Once Upon a Midnight Dreary - A Halloween Story

[Gypsy]

Despite recently putting several stories on hold, I'm trying to coax my muse back out of its shell with something Halloween-themed.    Though I wish I could say I was ready to resume the stories I put on hold, and that I was back up to full writing speed, I'm not.  However, Halloween is rapidly approaching, and given that it's my favorite season and I love ghost stories ...  I thought I'd see if the balky muse might respond favorably to this inducement.  If, of course, I find the right partner to help bait that muse ... both in terms of story interest and posting compatibility.

This is meant to be a ghost story, so I'm asking for any potential partner to be willing to let me provide the ghostly elements while they provide a stranded motorist, a lost hiker or hunter, or someone out and about for reasons of their own who find themselves at this isolated cabin in the woods with a storm rolling in.

I'm also willing to relax my ons/offs to include more violent non-con potentially -- but if so, I would want this to be a dark and gritty story rather than a progression into dub-con/consensual. 



Once Upon a Midnight Dreary

The cabin was remote, tucked far back into the trees, and the road leading up to it was rough, more mud than gravel. A few saplings had taken root in the middle, still supple enough not to provide a barrier to the car, springy enough so that the sounds of them bending and scraping beneath the undercarriage had been foreboding enough to raise chill bumps as she drove along the bumpy surface. With the fallen leaves, if you didn't notice the one power pole that cut off from the county line, you might miss the turn entirely, since there was no mailbox. The marker that had been put up when the 911 service had been implemented had fallen off or been stolen, a macabre souvenir or a statement of resentment of government interference in an isolation that the locals who lived this far out seemed to prefer. Even in winter, it was difficult to see the cabin from the road, except for the tell-tale smoke that rose skyward when the wind didn't scour it away.

Anna loved autumn, and Halloween especially. To her, it had always been a celebration of innocence, of the thrill of a harmless scare wrapped in the certainty that nothing bad would really happen ... or at least that had been what she had once thought. Now she knew different. There was a Boogieman and he wore Versace, enjoyed Glinfiddich after work, and listened to Handel while he watched her with eyes that did not burn with fire, but rather were as cold and remote as a mountaintop in the heart of winter.

That was over now. She'd left Hell behind and the bruises had faded away, at least on the outside. Anyone looking at her walking through the fallen leaves, her boots making them skitter and crunch, gathering wood for the fireplace and stopping to smile briefly at a deer peeking at her from the cover of a holly tree might have guessed that she had come seeking refuge from some disappointment -- a failed relationship, a lost opportunity, a loved one passed -- due to her overly somber demeanor. Like the deer, the solitude was her camouflage, and the earth toned colors that she wore made her blend in with the landscape, freezing her beauty on in those rare moments of stillness.

There was rain in the air. It felt heavy on her skin, exposed as the loose sleeves of her sweater pushed up to her elbow. She could smell it when she stopped to catch her breath, and see it in the hint of redness in the sky as the sun dipped low, stealing the brilliance of the colors from the fire-painted leaves. It would be good to light a fire, and settle in with a cup of hot cocoa and one of the books that had been favorites during the summer months she had spent there with her family, when the worst fear she had was the closet door that often crept open in the middle of the night. A few more pieces of fallen deadwood to add to the growing pile of kindling that would help her start the driest pieces of wood from the old woodpile and she could head back, and continue the process of getting on with a better life.

A sound in the distance, the crack of a breaking branch had her whirling, sending the small branches she had already gathered to the ground. Her heart raced, and the bitter metallic taste of fear rose up into her throat as her head jerkily turned to survey the shadows. There, was that him, behind the trunk of the oak tree? Or there, in the shadow of a small hill? Or there, where the branches of a cedar tree rustled?

It was long moments before she could force herself to stop seeing him in every movement, every shadow, to draw a deep, shuddering breath, and gather up the wood that she had dropped in startled fear. It would get better; it would have to get better. Otherwise, the solitude she had believed would be a sanctuary would become just another prison, an empty grave with her her name carved upon the stone in grim expectation.