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The 2023 Halloween Parade

by Alasdair Stuart

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This year you pass through a stone arch to reach the Parade. The churro stand is to one side, the bouncer to the other. You can’t quite tell if the bouncer is checking if you’ve been to the churro stand or if you’ve got your wristband. You do know both are pointedly ignoring the plate of raw meat on a nearby small table. There’s a notice, the familiar bone coloured paper and Silian rail, reading ‘Please take your seats. The Parade is about to begin.’ You walk through the arch and see…

The Director. Standing on the road in front of us, her voice in our ears as though she was speaking into a microphone. We all know she isn’t. We sit and eat our churros and watch as a young woman in a red hood appears. She moves cautiously and some of the audience, those above a certain age, chuckle as they recognize the first piece of this year’s puzzle. Then she drops her hood and looks around; a young black woman wearing a respirator. The first puzzle piece, yes, but a new take on the old story. Behind her, but not following her, a polite, befuddled looking man is led down the road by a colleague. You cannot help but notice they are both in black and white.

The large doll follows, skipping and dancing around her human with precision glee and machined love. One of the two women she’s dancing around looks furious, determined, constantly moving her gaze to possible exits, possible weapons. The other is young, face daubed with blood, a colossal dog by her side. She moves directly towards her destination. The doll, you notice, gives her a wide berth.

The bear is a surprise. Possibly to the bear herself judging by the way she sprints and cavorts around the road. Now you understand why barriers were put up along the route. But as you watch this car-sized omnivore tumble with the broken grace of the narcotically enhanced, you find yourself wishing the fences were much, much taller. There’s a pair of guys following the bear, one clutching a ruined hand, the other nursing a broken heart. The guy with the bad hand makes eye contact, mouths ‘It’s cool.’ And you buy into it. You also don’t breathe out until the bear passes.

Two couples follow. The two husbands walk hand in hand, one of them with a bandaged head, the other holding a gun. They make eye contact with no one, not even each other. Their knuckles are white. Next to them, the young woman in the white dress soaked red with other people’s blood talks animatedly to a partner whose smile never quite reaches his eyes. As they pass, you catch small, hooded figures darting through the crowd. You try very hard to not look too closely.

The next group are… odd. There’s a family: a teenaged son with artistic hair, holding a painting under one arm. It’s not quite dry, deep, textured ragged blacks hinting at something beneath it. His girlfriend is carefully ignoring it, trying to draw his attention away, engaging his parents in a conversation that seems set to remind them they’re a couple, or could be again. Next to them, two men resembling nothing more than Mormon ghostbusters good naturedly bicker, and do so in a manner that suggests someone else is there with them. You can’t quite see her, but get a sense of warmth and kindness. Of something separate but present and ready to help.

The soldiers lead the next big float. All of them wearing similar outfits, similar cowls, all of them singing notes that no one you’ve ever met has reached before. Your sternum vibrates as they pass, the skies darken and clear. Three of them, you notice, walk hand in hand. Flowers spring up beneath them, every line of their frame thrumming with tension. They each smile so, so widely.

So is the child on the next float. She’s sitting on a couch seat, all red leather and diner bravado, next to a man who radiates sadness like an old fashioned radio tower sent forth lightning bolts. He’s staring everywhere but at her yet somehow his attention is always right there with her. The other girl, the one you know somehow he’s looking for, walks beside them. The front of her shirt is soaked with blood. Her hand brushes his shoulder. He doesn’t feel it.

This is not your first Parade. You know that on this night more than any other, the rules are a little different. That’s why you find yourself oddly comfortable with the thought of the dead girl, and why it’s such a shock when the younger boy behind her calls out in a French accent. She turns, as shocked as she is, and waves. The older man next to the kid, crossbow in one hand, flail in the other, has eyes that move like his counterpart on the red couch. Targets, weak spots, threats, exits.

The woman leading the next group, one half soldiers one half children, has a similar set to her shoulders, a similar look on her face. These are the survivors, and these survivors have lived long enough to realize they may, finally, have reached their struggle’s end.

The float’s rear guard, a woman on a horse, both wearing leather armor, and a bedraggled man in convict’s clothes, have a different energy. They’re in lockstep but can’t see each other. They’re looking for each other, you can see that, but they haven’t succeeded. Yet.

As they pass you hear, just for a moment, from every smartphone, static and a woman’s voice. Tired, traumatized, alive, moving.

History is not often a visitor to the Parade, but this year the prehistoric has made an appearance. A delightfully low tech, papier mache barrow and hillside leads the next float. The woman in sensible shoes and more sensible trousers standing next to it is clearly an archaeologist, as evidenced by her single trowel. The young girls playing on the barrow’s top are unconcerned with her; the strange small creature speaking to her, or the sudden flashes of purple light that emanate from somewhere inside the barrow. You smell meat and age. You taste the dust of history. Somewhere, a goat bleats. You eat your churros and don’t look up until this float passes, ignoring the horned shadows thrown upwards by the purple light, beating in time with an absent heart.

When you do, you see the befuddled man again, this time deep in conversation with two male golfers. One of them is soaking wet. Neither of them are entirely… present. You can’t quite make it out but if you had to guess, neither of them are entirely corporeal. Doesn’t seem to hurt their putting game though.

The hearse shouldn’t draw you up short but it does. It’s… crass. Unsubtle. A moment of omenic fatality in a parade that over the years you’ve come to view as a polite, if fanged, parlor game that welcomes you on the understanding that the lingua franca is metaphor. You note your response: shock, surprise, disappointment, anger in the space it takes for neurons to fire and chemicals to form. And in that same space? You see the befuddled man again. You hear the hearse driver cheerily yell ‘just room for one inside, sir’ and when you look again, the hearse? Is a bus. Just a bus.

The relief carries you through the next couple of vehicles. The old car with the short, intense Indian woman in the front, the living embodiment of rugby prop forward in the back, and the granny with a submachine gun over one shoulder in the driving seat.

Following them is a much smaller float, dressed to look like an ornate bedroom. There is a beautiful mirror on one wall, the room’s sole occupant staring into it. The mirror is facing you and yet, when you look in it you don’t see yourself, or even the float. You see a different room and, like a snapshot, a murder. A woman being strangled. The befuddled man from across the Parade is the murderer.

The float passes, the atmosphere shifts and the next float lifts the mood even as it lowers the fog. A group of government workers appears. You can tell they’re civil servants because they’re tired. Their faces obscured, for now. The red-tinged light coming through the fog that surrounds them illuminates a sign for a guest house, two women, a car and the ghost of a lighthouse. Behind them, the fog lifts enough to see a town, small, snowbound, deserted. Aside from whatever is howling in the woods.

The ventriloquist comes last. He hasn’t slept, you can tell. The dummy is talking constantly. The man’s lips aren’t moving. But his eyes are; pleading, searching, desperate for human contact. In the corner, the befuddled man watches, hand over his mouth in horror.

The final float is a tower, an old fashioned radio mast glowing with green energy that dispels the red of what came before. There’s an eye, sometimes, at the top of the mast, outlined in green neon, unblinking. A wave of signal keeps pace with the tower, filling your phones with snatches of other people’s lives. A diner at the end of the world, the life of the first artificial man, a feral sit-com, the woman’s voice from earlier. A thousand more, a million more. No two alike, each broadcasting to the world they’re only half convinced is there.

Behind them, the two old sea captains are deep in conversation. The men could be brothers, both dressed in long coats, caps and beards. One of them is holding an umbrella, angled to shade him from the eye of the tower. Nearby, the author frantically makes notes even as he feigns disdain. But his characters see him. See him at least as much as he sees them. The journalist walking with them chuckles ruefully, starts his recorder, practices his professional laugh.

 

And then, finally, again, comes the Director. A weapons grade suit and industrial precision. Graceful like time, eternal like terror. She turns on the spot, holds all your gazes and begins to clap her gloved hands. Slow. Precise. Commanding.

You start to clap as well. And soon the audience is on their feet as the Parade finishes. An ovation thrown upwards into a darkening sky. A button put on a nightmare. A sacrifice of noise paid in full. When the Director deigns to bow and acknowledge the accolades, the spell is broken. And it’s time to go home.

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Twin Xolotls of Sorrow and Salt

by Russell Hemmell

In the year of Sorrow and Salt, where the plague raged and the sun was a livid, blackened sphere in the sky, a lone knight travelled the Earth. Two illnesses devoured him. One was a disease of the skin, gnawing at his limbs and rotting his nose. The other was the anguish of the heart-mind, drowning his soul in the parallel seas of sadness and anger.

In the season of Sorrow, he cried his solitude away in melancholic ballads of his violet-painted lute. In the months of Salt, his two-bladed sword mowed down whoever crossed his path.

One full-moon night, when Sorrow was turning into Salt on el Día de Los Muertos, he reached the outskirt of the Desert of Luna Nueva, where it was said a renowned hermit lived. They only showed up to dispense their wisdom on the Day of the Celebration of the Dead. A great savant, yes, but people were wary. Every year, somebody disappeared in the crowd of a thousand postulants, never to be found again.

For only fresh blood could buy deliverance, they said.

Every year, new bones joined the heap of skeletons at the entrance of the hermit’s cave, like a ghastly memento.

The knight unsheathed his sword to be ready for the encounter.

It was therefore with surprise that he discovered the hermit was a little girl sitting by the fire, clear green eyes and a scarred red fox tattooed on her face.

“You’re no savant, just a witch,” the knight said. “Tell me your truth, and I may spare your life.”

“Tell me yours, and I may give you peace,” the girl replied.

One moment of hesitation, that seemed eternal.

Then the knight put the sword back into its scabbard. “The illness that consumes my body is nothing compared to the hollowness in my heart. I fought for justice, defended my king, rescued his realm, killed the invaders. I’ve done nothing wrong, to deserve all this.”

A faint smile appeared on the girl’s pale lips, making the fox on her face move her paws in the air, like a cheer or the cast of a spell. He flinched, shivers running down his spine.

“You still believe you reap what you sow. How silly,” she said. “This is an illusion many humans share.”

The dark vault of the cave echoed those words, again and again, the way waves ripple on the surface of a lake. Silent, fleeting shadows he had not noticed before began to dance in the cave at the notes of an inaudible song.

The knight tightened the grip on the hilt of his sword, ready to unsheathe it again and use it this time. “Your truth, witch.”

She didn’t reply, her eyes like still ponds of dark water staring at him like dead stars. I have just told you, her face was saying in silence, can’t you recognise the truth when you hear it?

“Where’s my peace in that?” he stammered, wrists now shaking against his will, heart shrinking in his chest like a suffocated starfish.

The girl lifted her hand, and her tiny fingers moved in the air with the grace of lilac butterflies. “It lies still and naked in front of your eyes, hard like a stone and silk-sleek in its meaning, if you can bear its sight. It’s called solitude. There’s nobody to worship or blame, lost soul. No guilt, no pride, no love that can save, no sin that can damn. We’re all teardrops in the waterfall of life. Eternity only exists in the mind of the few who live and pass on our names.”

If that name is worth remembering at all, her eyes continued, speaking to his mind. You, who one day thought yourselves invincible and immortal, honourable and faultless. Would they do that with yours? Would they, indeed?

Another smile, wider –-a sudden stretch of the fox’s paws, ready to snatch her prey. The knight’s sword dropped on the stone, and his hands searched for the lute.

The girl’s irises turned into fleeting green flames, and the pale silhouettes of a thousand dead encircled them both, like candles lighting up one by one. They danced in the cave at the knight’s tune, singing along a peaceful chanson.

When the night faded away and Sorrow became Salt at sunrise, no ghosts lingered –-no hermit, no knight, no candles, no flames. But no new bones were found in front of the cave that year.

Just a violet-painted lute and a scarred red fox.

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod Episode 890

October 31st 2023

Twin Xolotls of Sorrow and Salt by Russell Hemmell

The 2023 Halloween Parade by Alasdair Stuart

Narrated by Leila Al-Jaboury and Alasdair Stuart

Audio Production by Chelsea Davis

Hosted by Alasdair Stuart

 

Welcome to PseudoPod, the weekly horror podcast and welcome to Horror Christmas! Our story for you on this magnificent day is Twin Xolotls of Sorrow and Salt by Russell Hemmell. Russell Hemmell is a French-Italian transplant in Scotland, passionate about astrophysics, history, and Japanese manga. Recent stories in Aurealis, Cast of Wonders, Lightspeed, and others. They are a SFWA, HWA, and Codexian member. Their historical horror novella The Chancels of Mainz published by Luna Press Publishing was longlisted for the BSFA 2023. Find them online at their blog earthianhivemind.net and on Twitter @SPBianchini.

Our narrator this week is Leila Al-Jeboury. Leila is an actor and writer from London. It’s unlike you have seen her in anything, unless you happened to not blink during a particular episode of Silent Witness about 8 years ago. Leila is currently in a children’s theatre show called Kidocracy, which goes to schools and teaches kids about democracy, so we should hopefully have a decent government in 20-30 years’ time. When she’s not training up the next generation, Leila can be usually found shouting at her kitchen utensil draws and asking her daughter to put her shoes on.

 

Our audio producer is the amazing Chelsea and I will be your host this evening so get ready to meet the two Xolotls because we have a story for you and we promise you it’s true.

 

The verdantly arid imagery of this story puts me in mind of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s hallucinatory films, all baked in the desert heat and stumbling towards something vividly real that still shimmers like a mirage. It also puts me in mind of overlooked Western Seraphim Falls. Jodorowsky’s work is full blooded in every sense, and offers no hands up or easy entrance points. Everything I’ve heard about Jodorowsky’s Dune, the documentary about the version of Dune he was set to make suggests that’s your best on ramp.

 

Seraphim Falls, directed by David Von Ancken from a script by Von Ancken and Abby Everett Jaques is more accessible but burns just as strong an impression. It stars Liam Neeson as Carver, a former Confederate general pursuing a man named Gideon, played by Piers Brosnan. The movie is a straight line with two points on it; a direct, brutalist study in revenge, obsession and what happens when you run off the end of the world. The elemental nature of the characters, especially a crucial cameo from Anjelica Huston as someone who may be an allegory, a mirage or supernatural, throws the same issue into stark relief as Hemmell’s story. What are we if we are more than our actions? What do we do when we do everything right and still come up short?

 

We play.

 

There’s a tiktok audio I’ve seen a few times which is someone saying ‘I don’t care what the government or Jesus says, I’m going to have fun and be silly.’ And honestly I feel that in my bones. Six months into a currently fruitless job search, seven months into a house hunt, multiple familial health concerns and a pandemic. The partridge and the pear tree have eloped and who can blame them?

 

Sometimes things get very, very difficult. Sometimes the only way to win isn’t to not play but to play with every fiber of your being. To string one last line on here that I love:

 

If nothing that we do matters, all that matters is what we do.

 

Some of you will recognise that as nihilistic. Some of you will recognize it from Angel. Me, I heard it in an issue of Fantastic Four. I don’t view it, or this story, as nihilistic either. Rather, both focus on what we can do, now not what we feel like we should. The horror here isn’t just in the pile of bones it’s in the realization of that flawed expectation. The victory comes from transcending that, for fox and lute alike.

 

Escape Artists always needs more volunteers from the audience and we promise you’ll have a better time than Darke’s volunteers. We’re an independent production you see, and entirely donation powered and that’s where you come in. We rely on you to pay our authors, staff and cover our costs. There’s a recession, a pandemic and yet here we are, making art for you. We can only do that if you help us.

We’ve got Paypal and Patreon subscriptions that start at 5 bucks a month.Both get you access to our audio archive. The Patreon subscription tiers get you all sorts of goodies at the higher levels. Please help out if you can. It’s always needed. Also now we’re a non-profit you have some very real tax benefits to helping us tell more stories in addition to getting more stores from us. So it’s a win two different ways.

If you can’t help financially, we understand completely please consider talking about us. It helps a lot too. If you liked an episode, please link to it, or blog about it or leave a review on your podcatcher of choice. It all helps and with your help we can keep doing this.

 

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

 

We’ll be back, immediately after this episode in your feed, with this year’s Halloween Parade. And we’re also back next week with The Evaluator by Premee Mohamed. Audio production will again be the amazing Chelsea and my fellow Caring into the Void-er Meghan Ball will be in the host’s chair. We’ll see you then but before we go, PseudoPod wants to remind you Only the dead can know the end of war, Captain.

 

Now, grab your churros. The parade’s about to start.