Note: I own nothing, and do not intend to infringe on any copyrights. I just wrote this as a slightly late Halloween inspired story, featuring caves and poems and ghosts. Enjoy.
The Dead Poets converged in the cave one Friday night with special purpose and enthusiasm. This was not an ordinary meeting, nor a usual day. Today was Halloween.
No other explanation would have sufficed to reason out why Charlie was currently attired in a bedsheet and bunch of grapes, Knox in what looked like several black feather boas, and Todd in a large straw hat and billowing shirt.
Neil was wearing his Puck costume. He hadn't needed to think hard. Cameron was wearing normal clothes, insisting that Halloween was a kids' holiday and that he didn't need to dress up.
"So are we starting the meeting?" Charlie demanded, pulling out a Milky Way bar. He had inexplicably collected a seemingly bottomless supply of candy, and was determined to get through most of it before the end of the night. Neil, looking a little creepy in his twig crown and the low light, took out Five Centuries of Verse.
When he had finished, Knox said, "Pass it to me. I've got one."
"If it's about Chris, I might kill myself here and now," Charlie teased.
"Here it is. Once upon a midnight dreary, as I pondered, weak and weary ... " began Knox, ignoring, with what he considered a moral high ground, Charlie's remark.
Suddenly, his costume made a lot more sense. The Poets listened, enraptured - Knox's delivery was nearly ideal. Of all of them, he had progressed the most in his recitation; in the first meeting, he had spoken a little awkwardly, acted embarrassed at the idea of a society whose purpose was reading poetry aloud. But now the words came naturally, their rhythm and tone creeping into his voice without conscious thought.
The poem was enough to make the night feel a tinge more forbidding. Todd had drawn his feet up off the floor of the cave instinctively. It was silly, but it always made him irrationally nervous to have his feet in the shadows when the rest of him was in the light. Neil, cross-legged in the back of the cave, kept looking toward the cave mouth as though expecting the eponymous bird to appear. When Knox finished reading, he looked around at the others with surprise.
"What're you all staring at me for?"
"Nothing," Meeks and Cameron said in unison.
"I'll go next," said Charlie, trying to make up for the fact that Poe's most famous work had made him draw his toga around himself like a blanket. He adjusted the grapevine in his hair and flipped through the book. "OK, I got one. The windigo, the windigo, its eyes are ice and indigo! Its blood is rank and yellowish! Its voice is hoarse and bellowish!" He continued in that vein, clearly enjoying the verses, and the other Poets relaxed once more - laughing at the turns of phrase, the humourous grisliness - though Todd kept his feet firmly in sight.
Charlie himself enjoyed every minute of the reading - both for the poem itself and for the attention - right up to the final verse, at the end of which Pitts, who was sitting next to him, put a sneaking hand round the back of Charlie's neck and yelled "Windigo! Windigo!" Charlie, caught by surprise, flailed to escape Pitts's grasp, and the grapevine he was wearing slipped down off his head and ended up a rather overlarge necklace. Hastening to adjust it, Charlie scowled. "Thanks, Pitts."
"Anytime," the taller boy replied, grinning. His costume was an ancient mariner; next to him, Meeks was disguised as a highwayman complete with a cardboard pistol stuck in his belt.
Neil had taken up the book and was leafing through it. The flashlight in his hand danced across the cave walls and floor, sometimes flicking upward catching his twig crown in a flash of golden-brown. A few candles, to add to the atmosphere, had been set up here and there on the cave floor. Meeks had started making shadow puppets on one wall, and the other Poets were momentarily distracted by his uncanny impression of a flying bird.
"Come on, I can do a better one than that ... " Cameron attempted to demonstrate his skill at making a barking dog, which ended up looking a little like a llama.
"What else can you do? A swan that looks like a hand?" Charlie ignored his roommate's glare, taking over in front of the flame to make what appeared to be a cobra ready to strike.
"That doesn't look like anything," Pitts laughed. "You're going to have to do better than that."
"Fine," said Charlie a bit huffily. "Here, have a yeti." Putting his hands together he approximated something large and furry.
"That looks like a giant spider," remarked Todd, grinning as he took a bite of a Snickers bar.
Charlie gave up.
"Hey, I've got an idea." Neil had their attention immediately. Neil could always get the Poets to listen.
"What? Tell us!"
"We make up a ghost story. But not one that we already know - no, this has to be original, and we all get to say ... three sentences, at a time, and the last one has to be unfinished. We'll go around the circle." He began. "Once there was a young farmer, around whose estate there was a wood. He lived in fear of that forest because he knew that wolves lived in it and would steal his sheep if he wasn't extremely careful. But he didn't know that there were also - "
" - wraiths, living in the woods and sucking the souls of whoever ventured in late at night." Charlie had picked up on the game quickly. "So he left his window open at night, because he didn't think about the possibility that a wraith might sneak in, lay a deathlike finger on his brow, and take his soul. One night - "
" - he was tending to his sheep, in the field." Meeks now took up the challenge. "Suddenly, he saw the lurking shadow of a wolf in the trees. He took up a flaming torch - "
Pitts took his cue. " - which he brandished as he chased it back into the wood. Returning to his flock, he herded them back to the enclosure where they would spend the night. When he returned to his house - "
" - he found it was dark, so he lit a lantern." Cameron thought for a moment, seeking an idea. "He sat down in his armchair for a pipe in front of the fire, for he was a simple farmer and could not read. As he dozed - "
Knox continued. " - he felt the room grow cold and saw the fire blow out before his eyes. Then he stood to light it once more, but the door blew open and the wind blew him back into the armchair. Then before him stood - "
" - a hideous wraith with eyes of flame and frost, having been awakened by the farmer entering the forest to fend off the wolf that day. He begged for mercy, but the wraith knew not the meaning of the word, and it struck him dead with a touch of its icy finger. And to this day ..." here Todd took a dramatic pause, looking uncharacteristically happy to be at the centre of attention "... his own wraith walks the forest, striking others who disturb him with the fate that befell him all those years ago." His eyes glimmered, and for someone dressed as Walt Whitman, he looked positively eerie.
"The end," Neil said. There was a pause. Knox broke it as he bit into a LifeSaver, a crunch that made the entire Society jump. There was a burst of nervous laughter as they all tried hard to cover their momentary nerves. When Neil accidentally switched off the only flashlight they'd brought, the situation was not improved. The candles were not enough to reassure the huddled students that there was not some dark figure, its fingers poised to strike them down, waiting in the shadows behind their backs.
"I'm not sure I want to walk back through the woods ... " Knox was the first to voice what everyone was thinking.
"Geez, Knox, don't be a wimp - I'll go first." Charlie stood up, nearly knocking his head on the ceiling. "The god of revelry and wine will protect you mortals!" The others laughed - if Charlie wanted to go out in the cold and dark, and risk his soul being stolen, he was welcome to.
"Did you take Keating too seriously when he said gods were created in the Dead Poets?" asked Neil amiably. He had relit the flashlight, but its beam was weak. The battery was slowly dying.
"Hey, do I have to remind you Bacchus was revered by ancient Greeks?"
"Sure, but was he immune to wraiths?"
Charlie hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Yes."
"Wanna bet?"
Todd picked up one of the candles. "At least don't go out without a light," he said earnestly, back to his usual self, staying out of the way. For a moment, caught up in the story, he'd stepped forward, let himself forget the feeling of eyes upon him, but that still scared him more than the possibility of getting his soul removed.
Charlie put out a hand and Todd reached up to hand him the light. Then a wind blew through the cave. No candles remained lit. It may have been coincidence, it was probably coincidence, but to all within it was an absolute and confirming sign that they would be made to suffer a fate worse than death if they set foot in the woods.
Neil glanced from one Poet to the next, unable to hide his fears. "So we've got one dying flashlight. And a fifteen-minute walk through dark woods full of soul-devouring wraiths. I say we make a run for it."
The others stared back at him with faces that were struggling hard to maintain their calm. "I vote we all go in formation - we don't want to lose anyone," Meeks replied rationally
Todd and Knox had been sitting on the edges of the circle, but they moved closer now, as they arranged a formation: Neil and Charlie in front, Todd, Knox and Cameron next, and Meeks and Pitts at the back as Meeks was too logical to be scared of wraiths and Pitts could take one on if he had to. Neil reached out a hand and placed it on Todd's own, giving his roommate a smile. "I swear, I'll protect you from whatever's out there!" he said dramatically, only half for Todd's own benefit. Every shadow was starting to look wraithlike now in the dying light and the over-lively imaginations of those present.
Just as the Dead Poets made to move, the flashlight died. This was the last straw and chaos erupted: abandoning formation, all seven Society members ran screaming into the dark.