In honor of the upcoming scariest month of the year (and due to my lack of updating this site in several weeks) I've decided to challenge myself with writing a scary short story each week of October, culminating (hopefully) with an appropriately scary story for Halloween itself.
It's gonna be hard.
To get the ball rolling, here is an excerpt from a longer piece I'm working on (and, as always, will likely never finish).
The Horseman was many things. Some say he was a demon, hell bent and heaven damned to haunt the glen of Sleepy Hollow, preying on the souls of foolish young men. Others say he was a ghost in the night, forever cursed to hunt for his missing head among shadows and moonlight. Monster, superstition, demon, ghost, legend. For all that they called him, the Horseman was - above all things - hungry. Hungry for souls and sunlight, hungry for hatred and hearts, hungry for humanity. And oddly enough, hungry just a little bit for pumpkin spice.
He had changed as much as the seasons over the years. In that he was still the same, but with each advance of the calendar he gained a little something new, another layer to his already layered soul. He had traded his mount some time ago for a new kind of stallion, and his headless shoulders balanced a burnished black helmet with a shadowed visor instead of a glowing orange squash. It was much easier this way. Gone were the days when he could feed his hunger with a wild ride across the country roads, chasing down superstitious school teachers with fire and lightning at his command. In this age of electricity and internet, there was simply no place for superstition to fester and grow. Now, he had to be creative.
Normally, he slept through the showers of spring and the heat waves of summer to greet the world at the first fall of autumn’s leaves. For it was autumn when he flourished. When, ironically, he felt the most alive, even when everything else was ready to fall away. He had heard it spoken once, this feeling during the latter months of the year. Things are too full of life in the spring months. In the summer, they’re too strong and won’t let go. Autumn’s the time. In autumn everything is tired and ready to die.
How appropriate.
The long first days of August were coming to a close, the dredges of summer blown away by thick gales of wind and fury. September was here and gone, a momentary stutter before autumn settled in for good. The horseman liked to wander - and oftentimes he was forced away in order to feed - but he always returned for the start of fall. Here, the bright October moon climbed higher in the sky and the nights grew colder and longer. Nestled in the little valley on the east bank of the Hudson river, the people of Sleepy Hollow were shuttering their windows and boarding up their barns. Harvest was over, the hunter’s moon was waxing. Hunger was setting in, and the Horseman was home.
Hope you liked it, stay tuned for more!
(The quote about autumn is from The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss - go check him out, he's a fantastic writer!)
:) Kathryn