The Ghoul’s Wedding

“The gruesome ghoul, the grisly ghoul, without the slightest noise,
Waits patiently beside the school, to feast on girls and boys.”

-“The Ghoul,” Jack Prelutsky

***

The First Time the Night People came for Amina she was six years old, and it was Valentine’s Day, and also her birthday.

She stayed up late that night with a flashlight, looking at the Valentines from her classmates and chewing the small, chalky candy hearts the teacher gave out.

The cards were flat, pink and red cartoons that didn’t really make sense to her. When she thought of a heart she imagined something meaty and hot, not a shape cut from paper. But at least the candy was nice.

It was approaching midnight when she heard scratching at the window. And, peeking out of the covers, she saw a man standing there. This should have frightened her, but it didn’t. In fact, although she didn’t really know why, she was thrilled.

The stranger wore a black coat and a hat with a wide brim, and his eyes looked like shiny pennies. He tapped the window with his sharp, unkempt nails again, asking to be let in.

Amina tiptoed to the window and opened it. The man reached in to pick her up and sat her on his shoulder. She held on, anticipating a swift ride, and together they ran off into the night, Amina feeling perfectly secure.

The stranger’s coat, she discovered, was not a foul thing, but smelled of savories and spices and things deep in the ground which were not yet rotten. When she got older, she would recognize them as funeral scents.

It was a cold night and she had only pajamas, but she didn’t mind. With the winter wind in her hair she felt free. She wasn’t surprised to discover they were going to the cemetery, with its aged trees and leaning monuments and the somber, shadowy opulence of the Millionaire’s Row tombs up on the hill.

The stranger lifted her over the fence and set her down softly, then clamored over it himself. A single candle glowed on top of a nearby headstone, where the grave was open and the box taken out. Here were a dozen people dressed in black. They welcomed Amina like old friends.

The sight of the open coffin and the smell of grave dirt didn’t bother her. Even when she saw what the Night People were doing with the unearthed body (her unspeaking protector soon joined them, leaving Amina perched on the headstone to watch) it didn’t seem wrong.

Bodies are put into the earth to be eaten, after all. Why should bugs and worms be the only ones to do it?

But when they offered her a seat at the feast, she shook her head. They frowned and muttered, but Amina’s silent guardian quieted them with a gesture, and no one seemed to want to challenge him. They left Amina be.

When it was over, he put her back on his shoulders and carried her to her window again. She felt bad about declining the night’s offer, but she knew that it wouldn’t have been right to eat anything. It wasn’t time yet. Something was missing…

The man in black tucked Amina in and kissed her on the forehead, and as soon as he was gone she went right into a dreamy slumber, feeling warm and safe as she never had before.

At breakfast the next morning her parents piled food high on her plate, but she wasn’t hungry. They must have seen something in her face, because their smiles faltered when she looked at them. A furtive glance passed between them, and they left the table. Amina didn’t mind. She preferred being alone.

She never told her parents about the nighttime visit, but she imagined they knew anyway.