The Morning After Halloween Night: A Short Story

The Morning After Halloween Night

     A cold October rain fell from a sky so overcast in dark clouds that the midday sky seemed more like dusk than noon. John sat at the base of an oak tree that was desperately holding on to its fall reddened leaves, though it was losing more by the minute as they fell to the onslaught of the weather. His clothes, what little he had left, were shredded and soaked, hanging in loose tatters around his shoulders, wrist, and waist. His shoes were long gone, to where he couldn't remember, and his hands were soaked in a viscous red icon now running in rivulets down his wrist and forearms before dripping from his elbows to the soggy ground.

"Johnny, don't go out." His grandmother's words were the last thing he could remember before the blackness swallowed his mind the night before. He couldn't remember anything after her warning except that he wanted to play with Billy before Halloween night was over. He came to in the woods outside of town some time ago and has sat there under the stubborn oak. He was staring at his red hands, trying to ignore a coppery taste in his mouth and the fullness of his belly. He felt sick but couldn't force himself to vomit for fear of what might come out of his mouth if he did.

He started at the sound of a twig snapping behind him and not so far off. "Oh Johnny, there you are, poor boy." Came the soothing and relieved sounding voice of his grandma.

"Gran-Gran, how did you find me?" he asked, bending around the trunk of the oak to see his aged grandmother coming towards him with an arm bag bulging with clothes, his favorite jacket poking a sleeve out of the top of the bag to reveal what was underneath it in the bag.

"OH Johnny, you silly boy. I followed the scent of blood, dear boy. When I found your kill, it wasn't hard to follow the scent on to you here now, was it?" she said as she came around the tree to stand before him. As he sat stunned at the words he just heard, she eyed him up and down with a critical eye. "The first transformation is always the roughest and usually the most fatal to the cursed, but you've survived and seem to be no worse for wear."

"I. I don't understand Gran-Gran, what blood, what kill?" he was confused, and his level of fright was quickly surpassing his level of shock as the words settled deeper on his mind. Transformation, kill, rough, deadly. He was sickened further and beginning to blanch as his confusion made everything worse.

"Why Johnny, if you would have listened to me last night and not gone out, I would have been able to explain what your 10th Halloween would mean for you." She sighed and tsked him as she pulled a jug of water out from under his coat in the handbag and opened it. "Here, let's wash you off a bit while I explain, and don't bother trying to sick up; you will never sick up again for the rest of your life, especially not heart's blood and meat. That's what makes you strong, Johnny dear."

She began washing his hands with the water from the jug, and Johnny sat stunned even further at not only her words but at the calm way she said them to him. Did she not hear herself talking about heart's blood and meat as if that were what went with the potatoes and peas for supper?

"Gran-Gran, what happened to me last night?" he asked in a trembling voice, afraid to hear her answer but knowing that he needed to listen to it or go mad from the confusion and fear. He noticed he wasn't cold, though. It was an odd observation his shocked mind latched onto at the moment in an attempt to hold him to sanity. He could see his and her breath misting the chill air, but he wasn't cold at all; even though he was practically naked and soaked in the freezing rain, he wasn't chilly at all.

"Well, Johnny, have you ever heard of a Rakshasa?" she asked, using some leaves to scrub his hands clean as she spoke.

"No, that's a weird word. What is it?" Johnny asked, curiosity starting to replace the fear as he rolled the word in his mind, "rak shas sah, rakshasa, rakshas sah."

"Well, for starters, it's what you became last night when you went out to play with that poor Billy kid. Ah yes, you will never see that boy again dear, you really should have listened to me last night when I told you not to go out." She was done with cleaning his hands and began to remove the strips of shredded clothing from his neck and shoulders.

"But, why Gran-Gran, it was my idea, don't blame him!" he said, his ten-year-old mind not grasping the context of her words and how she had meant them to sound.

"OH heavens no, Johnny, I'm not blaming him; you ate him is all. He will forever be a part of you on the inside, dear one." She said it as if he had lost a favorite hat out of the window of a car going down the road. There was no scolding to her tone, just grandmotherly love and apology for the loss of a hat.

"I ate him? No Gran-Gran, that isn't true!" he said, jumping to his feet, panic and fear spiking anew in him as he didn't mistake her words this time. "I couldn't have eaten Billy! I'm just a boy, not a monster." He felt the rough bark of the Oaktree bite into his back as his grandmother lashed out faster than he thought possible to push her delicate wrinkled hand into his chest and pin him backward against the tree before he could bolt off In his panic.

"Rakshasa, fool boy, not a monster. At least, not just any monster like a mere Werewolf. You were and are a Rakshasa. A devil's cat as the ancient priest used to call us when they remembered enough of their legends to know us and hunt us." He felt sharp claws start to dig into the flesh of his chest and looked down to see her hand changing.

She was using her right hand to pin him, but as he looked on in horror, he saw her thumb jerk and disjoint before crossing over the back of her hand and becoming a left hands thumb. Orange and black tiger-striped fur sprouted from her flesh, and talon-like claws grew from her fingertips as he watched. When she spoke again, her voice took on a preternatural growling rumble and drove all other thoughts from his mind.

"Look at me, Johnny, my dear; this is part of what you became last night when you went out and ate young Billy. Our family carries a blessing, or a curse if you don't embrace it, from the Dark Prince himself. We are Devil Cats, and every member of our family gains their blessing on the 10th Halloween of their life. If you would have stayed home," her face had taken on features like those of a human-like tiger with long fangs and fur. Her eyes were becoming golden orbs with feline black slit-like pupils and a reddish glow emanating from them as she stared into his human blue eyes.

"I would have been able to guide your first transformation and kept you from eating Billy. Now ill have to eat poor Mr. Kreiger myself since I had him stored in the basement for you." She sighed in a terrifying growling way and began to revert to her normal Gran-Gran form. Johnny was paralyzed with fear, and surprisingly to his horror, curiosity at the situation. "Now get dressed, and I will begin to teach you how to master your gift. My great-great Grandfather was the first to be blessed by the dark Prince back in Salem, and he took his lessons from the very same Dark Prince before he slaughtered the town clergy killing the other servants of the Prince. Hellish fun that was, he would always say."

Johnny dressed and followed his Gran-Gran out of the woods, listening to her stories of how their Bloodline became the sacred servants of the Dark Prince. Setting in motion things such as the American Revolution, or ended other things such as the unheard-of Second American Witch Hunt and Trials In 1812. He was to be the next generation, and he was going to do Gran-Gran proud.

The end.

Or is it?....