eerieindiana | Eerie, Indiana fanfiction: Confluence

Yesterday was both midsummer's eve and a full moon, which last sort-of happened in 1967. This is a quick snippet of what that night may have looked like in Eerie.

On Midsummer, the foothills of Wolf Mountain sparkled with the light of a thousand tiny lanterns. On every tree and brambly shrub hung tight-woven wicker balls, soul-cages containing one or more flickering fairies caught and pressed into service for a single night, the yellow-white glow of their wings illuminating trestle tables laden with food and drink to mark the coming solstice.

A dozen bonfires blazed in the encroaching darkness, and as the dusk fell, fireworks erupted from the various picnic spots, rockets and whirligigs, fizzbangs and screamers, as well as the bigger set-pieces, the heavy dark tubes that when set off would form the shape of flowers, or dragons, or valentine hearts.

Amidst the explosions of colour and noise the real dragons flew, taking advantage of the distraction to swoop and dive above the exalting human crowds, to feel the warm night air upon the thin jewel-hued membrane of their wings, and to snatch up the odd unwary reveller who had strayed too far from the shelter of lights and foliage and their own kind.

The full moon shone on the blood-stained ground where the Harvest King had made his final desperate stand the previous autumn, and the rust-red streaks were grey in the pale light. The darker shadows of broom-bourne witches flitted across the silver lunar surface, and the night sky hummed with whispered incantations and the prickling static feel of magic being wrought.

When the pepto-pink Cadillac pulled into the entrance of the northen parking lot, the old-timers supervising the community barbeque nudged each other and announced in stage whispers that it appeared the Widow Wilson would be joining the festivities with her two young sons, the first time they had done so since the sudden and unexpected passing of the man of the house, dead these past three years.

A respectable resident of the Eerie Public Library, an elderly knowledge-spirit with paperdust in her eyes and gossip on her tongue, whispered in a voice like turning pages that the Wilson twins had yet to satisfactorily graduate seventh grade, returning every fall to repeat the same classes, in the same clothes and with the same dead-eyed gaze. Mrs. Radenbacher, the proprietor of Everything Corn, confided that just the other day she had cause to be passing the time of day with that the nice young man who had taken over the World o' Stuff when Mister Radford had retired, and he had told her, in confidence of course, that he had yet to meet the Widow Wilson despite making weekly deliveries to her large double-fronted home.

Betty Wilson closed the car door gently behind her, bowed her head and took a deep breath. She smoothed her skirts with one white-gloved hand, adjusted her pink pillbox hat with the other, and fixed her face into a rictus-like smile as she turned towards the queue forming at the entrance to the picnic area.

"Three tickets please, Beatrice," she said, as she reached the turnstile. "And when you have a moment, I would love to talk to you about career opportunities for the home-maker-on-the-go."