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eBook Category: Dark Fantasy/Fantasy
eBook Description: Welcome to Alders, a very old town in New England where Halloween is a very special night. It's a little town with big secrets and dark stories. The story of the hair ribbon is such a story. Whether you journey through town on the Low Road along the Beelzebub River, or the High Road across Devil's Hill, you are strongly advised not to walk under a ladder or cross paths with a black cat. If you are wandering along the river some dark autumn night, don't be surprised if you hear the distant screaming of tormented souls. It takes getting used to. But then this is a town that nobody moves to, and those who are born here don't move away. Here is this year's Halloween Story from Alders, a little town where Halloween is not just an evening, but a whole season touched by brimstone and wonder.

eBook Publisher: Clocktower Books and Far Sector SFFH (magazine)/Far Sector SFFH, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2005

9 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [253 KB], eReader (PDB) [30 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [13 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [12 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [74 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [84 KB], hiebook (KML) [97 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [79 KB], iSilo (PDB) [10 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [13 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [61 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [21 KB]
Words: 3893
Reading time: 11-15 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Before I tell you the story of the hair ribbon, I must tell you a little about this little New England village, and what it's like on late October nights, when the leaves are down. With a cold wind smelling of wood smoke under a full moon that rides the barren hills, this town is full of stories with a distinct ripple of gooseflesh.

The village of Alders as recently as 2000 boasted exactly two traffic lights--one over the crossroads at each end of town. Each year on the Day of All Souls or the Eve of All Hallows (more commonly known in the secular community as Hallow E'en), high school students for generations have liked to play a prank. Since half the students in the small school volunteer with the Fire and Police Departments, they know how to do this, and the town's four constables pretend not to notice (because they did it when they were young). The kids ride to the outlying crossroads of town with a key to the stop light. They then turn off the normal green-orange-red sequence of lights, and just leave the orange light in the middle flashing. They paste on a few deftly cut strips of black plastic, and presto--a flashing jack o' lantern at either end of town.

Alders dates far back to the time when Tisquameket and other Native Peoples still hunted like shadows in the dense forests, and dour Puritans dressed in gray were hanging witches and black cats. Something else nobody talks about is that some of the English who sailed across in the 1600s were still secretly worshiping their own forest spirits, and liked to dance around the May Pole. The Irish brought with them their own Celtic spirit of Samhain--recalled in the carving of pumpkins, whose horrible grimaces and bright flickering candles drive away spirits.

Two kinds of spirits are abroad on this very powerful night. According to the ancient Europeans, evil spirits roam about seeking the ruin of souls. Also, the spirits of the unsaved dead wander the world seeking release, or so the Christian priests taught. And the next day, there is the Feast of All Saints, so presumably many of the unquiet dead found peace by midnight. One extremely ancient tradition from Italy, dating at least as far back as the archaic Romans of the Iron Age, was that a properly prepared shaman (streghe) could see the dead walking at crossroads on certain nights.