The Halloween Inheritance
I am now the owner of a silver-plated locket filled with soil from my father’s grave.
He died on 31st October at the age of seventy while exploring the site of an ancient Mayan city in Honduras. A dabbler in necromancy, he knew it was coming - that quick, painful death that only the most skilled poisoner can grant you. He expounded on his foreknowledge over a drink with me in the hotel the night before, saying a vision had provided the method and the date, nothing more specific. Would his killer lace his food or drink, or perhaps use a spray?
I know the specifics because I am the one who poisoned him.
We two fierce rivals in the world of occult artefacts, who raced one another across the globe in pursuit of our treasures, often stooping to raiding sarcophagi (but nothing lower. Certainly not murder) had caught up to one another as we sometimes did. On this occasion, however, I was determined to finally beat him to what he always playfully referred to as the trinket.
When his will was read, I was the recipient of the locket, which he’d instructed his solicitor and friend, Alistair McKay, to have filled with the soil.
“It comes with instructions,” said Alistair. “On the anniversary of your father’s death, open the locket and mix its contents with a drop of your own blood. Wait until you hear his voice. Then ask anything you wish.”
So, here I am, having just played host to the last of the local trick-or-treaters, a strange boy whose mother said he wished to sing a ditty in the Latin that he was being privately tutored in.
The ice in my whisky hits the side of the glass, sounding like the bell buoys do, out there in the Halloween darkness of this seaside town I now call home.
Pricking my thumb, I squeeze a drop of my blood into a mug containing the soil.
“Hello,” comes Dad’s voice, echoey and close, like I’m at the mouth of a tunnel that he’s about to emerge from.
I ask, “Do you know?”
”Yes. And you must pay. Now that you have called me forth, I am able to possess a living soul if they have granted me leave to do so.”
“There is no such soul here.”
“O patricidal son! Recall the child and regret your unwillingness to apply yourself to your Latin. Loyal Alistair sent his only grandchild. “Concedo tibi dicedre,” he sang, “Domino Obscuro.” “Dark Lord, I grant you leave!” Hark!”
I answer the midnight knock at the door. There stands the child, still masked (a Jack-o’-lantern, incidentally). He drives his knife into that sweet spot just below my knee.
After that, it is over in a bloody flash.
I watch from beyond the veil as my little killer fastens the locket round his neck.
This act drives father from him, and he runs off into the night.
