Story: A Halloween Miracle

A Halloween Miracle

I had finished carving the last of six large, orange pumpkins into cheerfully smiling jack-o-lanterns – one for each of the kids, one for my husband, and one for me – and I was clearing away the inevitable mess.  I had three sticky knives with different sized blades, a very sticky soup spoon with which I had scraped the stringy flesh out of the pumpkins, and a large metal dishpan burgeoning with untold hundreds of slippery pumpkin seeds.  I thought happily that the seeds would be a tasty treat, once I got them washed, salted, and roasted in the oven.

As I turned to the business of washing the sticky dishes, after first wiping the floor clean where the mess had escaped the edges of the vinyl tablecloth I had laid down as my work surface, I thought I saw a flicker of yellow light from the cluster of jack-o-lanterns on the kitchen table.  I turned to look, but they were all dark and quiet.  Shrugging, I turned on the hot water and attended to the sticky dishes.

I had finished the dishes, and had washed the pumpkin slime from my hands and arms, all the way to my elbows, and I was drying my hands on a soft, terrycloth hand towel.  I was facing the table, gazing appraisingly at the family of toothy grins there, when I saw the light again.  It flickered in the lowest part of the smallest of the not-so-small pumpkins, and then swelled to a rich, warm, yellow glow.  I blinked several times, and shook my head disbelievingly.  Without looking at what I was doing, I reached behind me to put the crumpled towel on the counter.  With my attention focused on the unnatural light, I didn’t notice the towel falling in a rumpled heap on the white tile floor.

As I watched, rooted to the spot in stunned amazement, another light flickered to life, this one in the largest pumpkin, and rapdly swelled to fill the hollow space, pouring out through the eyes and mouth.  Shaking myself free on the momentary paralysis, I took an involuntary step toward the table.

“No!” a voice screamed in my head.  “Don’t go closer!  The one who goes closer always dies in the movies!”

My inner voice was right, but I couldn’t help myself as a third light flickered to life.  Suddenly, I realized that it was completely dark outside the kitchen window.  It was dark like a void, not a natural light.  Just minutes ago, the afternoon sun had been slanting in at a pretty high angle.

“The news didn’t mention any eclipse,” I thought.  “We just had one recently.  What’s going on?”

I had stepped closer to the table without noticing that I di it.  I could almost have touched the nearest jack-o-lantern.  I was startled to realize that my hand was halfway up to reach for it.  Then I realized that it was the only pumpkin that was still dar….

Before that thought was complete, the sixth jack-o-lantern sprang to brightness, not even flickering as the first had done.

I felt very cold on my back and shoulders.  I was surrounded by a darkness so complete that it was almost physical.  No sun, no moon, no stars, no electric lights – the only light in my world was inside the family of jack-o-lanterns.

I shivered, and my stomach felt sick.  The darkness was palpable.  I felt it drape itself around me like a heavy robe.  I quivered with terror, and struggled to keep my hand from moving closer to those silently beckoning lights.  I was drawn to them.  I felt in my very bones that I would be safe from the darkness if I just touched the glowing yellow lights.

Then things became weird.  It wasn’t that they had not been completely freaky since the first light had flickered to life, but that had been oddly normal, compared to what happened next.

The largest jack-o-lantern seemed to shift, contort, and become somehow fluid.  The shell ceased to be rigid pumpkin rind, and took on the supple softness of human flesh, but it still had the shape and color of the pumpkin it had been.

“I give you good day,” said a deep, rich, velvety tenor voice.  There was a strange note of distant chimes overlaid on the words.

My knees buckled, and I sat suddenly and awkwardly on the kitchen floor.  I felt the bile rise in my throat, and frantically choked it back.  I broke out in a cold sweat.

The second-largest pumpkin underwent a transformation similar to the one I had just witnessed.  Even befdore I heard the coolly melodic voice, I had a sense of something feminine, even though the buck-toothed pumpkin grin remained the same. 

“Beloved, the Eartyhbound does not know us.  Didst thou forget to ask leave to enter before we made the journey?” the silvery female voice remonstrated gently.

“Ah!  Alas!  I fear I didst forget, my Wife,” the male voice replied.  Then, the voice seemed to be redirected toward me, as though the speaker had turned his head along with his attention.  “Good Mistress, pray thee, may I and my family have leave to enter thy world through these portals thou hast so cleverly wrought?  No harm will come upon thee by granting this request, but thou must grant leave by thy free will, or we must needs depart at one.”

“Wh-- … wha-- …” I stammered, my mouth as dry as a cotton ball.  “Who … what … are you?”  I still sat on the floor, in a humiliatingly awkward sprawl.

“Of course!” the female voice exclaimed with a gentle laugh.  “Thou dost not know us, so thou canst not invite us in.  Be easy in thy mind, Mistress.  We will do thee no harm.”

I finally managed to gather my legs under me, and I stood.  I tried to take a step backward, but the cold darkness was a barrier to my movement.  Only a very small clear space existed between me and the spookily occupied kitchen table.

“Um, what are you?” I asked.  “Are you ghosts, or something?”

“Dost hear, Beloved?” the male voice rolled over me, a note of satisfaction in its tone.  “She dost indeed know us!”

“Wait!”  I yelped.  “You’re ghosts, and you want me to let you in?  Oh, uh-uh.  I’ve seen that movie.  That’s how people die!”

“Fear not, Mistress,” the female voice soothed.  “We will not harmthee, nor thine.  We mean no harm, nor malice to any in thy world, but this night be All Hallows’ Eve, and ’tis the day we may visit those who love and remember us in thy world.”

“My lady wife speaks sooth, Mistress.  Our family must always cross together, as ’twas together that we died, three centuries since, in a terrible storm on the sea.”

“A storm at sea?”  I repeated, struggling between fear, disbelief, and wonder.  “Shouldn’t you be haunting some shipwreck or shore, then?”

“Nay, our eldest son didst survive, and his family now resides here, in this town.  We cross the barrier at the closest portal to our kindred,” the male voice explained.  It seemed that the grinning pumpkin looked sadder than it had before.

“So, why not ask them to let you in?” I demanded, my voice cracking slightly under the strain of my mixed reactions.

“We canst only enter through a proper portal,” the female voice explained, sounding very much like a parent trying to reason with an obstinate child.  “Six jack-o-lanterns carved at once must be out doorway, but only when the carver intendeth that they be for two parents, three sons, and a daughter much loved.  No other sort can we enter, even to ask an invitation.  We have waited long for such a portal to be created on All Hallows’ Eve, and thou hast made one at last.”

“Wait, what?” I choked.  “How could you know who I was thinking of when I made these?”

“The power of the love ist strong in thy handiwork, fair Mistress,” the female voice replied gently.

“Uh, okay, but the dark?  And the cold?  How’m I s’posed to think you’re not gonna hurt me, or kill a bunch o’ people, with that goin’ on?”  I felt sick, and the cold pressing around my back and sides made it ever harder to hold back the vomit in my throat.

“’Tis the boundary through which we must pass to enter thy world.  ’Twill vanish when once we pass through, and none will be harmed.  Whilst thou standeth within the boundary, no time passeth in thy world for thee.  Invite us to cross, pray, and we will cross and be gone, and all will be again as it was before.”

“Uh,” I grunted, most indelicately.  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?  What’s to stop you doin’ anything yo want after I let you in?”

A soft, warm, white glow suddenly surrounded me.  As if the afternoon couldn’t get any stranger, I felt a deep, complete peace wash over and through me.  I felt the very real presence of Love, holy and wonderful, enveloping me in warmth and safety.  I knew this Love.  I experienced it every time I received the Eucharist in the Mass.  I knew that it was the Holy Spirit, and I was dazed with the wonder of the moment.    An indescribable masculine voice reverberated comfortingly through every cell of my body.

“Truly, my Child, I tell you that you may freely and safely grant the request of this blessed family.  Their final visit to their loved ones will brush free the last tie that tethers them to the life that was, and they will then be free to pass from Purgatory into Paradise.  Grant their request, that you may be blessed by your act of compassion for six precious souls.”

I shivered with the enormity of receiving such a clear, definite message from the Almighty, in a voice I had heard only twice before in my life.  I swallowed hard, twice, closed my eyes, and silently thanked God for granting me such a wonderful blessing.  Then, still garbed in the safety of the warm, white light, I made my decision.

“For the sake of our Lord Jesus, I invite you and your four children to use these Halloween jack-o-lanterns to enter our world, so you may visit your loved ones, and loose your final hold on your earthly lives.  I beg you, in return, to pray for my children when you are saints in Paradise,” I said with a confidence I could not have mustered just minutes before.  “Amen,” I added, knowing it meant “let it be so.”

The four smaller pumpkins shifted fluidly, as the larger two had done, and then six human figures stepped out of the pumpkins to stand a fraction of an inch above the tiles of the floor.  They were neatly dressed in the plain but serceable travelling garb of middle-class English Puritans.  The children were all apparently in their teens, and the young daughter gave me a shyly radiant smile of thanks.

“We thank thee, good Mistress, and pray for thee, and for thy children.  Aye, we will pray for them unceasingly in Paradise after this night,” said the father, bowing low.  His sons copied his simple bow, and his wife and daughter curtsied, their eyes demurely downcast.

“Thank you,”  I answered with a smile.  “Go in peace.”

Before the last whisper of my words had passed my lips, the six softly glowing figures were gone, and with them went to icy, threatening darkness.  The warm glow that surrounded me lingered for a moment.

“Thanks be to God,” I whispered fervently, and then, aloud, I said, “Alleluia!”  

The glow left me, and I felt as though I had just had the best hug ever.

I finished cleaning up, and then carried the now-dark, grinning jack-o-lanterns out to the front patio, one by one.  Grateful for the unseasonably warm, still Halloween evening, I placed a votive candle inside each one, and I lit the wicks.  The flickering, yellow glow was entirely earthly, but my imagination overlaid it with the memory of the All Hallo9w’s Eve miracle I had experienced.

A few minutes later, as I was setting out the cauldron full of miniature candy bars, my husband got home from work.

“How was your day?” I asked him, after kissing him.

“It was a day,” he replied tiredly, and hugged me tightly.  “How was yours?”

“It was a day,” I echoed.  “I carved jack-o-lanterns.  I lit candles in them for six souls in Purgatory,” I added.

“Cool,” he replied.

“TRICK OR TREAT!” cfame the calls of several young voices, as small fists knocked on the door.  I picked up the cauldron, and went to answer the door.  I might tell him about it, someday, maybe, but I doubted it.  No one would believe such a story.  But I would treasure the memory.

I opened the door, and smiled warmly as I dropped candy bars into several plastic pumpkins and pillowcases, with an extra one for the tiny, blonde girl wearing filmy, white angel wings and a gold tinsel halo.

The End.