Mortavelle – The last vigil

Long ago, a small chapel kept a light burning for travellers returning after dark.

Its keeper had one rule: the window must never go dark while someone was still on the road.

One October evening, a traveller failed to arrive. The keeper left his lantern in the window and went out into the storm.

He never returned.

Years passed. The roof collapsed, the doors rotted away, and roses pushed through the broken floor. Only the great pointed window remained, its slender stone towers rising above an empty room.

Then, on the last night of October, something stirred beneath the steps.

A pumpkin split the earth. From its crown rose a twisted, wooden hand, its fingers curling around an empty palm. Smaller pumpkins gathered beside it, their crooked smiles facing the road. Among the ruins, the roses opened in the colour of an autumn flame.

The villagers called the strange figure Mortavelle.

For many years, nobody dared approach him.

Until one evening, a woman returning home found the road swallowed by fog. Through the darkness, she recognised the chapel window.

She climbed the broken steps and placed her little lantern in the waiting palm.

Across the ruined floor, the shadows of a roof appeared. Somewhere above her, a bell sounded once.

And beyond the window, the road became visible.

By morning, the lantern stood beside her own front door.

Since then, the villagers have left a light for Mortavelle every Halloween. They place it carefully in his open hand, beneath the window that has outlived its chapel.

His vigil continues.

Somewhere, someone is still on the road.

Why print / collect

• Open Gothic tracery, slender pinnacles, and fractured stonework create a dramatic architectural silhouette.
• A thornlike hand rises from a grinning pumpkin, surrounded by smaller pumpkins and blooming roses.
• A haunting Halloween centrepiece with its own legend of an unfinished promise.

An original artofshirley creation.