The Violet Hour

I have always been a creature of the in-between, a woman who walks with one foot in the mundane and the other in the unseen. As a practicing witch, ghosts were as common to me as stray cats on a back porch. I could see them waiting at bus stops, lingering in old libraries, crouched in the corners of abandoned houses. So when I decided to take a hiatus from my craft, to be ‘normal’ for a change, I thought a trip to the Blackwood Hollow Nature Preserve would be the perfect escape. It was a place I had visited many times, a sprawling wilderness with quiet trails and a deep, algae-black lake. But I should have known that even in the most ordinary of places, the veil can be thin, and on that late October night in 2021, it was torn wide open. I arrived at the preserve just as the sun was setting, the sky bleeding into a bruised purple. The air smelled of damp earth and rotting leaves. I pitched my small tent near the shore of Lake Blackwood, far from the main campsites, seeking solitude. As darkness fell, I built a small fire and sat, listening to the loons and the rustle of the wind. The moon was a sliver, a pale scythe in the sky. The first sign came as a faint sound, a rhythmic thrumming like the beating of a giant heart. It grew louder, and then I saw them: a long line of silhouetted figures emerging from the treeline across the lake. They were tall, impossibly thin, with limbs that bent at wrong angles. They moved not by walking, but by a strange, gliding motion, as if their feet didn’t touch the ground. They carried nothing, but their heads were tilted, as if listening to some sound only they could hear. My witch’s instinct screamed at me to look away, but I was frozen. The figures reached the water’s edge and stopped. They stood there, and I could feel their gaze upon me, even though they had no faces. Then, one by one, they raised their arms and pointed at me. It was not an accusation, but a summoning. The air grew cold, and my breath frosted. I heard a whisper in my ear, but it was not a voice; it was a feeling, a pressure in my skull, a thousand thoughts at once. The figures began to move across the water, their feet not breaking the surface, and as they approached, I saw that they were not solid, but made of a shimmering, translucent substance like oil on water. I scrambled backwards, my heart pounding, but the fire between us did nothing. They crossed the shore, and soon I was surrounded. The pressure in my head intensified, and I felt my own body begin to thin, to bleed into the air. I screamed, but my own voice sounded muffled, distant. Then, as suddenly as they had come, they stopped. They stood around me, forming a circle, and a single figure stepped forward. It was slightly taller than the others, and it had a mask of smooth, pale bark, with two dark holes where eyes should be. It reached out a long, twig-like finger and touched my forehead. In that instant, I saw everything: the history of the land, not only the tales of Confederate soldiers and Native American spirits I had heard about, but something far older. I saw ancient rituals, soaring fires, and the screams of the land itself. I saw the lake when it was nothing but a shallow marsh, and I saw the trees growing and dying over millennia. And I saw the creatures as they were, guardians of a boundary between this world and the next, and I saw that I, in my witch’s arrogance, had trespassed upon something sacred. The figure withdrew its hand, and the pressure vanished. The circle of figures began to fade, like morning mist, and they were gone. I was left trembling, cold sweat clinging to my skin. My fire had died, and the darkness pressed in. But I knew I was not alone. The whispers followed me as I packed my tent, and they continued on the long drive home. It has been months, and the whispers have only grown clearer. They call me, not by name, but by a title: the Keeper of the Violet Hour. I see the thin-limbed figures in my peripheral vision, always at the edge of sight. And I know that my plans to be normal were a fool’s dream. I have returned to the preserve every night since, waiting by the shore. Not out of fear, but out of curiosity. For the figures never cross the water anymore; they stand on the far bank, watching. And last night, I heard a new sound: the soft, slow clapping of many hands. I am not sure if it is a welcome or a warning, but I can no longer stay away. The boundary is thin here, and I have become part of it. I am the one who sees, the one who is seen. And I have a feeling that the Violet Hour is only the beginning.