When R. M. Greta and Hylia announced their Hallowtide project, I knew I had to contribute. Make sure to check out the project details here and then enjoy the other ghoulish delights whipped up for your delectation.
Subject: Re: Ethnographic Research Project
Body:
Hi Shauna and Melissa,
My name is Ed Sherman, and I lived in Hallowtide back when I was a kid. We moved away when I entered high school, but I still remember my time there (not with any particular fondness, I might add). My friend, Steve Elias, thought I might want to contribute to your project and forwarded me your information and email addresses. I hope it’s okay to reach out electronically — you won’t catch me setting food in Hallowtide voluntarily.
Anyway, Steve mentioned that you wanted to know if anyone who’d lived in Hallowtide had any “weird experiences”. I mean, just living there kind of counts, right? Haha. But in all seriousness, I do have something I’d like to share. It’s haunted me for years now. I’ve done my best to forget it, but sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse of a looming, shrouded figure, or there’ll be a dark blur of motion at the corner of my eye, and I’m right back there again. I hate it. I wish I could cut it the fuck out of my gray matter with a knife, you know?
Do you remember when Lilly Rainwater died? Little dark-haired girl, probably in the 6th grade? Melissa, you might recall that. You went to Burningdale Middle with me. I’m not sure if you remember me or not, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.
I remember when she disappeared like it was yesterday: October 11th. It felt like it had been raining for a month. There were posters up everywhere, the ink running down the gray, disintegrating paper from the constant wet. I remember search parties going out in the never-ending downpour and coming back empty-handed.
The rain finally let up on the 14th, but then the fog rolled in and decided to stay. Walking home from school felt like trekking through some ancient tomb, what with the fog and damp and tree trunks like fucking temple pillars.
They found Lilly in Godswood Park on the 15th, shrouded in fog and moss and blood.
The turf ended at the back of the park, and the earth sloped down like a jagged wound, a drop-off of probably 10 or 15 feet, littered with boulders and scree. The woods started right at the bottom, like the trees were trying to get up the hill to recolonize the land that had been taken from them. Her little body lay there in that no-mans-land, broken and bent across a boulder. I remember the blood on the stone was a couple of shades darker than the hoodie she wore.
Sheriff Billings ordered a town-wide curfew, and deputies and armed parents patrolled the streets. Like that mattered; most folks weren’t going to let their precious babies out of their sight with a kid killer on the loose. That was lockdown. But there was also this weird sense of freefall. We knew Lilly. We’d talked to her. Hell, I walked her home from school a few times when Becky Sanders and her gaggle of sycophants had her in their sights to torment. Knowing she was dead but not how or by who or fucking why… it felt like going crazy.
Sheriff Billings liked John Acre for it. Dumbass (the sheriff, not John). Word got around that John and Lilly had been seen together a day or so before she went missing, and the sheriff thought there was something hinky going on there. It didn’t help that John was a metalhead and looked the part (long hair, pentagram necklace, studded leather bracelets, demons on his T-shirts, etc.). Why do these small-town bozos always assume that metalheads are the bad guys?
They hauled John off to the station for questioning, but the problem was, he didn’t do it. It was someone else. I feel bad for Sheriff Billings in a way, because he never caught the killer, and no one ever will.
I saw what happened.
I was walking home from school on the 20th. It was so dark, and I was hurrying through the damned fog. I was by myself, and my mom would have had a fit had she known. I cut through Godswood Park, trying to shave off a few minutes. My old house was just on the other side, but to get there from the school without going through the park, you had to walk like two miles out of your way.
I was along the park’s fall line, right where Oakheart Trail comes up from the woods and drops you smack on the green. The drop off started on my right and ran off into the mist. Right where the trail comes out on the green, I managed to trip over a tree root half-hidden in the mist. I went right down on my face, hard. It hurt like crazy; I’d skinned my knee and somehow managed to bust my lip, so I lay there for a minute trying not to cry. And then I heard voices.
“I guess you’re wondering why I asked you to come here.” It was a woman’s voice. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“I was kind of curious.” The second voice was male, young-sounding, and also familiar.
“I know what you did, Craig.” That’s why I knew the male voice. It was Craig Billings, the sheriff’s son. He was in high school, so we didn’t hang out often, but everyone in town knew him. How could you not? He was a Grade A dickhead.
“I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs. Rainwater,” Craig said. And there was the second identity. Weona Rainwater, Lilly’s mom.
There was a pause then. I struggled into a sitting position and wiped the blood off my lip. I could just make them out— wrapped in fog, standing along the drop right above where Lilly’s body had been found. Craig was only 16, but he was already a full head taller than Mrs. Rainwater. Lilly had taken after her.
“What I don’t know is why,” Mrs. Rainwater said. She turned and stepped closer to Craig. I wanted to cry out, to make her stand back, but I couldn’t. “Why did you kill Lilly?”
“What?” Craig’s voice was incredulous, but something darker lay beneath that tone. “Look, lady, I don’t know what you’re on about, but I had nothing to do with—”.
“Cut the shit. I know. You need proof? You were wearing that godawful Steelers jersey that you always wear. But you fucked up and got blood on it and were worried about your daddy testing the fabric. You burned it a couple of days later, out past Devil’s Rock.”
Craig’s mouth hung open for a second. “H-how could you possibly know that?”
Mrs. Rainwater shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it? The point is that I know, and I’m going to make sure that you can never do that to anyone else’s daughter ever again. But first, I need to know why. Why, goddamn it?”
Craig glanced around, no doubt looking for witnesses. The fog was rolling in thicker and must have hidden me, because he turned back to Mrs. Rainwater. “Because I could, you fucking squaw. I stabbed that little bitch in the stomach, and I watched her bleed out.” He reached for something in his coat. “And I’ll do the same for you!” He found what he’d been looking for. There was a flash of silver in the fog, and he lunged for Mrs. Rainwater. I must have cried out, but no one heard me with what happened next.
Mrs. Rainwater just stepped out of Craig’s path, like he was moving through molasses. And then she was chanting something. I don’t know the language; it wasn’t English, and it sounded old. Craig recovered from his miss and went to stab at her again, but she had finished her chant and, with her last syllables, Craig was finished with his life.
Suddenly, there were three figures with fog twining around them. Mrs. Rainwater stood there with her hands raised in some sort of supplication to the heavens. Craig stood stock still, his Bowie knife still aiming for Mrs. Rainwater’s stomach. The third was tall and thin and cloaked in shadows and tattered wisps of fog. One hand reached out, fingers longer and thinner than the knife blade Craig clutched in his trembling hand. Those fingers pierced Craig’s chest, and there was a flash of putrid green light. The knife fell from his hands, and Craig crumbled to the ground, somehow smaller than he’d been in life.
Mrs. Rainwater kept her hands raised as Craig died. She was whispering something — someone was whispering something — but the dead air wouldn’t carry it to my ears. The tall, shadowy thing bent over Craig’s body, like a mother crane feeding her young. There was a horrid squelching, crunching sound, and I saw his body jerking. It took me a minute to realize it was eating him. It was eating Craig’s corpse, biting through bone and sinew and lapping up his fluids, and I couldn’t even fucking run away.
Mrs. Rainwater was still praying or chanting or whatever in that singsong whisper. I must have made some small sound. The thing that was eating Craig stopped, slowly cocked its head toward me, and all I could see were pale ghostlights where its eyes should have been. It felt like it was staring into me, like it was marking me somehow. I screamed then, for sure, and scrambled to my feet, before running like all the demons in Hell were on my heels.
I never told anyone about that day. As far as I know, Sheriff Billings never knew either truth about his son. It wasn’t long afterwards that we left Hallowtide. I was having the worst damn nightmares, and my mom wanted to give us a fresh start somewhere else.
I still see it sometimes, you know? Especially on foggy nights. Those ghostlight eyes burning, watching me, marking me. Sometimes I feel like it’s here, waiting. I wonder if I’ll ever be free of it, or if it will finally eat me like it did Craig Billings.
That’s probably enough from me. I hope this is something like what you were looking for and that it adds to your project. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.
Sincerely,
Ed Sherman
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