Halloween in Moriches Read online

Halloween in Moriches

  by

  John Gannon

  Copyright 2011 John Gannon

  For more books by John Gannon, click here:

  Halloween in Moriches

  This is a true story of a Halloween from before when you children were born. It was the Halloween of 1999—the last Halloween of that century.

  It was October thirtieth, nineteen-ninety-nine, the day before Halloween, and the Moriches Daredevils were meeting at the house of their leader, whose name was Tommy. Tommy insisted that since he was ten and a half years old, and the oldest and biggest of the group, that he should be their leader. No one argued with Tommy. Tommy wasn’t afraid of anything, or so he said. To prove how bold he was, he once stole a whole bag of mini-Snickers bars from the Moriches CVS by tucking it under his shirt. Tommy was a little pudgy, and the clerk didn’t notice the extra bulge under his sweater. Although Tommy gave each of the other five members of the Moriches Daredevils a Snickers bar, he kept the rest. All by himself and hidden behind the pine tree in back of his house, he ate the whole bag. Later, he couldn’t eat his dinner. He had a bad stomachache and got very sick, and puked, and puked, and puked, and puked.

  Tommy couldn’t look at a Snickers bar again without gagging.

  Tommy was not a good boy.

  The Moriches Daredevils was a club that included Tommy, three other boys, and two girls. No one mentions the three boys’ and two girls’ names anymore, because of what happened on that Halloween. No one likes to talk about what happened, but I’ll tell you now. It’s something you should know.

  The Moriches Daredevils were bullies, and not nice to the other kids. Their classmates called them the Moriches Morons behind their backs, which wasn’t very nice either, but the Moriches Daredevils were meanies, and didn’t deserve to be treated nicely.

  Anyway, it was October thirtieth, and the Moriches Daredevils were sitting on the front porch of the house where Tommy lived with his grandparents and his mother. Tommy’s grandfather, The Professor, was sitting in his rocking chair and smoking his corncob pipe. The Professor was quite the adventurer when he was younger, and he was very smart and taught history at Stony Brook, but these days he had trouble walking without a cane and often lost his train of thought. The Professor seemed to be daydreaming when Tommy asked him, “Tell us a Halloween story, Grandpa.”

  The Professor looked at Tommy and the three boys and two girls and said, “Do you want to hear a scary story or a true story?”

  “Both!” the Daredevils cried. The Daredevils always loved the Professor’s stories.

  “Okay,” the Professor said, “let me see. Hmm. Have I ever told you about the Salem witch whose name was Rebecca Mudgewick?” The Professor held his corncob pipe in his shaky hand while he spoke.

  “Who was Rebecca Mudgewick? Was she a real witch?”

  “Oh, she was a real witch alright. It was more than three hundred years ago when she fled Salem, just as the witch trials were starting, and she ended up in Center Moriches.”

  “How did she get to Center Moriches, Grandpa? Did she sail on a Clipper ship?”

  “No, Tommy. Clipper ships didn’t come until later. Three hundred years ago the big sailing ships were galleons, but Rebecca Mudgewick didn’t sail here. She used a familiar.”

  “What’s a familiar?” Tommy asked.

  “Witches would cast spells to make familiar spirits, or familiars, to help them do their evil deeds. A familiar would most often be an animal of some kind, and everything the familiar saw or heard, the witch could see or hear too. It was a very powerful kind of witch magic.”

  “What kind of animal was Rebecca Mudgewick’s familiar?” Tommy asked.

  “It wasn’t an animal. It was a bird. A huge eagle, bigger than a little boy, with a wingspan as wide as a man is tall. It was a ferocious bird, and it was so strong that it carried Rebecca Mudgewick from Salem all the way to Long Island. And that’s how she escaped the Salem Witch Trials.”

  “Wow,” one of the Daredevils said. “Magic is bad.”

  The Professor replied, “Not all magic is bad. For example, if you snap your fingers twice [SNAP SNAP] and say ‘woo woo,’ then it will keep bad magic from hurting you. You see, that’s an example of good magic. Try it.”

  [SNAP SNAP] “Woo woo.”

  “How do you know this, Grandpa?”

  “Never you mind how I know this. I’ve read a lot of books; I’ve lived a long time; and I know a lot of things. For instance, what do ghosts say?”

  “Boo,” the children replied.

  “Exactly,” answered the Professor. “But what they are trying to say is ‘woo.’ You see, ghosts are made of ectoplasm…”

  “You mean Ecto-SPASM,” Tommy said, and the children giggled.

  “Don’t be a wisenheimer, Tommy,” the Professor said. “No one likes a smart aleck. Anyway, the ectoplasm, or ghost goop, makes their lips stick together, so that when they try to say ‘woo’ it comes out ‘boo.’ And of course, ghosts can’t snap their fingers.”

  “But why would ghosts want to keep away bad magic?”

  “Because ghosts are former victims of bad magic, and they roam the earth repeating their lives and repeating their mistakes. They learned the secret of avoiding bad magic too late.”

  “Tell us more about the bad witch Rebecca Mudgewick.”

  “Okay. Well, it was three hundred years ago, and Rebecca Mudgewick landed in Center Moriches carried by her gigantic eagle familiar named Gorgonica.”

  “Was Gorgonica scary?”

  “You bet she was. She had talons as long as a man’s hand, and a beak that could poke through iron kettles. Worst of all, she had magic powers of her own, and if you looked straight into her eyes, you’d be turned into a bronze statue, never to be living flesh again.”

  The Professor took a puff on his pipe, and curls of smoke floated away in the evening air. The Professor said, “Rebecca Mudgewick took over a big white house down by Kaler’s Pond, and all of the townsfolk stayed away from her. But…”

  “But what, Grandpa?”

  “Well, the problem was, children started disappearing. They would kiss their parents good night, and go up to bed, but in the morning their beds would be empty, and their parents never found them again. Everyone suspected the bad witch Rebecca Mudgewick was responsible.”

  “What did the townsfolk do?”

  “Well, there weren’t very many townsfolk, and children were especially rare back then, so the townsfolk knew they had to do something. They tried storming the white house by Kaler’s Pond on a night of the full moon, when she’d be weakest, to drive the witch out, but the eagle Gorgonica flew the witch away to safety. The townsfolk didn’t know what to do, then. Luckily, Silas Chapman, who was a local fisherman, spotted where Gorgonica took Rebecca Mudgewick.”

  “Where?”

  “Gorgonica flew her to Fire Island, south of Moriches Bay. Silas Chapman had been fishing for flounder in the bay when he saw them land. A huge eagle flying with a witch in her talons is a sight to see, for sure. At dawn, Rebecca Mudgewick returned to her white house by Kaler’s Pond. And the next night, two more children disappeared. The townsfolk were perplexed, so they went to the local Indian, uh, Native American, tribes for help. They went to the Shinnecock Indians from the east, and to the Poopsatuck Indians from the west. It turned out that both the tribes were also losing children at night. It was decided that they needed to do something together about the bad witch Rebecca Mudgewick and her eagle-familiar, Gorgonica. Together. The three groups cooperated to do in the two scary villains.”

  “How?”

  “The leaders of the town and the Sachems, or chiefs of the tribes came
up with a plan. The townsfolk would confront the witch at the next full moon, and the tribes, led by their shamans, or wizards, would help seal Rebecca Mudgewick’s fate.”

  “At the next full moon, the townsfolk once more surrounded the white house by Kaler’s pond, demanding she come out. Once more, Gorgonica whisked her away. However, when Gorgonica landed on Fire Island, the Poopsatuck shaman did a rain dance, and a terrible rainstorm swept down on them. Now, you see, Gorgonica the eagle couldn’t fly in the rain, so Rebecca Mudgewick was trapped on Fire Island. Back then, there was no Moriches Inlet—Fire Island stretched all the way from Nassau County out to Southampton, one long piece of uninterrupted land. Rebecca Mudgewick tried to flee west, but the Poopsatuck warriors, led by the fierce, good magic of their shaman blocked her. So, she tried to flee east, but the Shinnecock warriors and shaman were there to block her path. They trapped her right where the Moriches Inlet is now. The silversmith from Center Moriches, whose name I forget, then put down a silver cup with a lid, and the two shaman cast a spell on the witch that trapped her in the cup. Gorgonica stood by helplessly because of the rain, and no one would look the eagle in the eyes, so she couldn’t turn them into bronze statues.”

  “And then what happened, Grandpa?”

  “Well, Rebecca Mudgewick may have been trapped in the silver cup, and witches don’t like silver—it burns their skin every time it touches—and she cast spells like crazy from within her cup. The ground underneath her crumbled, and the cup rattled and shook, but she was unable to escape. Finally, the Atlantic Ocean roared up and came pouring through the crevice her violent spells created. Rebecca Mudgewick was buried in the newly formed connection between Moriches Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. If you go down there today, you can see how the waters still churn from her spell-casting. Rebecca Mudgewick lies beneath Moriches Inlet.”

  “Is that why the beach is called Cupsogue Beach?”

  “Yes, that’s why. It’s a part English, part Indian word. It’s named Cupsogue because Rebecca Mudgewick is trapped at the end of it, in a silver cup, her flesh burning with every touch. Sometimes, especially at Halloween, after the sun goes down, she sends her Memory Stealing Mist out over the town.”

  “Memory Stealing Mist? What’s that do?”

  “I think you can figure out what the Memory Stealing Mist does. Just avoid the Memory Stealing Mist, at all costs!”

  “Sounds scary.”

  “That’s not the scary part. Some say Rebecca Mudgewick has spells that can free her from her prison, but only on Halloween night. And while she’s free, she can bring Geronica back to life.”

  “She can only escape on Halloween?” Tommy asked, and then said, “Wait, free Gorgonica from what? What happened to Gorgonica?”

  “The shamans turned her into stone—full size, wings spread, and all of stone. Somewhere in town, Gorgonica, the giant eagle, rests upon a stone pedestal, as a warning to all other witches to stay away from Moriches. I forget where it is.”

  “Is Gorgonica’s statue by the school?”

  “Perhaps. But there’s more you should know. It turns out Rebecca Mudgewick was using golems to capture the children.”

  “What’s a golem?”

  “A golem is a creature made from mud. And Rebecca Mudgewick would make the golems into dopplegangers of the children.”

  “What’s a doppleganger?”

  “A doppleganger is an evil twin. If a person encounters their own doppleganger, the doppleganger will stop at nothing to destroy them. The only way to defeat a golem-doppleganger is to write the name of the person they resemble on a piece of paper and find a way to slip it into its mouth. That’s hard to do, because golems don’t eat. Once Rebecca Mudgewick’s golem-dopplegangers were defeated, they turned into scarecrows of themselves. Maybe you have seen the scarecrows who used to be golems hanging on the light posts on Main Street, Center Moriches?”

  “I have seen them,” Tommy whispered. “Are they dangerous?”

  “Only if you are a bad boy, and if you step on a crack in the cement near where a golem is hanging after sundown. Then they can come after you. But you know the secret, now, so you’re safe. [SNAP SNAP] Woo woo.”

  “I’ll be safe,” Tommy said, “because I’m a good boy.”

  The professor harrumphed and said, “You’d best remember the secret, Tommy.”

  Tommy blushed, knowing that he wasn’t fooling his crafty grandfather. “What did Rebecca Mudgewick look like?”

  “Well,” the Professor said, “I hate to say it, but kind of like your grandma.” The children giggled. “Don’t any of you tell her I said that. There is a difference, though. Rebecca Mudgewick had a long nose, crazy long, and it was all fleshy and quivered when she cackled. And she had a hairy wart on her chin.”

  A car pulled up to the curb, and one of the children’s parents arrived to pick them up and take them home. Tommy’s grandmother came out onto the porch to wave to the driver of the car, and all of the children—Tommy, and the three boys and two girls whose names we won’t mention—all of the children giggled at the sight of Tommy’s grandmother while the Professor wagged his pipe at them to keep quiet.