‘The Gothic Time? I’ve never heard it called that before,’ I said.
‘Well you have now!’ someone exclaimed.
‘Anyway, you’re new to Preston,’ replied the one I remembered was called Helen.
‘And you’re new to us…to all this, I mean,’ added one of the others whose name I couldn’t recall but who might have been called Steve.
‘Don’t they call it the Gothic Time in Bristol, then?’ asked one of the others. Was his name Jim? Maybe. Anyway, for the sake of argument I’ll refer to him as Jim.
‘They don’t call it anything in Bristol,’ I replied, ‘well, not anything I’ve ever heard.’
‘But they must have it there,’ chipped in one of the females. ‘It can’t just be a Preston thing.’
‘It’s a universal thing, I can assure you of that,’ insisted the one called they called Roger, with an effortless air of authority. I’ve always assumed he was the leader. Then, addressing me, this Roger added, ‘You must surely have been aware of the Gothic Time in some capacity?’
‘I can’t say I have,’ I said.
‘I can’t seriously believe you haven’t heard talk about the Gothic Time since you moved here,’ declared Helen, rather shrilly.
I shrugged my shoulders. ‘I’m a newbie. What can I say?’
‘Well, it all kicks off tonight,’ said Roger, ‘and it lasts until Christmas morning.’
‘And what happens after Christmas morning?’ I asked.
‘Everything returns to normal,’ replied Helen.
‘Whatever normal is,’ added Jim, laughing wheezily. With that rattling cough of his I’d have sworn he was a goner if I hadn’t known better.
‘Didn’t you ever feel something different in the ether during the Gothic Time?’ someone asked me. ’Couldn’t you feel all that increased psychic energy crackling in the air after dark?
‘We’re well known sceptics, us Librans,’ I quipped.
‘Well, you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face very soon, mate. You must be feeling a right Charlie now,’ declared Jim, quite reasonably under the circumstances.
‘Yeah, I suppose I am,’ I admitted, suddenly feeling quite miserable.
‘To be fair to Gordon, I didn’t know anything about any of this either,’ interjected the one called Jane, ‘before, before… y’know.’
‘Well, speaking purely for myself, I don’t know how anyone could fail not to have been aware of it,’ stated the one called Martin. ‘All those ghouls and ghosties flying around all over the shop, scaring the horses and anyone or anything that spotted them out and about getting up to all sorts of tricks and nonsense.’
‘Did they scare you?’ asked Jane.
‘Me? Nah, I’m made of sterner stuff,’ declared Martin, proudly.
‘A bit ironic, though… the way things turned out for you, I mean’ said Steve.
‘Well, that’s life, I suppose,’ replied Martin, which drew a few mirthless chuckles from the others.
‘Anyway, regardless of who knew what and when, the reality is the Gothic Time for this year starts tonight,’ said Roger, ‘and it starts in precisely ten minutes time.’
‘We’d better get moving, then,’ said Martin. ‘I’d hate to miss out on all the fun.’
‘I bet you loved all this when you were a kid, Martin,’ said one of the females I hadn’t encountered before.
‘Halloween? As a kid? Bloomin’ loved it! Couldn’t get enough of it.’
‘And now?’ asked Helen?
‘Well, the circumstances are somewhat different now, aren’t they? For one thing I’m not a kid anymore, and after a hundred and twenty-eight years of all this, night after bloomin’ night, every single evening from Halloween to Christmas I have to confess that, yes, some of its novelty has worn off.’
‘You wait ‘til you’ve had to put up with it three hundred and sixty-four bloody times on the trot, Martin,’ sighed Jane, ‘then you’ll know what being fed up really feels like. Flying about all over the place all night long lost its novelty value for me around about 1658.’
Suddenly I was conscious of being outside my nice, cosy coffin for the first time since my funeral; floating freely a few feet above my own grave. I could feel the evening was rapidly growing dark, yet I could quite easily sense the presence of the others dotted here and there around the cemetery. I couldn’t make out any actual figures, but rather perceived them as dim lights, a bit like the meagre lights you get off those bloody useless energy efficient light bulbs. And I knew exactly who was who, just as I’d known exactly who was who when I’d been six feet under. Helen was the one in the next plot to me. Steve was directly behind me. Jim’s grave was diagonally across from mine. Jane was quite a bit further away but I still knew it was her. Roger was a few plots to my right, floating over what looked like an elaborate mausoleum rather than a bog standard grave. The others were peppered here and there about the graveyard.
‘So, when was it you joined us, Gordon?’ asked one of the spectres from perhaps a hundred yards away. I could hear her, though, as if she were floating right beside me.
‘August the 14th. I replied. ‘I was killed in a car crash on August the 5th. Head-on collision with another driver. His fault, it was. He’d been drinking and was pissed out of his skull and was careering down the wrong side of the B6242 at 80 miles an hour, heading straight for yours truely. I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance.’
‘Sorry ‘bout that,’ chimed up one of the lights right by the cemetery gates, suitably apologetic.
‘Well, it’s all water under the bridge now, I guess,’ I sighed, rather magnanimously I thought. If we’d both still been alive I’d have kicked the bastard’s teeth in. But we weren’t. So I couldn’t.
‘This’ll be your first Gothic Time as one of the ghouls and ghosties, then?’ said Martin.
‘Do I have an option?’ I asked.
‘No,’ replied Roger, curtly.
‘Oh, well then, bring it on,’ I said.
‘It’s only until Christmas morning, said Helen, ‘then you can relax in your nice, snug grave all night long.’
‘Roll on Christmas then,’ I muttered, under my breath, and suddenly I felt myself being whooshed against my will up, up and up into the cold night air along with all the others.
‘Right, crew, Halloween starts now,’ said Roger as we were each launched skyward. ‘Good haunting, and remember, everyone back in their grave by dawn.’
