Goatferatu

Gather round. Stir up the embers and light the candles. And as the shadows cavort across the walls like convoluted grasping fingers, listen. For on this All Hallows’ Eve, the skein between the worlds grows thin, spirits are unleashed, and strange things stalk the moonlit world. And, as with all our “human” festivals, the goat is at the heart of it.

Yes, goats have their own terrors. Ancient enemies who envy and hate, who would hunt down and feast on their living blood, and make of their fleece grisly trophies. It is not only Carpathian peasants who need fear the Vampire. For out of the outermost dark, from the horrid chill of the empty space between stars, comes Something – how can we know what? – Something comes in search of the warm blood of the goat.

El Chupacabra. The Goat Sucker.

This fiend roams the Americas, from Maine to Chile, insatiable in a goat blood-lust frenzy, as implacable as Dracula, as fearsome as the werewolf, as cunning as an alien lizard/kangaroo UFO-pilot abductor beast: fanged, fork-tongued, reeking of sulphur, red-eyed, monstrous and screeching, hopping mad… It wants blood. A chicken will do. But it has an insatiable and particular penchant for goats. Unfortunate and defenceless ruminants have been found, dead and dehydrated, the tell-tale double puncture wounds in their neck. None are safe. No weapons – silver bullets, a crucifix – are mentioned as effective against this evil goat-sucker.

It roams free still. Its thirst is unslaked. Its hellish desires unquenched. Outside, in the dark, it is on the trail of warm goat scent. Full of hate, it crouches, waits, ready to pounce, hiding in the bushes, in the dark. Out in the night, beyond the tiny circle of flickering and uncertain light cast by your computer screen, beyond all the temporary lights you vainly strike against the encroaching darkness, El Chupacabra draws near. Fetter your livestock. Bring them inside. It may help, perhaps, for a little while…