"Costume" by Vedikha_Writes
Genre: Horror (paranormal activity, blood, cult practices)
Each year it's the very same thing.
We tell ourselves that it's going to be a good year and then after a few months after making a decision to change things (sometimes the very next day) we realise that our own lives are set from a different mould to the one we'd like to fit.
But once again, the urge to change our mundane routine, or something else in our lives, resets and we begin to nurse a false hope that 'no matter what has happened in the past, next year will be different.'
Such was the case with Tia of the ancient village of Doon.
Each morning, she'd wake up to find the same lemon pierced with a series of eastern spices and other odd objects lying on her front doorstep.
And yet, she powered on, swinging it back into oblivion and continued with her day unbothered.
Tia ignored the heavy weight on her shoulders and she ignored the woman with matted hair that stared at her whenever she looked into the mirror from over her shoulder. 'Everything will be just fine. Next year, everything will be better.'
This is what Tia would tell herself when any sort of fear tried to creep in.
Image Description: A person from the chest-up, dressed in a black coat and hood. Their hand and a gust of fog obscures their face.
Credit: Jaroslav Devia / Unsplash
Or so Tia had believed...
Until Halloween night when the creatures that haunted her house were strongest.
It was nearly midnight. The owls had long fallen asleep after a bountiful hunt before winter's arrival.
Glowing brightly in the inky black sky, was the moon in all her glory, watching the midnight events of the creatures of the night coming out to play.
Each of them shrieking with delight to finally share in the festivities of the night.
But Tia did not heed the warnings of the current priestess in the village. Nor had she bothered with the traditions her family often followed when she was younger.
One the evening of the hallowed day, the night of the unhallowed world oft did erupt with activities of the undead and the like. Many a time had Tia's mother warn her of the things she needed to do to protect herself.
But Tia believed that she'd be alright.
'Mother was always so superstitious. Look where that got her? She eventually went out with a heart attack.' Tia shrugged to herself at the stroke of midnight, about to go out to a party she was invited to down the lane.
And then there was a knock on her door.
It was a very specific kind of knock, as if the person on the other side of the door had all the time in the world to patiently meature out the three knocks on the wooden door.
"Coming," Tia called out naively, not bothering to think who it could be at this hour.
She rose from her stool in front of the cracked mirror, and obliviously walked over to the door.
"Seriously, are you even in there? Aren't you going to open this already? I have a surprise for you!" Came the voice of Tia's only friend, Lana.
"I'm here, I was just getting ready for the--"
But instead of her friend, Lana Tia found a hooded figure standing in her doorstep.
She shrank back into her house, her back hitting the wall far sooner than she expected, despite her growing up in this very place for years.
The hooded figure glided forwards, cackling as it stopped just before Tia. Mangled hands appeared from the ends of the long sleeves of the ruddy ragged robes the figure wore, reaching out towards Tia with long, blackened claws and rotting flesh.
"The party is right here, Tia. It is my reaping party." The figure hoarsely exclaimed, their voice now hollow and raspy.
'Why...it was almost as if it were the voice of the Devil himself.'
Fear had widened Tia's blue eyes to the size of saucers, her heart was visibly racing in her chest as she panted with the adrenaline of it all. Her mind began to reel as she hastily thought out an exit plan.
She couldn't run out of the cottage, it had no back door. Even if she did try to make a run for it, who knew what other abilities this creature had?
'I may as well go out fighting this thing,' she foolishly thought.
"Where is Lana?" Tia questioned the figure.
"She is none of your concern anymore, Tia," the figure replied, it's hollow, raspy voice sending prickly shivers down Tia's spine.
Thunder crackled down around the cottage, momentarily lighting up the room, revealing more of the hooded figure's appearance.
The ruddy robe seemed to have had some former glory, the emblem stiched to the lapel spoke of a role as a possible high priestess in the early days of their village's history.
Tia had never bothered with such hogwash, thinking that it as all made up stories to scare off the population of youth in the village and gain control over them to manage the old temple ruins.
Beside her own foolishness, no one really liked talking about the ruins. Though, everyone knew never to venture forth, lest you become a target of the cursed spirits of the ruins.
But Tia did venture forth...A lonely child, orphaned at the age of fifteen, she was as rebellious as teenagers came in their time.
And then she met Lana, the friendliest, msot beautiful girl in her village. No one liked Lana much -- they avoided her like the plague, just like they did with Tia. So Lana and Tia did everything together, despite the funny looks that people often gave Tia.
It all made sense now.
The stern looks and odd stares.
The off handed comments that people had tossed her way many times when in the square. They couldn't see Lana.
Because there was no Lana!
It was her.
The cursed spirit of the first high priestess! The revered, Gifted One!
She was powerful. She had fought off the foreign invaders in their new home, but had perished by the hand of deceit. A betrayal so bitter, on this very night of Halloween...A sister of the temple, Tia, had let slip of the priestess's weakness to the comanding officer of the other side.
All for position and power. Because that Tia believed that she would be able to gain the High Priestess's position and powerful staff. She wanted power and status and to rule over the village.
But that is not the true meaning of a priestess. The Gifted One had her own gifts -- thus her name. It was the folly of the other Tia to slip confidential information about someone so pure.
For the Gifted One had only one weakness that would have rendered her invincible had she not had it. The Gifted One would become significantly weaker at dusk, the momentary shift from daylight to night causing a slight dip in her power and the ability to wield her staff.
The Gifted One was defeated when she was at her weakest, with the Tia in the story taking the side of the false promises that entered their village. The high priestess had perished in the fires lit around her hut, as she knealt at the alter, praying before she went out into the moonlight to bask in it's radiance before her audience with the invaders.
They say her screams were heard for miles and miles, while some say they can still hear her screams if they pass by the ruins after dark.
Fight or flight instincts taking over her, the current day Tia pushed back against the hooded figure and fled the cottage, screaming as she ran, trying her best to alert the village and beg for their help.
But Tia wasn't a likable girl. She talked to herself for hours and snubbed the village boys and girls. Tia also refused to help the elders of the village, claiming that they were 'more than capable of carrying their own water back to their cottages' and further stating that 'they were just being lazy.'
Halloween, in all it's midnight glory, began to truly exist that night in the village of the Gifted One.
Spirits of the dead rose up from their graves to watch the chaos unleash. Other creatures of the night crawled, appeared or swooped in to watch as the Gifted One extracted her revenge at last.
She had been cursed.
And to undo it, she had to sacrifice a woman named Tia.
Villagers had murmured and mumbled when they had discovered what her mother had named her.
"You've given birth to a bad omen. You should drown it now." The elders crowed at her mother for at least the first five years of Tia's life.
But that wasn't why the Gifted One had chosen Tia as her target. No...It was because of something else too...
It was because Tia was the direct decent of the previous Tia, who had broken free of their sect and had cursed the High Priestess, thus binding her soul to the ruins.
That Tia had then married the invader, who had killed her after she could not produce another son.
Or so the story goes...
"Tia. No matter how many centuries have passed, you cannot run forever." The High Priestess's hollow, raspy voice breathed in Tia's ear, stopped her dead in her tracks. She had almost reached the protective circle that was always kept at the town square.
But the High Priestess caught her just before it.
"Hold still. This won't hurt me at all." She now cackled, bringing out a ceremonial blade to slit Tia's throat.
"Ahhhh...Finally!" The Gifted One had cackled delightedly. "I have been freed by the spillage of thy blood peasant girl."
A bright white light appeared and no matter how far or wide one looked, the ruins had disappeared and so had Tia.
No one in the village could fathom the events, and by now, the church had dismissed any of the events as a 'mass nightmare' doing the rounds so people should stay indoors.
And so, in the years that followed, on Halloween night, the people of the village of Doon had dressed as anyone other than themselves to avoid having the same end as Tia.
They had dubbed these attempts at hiding in plain sight as 'cost tia muses,' or the cost of the musings of Tia. The word soon became blurred after many had deemed the story unworthy of regaling each year to the young ones. And so, people in modern times refer to their acts of dressing as another as 'costumes' instead.
About the Author
Vedikha_Writes (Libra, INTJ) is an avid reader, a lecturer by day and a writer and poet by night. She is currently working on three original stories: The White Lab (sci-fi), The Timeless Ones (mythology), and Code: Delta (murder mystery). Read more by Vedikha_Writes on her Wattpad and Neobook profiles. She writes on Wattpad under @Vedikha_Writes and Neobook under @snow_sparkles_7.
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