazalia, my birthplace, is seldom found on maps; its ancient buildings and narrow passageways sit regally on a desolate plain where it guards a dam and a mind-blowing portion of cloudless sky.
Lucy’s dream was not surprising, as many birds fly over Cazalia.
“What a wondrous jewel!” Lucy exclaimed on her first morning, having mounted the garden ladder. “The horizon is so wide I can cover the whole northern hemisphere with my eyes. I can’t wait to see the stars tonight. I bet I can collect all the diamonds of the Milky Way!”
When she said that, I thought of Rory Gallagher’s Moonchild and Eratosthenes’ calculations. Those two would surely have enjoyed Lucy’s long marble-like legs on that improvised pulpit praising the heavenly dome.
“You could surely try,” I replied, “only I won’t let you do it because it would be dangerous, darling. Even lethal”.
“How lethal?”
“Lethal means dead, Lucy. If I told you, I would have to kill you.” I was laughing.
“All right, agent whatever-your-number-is, keep your secrets!” She smiled at me beautifully, thinking that I was playing with her. And I was flirting, I admit it. But then she lowered her gaze & discovered the yard transited by ants carrying sun-bleached bird bones. Pretending it wasn’t what it was, she hid her emerald eyes behind those huge Onassis sunglasses of hers.
Death takes hold of you in surprising ways around here. Cazalia is, after all, a place to hunt. Different species of insects are aware of it, as are various species of birds, and even other species of hunters, and we all take advantage of it.
I’ve never hunted anything but ladies, and there is a scarcity of women interested in spending summer holidays in towns where you can’t take a selfie without someone calling it a cultural activity. Lucy, however, sensed the pulse of the place immediately on her first day, although she didn’t think it all the way through, unfortunately.
With tiny binoculars in hand, she joyfully began our mornings climbing naked on her improvised watchtower to observe the small swifts singing their funny tune. Later in the day, (once adequately dressed), I would walk her around the fields to show her the views: she felt drunk-like delighted with the landscape blurred by the bright sun, but not so much with those little details that make Cazalia a living edition of The Black Hen grimoire: a dove’s heart half eaten by feral kittens, a bunch of maggots pullulating the carcass of a dog, the rotting stag’s heads crowning the entrances of some of the most illustrious dwellings, and small crimson lizards running away like furtive flames of sun. There was an eye half-buried in the soil, something’s eye, or perhaps someone’s eye. Lucy said it gave her the wim-wams, and her soul trembled with these oddities. Cazalia might feel like Florida on some days when a wicked wind blows from the south. Everything thinkable is possible in this planetary spot.
Anything and everything.
That’s why during the evenings I would entertain Lucy indoors. Nobody ever knew what was going on out there once the sun set. It was as if there was a maniac running around loose, killing beings with an unusual voracity. From time to time, the ancient wild opens its way through, reminding us that we are all just but an abysmal hungry mouth. At night, Cazalia is like a tramp hole where death catches up with whatever it encounters, rendering life insignificant. To protect Lucy from whatever it was, I would cover the patio at dusk with a thick canvas cloth. She was very displeased with my decision because she could no longer contemplate the stars.
Rumor has it that falling in love is like hunting a great white in the vast Atlantic. I was particularly smitten with Lucy, even if after a week in Cazalia her marble-like flesh exhibited mosquito bites so pink that it resembled nipples. I would cook local treats in the chimney, and she would eat them all without asking questions. In Cazalia, we make our own wine in immense clay jugs, adding secret ingredients that would illustrate another story better saved for another day. After a good supper, love & desire would expand her wings generously until late.
Some nights, Lucy lay awake after our lovemaking. She trembled beneath the light sheets, shocked by the call of the night hunters. It wasn’t high-pitched raven shrieks like in the horror movies, but only an occasional throaty whisper. Dreadful sounds that crept over the walls and into our hearts. I would extend my arms & hug her until feeling her breathing soothe again. Until one night, my hands didn’t find her soft breasts, but an empty bed.
Blinded by lust or love, I had lost track of the calendar. I should have remembered and warned her. Now, it was the eve of the Virgin of August, a much-celebrated festivity in Spain. On August 15th of each year, the veil of the cosmos opens up with the same hunger as on Halloween. Its epicenter might very well be Cazalia.
My beloved birth town.
To my horror, Lucy was in the courtyard, and she had done what I didn’t want her to do. She had removed the corner of the canvas where the garden ladder was propped against a stone wall, and her body was extended halfway out. No sooner had my eyes adapted to the darkness to see legs and naked buttocks standing atop the ladder, when I heard the guttural horrifying whisper.
“Lucy, come down immediately!” I muttered, not wanting to attract the attention of the hunting air. I climbed the ladder beneath her and insistently tugged at her legs.
“Lucy…” I pleaded.
“No! Come on up with me! Look at the night sky, my love!” Lucy called. “I’ve seen countless shooting stars! Diamonds! A million diamonds. A million million diamonds. And a comet. And now there’s a dark violet swirl where the moon should be! It looks almost ghost-like, getting closer, an apparition evanescing into dark…”
Her voice broke, and her body shook violently from side to side, rippling snakelike. A waterfall of blood surged down her hips and legs, flecked with chunks of ripped flesh. I was awash in carnage. In my heart I knew the source of that gory miasma came from where her head and shoulders had been and were no more. Another shake followed, surely the consequence of the chomping and ripping of the upper part of her body. I clutched at the canvas as the lower half of Lucy’s body became slack and her weight struck me. Together we fell, me covered in blood, grasping the only piece of Lucy that remained. We smashed into the gravel beneath the ladder, the shroud of canvas ripping free and covering us like a shroud.
Cazalia’s nocturnal air during the summer is so ravenous.
Whenever the half-buried eye opens.
Whenever the hunt sets about.
I didn’t have to do anything with Lucy’s remains. All kinds of small creatures enjoyed the carnage as leftovers. By morning, not a strand of her silky pubic hair remained; her brightly painted toenails had disappeared. By noon, the last pieces of her flesh were riddled with trembling holes. By nightfall, swarms of insects carried away her bones until nothing remained.
That night, I wept a funeral dirge, then played Gallagher’s tune, and copiously drank local wine until falling unconscious. The secret ingredients eased my grief. I knew that all across Cazalia, people grieved and drank.
Maybe even across all of Spain. On every August 15th.
When I woke days later, at least the ants hadn’t carried me to Hell.
Amorosamente dedicado a Ramona la de los presagios.
Thankful to Richard Payne for his wisdom.
Rosemary Thorne (she/her) is a bilingual Spanish Horror writer, researcher of the Occult, and translator living in Madrid, Spain. Born in 1968, she joined the HWA in 2019 and serves as HWA International Chapter Program Co-Manager of the HWA. Her debut novel, El Pacto de las 12 uvas, (The twelve grapes covenant) was published in December 2021. She has also translated Edward Lee’s The Bighead into Spanish for Dimensiones Ocultas Press. Her most recent essays includes Rosemary’s Baby: A Satanic Camelot, and Eggs, rings and whips, were published in Spanish by Archivos Vola in 2024 & 2025 respectively. Find out more about her at: https://linktr.ee/Rosemary_thorne and Instragram at https://www.instagram.com/rosemary__thorne/