The Jack O’ Lantern

 “Perhaps (and no stronger expression can be used) the combination in England and southern Scotland of the lack of an underlying ancient festival, and the presence of a thorough religious reformation, had created a vacuum at Hallowtide. There existed the powerful memory of a connection of the season with the dead, and the vestigial customs based upon attempts to propitiate and comfort them.”

Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun: a history of the ritual year in Britain (1996)  

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“You ain’t doin’ Halloween?” The woman from the village looked curiously at Toby, who was sitting on a half-rotten old bench in front of his cottage, stabbing intermittently at a small pumpkin with what was, in fact, a very expensive, Japanese-made kitchen knife

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You just don’t seem the type, that’s all” said the woman. Short, unkempt, otherwise nondescript, she set down with a sigh the two heavy bags she was carrying and paused to unwrap a sweet for the grubby small child who accompanied her. 

Toby had seen the woman before. He thought perhaps she lived in one of those new houses by the river. Often she was with the grubby child, but sometimes there was also a largely toothless, mumbling, enigmatic old female to make up the trio. They were often to be seen in the village shop, or on the high road, but sometimes they also walked past his cottage. All the same, Toby, who tended to avoid his neighbours as much as possible, had never spoken with them before. 

“Not the type” the woman reiterated. “Dunno why, really. Some reckon it’s all just American, don’t they? Halloween an’ that?” 

“Well, I suppose my mother is American — was American” said Toby, crisply, still stabbing, albeit a bit more urgently now. “Actually, she’s dead now. Still American though!”

“You’ve gone an’ cut your finger! Here, let me ….”

But it was alright — just one of those stupid finger things where there was a surprisingly large amount of blood for very little actual damage — really just the most minor scratch. He sucked at the wound and then, more out of habitual good manners than anything else, accepted the slightly damp tissue that the woman proffered to him and wrapped it around his finger. He had left bloody fingerprints on the pumpkin, the knife, the bench. Now the blood was coming through the tissue, too. He hid his hand behind his back.

“You’re extremely kind,” he said, by way of thanks for the tissue. “But it’s honestly just a scratch.”

“Are you really doin’ Halloween? Trick or treat an’ that?”

In truth, Toby hadn’t really considered this. He had only acquired the pumpkin on a random whim, and started to carve it as a way of avoiding the paid work he probably ought to have been doing, but there was something disbelieving, even obscurely challenging, in the woman’s manner that seemed to demand resolve. 

“Yes, I’m definitely doing Halloween” he said, almost before he realised he was going to say it. “Trick or treat, the works.” He looked doubtfully at the grubby child. “Indeed, I’m very much here to welcome any little horrors who might wish to knock at my door. With chocolate!”

The grubby child, overwhelmed by all this, dropped her sweet into the dirt of the path and began to wail plangently, while her mother swore a little, entirely without rancour, and started to drag her away, back towards the village. 

“See you later, perhaps” said Toby, by way of dismissal.

“Halloween!” called the woman over her shoulder. “Only I just hadn’t thought it were your sort of thing.”

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