Halloween

October 31 1992 – Halloween

I had just decided to go for a stroll on the spur of the moment, no real grand plan for the way the evening was destined – just a means to get out of the house and away from the possibility of my night being ruined with the constant harassment of guisers – yeah guisers, I have always refused to call them “Trick or Treaters”, resisting the creeping Americanization of what, after all, was initially a Celtic festival – all tackily dressed in the same supermarket costumes and begging for type 2 diabetes and future dental bills. Halloween, one of those celebrations that I adored as a child but had grown to loathe as an adult. A reflection on the sad, privately reclusive man I had so effortlessly become.

It was just a short walk up to the Rhynie woods, located about half a mile outside the village and on the way I passed herds of children and harassed looking mums, never the dads I noticed, congratulating myself on the decision to get out of the house with every step. It was cold as hell, I felt I would piss red ice cubes if the glass of Merlot I quickly threw over before setting off decided to make a reappearance on the way, but my resolve was strong, nothing was going to deter me until I was sure all the children had given up for the night.

Rhynie wood itself was a place I went almost everyday as a child to build huts and explore and play, to trip over, to climb trees and occasionally fall out of them, to bruise and cry and then get up again; a pivotal place for us village kids to crash and burn so that we could live and learn. It was our very own enchanted forest back then, but I couldn't remember the last time I had been there at all, never mind on foot. I surprised myself by how quickly I got there and how the memories of the tracks meandering their way through the trees came flooding back. The pristine silence was hypnotic – only the icy breeze whispering through the conifer branches as a soundtrack. Perfectly, blissfully alone. Or so I thought.

Down by the banks of the burn that slowly trickled through the wood, only a matter of a few short metres away– there seemed to be a projection of a woman, like she was being beamed out from a 1940's cinema screen. I felt I could almost see right through her, such was her ethereal appearance. I was dumbstruck – the village was tiny, populated with only 300 or so simple souls and I had been born and lived my whole life there, yet I had never seen this girl before. And I would have remembered. She was the single most beautiful thing I had seen before or since. Gazing helplessly at her I realised that this was the first time I truly understood what beauty meant, it radiated from her like an electric current and I had about as much resistance to it as a shadow. I would have been happy if it had been left at that, but she looked up, still flickering like she could be switched off at any perilous moment, and she smiled at me. A smile that felt like the Sun coming out after a month of January evenings. “

“ she said still smiling, “that must mean it's Halloween”. “

” I replied with all the wit and insight of a guppy with mild concussion. She just smiled indulgently at me like I was a foolish child. I admit I was beginning to feel like one and I didn't care. “

?” I awkwardly asked, struggling for any reason to keep this conversation going. “

” was her somewhat perplexing reply. It was making less and less sense but I didn't care – she could start making up words, picking them out of a hat and mangling them together and I would have still believed every single one. “

”. “

” she replied gesturing around about the woods growing gloom and darkness, now using the tones of someone talking to an imbecile, that glowing smile however, never leaving her pale pink lips. “

” I blurted out confused and disorientated. “

” was her cryptic reply. Just as I opened mouth my to inquire what she meant she placed her finger over my lips as if to shush a child and turned and faded into the woods dark recesses. I tramped back home – exulted and confused. Reinvigorated, re-energised and bewildered. I couldn't quite get my head around what had just happened, but I was as sure as hell I wanted it to happen again.

October 31 1992 Halloween

Over the course of the year I had begun to doubt myself and of what had happened that night. Of course I had – I prided myself on being a rationalist, a simple man, but a man of logic and reason, of science and philosophy – so surely there had to be a plausible explanation for my spectral encounter that evening, but as the days and months ticked by I couldn't help myself from getting excited by the prospect of Halloween again and with greater fervour than I had ever experienced as a kid on my birthday and Christmas combined. As soon as the light began to dim I set out for the walk back to the woods – only this time I had a bag laden with sweets to give to the children I passed on the way. I'm sure the kids I walked by received enough chocolate treats on my journey to ensure that voyeuristic, exploitative Channel 5 documentaries about their superhuman blood sugar levels would be made within days. As the street lights faded and I was on the last few steps up to the entrance of the wood – I began to feel slightly foolish. And then ... “

” she said with a smile I could feel all the way down my spine. “

” was all I could sputter out.  

1993 – 2011

That's how it began – that's how I met and fell hopelessly in love with the woman in the woods; it's Guardian, who had been there since the trees had spouted out of the earth and who will remain to look after them until they die, to tend to their wounds - like the initials carved into them by teenagers too enraptured in their own first love to recognize the damage they are doing to the very trees that help them breathe. I know to you it sounds like a poor deal – a woman I could only see for a few hours once a year. Let me assure you I would not have swapped those hours once a year for any other woman at any other time or place on earth. Not a single precious second. Don't get me wrong – my life moved on. I got a new job down south and carved out a respectable career in a job that provided me with a comfortable lifestyle, if little satisfaction. I made new friends and experienced all the usual up and downs and disappointments that are an inevitable part of the tapestry of life, but always, always made sure that I had Halloween booked off so I could make an annual pilgrimage to Rhynie woods. Even if it meant I had to work on Christmas day and Hogmanay and every other holiday inbetween, it was worth it. To experience immaculate, unblemished joy provided all the nurture my previously blackened soul and heart could take. Life was indeed good!

October 31 2012 Halloween

It had been a busy

year, busier than normal but I had coped and even won a promotion and as the summer faded into dying embers of late September and October was gearing up to begin it's Autumnal countdown to Halloween, I was tired and more ready than ever for my rejuvenating evening with Rhynie woods glorious Guardian. At least that's what I kept telling myself. But the train journey back up through the Highlands was normally where my expectation would grow like that of schoolchild the night before going to Disney World – but this time I was more subdued than usual. I checked into the village hotel and into the same room I always got, comforted and depressed that it had never changed in the entire decade or so that I had a need to use it. But it was immediately apparent that the village had changed irrevocably. The bar on the ground level only normally had a couple of regulars nursing a pint of crappy lager and a whisky if they were feeling flush, but tonight it was throbbing. Not with anyone I recognized either, they looked like workmen enjoying a night of drinking after a hard day. Well who can blame them. We all need to let of steam from time to time. Or at least that's what I told myself. After showering and ritually throwing over a glass of Merlot, I made my way up to the woods but didn't see any children or harassed mums this time. As I got closer I could see why. I could see the heavy machinery, the bulldozers, the safety cordons and the cement and concrete. But I couldn't see any trees. “

” - the softest words I ever heard, like an Autumn breeze I only dreamed. And there she was flickering more than ever, fading away right before my eyes, until she was gone, before we even said goodbye.

The End