Dandy Darkly

The Halloween Bride

Prepackaged hamburgers, vacuum sealed and ready for the radiated waves of a beeping glass carousel, and sugar sweetened water, carbonized and bottled in the plastic cancer that grows deep within Mother Earth's metastatic land fills. And to the dark sorcerer who conjured Man's first Funyun, my pointed hat s'off to you. For better or for worst. In sickness and in health (mostly sickness), these are the delicacies which sustain the masses in this modern world. Our first farms and fields, so lovingly and carefully maintained by early man, have been replaced by automated harvesters and growth hormones and genetically mutated grains. And almost gone are the ancient rituals associated with the end of the harvest and the blessing of the fields in preparation for next spring's planting.

Except for one such ritual -- the Halloween bride.

In the Night's Time, when the country sides and meadows were rife with creatures of The Void, the crones taught protective blessings to the farmers who tended Man's flocks and fields. They risked their safety living outside the growing cities, a risk casually dismissed by those walled away from the hidden things lurking between the rows of corn. 

One such blessing (the greatest such charm given) was the invocation of the straw man or the scarecrow, a delightful sort of golem who hung in the fields to shoo away unwanted gremlins and ensure a bountiful harvest throughout the planting season. Few ever saw this folksy effigy take from his pumpkin patch post to battle trespassers into his territory, but all written accounts agree in the deadliness of his dispatch, followed by a most charming display of local dance before settling himself back on his wooden stand.  

As it was in Night's Time, and still is today, nothing came without a price. The scarecrow, henceforth known as Sam Hain in honor of the harvest season's ancient name, required gifts to guarantee his protection for the next planting season. Once the fields were reaped and the livestock slaughtered, the rural townsfolk gathered in colorful costumes to celebrate the harvest and tempt that ragged scarecrow, Sam Hain, down from his peg to dance a jig.

And what a fabulous party! The spirits (evoked) of family passed mingled with the spirits (distilled) of fermented grain. Emboldened by their disguises (and the alcohol), the hardworking men and women of these rural areas threw caution to the wind, taking up chanting and dancing in circles with the cursed crones who were typically shunned, the wyld women who lived even outside of country society. There they celebrated another passing of the year, and paid tribute to the master who kept their plates filled, and families safe.

And once the festive frenzy hit a crescendo, that stitched sack of hay and twigs would suddenly jump down to the delight of the assembled guests. Kicking, shimmying, swaying and grooving, there Sam Hain danced while villagers and farmers laid at his prancing feet offerings both beautiful and profane, both a trick and a treat. 

You see, Sam Hain, like all conjured entities, exists in the world between Man and The Void. And the gifts for his services had to be equally exquisite yet grotesque. A lovely carved knife stained with demon's blood, for example; or a detailed painting of a crying child, one enchanted to actually sob out loud; or thirteen white doves, all skewered on a silver arrow; are all documented examples of a few gifts offered in harvest rites gone by.

And as the years passed, old Sam Hain had time to think about his situation hanging up on that stick, roasting in the summer sun or swaying in an autumn breeze. The scarecrow realized how lonely his life had become. He came to anticipate his tribute with increased emotion. And he found himself envious of Mankind for their loving relationships. The crooked crones relayed Sam Hain's wishes. He now wanted a bride, one every year to continue his blessings on the harvest, or else he'd let the monsters of The Void ransack their farms.

The farmers had no choice in the matter. And now a young, virgin bride (or groom -- being a scarecrow, Sam Hain naturally swung both ways) was selected from their midst to keep him company for the long, cold winter. She'd travel with him into The Void and bid goodbye to Man for eternity.  

There are rumors that in some of Man's cities (those with a strong connection still to nature such as Atlanta, Bergen and Portland) elaborate, costumed weddings to Sam Hain still exist. Halloween brides are said to be chosen at birth, and raised with the knowledge their destiny lay within The Void, and at the side of the Master of Halloween. And the lucky guests who give gifts to that dancing scarecrow are entitled to all manner of blessings for the year that follows. But only if your gift exceeds old Sam Hain's expectations.

And only if you're on the wedding guest list...

Wicked Little Town (part four)

Peer into the astral plane, and still today you'll see two teetering infernos of spinning fire. The columns stretch from the blistered pavement up to the mocking cosmos. Shrieking harpies with bat wings and barbed whips ride the updrafts of scorching air, seeking helpless souls to pluck from the chaos and drop to the ground below. From beneath the fallen beams crawl demons the color of carnage, and a gentle, southwestern breeze supports a rotten-candy cloud of ash, burning jet fuel, and soot covered, contorted faces lost in the dark and gasping for air.

No trip to New York is complete without an obligatory visit. There's the construction pit, offerings of flowers and cards. Annual ceremonies remembering those we lost. Elaborate murals illustrating what's to be. Though it never shall be. The site is cursed. We all know it, but can't accept it.

Look into the past and remember that day. The bravest among us, fire fighters, police, ordinary men and women who dropped everything to help the injured or the fleeing. The wall of dust held razor sharp teeth and goring horns. They found monsters in the narrow canyons of Wall Street. That morning the Veil between worlds fell with the towers. Cowering behind that car. Clutching his briefcase. Everything covered in ash. Alarms and police sirens and explosions, but all he heard was the breathing. And the growling.

Reading a comic book under the covers. Mom and dad are arguing again, but just keep reading. The flashlight's translucent glow pours through the thin paper page and casts a prismatic spray of distorted images on to the insides of the blanket. The safe blanket. Rotate the flashlight, the image shifts. The monsters and heroes melt together beneath the blanket. Count backwards and study the image. 3. Mom screams. 2. Dad screams. 1. Pull back the blanket. There's a monster in the room. Scream.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! DIE MOTHER FUCKER!" - "The fucking thing had two legs and four fucking arms and a fucking spikes here and and and a fucking mouth of giant fucking teeth!" - "fuck where did it fucking come from man!?!?!!?" - "FUCK ANOTHER ONE! THERE!" - "Keep smashing it with rock! SMASH IT'S FUCKING FACE IN!!!" - "FUCK WHAT IS GOING ON?!" - IT'S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD!!!!"

The matron has arrived, and she has the artifact. The older witches are exhausted. Many of the younger are dead or flying wounded out of the blast zone. The matron steps quickly, her focus absolute. Demons three times her size roar and sprint in her direction. They leap and instantly vaporize into sand. Her thin lips move silently. She manipulates something small swiftly and delicately within her withered, ancient hands. The women rise as she glides past. They follow in her wake. They know her sacrifice is imminent. Their most loved; their eldest. The Green Witches' tears hit the charred cement near where the drops of the matron's blood has fallen. She who was here when Manhattan was born. The matron bids them stop. There's so much more they must accomplish this dreadful day. She opens her tiny palm. To her hand she's painstakingly sewn a wooden button. The witches turn and flee from their loving mother, sister and friend. 

The conspiracy theorists say it's a government cover up for a secret radiation or nuclear testing facility beneath the World Trade Center Site. Think about it, the infected mutants in the Chelsea biohazard zone got loose and somehow busted a reactor core or something. Whatever. If you study the tapes you'll clearly see a green explosion happen at the base of the second tower a full hour and twenty minutes after the collapse. Pause it. Right there. See it? What is that green light? 

It's a sunny morning in the month of September before the September we know was. A gentle breeze blows to the southwest. Three regal women stand on the banks of a wild, untamed island. The natives claim the forests are cursed and want no ownership of it, but are willing to sell it in exchange for a few mystical trinkets. The witches confer and return with a handful of thirteen buttons. Supposedly these buttons have the power to close any door, seal any break and mend any tear. The natives refuse the thirteenth, as their shaman is highly suspicious of the number, and instead accept twelve of the magical fasteners as payment for the blighted land they call Manhattan. The matron puts the lucky thirteenth button in her pocket for safe keeping, and begins helping the sisters of the Green Witch Coven unload their tiny boat.

Wicked Little Town (part one)

On a clear evening, from the rooftop observatory of the Empire Tower for Astrological Sciences, one is afforded an unobstructed, three hundred and sixty degree view of my new home, the lovely necropolis called Manhattan. 

Down Fifth Avenue, past the Flat Iron Building, the crowded shops of SoHo and the ornate golden rooftops and winding alleyways of Little Beijing Market, you can see the razor sharp spires of the Bergen Bridge. Their elegance sits in stark contrast to the dull, squat masonry of the massive toll bridge, Goblin's Crossing. 

Both bridges deposit the traveler in the state of New Norway, the eleventh state of our great nation which geographically encompasses the entirety of Long Island. One of the oldest settlements on North America, New Norway was discovered circa 1100 AD when the viking explorer Thorkell Leifson (son of famed adventurer Leif Ericson) made contact with America's indigenous people there. The civilized Norsemen admired the Lenape tribe's deep sense of honor and rich pantheon of powerful deities. They were equally impressed by the natives' giving nature and capacity for deadly retribution if threatened. The two groups were fast allies long before the Spanish sorcerer Giovanni da Verrazzano's ships sailed past the Narrows in 1524. And almost a century later, when Henry Hudson's expedition glided up the river that would later bear his name, the two races were indistinguishable as one.

Much of New Norway's capital city, Bergen, is visible tonight. The towering totem poles, carved with likenesses of Odin and Freya, are as impressive as their unique homes and buildings, ecological and architectural masterworks cradled within the limbs of hulking, living trees. And sure, occasionally a sacrificial scream or two echoes across the Hudson, way more during their hedonistic full moon rituals. But for the most part, the tribes of New Norway are good people and amicable neighbors. 

(If only the same could be said for our Eastern state, the toxic swamp people of New Jersey. Seriously.)

Back in Manhattan, further north from Little Beijing Market, the colorful murals featuring laughing, round faced children riding whiskered dragons abruptly disappear. In their place are filthy, graffiti covered brick walls with broken windows. Buzzing neon signs point out tattoo parlors and absinthe lounges. In the East Village, pierced young people grind away a life of self-destructive bliss. And the old ones, the ones who somehow managed to survive it all, they roam the shadows, hungry for any scrap narcotic The Void tosses their way.

Midtown... bleh. Busy little gnomes busy making piles and piles of cash. Next!

Moving around the observatory walk... gross. There's a winged rat sitting perched facing the Upper East Side. No, it's not a pigeon. In my Manhattan the rats actually have wings -- black raven's wings to be exact. They're gross. Shoo, rat.

A perpetual fog hangs over the Upper East Side. New York's most influential, original families still own sprawling residences among the grim granite buildings and stuffy English pubs here. It's in this dreary neighborhood that you'll find the Mayor's mansion. Mayor Gloomberg, laughably running yet again for re-election, holds the post in perpetuity. And, yes. He's a ghost. A very, very old ghost to be certain.

I sincerely hope you, delicate reader, don't find these dreadful admissions to be too shocking. Tis simply the world I've come to inhabit. I consider it my honor and duty to share it's secrets with you. Moving on --

New York's enormous, fifth avenue museums form the backbone of the fence separating Central Park East from the rest of the city. The spiked barricade runs the entire perimeter of the 800 acre park. Most New Yorkers think the barbed wire and razor sharp spikes are in place to limit the access of the gardens and lawns to those who reside in Manhattan's wealthier neighborhoods. In honesty, it was erected to keep Central Park's myriad nasties from interrupting the rich folk's genteel croquet matches and well earned steak dinners. But occasionally something truly twisted does get loose. 

And it runs its ten legged, twelve eyed self straight to Harlem!

Wouldn't you know the black folk just happen to got stuck with the side of the fence that no one can seem to keep repaired? And that's precisely why Councilwoman LaShawndra LeFay went into politics. Fed up with how the city was dumping all their shit on her Harlem, she's now become one of the most influential politicians in the entire state.

There's also a persistent rumor that Ms. LeFay is the infamous Voodoo Queen of Harlem with hexes on Manhattan's most powerful movers and shakers and a horde of blood thirsty zombies at her disposal. But you can't believe every rumor you read on Page Six. Can you?

OK. That's enough for now. I'm not convinced your suspicious natures can accept the fantastical things you've read on this interdimensional diary of darkness.

In the cards for tomorrow:

The bohemian west side of our horrific hamlet: Are the jovial families of the posh Upper West Side any happier than the smiling troubadours gracing the prosceniums of Manhattan's famed Broadway? Not really. Both groups are paid to look happy.

And once again Times Square is a cesspool of low morals and filthy pleasures!

Name Calling

My fucking hand refuses to heal. After the rat trap snapped my knuckles, I've had a perpetually bloody bandage decorating the most important God-given finger of them all - my middle one.

Week two of the new day job - and taking into account a fading black eye, my bloodied left hand and yesterday's two hour nose bleed (not to mention my ever present pink criss-crosses: four on the left wrist, two on the right), I'm certain my new bosses suspect FightClubesque extracurricular goings-on as their new hire's after-work-fancy. I told them I'm on a gay rugby team. Let's hope I don't catch a pox while banishing something; only so many lip sores can be explained away by a team of homos in short-shorts.

Oh, vino. I should be in the corner kitchen of my cozily appointed Clinton Hill apartment making turkey meatballs with angel hair pasta, instead I'm drinking Malbec and considering the tougher-than-expected exorcism of Sunday's mafia ghost. Ouch. Typing is difficult (and painful) with three swollen fingers.

So... still trying to feel out how I want to arrange this journal of the occult. I've considered relating a weekly encounter, and then detailing the methods used. Although that seems awfully clinical.

Clinical is the primary reason why, as a wine lover, I never fell into the aesthetic of wine-tasting. Why contribute so much "sissy-science" to a pursuit that really trickles down to simple taste and a knack for "knowing" what is good and what is bad? For what it's worth I'm drinking a Familia Mayol Malbec 2008 from Luyan de Cuyo, Mendoza Argentina. $12. But whatever. I can stalk the moors of Scotland in pursuit (as I have) of a dread banshee, but would the layman know such a vaunted specter from a common house spook? Probably not.

I totally need to tell my trip to Scotland someday. I was such a newbie. I still can't hear parts of the upper register because of that damned red head's screaming.

I digress, Names. Names have power in the world of the dead -and the living for that matter.

I have a name that's on my driver's license and Social Security card, but the name that the minions of The Void know me as is: Dandy Darkly. It's my "industry" nom de gloom, if you will.

There's much power in a name. I'm loathe to call into being our current leader in chief, but much of his own failure attributes to sharing the same name as his presidential daddy. Truth be told, even though I hate the man - (hah like I even know the real guy? Likely we'd smoke out, drink some whiskey and I'd say something really profound which in response he'd say "that's really deep.") But even though I HATE George Bush - if I ended up in Iraq banishing suicide ghost bombers (not that I would ever! yikes) I'd definitely call up the name of George Bush as a Get the "dubya" outta here! solution.

For reference: imagine two columns side by side. Column A you have Names that the Ghostie would react poorly to (considering the mortal age of the ghost and it's education level) and Column B you have Names that Mankind would consider an appropriate "opposite" to the "type" of ghostie you're trying to vanquish. Again, typing this makes it sound like I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons. (Not sure if Gary Gygax was a servant of The Void.)

Likely the soul of that nasty ghost-rat didn't know who the hell Ganga is (Indian goddess of cleanliness and namesake of the Ganges River.) But when you're me, simply screaming her out feeds on the fifty-trillion Indians who do know - and that lends credence and power to her name.

Hippocrates may not be a "god" per se. Ugh, what is a "god". We'll get into that later, trust me, but it's good enough to trigger a reaction in a pestilence spreading vermin like rat-ghost, and voila - it's scared and scurrying away.

Many a darkness spook I've run away by yelling out Edison's name. After all, what are early industrial scientists other than America's "magicians"? Could you invent a light bulb? No.

How do I do it? I read a lot of ancient mythology -- and I travel abroad when I can. And attend religious ceremonies. And most important: I was born this way. Duh. Lately I've been stuck stateside, but in my twenties I had traveled abroad quite extensively. Funny thing about New York City: it's full of ghosts.

Oh - number one misconception about ghosts is that calling out their true name will banish them outright. Hah. No way. Ghosts don't give a fuck if you know their name. By the time they become ghosts  they're so juiced by The Void that such beginner's crap is below their notice.

Certainly there'll be more regarding names to come. Names of the ancient Magi have power: Vainamoimen, Ilmarinen, Circe, Merlin and Baba Yaga to name a few hold tremendous power -- my head spins from simply typing them -- or it's the Malbec. Oh? Did you know serial killers become ghosts simply because of their notoriety? Its true.

Will Dandy Darkly live up to the esteem of his peers? With a bar set so high, My journey has extended three decades prior to this trivial exercise. Those gifted I've named - their journeys - some of them centuries or eons prior to my own.

I have no shame in expressing absolute candor and pride in regards to my present endeavors, but when regarding the literally earth-shaking power of my elders - I demur to utter humility on every count.

Because, for better or for worse, such powers are still among us.  Now I'm off to cook dinner... for my boyfriend. No name given, nosy bitches.