Halloween Special Part One

Nathaniel and the Shadow

There was once this boy, lived down the street from me, who went by the name Nathaniel Nicholas Night. To tell you the truth, Nathaniel was something of a curiosity to the rest of us. Why is that you wonder? Well to start with, his hair was dark blue. You heard me, dark blue, and no, it was not dyed. In fact, his mother would oft say to him:

“Nathaniel, Nathaniel dear, please come with me and change your hair to a normal color.”

But Nathaniel would always say in response:

“Nay mother I cannot, for I was brought into this world with hair the color of the evening sky and with hair the color of the evening sky I shall leave it.”

And then what was a good mother to do? After all, he also had yellow eyes. Yellow eyes! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Now this was before everyone was running around with those newfangled colored contacts in their eyes, but even so, his poor mother did her best. She bought him a new pair of sunglasses every week, but Nathaniel, he never used them.

“My eyes may be like two cornflowers in the sun,” Nathaniel would say, “but these shades would only dim what is currently bright while obscuring wholly that which is already dark.”

What is the most curious thing about him? Why, that would have to be his inordinate amount of innate curiosity. No mater how curious any of us were about Nathaniel, he was always ten times more curious about something else. The first time we all went fishing, Nathaniel became so intrigued as to what the fish do all day that he up and leapt in the pond, vowing not to return until he had seen it for himself. And he didn’t return. We waited nigh an hour for him to resurface, but once Nathaniel had got an idea into his head, there was nothing and nobody was going to get it back out. It was a good full week before anybody saw or heard from him again. Not too surprising, his mother locked him in his room after that.

“You can ground me if you like mother,” Nathaniel conceded to this, “But I learned such wonders in the last week as they never taught in a school.”

It was another week before he was allowed outside again.

Well now, it may be that the adventures of Nathaniel will go on forever, but alas that is not for us to know. You see, and this is something of a carefully guarded secret, so please don’t go spreading it around, there came one fateful night, not long after the fishing incident, when a few of us watched Nathaniel leave this world for good.

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I decided to give my adoring fans- all maybe one of you if I'm lucky- a whole short story for Halloween. This was my attempt about a year ago to combine a tall tale with a ghost story. In case my previous clip about a robot practicing witchcraft didn't tip you off, I get some odd kicks out of combining ideas that most people wouldn't bother trying to combine. Anyway, expect part two to conclude it tomorrow.