Spookiness

Sleepy and I have been discussing spookiness. And I can feel it, something in the ether. Not that I feel something's about to happen or what have you, just that I feel kind of...connected, like a spider in a web.

I can taste something in the air, like Terry Pratchett's Octarine, the metallic taste of magic.
I can smell the heavy scent of the otherworld, see it in the dreamworld, but I'm not receptive. I can feel, taste, smell it there, behind a heavy curtain, but I can't see through it.

There is a bite in the air, the wind is blowing down the chimney and during the daylight hours, I could see the leaves being whipped from the trees, the air was full. And the ground is strewn with them, beautiful, autumnal carpets. Treacherous carpets of wet leaves.

And all the mushrooms, more and more, the amanitas, Fly Agaric now replaced with shaggy inkcaps. Evidence of life feeding on death, pushing up from the depths, through the soil. Musky soil.

All Hallows E'en is coming, Samhain, and there are certain things about the celebration of Halloween here that I like. The carving of the pumpkins, the mists, even the pretend type.

But there's a hell of a lot I don't like. It's not a time for sweets, it's not a time for plastic frippery, blow-up ghosts and witches.

Plastic and sugar, what have these to do with Halloween?
Nothing.
They debase it. They bury it beneath the cartoon spiders.

But the truth is down there, buried in the soil, rotting under dried, brown leaves, howling through the trees, slithering in the undergrowth and shimmering on the edge of perception, and contorting reason.