October 31 - Someone who has passed to the other side

All Hallow’s Eve. Ginny often felt that people forgot the origins of this night, masquerading instead behind a glut of sweet candied treats and well-meaning tricks, perhaps because the truth was too frightening for them to admit. Child’s play, no harm here. People forgot that it began as a pagan ritual celebrated among the Celtic tribes of Great Britain, who knew the truth. That on October 31, magic is at its most potent, and the worlds of the dead and the living overlap. That on that night the deceased can come back to life, or the living can join the ranks of the dead. These spirit-fearing Celtic peoples devised means by which they kept their ghosts and ghouls at bay. Bonfires were lit, and masks were warn so that the living would look like just one more of the dead when they ventured from their homes, to placate them, to scare them away. To blend in with them. The young children now who dressed as superheroes and black cats, fairies and pop singers – there was no placation in that. A K-mart purchased costume did not set a spirit’s vengeance at bay.

Oh how the Puritans despised this holiday, its pagan origins, its fearful connotations, thus delaying the observance of the holiday in America for years while the Irish and Scottish and British already reveled and shouted defiance at the goblins on the other shores of the Atlantic. When All Hallow’s Eve did reach tentative tendrils into America, it quickly was corrupted, the name forgotten and shortened to Halloween, the rituals subsumed into consumerism, the buying, the grinning jack o’lanterns and the office mixer parties, where the liquor was black and the cupcakes had orange frosting. What would the ancient Celts say to that? Would the witches lift their spells just because the populace had ceased to believe?

Ginny loved the lore of Halloween; her mother had always believed in witches and black magic, and when Ginny was a child, Mary O’Reilly had dusted her daughter’s head with salt on Halloween before sending her trick or treating with the neighborhood children, lest the evil spirits come out to get her. The salt made Ginny sneeze, and she hated the ritual when she was young, but as she grew up and saw the blatant commercialization, the disassociation from the origins of the night, she found herself longing for such a belief. She hated that costume parties had become an excuse for women to debase themselves. Sexy witch! said the costume racks. Sexy doctor! Sexy cat! Might as well walk around as a sexy construction cone or a sexy monkey. Were women so easily maneuverable, forgetful that they had the agency to be sexy the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the year without being condemned to a curse on their sexuality. Ginny was tired of the charade. She wanted an authentic costume, something that called up the true spirit – literally – of the holiday. Or un-holy day, as it were.

The day before Halloween, she still hadn’t settled on a proper costume. She was walking through the Village when she saw a strange sign outside the herb shop she passed on a regular basis, though she had only stopped in once, and that to buy hibiscus flower for a recipe. Witch on duty, the sign stated. Ginny hesitated a moment, then opened the door. A tinny bell signaled her entry.

The walls of the shop weren’t frightening or black, she noted with relief, but were instead lined in purple velvet, and the small square space smelled thickly of musky incense. The woman who looked up from behind the counter didn’t have warts on her nose, or long inky black hair; it was long, but it was a deep chestnut color. Perfectly normal.

“Can I help you?” she asked in a lyrical voice. Ginny gave a start. Normal except for her left eye, a pale blue that had not one but two coal-colored irises vying for space in the center. Ginny made herself take a step forward.

“I was hoping for an authentic costume for a costume party,” she admitted nervously. “I thought you might be able to help.”

The woman – witch – gave a laugh; there was no cackle to it, so Ginny took another step forward.

“You want to pass to the other side, is that it?” Ginny hesitated again, then nodded. The witch crooked a slender finger, summoning her beyond the boundary that normally separated a customer from an employee, and behind the counter. “Come downstairs. I have a few things that will fit you just perfectly.”

The dresses were beautiful, the incense even thicker down below. Ginny began to feel dizzy as the woman – witch? – laced up her corset. “Now here,” she instructed, before Ginny ascended the stairs once more. “You must drink down all this concoction and the outfit will be fully authentic.”

“A drink with an outfit,” Ginny laughed nervously. She sniffed warily, catching nothing more than an earthy scent, perhaps nutmeg. “What’s in it?”

“Beans, mostly,” shrugged the woman. “Drink up. You wanted authentic, didn’t you?”

Ginny left for the party the next day wearing a brocaded black dress, that cinched at the bodice before climbing to a ribbon at her bust in a criss-cross pattern. The petticoat, visible beneath the divided skirts when she moved, was the same rich purple that had adorned the walls of the herb shop. The cap was not pointy, merely a dark black snood that held her hair. The shoes were a toe-pinching black satin. Ginny caught sight of her reflection and shuddered at the effect. Before leaving the house, she sprinkled just a dash of salt onto her dark hair, the flecks glistening when she stepped outside.

The light of full moon flooded the streets, even though it was almost midnight. She heard the whisper of fallen leaves blowing along the sidewalks, across the roofs of the six-story townhouses. It sounded like the chatter of gossipy whispers, like those her mother had warned her of as a child. Leaves on the rooftop. A witch criticizing the inhabitants within.

The streets felt quiet, too quiet. Where were the young children gripping their parents’ hand with one fist, a goody bag with the other? Where were the adults clad in their skin-baring ensembles, their hemlines high, their gaiety higher? She saw a few people walking quickly, hands shoved in pockets, and picked up the pace herself.

The life within the party felt comforting after the silent sidewalks, music thumping to a deep bass beat, and Sexy This-and-Thats conferring with their male counterparts, who in turn wore plastic masks of past presidents or of ghastly beasts with fangs and tufts of fur over the eyebrows. People cackled with laughter over glasses of deep red punch, and picked at the popcorn balls that were offered on the caterer’s trays. Human revelry all around. Ginny sat on a stool near the bar and plucked idly at her dark skirt.

“Blood punch?” asked a bartender dressed as a Sexy Police Officer. Ginny acquiesced with a nod.

A man in an ape suit walked over to her, not even bothering to mimic a simian’s amble. “And what are you supposed to be tonight?” he asked.

“Someone who has passed to the other side,” Ginny said cryptically, copying the witch’s words.

“Ooh, creepy,” he said, wriggling his fingers spider-style, ten fat legs waving with menace. She cracked a polite smile.

Ginny pressed a hand against her forehead. “Excuse me,” she said, slipping from the stool. “I feel light headed, all of a sudden.”

King Kong let her go without protest.

By the next morning, she was in a coma. The doctors had no explanation for it, no trauma to the head, no injuries, no sudden mental episodes. On the twelfth day after Halloween, she passed to the other side.

“Inexplicable by modern science,” the doctors said, shaking their heads.

On a street in the Village, a woman with long chestnut hair and two irises in her left eye continued to peddle her wares.