By: Daiyu Tang ((Photos by various Haven members! TY))
The cemetery still stank of brackish storm water when a small, hooded circle filed in through the broken iron gate. Moonlight knifed across standing pools; toppled stones wore ropes of Spanish moss like wet shrouds. From the hedgerow, this reporter watched as the group formed a ring around a marble slab. One woman, pale-violet hair, thorned crown, gown soaked to the knees raised what looked very much like a heart in one hand, a jar of dark blood beside it.
The leader was Eva, known to our readers from her work at the Vudu Spice shop. She moved slowly through the ring, dipping a metal claw into the jar and tracing an ∞ in blood between each brow. “We gather here to return the spirits to their bodies and to their graves and to their realms,” she said, loud enough for a certain black clad shadow to hear. It was as matter-of-fact as a medic giving a diagnosis or as solemn as an ordained priest. Say what you want about religion, but I for one don’t think ‘ordination’ stops at the Abrahamic. Certainly Eva projects the power and presence of any ermine clad religious leader.
The floodwater lapped at ankles; a statue appeared to weep algae; and a solitary Crow formed part of the circle. No one spoke except to answer Eva with their bowed heads and what they said, lower and less forceful than her ‘sermon’. I often struggled to divine it all and didn’t know the others, masked and cloaked supporting the ceremony…
Speaking of the solitary Crow, Alice Crow, without effort to hide her face and looking still the same despite ornamentation came forward cradling the sacrifice’s blood and the blade that had made it. She pressed the knife into the soil through the ‘skin’ of water. “Spirits, take this sacrifice… as above and so below, feel the blood in your soil, ground it to your roots as it grounds us to this realm,” she called, scattering the remainder with her fingers. A raven circled once above the circle; a hairless cat threaded between boots and settled by a stone like an usher from an older country.
Eva lifted the heart toward the quarters, calling each in turn. “To the north we pull from your strength… to the south… to the east… to the west… Joining them together brings a balance to this area. Keep this area at bay!” The wind rose as if on cue, snapping cloaks in the aftermath of Ruth, sending little flecks of spray from the sodden ground. Then her voice climbed still further.
“We come bearing gifts to you, Spirit realm. Take these wayward spirits and pull them back to rest. Relinquish their binding to this storm… We chain the gates to your realm once again! We are the keepers of this realm. Spirits, return home, find your rest again.”
The Fifth ‘Emergency Service’
Look, this is as far away from ‘Ghost Busters’ as it’s possible but I throw the name out here just to make that link to a service, a civic service. Alice, Eva and others catch some bad headlines and rap around here. This ceremony (especially when garnished with what looked like a real heart) isn’t going to turn my view round. Alice is still a murderer for example.
Never-the-less, if you have a feeling of spirituality then you probably feel things in Hathian aren’t that ‘right’ and while to a more mundane woman we might see that needing a better mayor, or different police officers, or less gangs, perhaps in a way, an ethereal way, there is a deeper connection to such a blood soaked land. Perhaps that deeper connection needs to be told to rest…
Whatever your views, I might argue that at least as far as I saw, no crime was committed here and a service, for Hathian, seemed to be being rendered. Consider that a moment as you praise your ‘heroes’… perhaps there are some other ones less well known. Move over HPD… The Hathian Paranormal Department is in town, kicking ectoplasmic butt. Yes, I end with flippancy but perhaps that is nothing more as my insecurity at things I don’t understand. What about you dear reader?
An Ending – The ‘Garden’ Tended?
“Crows once looked after this land,” Alice Crow answered, arms lifted. “The garden is sacred… As the last Crow who holds these words, I urge the spirits to return to their homes!” The wind thinned. Somewhere in the ring a voice asked if they were gone. “They are leaving,” Eva replied without opening her eyes.
At last the leader lowered the heart, returned the jar, and let her shoulders drop. “The gate is closed. It is locked… I hear them at peace,” she said. The circle loosened. Blood washed from foreheads in thin, rust-coloured threads. Light seemed to return, just a little…
Hurricane Ruth ripped shingles and power lines and contributed to the fall of the Theatre yes; but it also ripped boundaries. In Hathian, when the water rises, so do the old ways. This paper offers no blessing and no curse; only the record that, in a graveyard still wearing the trappings of the storm, a ring formed, names were spoken, and… if you believe them… the wandering dead were told, firmly and finally, to go home in peace. The Lord of the Rings fan in me, once I was safely away and feeling less spooked might also have said ‘LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK‘, but I am sure Eva would say, that just like Smeagol, the dead will always find a way to be restless and return to haunt our world.
