His name is Sam-El Caan, and he was once worshiped as a god. In some countries, he may still be. He was more a demon than a god, but no one knows exactly how he came into being. He was “put to sleep” by a small group of monks at some point in the 1400s, and his eyes have not opened since. He was buried deep beneath the ground in an unmarked field in the middle of Kentucky. The original plan was to dismember his body and scatter him across the world, but the instructions were very clear: he must be kept in one piece, his right hand clutched around a ruby. The ancient text was vague in many things but very clear in this.
And so he slept. As the world changed around him, he slept. For centuries, someone had kept an eye on his resting place, guarding against any attempts to resurrect him. As time went on, the horrors were forgotten and duties were thrown by the wayside. The guard had gone, but Sam-El Caan remained buried in the dirt.
Sam-El Caan stood 25 feet tall. His head resembled a pumpkin and his face was carved in the manner of a jack-o-lantern. He spoke in a deep, resounding voice. His body was thin, strong and gnarled, like the branches of a very old tree. His feet were wide and the ground shook when he walked. He was an imposing figure, but he was now trapped underground in a seemingly endless sleep.
But it was not as endless as it appeared.
The ancient texts were incomplete. One of the missing pages stated that he would be awoken on Halloween night, 2016. When the clock struck midnight, he would be free to roam the Earth once more.
As distant chimes rang, Sam-El Caan’s eyes regained their glow. He did not know where he was, but he could sense his domain calling for him. He began digging upwards towards the surface, ready to reclaim the world that he felt was rightfully his.
He emerged into the darkness of a dim crescent moon and howled as best as he could, but centuries of being buried in dirt meant his howl wasn’t what it once was. No matter. He would regain his full strength soon enough and this new world would be his. He was hoping he would emerge to find a full moon – the light from that moon restoring his powers – but that was a couple weeks away. He would retreat into the woods to wait, and when he emerged he would not be stopped. Not this time. Surely the ancient text had been lost a very long time ago.
He stepped into the forest in search of dark place to sit for two weeks. What he found were a couple of teens dressed like wizards, smoking some kind of small white object. At the sight of him, they stood up and stumbled backwards.
Sam-El Caan’s eyes glowed red as he advanced on the teens. When he spoke, it was in his native dialect. It was deep and filled with all the rage that had been slowing building over the course of hundreds of years. “HOW DARE YOU LOOK UPON SAM-EL CAAN. MY RETRIBUTION WILL BE QUICK AND COMPLETE AND IT WILL START WITH YOU.”
One of the teens had regained his bearings. He picked up a rock and hurled it at Sam-El Caan’s face. It entered his left eye and exited through the back of his head, causing an explosion of gooey orange viscera.
The light left Sam-El Caan’s eyes. He stumbled and fell, exploding into thousands of twigs and what appeared to be the emptied shell of a rotten pumpkin.
The teens looked briefly stunned, then laughed and continued on with their night, the corpse of the once great Sam-El Caan lying beneath their feet.
Happy Halloween!
