Introduction
297 Words
They will tell you that Halloween is harmless. It is nothing more than children wearing masks, sweets traded in the dark, and laughter echoing through the streets. They will tell you it is a night of innocence, of costumes and lanterns, of paper skeletons hanging from porches.
They are lying. For beneath the laughter, beneath the carved pumpkins and the gaudy masks, lies the oldest celebration of blood ever whispered upon the earth. October 31st is not a holiday invented by men; it is the Devil’s birthday, the night he first drew breath into the world of flesh. Ipswich has always known this truth, though its people pretend otherwise. And tonight, the mask falls.
This book you hold in your hands is not safe. It was never meant to be safe. It was written with ink blackened in midnight oil and with words sharpened upon gravestones. Each page carries the weight of centuries of suffering, of secrets unearthed from the Ipswich earth — an earth swollen with bones. The longer you read, the less you will belong to yourself, for the Devil does not simply wait in churches or at crossroads. He waits inside stories.
And tonight, as you turn the first page, you will step into Ipswich on the last night of October. The bells are already tolling. The graves are already opening. The laughter of children has curdled into something you will never forget.
This is no entertainment. This is no game. This is the book that strips Halloween of its colors, of its warmth, of its masks, until only the raw face of Hell remains. When you finish it — if you finish it — you will never again look upon October 31st with joy.
You will remember Ipswich. And Ipswich will remember you.
- Writer
