halloween story

Bettyhill in Winter was a very different place - hardly any light, lots of wind. Sometimes you’d see bits of sea foam wip past the window, sometimes you couldn’t stand up straight. By the end of October, summer was some distant memory of the sun and green things - every thing turned brown and grey by September. But for us it was the dark nights that were hyper real - that were magic - lots of games, lots of stories, lots of superstition. Halloween was absolutely the best night - we could stay out all night if we wanted to - spend ages on costumes and then destroy them in twenty minutes, soggy cardboard and paint that had run together. The boys would disapear early and roam round the village, dropping things down people’s chimneys, throwing gates, prams and bicycles down the cliffs. Tying doors together, painting windows black - mixing up the normal order - becoming evil spirits. There were special rhymes - a mix of Gaelic and English - and special rituals. The local minister had decided to tolerate it - there was nothing he could do about it really so he would have a Halloween party, say a prayer and hope no one was too tarnished by the experience. Then a new minister came - he was not a nice man. He refused to tolerate it - he was disgusted by the behaviour of the children, he thought the adults were pagans to allow such unchristian behaviour. He cancelled the Halloween party and said if anyone came to his door guising, he would refuse to answer - they would not bring such evil to his house. Three of us decided that this was shit - the minister was wrong. We nicked some masks off the younger children and went to pay the minister a visit. We wanted him to open his door, to recognise that this was the place he lived in, these things had been around much longer than him. The manse was the biggest house in the village in a garden of huge pine trees - the only real trees in the whole place. We stood on his doorstep for ages, but he wouldn’t answer the door. Just as we were leaving the policeman turned up - he claimed we were knocking on the minister’s door and running away - we weren’t running away we told him, we were guising, ‘a very legitimate activity’. He knocked on the minister’s door to ask him. He knocked for ages but was too stubborn to admit that we were right, so he had to keep going - he was doing our job for us. Eventually curtains moved and we saw a pale face looking out. He came to the door and opened it a little. No, he said, they hadn’t run away - they were guising. At that moment someone threw a massive firework into the garden. It lit up all the trees, the minister’s face, the policeman’s face, our masks. There were howls and shouts and laughter from beyond the gates - more fireworks followed lighting up the policeman as he made a dash for the road, trying to catch those ‘little bastards’ who had already disapeared into the dark.