Member-only story
Elne Is Empty, but All the Devils Are Here
A hand to hold on Halloween
When the lights go out, everybody screams
This is the point. To be scared, but to know deep down that you’re safe.
The roller coaster. The sports game. The thrills and chills you can get from pretending it matters. From all the way out on the edge of the cliff, because you know there’s a net underneath, ready to catch you.
Except nets are mostly holes.
It takes time to learn that.
Halloween is for kids. A time to play with fear, to encounter monsters and learn how to defeat them. But when you live in a fantasy, you don’t know the difference. When they see a devil, they see the real thing. An actual monster, not some man in a mask with blisters and rent payments and weekend custody of his kids.
When the lights go out, everybody screams.
The devils ululate. The drums kick. The whole town turns red with flame, and fireworks crackle in curtains of falling sparks, and something seems to step through the darkness, into the living world, like a coin balanced on its edge to become a portal to something nameless and ancient and dangerous.
