Halloween is over. My biggest season, you would think. Actually, I know of at least one California woman who I've channeled my story through who had the nerve to impresonate me using:

• Baby powder
• SPF 45 sunblock
• Red lipstick
• Lots of black eyeshadow around the eye area

She did a fair job. Scared the pants, or rather the bones, off several small children.

I did do one thing I'm proud of. I appeared to John Kerry and George Bush and caused all kinds of chaos. I love politics.

This little scribbling shows too much influence from THE TEXAS CHAOINSAW MASSACRE...I've always liked Leatherface.

Chapter 1

Kate’s Hideaway was the DeKalb County version of the Bates Motel.

“Monday, October 30, year of Our Lord 2006, first police walkthrough of a homicide investigation. We’re at Kate’s Hideaway Hotel. The first victims in this latest spate of killings called the Bloody Mary Murders were found in the hotel rooms.”

A video camera targeted bloody writing on the walls: “MARY BLOODY OUT COME KATHY DEAD CHRIST BABY”.

“Similar to the other freak murders. Killers’ signature.”

A penlight illuminated the macabre. An octagon-shaped room, maybe a wedding chapel once, with a pagan altar and a floor-length mirror, shattered. Occult stench.

“The evidence here matches the crime scenes of the Bloody Mary Murders. The evidence here points to the same sick twisted mind…or to a copycat.”

The video recorded, in full digital precision, the entire walkthrough. Bulletproofing the investigation against tabloid terrors and accusations of police incompetence. Don’t give the defense any quarter. Disembowel the son of a bitch who caused such misery and suffering. No reprieve.

Room 18 near a dead end with another shattered mirror. Inside the room. Walk inside. The camera unflinching.

The bloody signatures decorated the walls. Mutilated bodies that no longer looked human. More like human purees.

Inhuman ghostly female muttering. Someone jumped and muttered, “S-Sorry.”

“Jesus, sweet Christ, turn that damn thing off.”

The video kept running.

“I said turn it off! Let’s show some respect for the dead!”

“Uh, Detective Gates, this is Officer Zapata…it won’t shut off.”

There are several stories about me...This one is a novel I peeked into. Some screenwriter novelized her own script. So far she hasn't enraged me.

PROLOGUE

She could smell their blood even though she hadn’t shed it yet.

Chris Levinson, seventeen with a matinee idol life ahead of him, and Kathleen Stein, drop dead gorgeous, lay gagged and terrified on the bed. Their eyes fogged from the datura the cult had fed them.

Chris and Kathy weren’t always so perfect, Mary whispered, prompting Namah to stare up into the mirror in the ceiling that reflected a threadbare hotel room.

Human bones and dried human organs in jars decorated the nightstands and walls. The femurs, tibias, skulls and newspaper clippings had replaced the insipid floral paintings that spoke of a time when young couples frolicked in ecstasy on the damask bedspreads.

The Gideon Bible was still in the drawer. Mary and her cult's former leader, Amara, had thought it amusing to leave the Bibles in the guest suites.

Namah, eighteen, hair disheveled, white dress spotted with blood, squinted into the mirror and saw the toddler Kathy had once been stepping in an anthill. Wee Kathy just stood, fascinated, as the ants angrily swarmed and bit—until her parents came and pulled her away.

“She never could keep out of trouble.”

Madelyne, Namah’s twin sister, smiled seductively over Namah’s shoulder. The come-hither look was not for Chris or Kathy or anyone. It was not the usual flirtatious glance. Madelyne wanted to lure the powers that would free her—her and her twin.

“She won’t have that worry any more.” Namah, born Justine Harris, smiled at Madelyne. “We’re doing her a favor.”

“Everyone knows it’s all downhill from eighteen.” Madelyne raised her athame and crossed over to Kathy.

“Stop.” Namah’s voice trembled.

Madelyne looked at her. “You’ve changed your mind?”

“I want her blood all over me.” No, she didn’t want it, even though… “I mean I have to be the one to sacrifice her. You do Chris.”

Madelyne looked at her suspiciously. “You aren’t chickening out…”

Namah sing-songed. “Cross my chicken heart, stamp my chicken feet.”

“And cock-a-doodle-doo?”

Namah answered their kindergarten-born oath. “And cock-a-doodle-you!”

Madelyne smiled. The sisters moved into position.

Chris and Kathy gasped as Namah pulled the gags loose. Kathy burst out with a scream that sounded like “You bitch,” but was too animal and guttural and distorted, almost as if the words were eating themselves.

Chris screamed too. It might have been “You bitch” mixed with “I love you.” Men often got those confused.

Namah and Madelyne sheathed their athames repeatedly between Kathy and Chris’s ribs, in their necks, in their stomachs. Namah stabbed Kathy thirteen times, chanting silently with each stroke. Bloody Mary…

And then there was blood, more than she would have wanted, washing over her. Pouring from the mirror above. She closed her eyes and hoped it would wash away everything she’d done for love of her sister.

A ghostly female voice compelled her eyes open. Mary, Bloody Mary, the Dark Mother, stared back at her, the hideously scarred face no longer repulsive.

“Sister…” Mary whispered, her voice filling the room and muting the screams of the dying.

It's October. The cruelest month in my opinion.

Tonight I'm hiding behind the mirror. I'm waiting.

The teenage boys and girls aren't interested in me. Or at least in the game. They talk to the mirror all the time. As if I could talk back.

I watch a boy with autism today. He hits at me and rocks back and forth in the bathroom. He hurts his hand.

Only someone with as much pain as I have could understand. I'm trapped too. He cries out. He heard my name at school. "Mary...Mary...hell."

They're pounding on the bathroom door.

Don't they understand? He can see me, he can talk to me. He can't speak to his mother or his father or his school. He's changing and it scares him.

I want to reach out, but my touch is death.

For once in my anger, I decide on mercy. I vanish, his cries still echoing in the nightmare world of the mirror.

I've mentioned "Candyman," but one movie deals with me directly: "Urban Legends: Bloody Mary". TBThorn of Epinions.com has a rather nice review with a few left-handed compliments:

Bloody Mary is the third installment of the Urban Legends franchise, and it marks a pleasing turnaround from the atrocity that was the second, Final Cut. Bloody Mary fills the deficiencies of Final Cut while still clearing a path that is distinct from the original Urban Legend, although the film itself is a clichè of clichès and borrows heavily from other unrelated films...

The story consists of a series of urban legends wrapped in an urban legend, with "Bloody Mary" as the twine that holds the film together. Mary is killed on prom night many years earlier, but her ghost can be summoned by saying "Bloody Mary" three times. It's a timeless story that has inspired at least three Candyman films and any number of ghost stories and knockoffs. Mary then reenacts urban legends, targeting the children of her killers. The perennial 'death for their parent's sins' theme would be cause for complaint if the film wasn't already made from 100% post-consumer recyclables. Of course, the story isn't the only thing that is borrowed. Bloody Mary might as well have been played by the same creepy girl from The Ring, as the effects and image sequences bear striking similarities.

Why does a ghost care about movies or reviews? To paraphrase Bill Clinton: "It's the story, stupid." I'm kept alive by stories, and if I have to be cursed to haunt people through mirrors, at least give me a good plot. After seeing "The Ring Two," with its "sins of the mother" plot, I resent being compared to its villain. Videotapes against campfire tales? No contest, Samara.

I did appreciate TBThorn's final summary:

I generally protest the sanitized nature of neo-slashers, but Urban Legend remains a film that is near and dear to my heart -- despite the fact that it has gotten me banned from picking movies indefinitely by most of my friends. I like the concept and have a healthy respect for the execution. Bloody Mary almost lives up to the original and is a must-see for anyone who loved the first and hated the second. It's not as edgy as part one but it still entertains.

Just for that, I'll scare the pants off TBThorn tonight.

I suppose I have to give credit where credit is due. Many thanks to Dan Norder for the photo...I borrowed it when I got summoned into a computer. Yes, believe it or not, some kids these days won't leave their IMs and Warcraft sessions and MySpace postings long enough to actually go to the bathroom, much less with a candle or a group of friends. I'm still waiting for a mass Internet summoning. Don't parents monitor their kids? Besides me, there are all kinds of dangers kids can get into alone.

I heard a rumor some kids have even posed as me online and harassed others--that's called cyberbullying, by the way, which you can read about http://www.stopcyberbullying.org/index2.html. StopCyberBullying.com says:

We need to get to know your friends. Get to know their online friends, just as you would get to know their friends in everyday life. Talk to your children about where they go online, and who they talk to. Don't just set up the computer in the corner of their bedroom, and leave them to surf alone. Take a look at their computer monitor every once in awhile; it keeps them honest.

I suppose you might be wondering why a murderous ghost cares about children. Well, Dan Norder has an answer for that too at http://mythologyweb.com/bloodymary.html:

The words that must be recited vary quite a bit. In many cases you just use the spirit's name. In others you would say, "I believe in Mary Worth," "I don't believe in Mary Worth," "I hate Mary Worth," "Bloody Mary, come to me," or even "Bloody Mary, I got your baby" in those versions where the legend mentioned someone either killing or running away with her child. You might also be able to use the words "Bloody Mirror" or "Hell Mary." Sometimes the invocation was reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards.

I didn't kill my children though, like La Llorona, and Norder knows it, http://mythologyweb.com/bloodymary2.html:

Some Bloody Mary versions, specifically the ones in which she kills her children and comes hunting for them, bear a striking resemblance to the Weeping Woman legend of Mexico and the surrounding area. Tales of female spirits who come to harm other people's babies and children because they no longer have their own can be traced back to the Aztecs and appeared in many other cultures as well. The Greek Lamia and Jewish Lilith figures are just two of the more widely known examples. None of these stories seem to have too much to do with mirrors or summoning someone's image, so appear to be another case of two separate folklore branches influencing each other.

By the way, it's about time someone gave the Weeping Woman her own movie, since I've gotten my star turn ("Candyman"): http://www.lallorona.com.

Argh. Someone in a school bathroom is summoning me--I swear, if they would actually teach these children something in class, I wouldn't be bothered so much.

Let me start by saying I always hated mirrors.

I don't know how I came to spend my life, or my afterlife, depending on them, looking through them. But no use moaning over cracked mirrors.

I love cracked mirrors. People think breaking one gets rid of me. It's the opposite. Ever notice how no matter how diligently you clean, there is always one piece of glass that stabs your bare foot months later at three o'clock in the morning in the dark?

It's the same way with words. People toss them around as if they don't mean anything. Like, "I could die." Yes, you could. And horribly. People toss names around. Terrorist. Nazi. Satan. You'd think they'd know better.

I get this more often than most, but even though my name is synonymous with a cocktail, I don't jump every time someone orders one. To have me suddenly staring at an ex-Enron thief out of his glass...now those screams would be priceless.

I prefer screams to giggles. I hear far too many giggles when girls are in their little Maybelline-scented bathrooms at night working up their courage. At least they're not listening to Britney Spears. She's so foolish she didn't even know me. And that stuff with her kid in the car? Oh, that burns me. She doesn't know what grief is.

I do. Every time I look out of a mirror...just ask Dan Norder: http://mythologyweb.com/bloodymary.html

That's why I can't help myself when I'm summoned. As I am now. "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary."

Mu-ha-ha.