Abstract: Every few decades every imaginable trope of All Hallows' Eve gather at a special haunted house for one and only one mysterious purpose, but first the staff must be assembled.
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THE WRETCHED ACOLYTES
Seemingly lost in a void of fog, a tall slender woman wrapped snuggly in a long black gown ventured across a dead grassy meadow. The mist choked out the sunlight around her, making any sense of direction impossible. Fighting the dread that would overwhelm most venturing out on the property, she pushed forward hoping to keep her bearings as she got further away from an abandoned Victorian manor she had left somewhere behind her in the void.
Her dress swathed her legs so tautly down to her ankles with such structure and firmness that it forced her to take the shortest of hobbled strides. Brisk wind swirled leaves around her pushing up harsher along her body to play with the wide brim of her tall cone-shaped hat. In the distance, a slate tile crashed to the ground from the manor's dilapidated roof. The echoes forced an instinctive attempt to turn back to glimpse, to see, but her rigid dress wouldn't allow even a slight twist of her waist or even her shoulders. She almost turned her neck, but too much of that was getting to her as it already ached from previous things that caught her by surprise. She craved simple things, like a quick glance over a shoulder without taking several awkward rapid steps.
Taking a deep breath followed by a sigh, she felt her cleavage forced into raising and lowering against a stiff corset underneath her dress. The long hugging sleeves did nothing to provide warmth against the cold. She rubbed her arms as she thought how her dress felt tighter every day, more so now that the house came to life in anticipation of the coming Halloween. She resented having to wear the damn outfit. It was a curse to wear, an actual curse in fact, with magic that forced her to occupy its limited volume for the rest of her life. She avoided bringing-up those memories and focused on picturing her location on the grounds. She couldn't afford to get lost, so she tightened her grip on the brim of her hat holding it against the wind and resumed her journey towards some overgrown gardens that clearly had seen better days long ago.
The soft wet ground made her excursion harder as her high heels sank into the soggy soil accumulating a stack of harpooned leaves. She cursed her hobble skirt and tried to calm herself after a low hanging tree branch kinked the pointy tip of her witch hat. Her nylon covered toes began to feel the surrounding cold wetness that her thin strapped heels were helpless to insolate against. Almost pouting, she stepped in place a few times trying to remove the leaves skewered by her stilettos. She couldn't reach them by bending over or by lifting a leg up. Her restrictions led her to try a couple times to rub one heel against the other and then give-up. It was hopeless.
She muttered to herself as she grabbed her hobble skirt at her thighs giving the gown a strong pull up her legs, which barely lifted the gown even a finger's width. It seemed to give more than that and she smiled thinking she could finally take some more satisfactory longer strides. In reality, the next few steps where only quicker but the same distance as before. The extra speed led to a loss of balance and forced her to stop. She had to be careful, if she fell over, she wouldn't be able to get up. She imagined herself being forced to endure the embarrassment of rolling across the property like a log.
Focusing on her goal and taking on the patience required, she eventually approached a lonely rotted scarecrow in the center of an abandoned hedge lined garden of weeds and thistles. She minced her steps more and stopped with her arms thrown outwards to steady herself. Finally stable, she withdrew a crystal perfume atomizer bottle from her prow of cleavage and aimed the tiny sprayer at the decomposing farm clothes stuffed with hay. A few squeezes of the atomizer's little red rubber ball sent a glowing green perfume onto the molding potato sack head and hay-bunched hands.
The scarecrow slowly sagged as if getting drenched in a heavy rain. Its arms strained against ropes that bound its wrists, crucifying it to a rusty metal pipe cross. The potato sack head and limp body continued to slouch lifelessly down. It took a couple more minutes, but the green mist somehow took affect. The scarecrow lifted its face up, saw the mysterious woman, turned left and right to look at its tied hands. It struggled, wreathing violently against the ropes. Several clumps of hay began to fall to the ground until it yanked its hands free and stood seven feet tall towering over the witch.
"Come with me," said the woman in black.
The scarecrow gathered its thoughts. It looked down at its hay stuffed overalls and its flannel shirt. It then tried to see through the fog. It felt cold and lost. It craved having someone to hold it. It looked at the witch waiting there. She was as cold as the wind, detached as the standing scarecrow itself, and though stunningly beautiful, a ruthless glare in her eyes burned. She was dangerous and addictive to look at. Men probably died for her not knowing why.
The witch turned away, took several tiny hobbled steps, stopped and without looking back impatiently said sharply, "Well, keep up."
The Scarecrow lurched forward. Several times on the walk, it paused finding no problem in keeping up with the lady in black. It was actually harder to obediently stay a few steps behind given the slow procession. The pace forced it to pause after every few steps allowing it to spend those precious moments watching the lady's swaying hips as she struggled with her tight skirt to navigate every little uneven feature on the ground. The trip was slow, but entertaining and very hypnotic.
Seeing the house come into view, the scarecrow realized the destination and settled back to figuring out its new body and getting ready for whatever was ahead. It twisted the hay coming out of its shirtsleeves giving form to its hands. It then realized it accidentally made more fingers on the left than the right. It made more adjustments. With its new fingers, it felt its face again and fixed its straw hat. Taking a few more steps and almost bumping into the witch, it switched back to watching how the witch's skirt hugged her ass and thighs. The garden guard even secretly reached out to her butt cheeks and gently brushed some hay over the curves to sense every tactile detail. The woman didn't seem to notice, so the urge to do it again rapidly returned.
On examination, the gown was actually a thin black material covering something firm and smooth underneath, possibly - no, on second thought, definitely - constructed with lots of corset boning. Was she wearing leather under there? The tall scarecrow leaned forward while they walked trying to answer the question. Scarecrows, after all, do not have much else going on to think about. It's face was so focused on the undulations of the witch's rear that if it had had a protruding nose of any kind it would have been touching the outward contours of her rear end. With such a close examination, the theories of the black dress and the body underneath continued. The gown was stretching over corset lacings in the back that cinched the woman from a point between her shoulder blades all the way down to her ankles. Seemingly hundreds of black buttons from the nape of her neck formed a series down her back and to the ground closing the outermost layer. The scarecrow wondered how long it took the woman to don the outfit in the mornings. The long sleeves and all the buttons must have required some assistance.
There was pause as the witch handled some more of the uneven ground before her. She made a little detour around a rock providing the lurching scarecrow with another temptation to brush against her body again. When the witch made a sideways glance, the attempt to cop a feel was quickly retracted with a fain of innocence.
"We're almost there," she said pointing to the old manor, showing clearer now through the lifting fog.
As they approached, a back door left open behind the house became visible. Across from the door, a carriage house stood that had been renovated into a garage during the 1920's. The scarecrow wondered how it knew that, but then its mind focused on the wild wind slamming the back door violently against the mansion's outside stonewall. More wind whistled through a broken-down greenhouse, missing all its glass panes that had been shattered to pieces by visiting vandals over many decades. The witch ordered the scarecrow to force the rusty greenhouse door open.
With a caveman brash hit of the scarecrow's forearm, they entered.
The witch's heels clicked on the cement floor. She took center stage and posed with a long wand in her right hand like an orchestra's conductor. Watching from behind, the scarecrow was confused to see that somehow, despite the tight dress with no place to hide anything, she had somehow gotten hold of a wand. Where had she hidden it?
