| FELO-DE-SE |
| Eventually, our boy came upon the designated spot. It was nightfall by then, and the scene was feebly lit by a crescent moon, which shown like a luminous harvester's sickle, poised to crash down from the blackness, as if it were surreptitiously whipped out from the folds within the robes of the Grim Reaper. The first thing he discerned under this limited light was a stout figure standing in front of a road sign which pointed in all directions. He seemed to be agitated and he kept muttering about the "blasted arrows". The boy cautiously approached the man, who was clothed in a frock coat, knickers, and a powdered wig--all of which had seen better days. Upon closer inspection, he saw that about the man's neck was a filthy bandage, and the front of his shirt was all covered in, what appeared to be, a dark russet sputum. Gingerly approaching the old fellow, he cleared his throat, startling the man and causing his jowls to quiver, and his eyes to pop. "Halloa there," he shouted in surprise, "and who might you be, a-wandering thro' these parts at this ungodly hour?" (Note that he actually said, "who might thou be?" but to spare ye, dear readers, from having to wade through a mess of antiquated pronouns and verb tenses, all of this spirit's grammar, as well as that of the rest of the spooks in this phantasmagoria, shall be translated as closely as possible into the modern vernacular; leaving in, of course, any colorful phrases, which might add some flavor to the tale.) "I am Amos," answered the boy, "and I was sent here by a wood spirit to find someone at the crossroads." "Well, whatever for, my boy?" "To talk about suicide." "Ah, the less said the better on that one." "But I was told someone could help me, and that there'd be more than one person to talk to as well." said the boy, with the slightest choke of a sob in his throat. "Quite right master Amos," sighed the old fellow, "quite right indeed. The name is Quirk," Then, looking over to a mound of purposefully piled stones along the roadside, he pointed and exclaimed: "and that is where lies my corse, resting till the Day of Judgment, kept down by yon stones so that it may not rise to vex the living." "Your corse?" What's a corse?" questioned Amos. "Why a corse is a corpse, or course." "A corpse?" "Which is to say I'm dead." "Oh." "As I fear you must be as well, if you can see me and not tremble. As for others, under our feet there is Mumbles, who is pinned to the ground with a stake thro' his heart, but he hasn't bothered to let his spirit wander for some time now. He was weary of trying to decide which path to take into town, and concluded that even if he found his way there, he would never be able to grasp anything or anyone in his spirit form. After his loved ones passed on, he decided it was not worth the effort anyway. "Down the road a stretch, is the spirit of a scoundrel, who was so much like the Devil himself, that he went by the moniker of Sam Hill. It was said he murdered a lass because she would not give him her heart. He vowed that if he could not have it, no other man would; so he clove her asunder and stole it from her young breast, like a bloodthirsty lycanthrope! Well, when her menfolk discovered this dastardly deed, they swore vengeance. The cutthroat, coward that he was, reserved a pistol shot for himself. The family, cheated out of retribution, demanded that he be placed in a gibbet and hung along the roadside so that he might never find rest in the hereafter. He tends to keep to his part of the road, and we don't mind a bit, do we Mumbles?" At the prompt, there was a barely audible grunt of affirmation rising from the ground beneath their feet. Wide-eyed, and with mouth agape, the boy jumped up moving his long legs in a piston-like motion, which rather resembled a pantomime's jog. "What was that?" "That was Mumbles. He doesn't come out anymore; he just stays in his grave. He occasionally likes to comment on things, however, but there's none that can really discern a thing he says--hence the moniker--because he speaks from behind still lips and a spadeful of earth! "I don't understand why he'd want to stay in his husk all of these years, at least two hundred by now, but there it is, that's old Mumbles for you." "How did he come to be buried in this way?" "Well, what I gather from all these years mumblings, it seems he was very devoted to his wife, whom he lost to consumption. He was so mad with grief that he took laudanum to reunite with her as quickly as possible. What he didn't realize, at the time, was that by taking his own life, he forfeited his only chance to join her." "That explains the suicide, but why the stake through his heart?" "We cannot be seen by mortals, except after the witching hour, and even then only around our burial grounds. Likewise, we cannot grasp any matter, nor can we be felt, save for as a chill when in one's immediate vicinity. All this changes around the night of All Hallow's Eve. On this night the veil between the world of the living and the dead is thinnest; all spirits are made tangible, and can be seen, heard, and felt. On such a night, old Mumbles, here, tried to move his body to the churchyard so he could bury himself near to his beloved. Upon reaching the gate, he was stopped by the sentinel spirit of the last person to be interred there..." "Interred?" "Buried, my boy, buried!" "Anyway, he spent the whole night arguing with the spirit, who would not let him in. By sunrise, he had lost his ability to carry his coil, and his grip faltered. He was found by the grave digger that morning, who took him by the roadside here, put him back in his grave, and drove a stake thro' his heart, to keep him from ever getting up again. "His family heard about the whole ordeal, and came, secretly, to his grave to mourn him and lament this egregious act of vandalism, as his disinterment seemed to them to be. He heard their grief at his passing, and learned that the loss of his love and guidance around the household was a pain and a burthen to his loved ones. He then realized the selfishness of his act, and how it hurt those that survived him. He tried to console them, but they could not really see, hear, feel, nor sense his presence in any way; this compounded his own feelings of sadness, loss, and even guilt. After a while, they stopped coming around and, eventually, he surmised that they had followed his dear wife into the hereafter. That is when he decided to just lie in that ditch, perpetually pinned, like a specimen in a collector's box, until the Great Day. Can you imagine what it is like to have a stake stuck thro' one's heart for over two centuries?" "Please, I dated Gothilocks for about two months; so believe you me, I know a thing or two about heartache!" "I see...well, be that as it may, it is still rather a very unpleasant predicament to find oneself in, to say the least." |