Story [Halloween Special] Crossing Over

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

 

 

October 31st. Halloween. More correctly, Hallowe’en. Even more correctly, All Hallows’ Evening. The first of the three-day Allhallowtide, which goes on to include All Saints’ Day on November 1st and All Souls’ Day on November 2nd (at least according to the Roman Catholic Church). Blame Pope Gregory III; he settled for three days back in the 700s. Pope Sixtus IV upped it to an 8-day observation in the 1400s, which lasted 500 years until fun-hating Pope Pius XII started his reforms in the 1940s, reducing Allhallowtide to the original three days.

 

She loved the eight-day version.

 

Or perhaps you call it Samhain. That’s likely of you’re of Celtic descent, or have a fascination with all things Celt, or are one of those woo-woo new age witches. You probably attribute its origins to the Druids. And if you’re really, really deep into it, you might even call it Nos Calan Gaeaf. Do you know the poem? “Adref, adref, am y cyntaf', Hwch ddu gwta a gipio'r ola'.”

 

She did.

 

Dia de Muertos (or Dia de los Muertos, depending on exactly where you grew up) is another option. And this, of course, is descended from the Aztec worship of Mictēcacihuātl. May Aztec gods appear before you and demand you pronounce their names!

 

She could have.

 

The list is actually fairly long, but here’s the thing; there are a lot of cultures, living and extinct, that have rituals and beliefs surrounding this time of year. Not all of them knew it as October 31 (the Gregorian calendar being something of a recent invention), but all of them knew (or know) it as a time when the veils between the world of the living and the world of the dead grow thin.

 

Some of the observations are based in terror. Have you ever wondered why you put on a mask for Halloween? It’s so the wandering spirits of the dead won’t recognize you as a living being and take possession of your soul. Some of the observations are based in the joy of remembering and celebrating the lives of the ancestors. Dia de Muertos heads that direction, with parades and fireworks and offerings to the dead.

 

She really loved Dia de Muertos. We’d traveled to Mexico twice to be part of it, but that wasn’t odd; we’d celebrated in many ways, as many as we could. The top of the list every year was writing our names on stones that we tossed into bonfires for Calan Gaeaf to see if we’d die in the coming year. The last time, her stone had been missing the following day. I didn’t take that seriously, but I should have.

 

She did.

 

Lots of bonfires. Almost all of the ceremonies had bonfires. If there weren’t bonfires, there were candles. Often there were both. Flame, the element of flame, is apparently important because it transcends the veils and exists in both worlds at once.

 

If she hadn’t been there, flame would have gotten me killed.

 

We met at the university in a “cultural philosophy” class. I was there because it seemed like an easy elective. She was there because she believed in it all. Pick a mythos, a religion, a philosophy, a fad, anything with woo-woo, and she believed it. If you could work in the words “astral,” “new,” “empower,” or “goddess,” she believed it twice. Of all the hippie-dippy people you could ever hope to meet in your lifetime, she was the hippie-dippy queen. We were as opposite as it was possible for two people to be.

 

Of course we fell in love.

 

You would think that subscribing to over 200 individual belief systems would paralyze a person, but not her. I like to think that, if there was an underlying Truth, she somehow found the fragment each system accidentally got right and was managing to put those fragments together. I didn’t actually believe it, but I liked to think it.

 

We joined the service together. The threat of war from our neighbors to the south was too real, and we were too idealistic, to let ourselves sit on the sidelines. We enrolled in the combat engineers.

 

War came while we were still in training. By the time we were deployed, the enemy was deep within our own borders. They had tanks, good tanks, and plenty of them. Our tanks may have been better, but we didn’t have nearly as many and they were spread widely. We depended on other ways to slow them down. Trenches. Mines. Barricades. Combat engineers.

 

Once we were bivouacked directly in the path of an enemy column. They would be on us in two, maybe three, days. We had a bridge to demolish, roads and forests to mine, buildings to booby-trap, all manner of delayed death to sow. We were working 20-hour days with bleeding fingers and breaking backs, but it was October 31, so she had to have a fire for Nos Calan Gaeaf. We wrote our names on stones and tossed them in before settling down for three hours’ sleep. If the stones were still there after the fire went out, we’d live throughout the coming year.

 

We were yanked from slumber and went straight to work; it was 20 hours later that we got to rest again. My stone was still in the firepit. Hers was not. She didn’t say anything about it, just looked a little sad as we lay down for our brief sleep. It wasn’t until maybe a week later, after we’d been evac’d from that location and had a chance to breathe, that she even mentioned it.

 

“I’m only sad because it means we’ll be apart for a time,” she said.

 

“Huh?” I replied, looking up from my instant coffee.

 

“It’s ok to miss me, love, but remember that it’s temporary.”

 

I really had no idea what we were talking about, but she moved in to kiss me and I forgot all about it for a year.

 

Late the following October, we were once again sent to do what we were always sent to do: stop tanks with our bare hands. We were supposed to have two days before the enemy arrived, but they had some hotshot commander, a fellow named Chip, and the gods had his back. He made it to our position in 12 hours.

 

We weren’t ready. How could we be ready? The command was to pull back, but we all knew that if we didn’t hold, people down the road would pay the price. So we stayed.

 

I killed two of the enemy war machines with portable rockets. I lobbed a few grenades at them, hoping to get lucky and damage a tread, but to no avail. I even took a rifle shot at a commander who foolishly stuck his head out of a hatch. I missed, but I did try. But mostly, once the rockets and grenades were gone, I hid. There was a drainage culvert and I hid. The fighting started the evening of October 29. My munitions were gone by the morning of October 30.

 

So I hid, and I lay in my own waste, and I drank water from the ditch, and I prayed to all the gods I’d never believed in for my own salvation, and for hers. While above me, and around me, the battle raged.

 

On the morning of the 31st, the enemy had penetrated maybe a kilometer farther. Our troops were doing a magnificent job holding them, but the actual battle had moved just enough down the road that it wasn’t over my head. I could still hear it clearly; could still see the flashes and smoke just a few hundred meters away. I crawled out of my sanctuary and began to look for her.

 

The landscape was ruined. There were bodies of war machines, vehicles, and soldiers everywhere. There were craters, and parts, and fires. Both sides were too locked in the fierce conflict to spare any effort at cleanup. I even heard the moans of wounded who had been lying there for days, but other than to see if they were her, I offered no assistance.

 

It only took a couple of hours to find her; we were never far from each other. I guess I should say, it didn’t take long to find most of her. Her hip had been blown off; the left leg wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I dropped down beside her, placed her head in my lap, and there we sat as the sun climbed to its zenith then headed down.

 

As sunset colored the sky and with the shrieks of war as a background accompaniment, I began to gather wood. There had been a fence here, before tanks had rumbled across what had been peaceful plains. And there were the remnants of barricades, measures of desperation that had failed to inconvenience the enemy at all. But the barricades were made of good, hard wood, and the lumber in the fence had been soaked in pitch. Both would burn well.

 

My body was weak and betrayed me frequently, but I built as much of a pyre as I could, then wrestled her body to the top of it. I knew she’d like that. Very woo-woo, very old.

 

Gasoline was easy to find. There were tanks of it all around me. I doused the pyre liberally. I probably soaked myself pretty thoroughly as well, but that wasn’t really my concern. I mean, I had no plans to immolate myself, but neither did I have plans to live. I, or what was left of me, was just focused on this one task, to see her one more time.

 

I got stuck for a little while, wondering if I should wait for midnight. Was that when the veils were thinnest? Or was that just some bit of a fairy tale stuck in my head? In the end I decided not to wait, lest some enemy patrol or sniper chance upon me before I’d had my try.

 

I lit the pyre and sat down to wait.

 

I was a doomed man, of that there was no doubt. No matter how busy the enemies were, someone was going to look back and spot my bonfire, and someone was going to come to investigate. I just hoped they took a while.

 

“Honey, you shouldn’t be here,” she said from behind me. I didn’t turn around. That’s how these things work, right?

 

“I have to be,” I said. “I have to say goodbye.”

 

“I told you, my love, it isn’t goodbye. And it’s ok to miss me, but we’ll be together soon. Now, pick yourself up and go hide under that tank over there, the one with the really big gun. Stay there for two more days. Do not answer when you hear someone calling tomorrow; stay quiet and don’t let them see you. Don’t come out until you hear a horn in two days.”

 

Then she was gone.

 

I stumbled to the tank, maybe a hundred meters away. I crawled underneath it, lay down in the mud, and sobbed myself to sleep.

 

The next day, I heard a voice calling, searching for survivors. The language and accent were my own, and the appeal in the voice seemed earnest, but I stayed hidden. I didn’t even peek to see whatever there may have been to see.

 

The following day came and went. Long after the sun went down, I heard the bleating of a horn. I crawled out and saw an ambulance sitting there; men with dogs around it, searching for survivors.

 

After a few weeks in the hospital, I was discharged, both from the hospital and from the service. I even got a medal and a pension. Apparently I have a piece of shrapnel buried in my brain and that is grounds for the army not to want me. I don’t really notice it, but I do notice that people tend to look at me strangely whenever I start to talk about my story.

 

So I don’t.

 

The days are getting shorter, and the leaves are turning colors. October is running out. Soon, I am going to lay beneath the stars, with a picture of my love, and light a bonfire. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get to say hello, Mictēcacihuātl willing.

 

Woo-woo!

 

 

 

Mahalo (thank you) for reading; I hope you enjoyed! Links to other works in the same universe can be found here.

 

 

[thethiefofvictory 339]

Well well, that was a good story, loved it! I'll get round to your other one too, it's so long...

 

Wait. A commander named Chip? Are these two soldiers in the war in Fred's story? Hmm.

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

Wait. A commander named Chip? Are these two soldiers in the war in Fred's story? Hmm.

 

;)

[cryptor 589]

Nice article, Hippin!  ;)  :D

[Pythor 1,354]

Loved the first part especially ;)

[Maverick_Storm_Xian 5]

this is not a true story right? :ph34r:

[Hippin_in_Hawaii 639]

this is not a true story right? :ph34r:

I couldn't swear to every detail but it's certainly true that it is a story.