The October Country

A Tale for Hallowe'en

Every October Alan bought the book, ‘The October Country’ by Ray Bradbury, it was a weird ritual, but October was his favourite month, just as December and the run up to Christmas was for others.

Alan was born on Hallowe’en, and this had fuelled his love of the macabre and horror in the books he read. First it was H.P Lovecraft, which he found more outlandish and weird than actually horrific, then Stephen King, now there was an author for you, and a great one at that. Alan often thought that Stephen King was a literary equivalent of Bob Dylan as far as US pop culture went, and he had as many King novels as he had Bob Dylan albums. He had been a fan of both King and Dylan for decades, through thick and thin, whatever direction their creativity had taken them. Anyway, having discovered King, Alan delved back into the sources of King’s influences such as Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Ray Bradbury. He did not really go for Matheson’s work, as ‘I am Legend’ had given him nightmares during the Covid-19 pandemic, he was not a big fan of Bloch apart from ‘Psycho’, he loved Bradbury, but for some reason could never finish ‘The October Country’, he was never sure why.

In the last 30 years or so, he had purchased as many copies as possible of the book, whether it be online, second-hand, or Kindle download, but he had never finished it. He always lost patience with that book, as he would rip through anything else by Bradbury, his special favourites being the short story ‘The Foghorn’, and the famous novel ‘Fahrenheit 451’, but most of his copies of ‘The October Country’ had been binned unfinished, donated to charity shops, church sales, Salvation Army recycling skips, even passed onto unreceptive friends. But this year, on his 29^th copy, he swore he would finish it, he would post this factette of information on social media, he thought, but then, that would be him setting himself up to fail!

He bought the new copy online at a reasonable price from one of the dealers he regularly bought from. It arrived a couple of days later, and on an appropriately dark and stormy night, he started reading, a chilled beer on his table nearby for alcoholic accompaniment, and the sounds of the wind outside helped the atmosphere. Was that really the swishing or shivering of pines outside he was hearing, what was that cry or howl from out there?

His imagination was working, it was the magic of Bradbury and October.

What a great writer Bradbury was, why had he not got this far with the book before?

Here he was , on the tenth story, and it was a real ‘mixed bag’, as he would say in conversation to a friend or acquaintance, not words he would use when writing in an online review, on Amazon, or his blog page, but that was it, the October Country was a great mix , a great ‘mixed bag’ of horror and fantasy tales, some  of them reminded him a bit of the early Stephen King, and episodes of the Twilight Zone, they were quite verbose, but Alan liked words, and the more the better, like Jack Kerouac, whose sentences could be several lines long, but that’s a another story.

You may or may not have guessed by now that Alan was also a writer, albeit an amateur writer, who had suffered what he had perceived as  ‘writer’s block’ for six months, he was almost going to his GP in the mistaken belief that he was depressed but realized that he was Googling symptoms a bit too much, and had believed what he as reading online, never a good idea.

Strangely, in October, when darkness took over, and the cold windy rainy autumnal weather began in earnest, his ability to write prose returned, and the inspiration of Bradbury’s stunning collection of essay/memoirs ‘Zen and the art of Writing’ , as well as his 29^th reading and completion of ‘The October Country’ , had given him some ideas for writing , for getting back to prose, after writing solely poetry for the last four years,.

He had always been inspired by October, and the coming of autumn, the ‘dark mornings,’ they had called it in the late ‘sixties when he was in his early years of school. He could remember the Sixties, or at least the late Sixties, as he was a child just starting off at school in what seemed like a science fiction world, the Apollo missions had taken place when we was small, and he played with toy rockets, and space and the future were very popular back then.

'Daylight Saving Time', an initiative of a previous government many  decades before, and which  was still in place . At the end of the month, the clocks would ‘change,’ being turned back an hour, Spring forward, fall back, he had heard Dad saying years ago. He remembered that now, at the age of sixty, the words referencing the seasons in a memorable quote, his dad dead now 13 years, had been an avid reader also, and would have liked Bradbury’s work.

It was quite an appropriate to be thinking of Dad, as he had passed away at this time of year.

The past of course is a different country, as someone more famous than I once said, but the October Country was a place Alan wanted to be , like his own hometown, when darkness came sooner, and inspired him, he always made a point of reading something horror -wise in the run up to Hallowe’en, so Bradbury, the bard of Waukegan , would fit the bill. He would look out his top floor window, and watch the shadows below, what mysterious happenings were taking place in those environs.

Alan recalled the quote from Hemingway, from a book of quotes he had years ago ‘ best of all he loved the fall, and the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods’, this resonated with Alan’s perception of autumn , the images of the changing colours of the leaves, the gradual transformation of the trees from majestic verdant monoliths to skeletal sculptures with multiple limbs, with spidery fingery twigs and branches blowing in the wind, until they withered and perished.

Hallowe’en was a big deal in his hometown, as it was all over Scotland, he was old, being a late middle-aged man, without a wife or any children, and had found it weird when walking during the pandemic, that many of the gardens on the other side of town were decorated with plastic gravestones, white sheets sewn together to create ghosts, not to mention the plastic skeletons and faux cobwebs which conspired to create a spooky graveyard tableau which would not have been out of place in an early ‘70s Hanna Barbera cartoon. It was a welcome change from garden gnomes, but they too had discovered the ‘October Country,’ a time and place to celebrate, a tad like Christmas but entirely different, more a celebration of death, than one of birth.

The words came quickly when he typed, a Bradbury type tale, so he thought, but then , we’re talking about the guy who wrote the story in 2020 called ‘The Office Runs Itself’, under the mistaken belief that he had written a tale which was at least the equal of Robert Aickman, or maybe even Ramsey Campbell.

As he finished the tale, the spell check and word count having been done,  the front doorbell buzzed urgently, he jumped slightly, who would be calling at this time of night?

Who could it be, a friend, neighbour, his brother coming to tell of a family emergency?

Of course, the rational side of him said, it was Hallowe’en, it was bound to be the trick or treaters, wasn’t it?

But then he heard  a voice amidst the doorbell's insistent clangour, a friendly , calming voice, it was the voice of his dad.