Undying

The ghost of Halloween flooded our house, then flattened our tire for good measure. By the time we reached our rental cabin, car grease stained my hands, and anxiety sullied the rest of me. 

Elizabeth took the kids to walk Bau and Astrid while I unpacked the SUV. It wasn’t my proudest moment, renting a gimmicky cottage, but until insurance sent a check, it was all we could afford. 

Bramble Village was a cheap cabin village fifteen minutes away from the Renaissance festival. In the summer, it teemed with cosplayers and re-enactors who’d run through its dingy woods pretending to be nobles. But, in October, the place lay deserted.

It was only early evening, but autumn lets the sun take a half-day. The shadowy woods made the night-like darkness feel ominous, but I tried to shrug it off. I wheeled our luggage up next to the front door’s plastic jack-o’-lantern, then searched the porch lamp for our key. 

A dozen moths flew off the fake flame, batting into my face as I batted back and fought through their swarm to remove the keycards left by the rental manager. The historically inaccurate lock beeped as I waved the card over it, then I pushed inside, leaving it unlocked for Elizabeth.

A tavern dining area, complete with a barrel-shaped table orbited by four stools, greeted me. A fake stone hearth with LED flames gleamed next to a welcome package with cookies for the kids, pamphlets, and a letter written in old English font. I parked the luggage by the wall and scooped up the letter. 

Beneath the Wi-Fi password and general instructions was a handwritten note:

Welcome, weary traveler,

Me lady and I will be in Wilmington this weekend. Call should ye have any troubles. Your keycard will get ye inside the shower cabin, where vending machines filled with sustenance await thy famished bellies. Also, apologies about the moths. The woods are ancient and infested with them.

Thank ye,

Management

Stapled to the letter, an advertisement for the Renaissance Faire highlighted the village’s summer attractions. I frowned and looked closer: One picture amongst all the jousting knights, mermaid tanks, and axe throwers felt different somehow.

My eyes moved over it until I saw her: Standing next to a fortune-telling booth was the ugliest crone I’d ever seen, covered in a shawl that itself was covered with gray butterflies. Whoever had hired her had done an excellent job — her hideous face and the scar across her neck didn’t appear to be makeup. And she seemed to stare right up at me from the picture.

With a small shudder, I dropped the papers back onto the table, but I noticed the village map as it fell. The shower cabin would be a bit of a walk.

“Outstanding. Who needs baths?” I said.

“I know, Dad, isn’t it great?” asked Aster from behind me. I jumped and spun around. Aster not only wielded the unwavering positivity of a confident, eight-year-old girl, but she also possessed an uncanny ability to sneak up on me. She could have worn tap shoes and still succeeded. 

Now I watched her unconsciously doing cartwheels while her five-year-old brother, Eden, raced to a wall and started prying a replica sword off it. 

Elizabeth unclipped Bau and Astrid’s leashes, then gently pulled our littlest, Adair, from her back where he’d been clinging. Released from their restraints, the dogs took to their canine responsibility, sniffing every piece of furniture in the building. Adair toddled toward Eden.

“Lots of moths,” said Elizabeth, batting them out the open door.

“‘Ye management’ says the woods have an infestation,” I said, waving a hand at the letter on the table.

“The other cabins are neat,” said Elizabeth. “There’s a Gryffindor dorm.”

“How the heck is that Renaissance?” I asked.

“It’s super cool, Dad,” said Aster. “We peaked inside, but it’s only one room and it’s not cleaned up yet.”

“Well, according to the website, ours has two,” I said. “You kids get the Little Prince and Princess suite upstairs, and Mom and I are sleeping in the King and Queen’s Chambers down here.”

“Think any trick-or-treaters will come tomorrow?” Eden asked. He had successfully acquired the sword and was now gesturing with it towards our two-year-old. I disarmed him and placed the sword out of reach on the fireplace mantel.

“Bud, no one is coming,” I said.

“But we’ll find a town to get candy,” Elizabeth amended. 

“Think they’ll deliver pizza here, Dad?” asked Aster. Eden and Adair’s heads both jerked up as hopeful grins widened on their faces.

“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “It feels secluded, but we’re only five minutes off the highway.”

“Why don’t I get the luggage seen to while you order?” asked Elizabeth.

I nodded and reached for my phone. “While I do, I’m going to check out the shower situation.”

I navigated the long, dimly lit path to the shower room, my eyes half-glued to my phone as I searched for pizza. The fall leaves surrounding Bramble Village assaulted the hamlet with their dead: gold, blood, and pumpkin-colored leaves rained down, adding to the tapestry of browns I crushed beneath me. 

The air grew steadily cooler with each passing minute, but by the time I reached the shower cabin, I’d ordered bargain pizza, and it was en route. I used the keycard and entered, though the odor of bleach and socks that rushed out the door almost made me change my mind. 

The interior looked like a gym bathroom accented with faux stone walls. Four shower stalls draped by royal purple tucked themselves along the western wall, and a set of vending machines glowed near the emergency exit. 

My eyes focused in on the muddy footprints coming out from a shower, and a soily handprint with a strange moon-and-circle symbol smeared on the vending machine glass.

“‘Ye management’ needs a housekeeper,” I said. No one laughed.

I looked inside the muddy shower stall, and another moth hit my face. I swatted it away as I stared at the muck-covered plastic walls. It looked as if someone had washed a farm pig inside. Dirt-ladened handprints with long nail marks spread over the shampoo dispenser as if Swamp Thing had pumped it several dozen times. I checked the stall next to it. It was clean.

I shrugged, then proceeded to the clean booth, turned on the water, and scrubbed the tire grease from my hands. It took longer than I’d thought to get the black out of my fingernails, but as I finished, my stomach rumbled. The pizza would be arriving soon. I needed to get back to the cabin. With no towel in sight, I wriggled my hands to shake them dry. 

I glanced over the vending machine’s temptations, but the smudge marks made the chocolate bars and fruit candies less appetizing. Besides, we’d be rich in Halloween candy come tomorrow. The timer on the automatic lights chimed a warning, so I headed for the door to avoid being abandoned in darkness. 

The pizza delivery woman pulled up as I reached our front door.

“Sorry,” she said through her unrolled window, a pair of pumpkin-bulbed antennas wobbling on her head. “Address threw me for a loop. I didn’t know you could rent these when it wasn’t festival season.”

“Neither did I,” I said. “Let me go get my wallet.”

I hurried inside. The ceiling above thundered with the sound of kids trying to bring it down via bed bouncing.

“Pizza’s here!” I shouted. A chorus of cheers and barks echoed from overhead, and a different kind of rumbling ensued. Elizabeth appeared from our bedroom and gave me a tired smile.

I returned to the front door to find the pizza lady fighting for her life as hand-sized moths circling the porch lamp flew at her. I noticed with a frown that she’d drawn a moon with an X across it in the porch dust by her feet.  

“Wowee, lots of moths,” she said with a grin. Her wide eyes and peppy voice gave off a toddler show-host energy.

“Yeah, the wood’s infested,” I said, stepping out and closing the door to just a crack behind me. 

“Oh, I know.” She handed me the receipt. “The old gallows used to be in these woods. They’d hang people far away from town so their spirits wouldn’t return home. People say the moths are the lost souls.”

“Oh, that’s an…interesting history lesson,” I said, trying to ignore the chill that shuddered down my spine. I reviewed the receipt, then withdrew ample cash to tip. But the pizza lady was still talking.

“When I was a kid, lights and weird sounds convinced everyone that these woods were haunted by the last person the town hanged. They called her The Quiet Witch and said she refused to die despite hours of dangling.” 

Her eyes seemed to light up as she warmed to her tale, and I shifted on the porch and glanced down again at the weird symbol she’d drawn as she kept talking, “One of my friends said he saw her up here one time while breaking bottles with his friends, but how could that be when they strung her up a hundred years ago?”

“Now, that’s the silliest Halloween story I ever heard.” I reached for the pizzas, but jerked back as a particularly large moth darted across my face.

The lady handed me the boxes as if she hadn’t noticed it. “Yeah. But a funny thing: The cops chased off an old lady when people broke ground for this place a few years back. Everyone thinks it was her.”

“Interesting,” I said, and ducked another moth. “Well, thanks for the pizza. You just made three kids very happy.”

“Of course, good Sir.” She bowed like a knight, her pumpkin antennas almost falling off. “Happy Halloween!”

“Ha, yeah,” I said. “Goodnight.”

I waited for her to return to her car before reentering and closing the door with my hips. The children had already poured down the stairs, so I brought their feast to the barrel table. For the next half-hour we treated ourselves to Caesar salad, jalapeno-poppers, and one large meatsa-pizza. 

I tried to ignore The Quiet Witch while cleaning up the paper plates, but I remained unsettled. It must have shown more than I intended, because Elizabeth took pity on me — after we’d teamed up for pajama-donning and brushing teeth, she volunteered to tuck the kids in.

I headed for the King and Queen’s Chamber, kicking off my hiking boots and stripping down to my briefs before flopping into the canopy bed. The rich fabrics of our red duvet, which matched the window blinds hugging our bedsides, comforted me as I checked my phone. What was a witch in the face of this presumed opulence? 

Then I sighed. A list of insurance emails I lacked the energy to read awaited. I put the phone down on my nightstand next to the dragon-shaped lamp, wormed up into my frilled pillow, and flipped on the television. Blair Witch, Hocus Pocus, and other seasonal movies littered the screen. 

I groaned, flipped the television back off, and closed my eyes. A tapping on the glass caught my ear — the moths must have been trying to get through the window to my dragon lamp.

“I’m never going to get any sleep,” I muttered. The moths must have agreed, because the tapping grew louder.

Maybe their tapping lulled me, or maybe the day just finally came down to rest its full weight on me, but my eyes did at last grow heavy, and I faded into a light sleep. My mind no longer considered or responded to anything, but at some point I heard the cottage’s door beep, the jingle of car keys as my wife collected them, and the start of our SUV. 

Then an odder sound shook me from my slumber. A whiskey-rough, campfire-dry voice whispered from the walls.

“It’s my turn to be here,” said the voice. “Be gone.”

My eyes flipped open as a creaking from the stairwell approached.

“They didn’t make it ten minutes,” said Elizabeth, entering the room. “Are you sleeping with the lights on?”

“Did you say something a minute ago?” I asked, sitting up to prove my wakefulness. “Thought I heard someone talking.”

“No, but I played some stories for the kids on my phone. You probably caught Old Mother Goose.”

“They don’t find this place creepy?”

Elizabeth shook her head and started to change into her nightgown. “Not so long as Bau and Astrid sleep with them. Why do you ask?”

“I think it’s a bit weird.”

She grinned as she glanced around the room. “It’s different. But we can find someplace else.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s cheaper than the pizza!” I sighed and rubbed a hand over my face. “Everything else is going to be expensive.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “Then weird is what we’ll be. Maybe we can rent a house once we get the insurance check.”

“Ugh, I don’t even want to talk about it.”

“Pizza was good.” She pulled back the vibrant duvet and climbed into bed.

“Yeah. “ I leaned back, hesitating for a moment before deciding to share what was really on my mind. “The pizza lady said a witch lives in these woods. Kind of creepy.”

Elizabeth laughed. “You need sleep. All these problems are making you come up with fresh problems.”

“You know me.”

“Mind if I read a bit before you turn off the light?”

“Knock yourself out,” I said, putting a pillow over my head.

In the ensuing silence, Elizabeth asked, “What’s that clicking?”

“Moths,” I muttered from under the pillow.

I let myself drop back to sleep, eventually reaching that prologue of dreams where thoughts take shape without plot. I lingered there for a moment before my wife tapped me on the shoulder.

“Okay, all done,” Elizabeth said. “You can turn the light off.”

I did as instructed, fumbling with the switch. The room went dark, and I tried to return to my marked page of rest. But reason caught up to me as the clicking of moths on the windows continued. As if she read my mind, my wife spoke.

“I thought you said that was moths?” she asked.

“I did,” I said, turning to face the windows. “Why are they still tapping?”

It occurred to me that I’d never checked to confirm. I sat up, looking at the drawn drapes. I stood, and assuming the mundane, pulled the curtains open. 

What I saw defied all expectation.

An ancient crone’s nose pressed against the glass, inches from me. A scattering of teeth punctuated her mouth, and her eyes, devoid of expression, stared right through me. She wore a Gryffindor blanket like a cloak, roofed in moths, and her long neck showed the purple scars of what appeared to be rope burn. 

She clicked her long, broken fingernails against the glass again, and spoke in a low, grinding voice.

“It’s my season,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Holy—!” I fell backwards.

“What? What is it?” My wife leapt out of bed.

“There’s someone out there,” I said, yanking the curtains closed. “Get the freaking kids.”

Elizabeth raced upstairs. I listened to the hag, unsure how to proceed. She continued to ramble, but I couldn’t make out any more of the grinding words. 

The dogs, released from the kids’ bedroom, ran down the stairs. They stopped at our bedroom doorway and started barking, the hair on their backs rising. I heard the woman give a guttural growl. The tapping stopped. 

Now I was terrified. I jammed on a pair of pants and hurried to the kitchen to grab my keys, but they were gone. I shoved my wallet into a pocket as Elizabeth came down holding Adair in her arms, with Aster and Eden plodding groggily at her sides.

“Where’s the keys?” I asked.

Elizabeth stared at me. “You had them. You drove.”

“You went to the car to get your book,” I said. “I heard you.”

“No I didn’t,” she said. “I had my book in my luggage.”

I rushed to the front of the house to look out the dining-room window. Our SUV stood waiting, spun around to face the exit with its headlights on. In the light of the porch lamp, I saw that the symbols drawn in the dust had multiplied and now covered the entirety of the cement. 

Clenching my jaw, I retrieved the sword from the mantel, then approached the door. The dogs scratched at the entrance, growling, and I decided that keeping them unleashed would buy us some time. They were well-trained. They’d come back when I called. I met Elizabeth’s eyes.

“When I say ‘go’, we run,” I said. “Got it?”

“Dad, what’s going on?” asked Aster.

“Just listen to Dad,” said Elizabeth, squeezing Adair a little tighter in her arms.

“Go,” I said.

I opened the door, and the bite of night took my breath away. Bau and Astrid rushed out, snarling into the darkness while we hurried to the car. I checked inside, but the vehicle stood empty, the dash’s blue lights coloring its interior. 

With the replica sword readied, I opened one of the back doors. Elizabeth hurried the children in, clicking Adair into his child’s seat and confirming that the others had fastened themselves correctly. 

Meanwhile, I ran around to the back, opened the liftgate, then called the dogs. Bau and Astrid did as commanded, hackles still high. After securing them, I sped back around to the driver’s side and leapt in.

Our hood hosted an army of moths, wings fluttering as if ready for flight. A symbol like the ones on our porch had been drawn in the windshield film. I put the car in drive and jammed on the gas.The SUV bucked forward. We raced out of the renaissance village, reaching the gate with impetus. 

And there, posted at the gate’s pillar, stood the old hag. Her lips moved as she mumbled, and the moths from our hood flew off to return to her. I didn’t look back as we rushed past, on our way to the highway. Only when the lights of the expressway illuminated our car did a feeling of safety finally wash over me.

“Who was that, Dad?” asked Aster, her voice barely more than a whisper.

“The Quiet Witch,” I said.

We reported the issue to management, and then the police for good measure. Much to my chagrin, both parties wrote it off as a drifter playing a Halloween trick. We spent the night at Elizabeth’s sister’s house, bought some necessities the next day to replace what we’d left at the cabin, and the ecstasy of Halloween at Aunt Ashley’s neighborhood helped the kids move on. 

Each time we retold the story, some of the eeriness dripped off. We received a refund for the cabin and got our luggage back a few days later, then the insurance check arrived soon after. And for the next few months, we lived in an ordinary rental, free of nightmares until we could return home. 

Everyone we told wrote that evening off as a spooky story that held more circumstances than facts.

But not me.

I knew who visited us that night. And as if she never wanted me to forget, a moth awaited me on my car’s windshield each morning on my way to work from then on. 

But no one believes me. The stress has made my voice as frail as hers, and I think The Quiet Witch likes it that way. Much as her soul, the hag’s lesson is everlasting. She wants me to remember that some places are best left alone over the Halloween season, and that ignoring such forewarnings means relentless reprisal.

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Ready for more spooky tales? Try these!

• The Night Library of Sternendach – Book Review
• Attention: Important Public Safety Announcement – Flash Fiction
• His Halloween Mask – Poetry
• Of Bats and Ravens at the Black Orb – Fiction