May Eve
[Author's note: I've been working on getting the formatting right. Any format problems are caused by a problem transferring this story between WP programs.
In the first week of January, Elizabeth Fowler asked her husband, Brian, for permission to attend the May Eve festival in her hometown of Barrettville. He refused. She had married him. That made her part of his family, and her town was wherever he lived.
She didn't ask again until the middle of February. He refused again, and back-handed her.
At the end of March, he punctuated his disapproval with a punch in the eye.
* * *
As always, Brian collected the mail. In April, letters from her family and a Caleb Howard arrived. They asked when she would be in town. He sent a reply: she wasn't coming.
Also as always, he called home during the day. When she returned from shopping (one hour allowed), he would take the remaining money and the receipts. There was never an unexplained shortage.
* * *
Elizabeth fretted. Nobody ever missed the May Eve celebration. Men went AWOL from the military rather than miss it. The pull on her increased as April wore on. How could she make Brian understand that this was no mere holiday, but a sacred renewal of the covenant with Shub-Narkrano?
She regretted marrying him. She d met him when she was assigned to his firm by the temp service. When he courted her, he had been charming and urbane, more sophisticated than the men of Barrettville. After two months, they had married.
She turned her agitation to cleaning the house, washing and ironing clothes, cooking elaborate meals. The house had been very clean, now it was cleaner than that. She wondered if this would appease Brian, reassure him that she would not neglect her duties, so that he would let her go.
Brian noticed the increased cleanliness of the house, and the good food. Suspicious, he hired a private detective.
"My wife insists that she must go back to her podunk hometown for some type of festival. She claims she has to be there." He smirked at the detective. We all know what that means.
"Then go with her."
"She says I can't. Townies only." He'd never asked about the festival. She would only travel where he allowed.
The detective had asked him more questions, about the festival, about the town, about the lovers Brian was sure waited for her. A week later, the report came back.
No lovers. The 'mysterious' Caleb Howard was the mayor of Barrettville. Yes, there was a festival, and the town was filling with returning people.
Brian swore. They had to have paid off that detective. He knew Elizabeth had an old boyfriend or three just waiting for her return.
* * *
Elizabeth talked in her sleep. She dreamed of the festival.
The first dreams started as the townspeople left the church, led by the Barretts. These days, they carried flashlights instead of torches and oil-lanterns, and the school band provided the music, but the chant was older than Barrettville:
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath! Iä, Black Goat with a Thousand Young!"
There had been only one addition since the founding of the town:
"Iä, Child of Shub-Niggurath! Hail Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of the Thousand Young!"
Up the hard-packed, graveled trail to the cavern they marched, carrying the offering to Shub-Narkrano on a litter. Into the cave, down a twisting path to the holy cavern.
In the center of the cavern was an altar, made by the Barretts, carved with the symbols of the Great Old Ones. On the walls were defaced Cherokee carvings and paintings. The local band had known the Old Ones, and had trapped this one until heroic John Barrett and his men slew them in the 1700s.
The sacrifice---usually a child less than a year old, or a goat---would be brought forward. After due ritual, the victim was killed.
Every twenty years or so, Shub-Narkrano would not demand a blood sacrifice. A woman, usually single, preferably a virgin, would be brought in its place. She would enter the cavern beyond the holy cavern. The priest would remain behind.
The union, and its result, was a further renewal of the covenant. There was never any doubt of the child's paternity.
She would awaken from her dreams as tired as if she had made the trek herself. Brian would question her: who did she dream about? What happened in her dreams? Did she have a lover, did she plan to run off? The interrogations ended with either rape or a slap.
* * *
She's my wife! She's not leaving me! Brian paced his office, ignoring the floor-plan he was supposedly working on.
First, she complained about being stifled in her little town, but now she just had to go back. Women. They all had to be kept on short leashes.
On the other hand, she kept the house squeaky-clean these days. You could eat off the floor. He could cut his fingers on the creases in his shirts and pants. All that nervous energy was good for something. Unless she was trying to lull him.
What she said in her sleep bothered him. It sounded like gibberish. Was there insanity in her family? Did she belong to one of those fall-down-and-froth churches? Was she pretending?
He'd pulled crumpled papers out of the trash this morning. Random doodles, he'd first thought, but there was order to the symbols.
But what symbols! He'd never seen anything like them. Not even in those stupid supernatural TV shows and movies.
* * *
After work, he searched the house. He'd made Elizabeth close her checking and saving accounts, but she could have hidden some of the money for a rental car or bus ticket.
No money. No ticket.
No unexplained telephone charges. She never saw letters addressed to her. Unless they had called her during the day, or she had written to them, there had not been any contact.
* * *
Cleaning, more cleaning. She washed every bed-sheet, pillowcase, towel, and every piece of machine-washable clothing every day. Cabinets, cupboards, and the refrigerator were emptied and cleaned daily. She cooked when she wasn't cleaning. And she paced the house.
Brian noticed the cleaning and cooking. He did not notice she was pale, or that she had lost weight.
When he came home on the 29th, he found her beating her head and hands on the door. "I must go, I have to go, please, Brian, let me go I'll come back I promise please please please," she begged.
"No." He locked her in the basement. Then he went out and bought chains and locks at separate stores, and handcuffs from a military-surplus store.
"You aren't going anywhere," he told her as he chained her to the support pole in the basement. "You're my wife. You joined my family, came to live with me."
"Brian, I have to go. Please, Brian."
He slapped her. "I'll release you on May Day." He left a gallon milk-container of water, a bag of apples, and a bucket. "Be quiet."
* * *
The chain criss-crossing her chest was almost too tight. He'd handcuffed her, too.
She circled and circled, unable to hold still. If she sat, she had to get up and move right away.
The call pounded in her head. It was time to go. Time to renew the covenant.
* * *
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath! Iä, Black Goat with a Thousand Young!
"Iä, Child of Shub-Niggurath! Hail, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of the Thousand Young!"
Ephraim Barrett stood naked on the dais before the gathered population of Barrettville, his tie with the Great Old One plain to see. His purple-ringed proboscis tail stood out against the shaggy, straw-colored hair that covered his lower body, and an eye peered from each hip. His arms and legs flexed in ways no human limbs could, and his fingers were tentacles.
Elizabeth shifted, moaned, in her sleep.
"Tonight, we renew our covenant with Shub Narkrano, in the ancient manner. Blood and souls. Souls and blood. Bring forth the sacrifice."
The dream combined a goat and an infant. Elizabeth lurched to her feet.
The goat-child was carried on a litter, surrounded by hawthorn and buckthorn branches, bunches of flowers, sprigs of leaves. The litter-bearers made one circuit of the inside of the church, then went out the main doors, followed by the congregation.
The chain stopped her. Compelled, she strained until she circled the post. At times, she jerked against the chain.
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! Hail, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of Shub-Nig–"
"--- gurath!" Elizabeth stumbled as she awoke. A rib broke under the chain.
* * *
Brian picked up the morning paper on his way to work. A minor headline above the fold announced the discovery of oddly-marked pieces of stone and pottery on a construction site in downtown Atlanta. The marks matched the ones Elizabeth had drawn. A campsite of the intrepid founders of Barrettville?
It didn't matter. Elizabeth would learn her lesson, and there would be no more of this nonsense. She would keep his house, cook his food, and bear his children.
He had breakfast at Waffle House. Men do not cook.
Work was fruitful. He finished the plans for the fifth floor of the Lansing project and began drawings for the sixth.
* * *
There was a groove in the paint on the support pole. She d tried to eat, could not.
I must go!
The only tools were in a box on a shelf across the basement. There wasn't so much as a putty knife in reach.
No escaping the chains. She d tried (still tried), twisting her swollen hands and wrists, trying to get some slack. Bruises discolored her wrists; abrasions oozed blood and fluid.
Her head pounded in time with her pulse, each beat worse than the one before. By noon, it felt as if dynamite were exploding inside her skull.
Go. Return. Go. Return. Pulse, pulse, pulse.
She hurled herself against the chain, in time with the throb in her skull. "Brian, please!" The pain of cracked ribs was nothing to the pounding call. "BRIAN!"
* * *
When he came home (after eating supper at Longhorn), he checked on her. She begged him to take her home.
"Shut up about that. You are home."
"Brian, please." She grabbed his arm.
"Let go." His voice level, his fist raised, he repeated, "You are home."
A whimper: "Brian."
He clipped her under the left eye and went back upstairs.
* * *
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath! Iä, Black Goat with a Thousand Young!
"Iä, Child of Shub-Niggurath! Hail, Shub-Narkrano, First Born of the Thousand Young!"
Ephraim Barrett stood before the gathered population.
"Tonight, we renew our covenant with Shub-Narkrano, in the ancient manner. Blood and souls. Souls and blood. Bring forth the sacrifice."
The goat-child was carried on a litter, surrounded by hawthorn and buckthorn branches, bunches of flowers, sprigs of leaves. The litter-bearers made one circuit of the inside of the church, then went out the main doors, followed by the congregation.
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! Hail, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of Shub-Niggurath!
"Hail the god older than all others, older than Herne, older than Faunus, Artemis, and Isis!
"Hail the god before whom these others are but pale ghosts of imagination!
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath, Iä Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of the Thousand Young!"
Elizabeth screamed and awoke, tore at the chains, breaking her nails and bloodying her fingers on the links. "Brian!" she shrieked.
* * *
Brian spent the thirty-first redrawing plans for the Lansing third floor. Fool wanted changes. Changes. Even with Computer Assisted Drawing programs, redrawing took time.
He didn't check on Elizabeth when he came home.
* * *
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath! Iä, Black Goat with a Thousand Young!
"Iä, Child of Shub-Niggurath! Hail, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of the Thousand Young"
Ephraim Barrett stood on the dais.
"Tonight, we renew our covenant with Shub-Narkrano, in the ancient manner. Blood and souls. Souls and blood. Bring forth the sacrifice."
The sacrifice was now an infant.
The child was carried on a litter, surrounded by hawthorn and buckthorn branches, bunches of flowers, sprigs of leaves. The litter-bearers made one circuit of the inside of the church, then went out the main doors, followed by the congregation.
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! Hail,-Shub Narkrano, First-Born of Shub-Niggurath!
"Hail the god older than all others, older than Herne, older than Faunus, Artemis, and Isis!
"Hail the god before whom these others are but pale ghosts of imagination!
"Iä, Shub-Niggurath, Iä, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of the Thousand Young!"
Up Main Street, flashlights lit, accompanied by the band's playing, singing praises of Shub-Narkrano.
Ephraim and his family danced in the lead, chanting and singing. Light shown on shaggy-furred bodies, on claws and horns, on more alien appendages, gleamed off Ephraim s knife.
The procession passed between the pair of columns marking the start of the sacred path, and danced up the mountain to the cavern.
Ephraim raised his arm. The music stopped. "We come, Great One! We come to renew the covenant!
"Iä, Shub-Narkrano, First-Born of Shub-Niggurath!
"Hail, Great One!"
Chanting, the crowd entered the cavern. They circled once, and the litter-bearers set the child on the altar.
Ephraim s knife rose, fell. When he finished, he held up a bloody piece of flesh. "The covenant is renewed. Go now to your homes. Renew your covenants with each other."
* * *
May Day morning. Brian woke early and went to the basement. "Elizabeth!"
She lay at the end of the chain, unmoving.
"Wake up." He knelt and shook her. "Don't sulk," he warned, and rolled her over.
Her head lolled on her neck, face muscles slack. Nothing he did got a response.
"Oh, no. No."
Now, what? What should he do, now?
Put her upstairs, in their room. No, he'd have to explain why she was dressed, why she stank.
He carried her to the bathroom, stripped her and cleaned her as best he could. Then he dressed her and laid her in the kitchen. All he'd have to do was say he'd found her that way. He'd have to bluff about those bruises.
The ambulance came in good time. He saw Elizabeth off, and went to work.
* * *
Police detectives called on him at the end of the day. They wanted to know about Elizabeth's injuries. It had looked to the doctors as if she'd been restrained with chains.
He admitted locking her in the basement for her own good. He had to keep a close eye on his wife, or she'd blow all their money on dresses and facials.
The interview went south after that.
In the middle of the meeting, the hospital called. Elizabeth was two months pregnant.
He held the receiver away, staring blankly. When the detectives asked, he told them. Pregnant. His child, perhaps a son. She had to live at least long enough to give birth.
After they left, he wondered why they had glowered at him when he'd said that.
* * *
Brian Fowler was arrested after further investigation revealed evidence of abuse. The charges were assault and battery, unlawful imprisonment, and domestic violence.
Elizabeth lived long enough for the baby to be delivered by Caesarean section. Her parents sued for, and got, custody.