The Circle: An All Hallows Visit

The woods, midnight; a perfect place to be on Halloween night.

I checked my map again to make sure I was right. Unfortunately, I was.

Sorry, let me start from the beginning. My name is Harold, folklorist by profession, master of the occult by hobby. However, the deeper I dove into occult lore, the more I realized that some of the coincidences we experience in our everyday might not necessarily be pure coincidence. Do your socks always go missing on specific days? Do you consistently see triple numbers like 222 and 777 all over the place? Do you see things out of the corner of your eye that no one else does? You might be closer to a world of arcane wonder and eldritch horror than you would have ever imagined.

But, one does not play with fire and expect to be free of burns. As it turns out, the harder you search for what the world has hidden, the quicker it finds you first. That is what led me thousands of miles from home to the middle of a Norwegian forest.

About a month ago, after a rather abnormal series of events which are too lengthy to discuss here, I received an anonymous invitation from a woman in Norway to meet her on All Hallows Night. She only signed her name as 'A Fellow Witch'. I am not entirely sure what I expected to find, but I exited my rental car beside a completely unassuming country house. Despite the oddly familiar sight, I felt a severe sense of foreboding about this place, but even more about the darkening wood and setting sun. Without further ado, I gathered my messenger bag and suitcase and knocked at the front door of the house.

In seemingly no time at all, the door opened. On the flight to this country, I imagined who I might be meeting in the woods on such an auspicious night. Perhaps it was to be some wizened crone or even an eccentric old man. As fate would have it, it was indeed a woman who instead seemed to be in their late twenties, about my age.

She wore a confident, matter-of-fact expression as though she was always in an intense state of thought. She was adorned in a simple frock and sweater and a St. Olaf's medal hanging from a delicate silver chain around her neck. Silver hair held in practical looking pigtails hung from her head. Her pale blue eyes scanned me from toe-tip to forehead in but a moment.

Her mouth creased in an excited smile. She spoke in perfect English with a hybrid British-American accent, "You're right on time. Please, do come inside. It's getting dark. Leave your things in the foyer."

"Thank you," I said, immediately taking the opportunity for much needed hospitality.

She was awfully pretty, it took all my focus in my tired state not to stare. That would have been an awful first impression.

"Was the trip difficult?" She asked.

"No," I answered groggily, "Just long."

"Good-" She said, though her gaze was drifting over my shoulder. Her voice was eerily calm. "Could you please close the door. Quietly."

I tilted my head in confusion. "Alright..."

I gently closed the door while taking a moment to glance outside. I saw nothing. The slightest hint of a chill crawled down my spine before I returned my attention to the woman.

She nodded, satisfied. "Make yourself comfortable. We have much to discuss... and perhaps not much time to discuss it in."

I shrugged, not understanding her haste. "I have nothing but time."

She grinned. "That, my friend, is not true."

I swallowed hard. The chill sat awkwardly along my spine. I opened my mouth to speak. This whole affair seemed like a meaningless string of random events, but something in my core felt like I was working in the right direction.

"Come with me," she urged.

I did so. She led me into a room that seemed like a half-craftsroom, half-kitchen. Other than the eccentric assortment of candles, herbs, crystals, stationary, and the like, the room seemed normal like the rest of the house.

"Will you at least tell me your name?" I spoke, "I came all this way..."

She chuckled, "You may call me Nora." Nora pulled a quartz crystal and a wand made of ash from her collection. "Come here, let me look you over."

I sighed, recognizing the typical neo-pagan pageantry I had come to expect from self-professed witches. I spoke with unintended sarcastic bite, "You don't want to start with a Tarot? Wouldn't that be quicker?"

She cocked her head. "I mean, I could, but this feels better for you."

I sighed again. "Work your magic."

Nora shot me an admonishing glance before she shook her head and began her examination, primarily clutching the crystal in her hand as she looked me over.

"Hmm..." said Nora, "Hold this for me and tell me what you see."

She placed a different polished crystal in my hand. Internal cracks shot through its translucent yellow.

"It's a citrine. Oh, a real citrine, not heated amethyst. You have a good eye."

Nora dropped her shoulders in disappointment. "You are seeing with your eyes. Feel it. See into it. Close your eyes and tell me what you see."

I obliged. For a solid minute, I felt nothing. That was before the release, before the mindless cascade of emotions: emotions other than my own. It was like the roaring of a waterfall in a distant valley beyond my sight.

"Sorrow. I see sorrow-become-pain. It has been abandoned here, here in this stone."

I opened my eyes to see Nora smiling. She spoke softly, "I held that citrine when my mother died. I communed with its energy and it took some of my grief. You too have the gift. I thought I sensed it from you, but it appears... dulled."

"Dulled?" I asked.

Suddenly, the lights in the room seemed dimmer. There was the faintest ringing in my ears.

Nora stared into my eyes. "Yes, I see it now. Someone has placed a luck hex on you, a rather nasty one it seems."

Suddenly, a shadow moved at the window. My throat instantly grew dry and my hands felt cold. My breath condensed in the air. Nora wordlessly exhumed a bronze knife from her collection.

"Steel yourself," she said, "it seems we have a visitor."

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This short was written for Marie Sinadjan's Spooky Season Bingo writing challenge under the prompt 'Forest Witch.'

This prompt was the perfect excuse to experiment with some quasi-urban fantasy with dark elements. Also, Harold is in no way inspired by Harry Dresden. Not at all. Not one bit.