“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth. In guts they beetle-scurry, creep, thread, filter, motion, make all moons sullen, and surely cloud all clear-run waters. The spider-web hears them, trembles – breaks. Such are the autumn people. Beware of them.” ~Ray Bradbury “Something Wicked This Way Comes”
I’ve been so busy dealing with Puca this past week, and everything else the weeks’ before, that I’ve more or less missed the entire month of October this year. I’m having a hard time not crying about that. This is my favorite time of year, the month of my heart’s home, and here we are, at the end of it, and I’ve barely been able to get outside, let alone do much of anything involving seasonal activities or adventures. Going to have to make up for it the rest of the year, so I’m sorry to anyone who missed the memo that I am one of the Autumn People.
We have been watching Guillermo del Toro’s “Cabinet of Curiosities” on Netflix, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is a series of horror stories, and it is done by del Toro, so understand that it is, in fact, horror, and extremely detailed, well done horror at that. We’ve got two episodes left, and I’ve enjoyed each one immensely. It’s hard for me to find a good horror that I can just relax into and enjoy, without getting annoyed at bad effects, reliance on jump scares or excessive use of fake blood, etc., so this has been an utter delight.
I’m going to try and get out for a little bit today, so I don’t miss Halloween itself, at least. I need to dance with the ghosts to the sound of the rattling bones of the bare trees, fill my lungs with the smell of rotting leaves and woodsmoke. I need to feel the cool, sharp edge of the wind on my skin as it whispers of the coming darkness and lose myself in the piercing blue of the sky.
If I can, I’ll also try and at least hunt a bag of cider donuts and bring them back home, because there needs to be cider donuts somewhere in all of this.