Scary Holiday Tales to Make You Scream (35 page)

Customary activities include dances, songs, feasting, and the construction of tall maypoles as the center of it all. Some activities are exquisitely simple, such as "going a-Maying", wherein one traverses the countryside gathering flowers. It is natural, then, that the Puritans looked upon the holiday with extreme displeasure. Their efforts to ban the celebration of nature in England proved ultimately futile.

All throughout western Eurasia customs vary. German boys will plant a May pine tree under their sweetheart's window; in Czechoslovakia it's a maypole. Grecian children will try to locate the first swallow of spring, and then when the bird is found they'll go door to door singing springtime songs. The children are then rewarded with fruits and sweets. In Ireland and Wales flowers are sprinkled outside the door to ward off malevolent spirits. In the United States the Puritan heritage has largely delegated May Day to a second or third tier holiday.

Hawaiians celebrate a differing version of this holiday, called Lei Day. On Lei Day people gift each other with a lei which is traditionally accompanied by a kiss. The United States government made this an official holiday in 1928 to respect the customs of the islanders.

Internationally, May Day is celebrated more as Labor Day in commemoration of the Haymarket Riots of May, 1886. This Chicago tragedy sparked the international labor rights movement. See Labor Day.

-John Edward Lawson

By Susanne S. Brydenbaugh

They were speaking to her again. Voices with frequencies beyond her capacity, intended for the old woman's ears.

Lethe peered through the mesh screen door as Aida Berwyn sat in the Birchwood rocking chair, gently rocking back and forth on the whining and creaking front porch. She tried not to stare, tried not to see herself in the old woman's mercury-white hair and stubborn jaw line pushed up and defying gravity. One precision eye the color of peat moss, the other milky-blind, locked in the direction of Capel Mountain's highest peak. Arthritic-twisted hands rested on the arms of the chair, seeming demure and frail; but they were hands that commanded fire through trick or truth: only she knew which in her ancient hidden thoughts.

Too thin
, Lethe thought,
as if she'd lived a hundred years instead of the sixty and two. And she was all Lethe had left in this world that didn't exist beyond the furthermost mountain she could see. Best that her thoughts didn't travel too far, anyway; what would her Grandmere do when she left for school in September? Shook her head and wondered just who she was kidding, don't you mean what will you do?

Elder-sweet air cavorted and rippled the tree limbs and grassy waves, but soon, Lethe knew, the eastern Tennessee hollow would be adrift in ash and smoky air. The time was drawing near, renewal was in the sprouting buds, peeking green and white from the dogwoods; smatterings of wild daffodils poking yellow noses to the sky.

Lethe moved across the porch until she stood at her Grandmere's side and she laid her hand on the old woman's shoulder, eyes searching the mountain, listening for the whisper that her Grandmere heard…

"Only a couple of days remain; the ewe has grown fat with readiness," Lethe said, breaking the uncomfortable trance that she felt isolated from.

Aida kept her focus on the cloud-shrouded mountaintop. "Two hundred, twenty years the Berwyns have lived on this land so like dear mother Wales. But this year is going to be different. You need to tell the folk that. We wait until the fifth this year. Signs have been sent and we must heed them."

Silent gasp and Lethe stooped to the old woman's side to look at her face, trying to understand just what she was saying. "But we've always celebrated on the first. It is custom."

Aida nodded, finally took her eyes from that epic mountain to gaze steadily at Lethe. Old world severity collided with fresh world wonder and Lethe knew that she shouldn't question, that maybe she should just say okay and leave it at that.

"This year we celebrate the old Beltane," Aida said, those piercing eyes seeing far ahead and back beyond time. "Go tell the others what I have told you. No fires until the fifth." A knowing nod and quick click of her tongue as Aida Berwyn looked to the trees, her seeing eye darting from spruce to oak, "Take your coat with you, the northern winds will blow soon."

Lethe stood. It was end of April and mild enough for late afternoon; and on the tip of her tongue words that wanted to argue that the wind was blowing eastward and gulf-stream-warm; but she turned and went to get her wool coat, only coat she owned, that would surely prickle her sweat-damp skin.

She followed the serpentine trail down the mountain and valley to the Hendricks and Ruberts; the Nichols and Hodsons, and further into the valley where the Cheevers and Blaylocks homesteaded. She created a nervous buzz of awe with each home she stopped in on; husbands and wives looked at each other in confusion, reaching back into their memories, searching for a time when Beltane had been delayed-but coming up empty.

When the people tried to question her: "But it has always been celebrated on the first," she shook her head and repeated the message her Grandmere had given, and none dared reproach Aida Berwyn, not 'the fire witch,' not even indirectly. And it was the sudden hush and wary look in their eyes that revealed their secret truth: though they feared her Grandmere, she made them uneasy as well. Perhaps she had all the time, even as a child, but in the way of children did not sense the edge of apprehension; or perhaps it was only since the scarlet curse of monthly bleeding that signaled her entrance to womanhood. Maybe they thought she would eventually take her Grandmere's place, although she could not conceive of that ever happening. But there it was staring her in the face, this separateness that made her an entity all to herself.

She remembered her sweet mother telling her in the years before she became ill: Lethe,
put up your shield so that all the world cannot see your softness…It is a lonely life, to be born into the Berwyn family.

Lonely, how inadequate that word. Her birthright of pity and scorn: walking in the gray shadows of neither here nor there; a puppet to her family name. Not even a father to place a name to, only this matriarchal name handed down nipple to mouth. And now this crown of thorns biting into flesh not yet healed from death inflicted wounds scarcely three months ago.

With the last home visited, Lethe made her way home in the wake of dusk. The wind had shifted to a brisk northern blow and the accompanying chill was distinctly noticeable. By the time she reached the footpath to the old stone and wood house, her hands were deep in her coat pockets and buttons fastened to her neck. The fire witch had spoken.

She was tired when she walked through the front door, tired and weary of earth-shattering revelations that seemed eager to crash into her world; the same damning despair all over again, same gut-wrenching loss as watching her mother's body float out on the pyre in the middle of that bottomless lake, flames licking heavenward.

She stopped at her Grandmere's bedroom and eased her head around the door. Her Grandmere sat upright on her thick feather mattresses reading one of the old books that lined the bookshelves along the wall; one good eye following the words while the other drifted white and unseeing into dull space.

"I've told everyone," Lethe whispered and waited for her response.

Her Grandmere paused, laid the book upon her lap. "And Brother Evans, you told him of the change?"

Lethe winced, she had not. But what good would it do to tell the disagreeable man? The old preacher did not follow their ways, and went so far as warn others the ills of pagan ritual and the punishment from God for doing so. What good?

The old woman uncannily answered her thoughts. "Everyone must be welcomed whether they choose to follow or not; is it not the same with his Christian god?"

It was enough, these words, to quell the rebellion of words clinging to her lips. And although Lethe did indeed see the wisdom of her Grandmere's words, she dreaded the encounter; even as she grabbed her coat once more from the hook beside the door and urged her weary legs and spirit to make one more calling.

Brother Evans' squat little farmhouse was on the eastern side of the valley,
closer to the eastern star
, he would say.
Closer to protection
, Lethe thought, and inhaled the cold night air between her smirking lips. The firelight glowed through the gray-dingy curtains as she knocked at the door and blew her breath into her hands to warm them.

Must be twenty degrees,
she thought. Her booted feet, numb with cold, stamped at the cinderblock floor of the narrow porch. April cold snap and maybe that was why the celebration was postponed until the fifth. It wouldn't be much of a stretch for her Grandmere to know that…to feel the weather deep in her aged bones; even caterpillars, rabbits, and squirrels sensed that much.

Just more instincts than other people, and holler folks didn't understand, and she almost convinced herself, ready to cast off the veil of magic and expose it for fraud, but then a quick glimpse into yesteryear and that autumn day in the forest, undeniable and sharply infused in her memory even as thirteen years had passed.

Brother Evans must have looked between the curtains, when he flung the door open his teeth were bared and insincere. "Yeah?" he greeted her, tall hunchbacked man with narrow shoulders and wet, shiny lips from constantly wetting them with a seldom still tongue. His hair hung like sparse yarn the colour of spent coal, it fuzzed and cow-licked around his ruddy face; ruddy like he'd just hurried back from somewhere important to someone less important-like her.

Still, she was kind-faced, respectful, "Brother Evans," she said, not quite able to keep the shiver from her voice, not quite sure if she wanted to be invited into the warmth of his home. "I have a message from my Grandmere," and she watched as his mouth twitched in disdain, curling in on itself as if the very mention of Aida Berwyn brought with it the demons from Hell. She half expected him to sign the cross in front of his chest, but no, he was a Baptist preacher and more likely to shout his offense with scriptural references, fire and brimstone words that carried the weight of an angry, vengeful God. But he didn't shout. His eyes squinted, curious despite the scowl. Impatience fell from his mouth, "Well? What is it, girl?" And she became cognizant of the rhythm of rain pellets on the roof overhead, mixed with icy tings, like nails spilling onto the tin.

"Grandmere wanted you to know Beltane would be celebrated on the fifth of May this year, like in the old times. You're welcome to come." And there, she'd said it, fulfilled her duty;
hurry home.

Brother Evans took a prolonged wheezing breath,
rattles
and
humph
went on for a few seconds, and then he lurched backwards into the door as if unbalanced, and expelled his lungs in a squeeze of laughter-coughs that condensed to fog in the cold air. "Beltane," he laughed, "witches and devils paradise," and still he laughed while she felt a warm flush travel from her head to her toes. Lethe turned from the old man, this pillar of morality, no more enlightened than what breath he could draw and flay her open with.

"You tell Aida Berwyn that the devil will never get Malcolm Evans. Never! Oh, the very thought of dancing with sprites and evil doers…"

Lethe stepped into the wind and sleeting rain, flipping the hood of her coat over her head still hearing his litany of pulpit threats: "Tell her she's an old woman and she hasn't much time to repent from Satan's ways. Run Girl! Go tell your Grandmere God's message!"

Almost to the dirt road, her labored breath beating upon her eardrums, and his voice still carrying, "I'll pray for your soul too, girl. Can't help you were born into Lucifer's family." More laughter followed her down the road as she increased her pace. The rain fell harder, a welcome muffler of his voice, and soon she was far enough away to hear only the grunt-slosh of wet sneakers in the red mud, sucking and pulling her closer to the ground in gravity's sweet lure to the grave. She cut through the forest running along the path with only the moon cutting a hole in the black night to guide her. Running until her breath was stolen and her heart could not pound any harder, she stumbled and went to her knees, crawling through the tearing shrub and briars; cold sharp pricks and scrapings along her palms and knees, muted raindrops onto the lush of moss and pine needles.

Not easy to be a Berwyn,
her dead mother whispered from the sodden leaves overhead where she stopped and leaned against a solid tree trunk, her lungs raw and too heavy to go on. She ripped the hood back and raised her face to the sting of frozen rain. No going back to the innocence of childhood, and the road of the future spelled nothing but pain and ridicule… and a slow pariah's death.

"Where, mother, do
I
belong?" she spoke aloud, voice catching deep within her throat and carrying along the wayward winds.

An owl broke its silence from overhead, strange stutter of clicks before the "Whoo-whoo-whoo." And she pressed her face upward again and found the bird in white animation of stretched wings against the dark shadowy trees, refractory yellow eyes staring soberly into her own.
Hoot owls tell you when something's afoot,
her Grandmere always said. And simply because her Grandmere was never wrong, she heard the wet-push of something moving in the foliage, and pushed her back firmly to the trunk of the owl's tree. She wondered who would be coming into the dark forest in the cold of winter's last chill. She almost called out then, almost stepped out from behind the tree, but some greater instinct held her immobile and she heard the approach and deep breaths of someone-something, as it ambled along coming closer to the oak. She shuddered and clamped her jaws shut to keep the Morse code of her teeth from giving her away. High above, the owl took flight with a fanning of wings and piercing call. She heard the figure directly behind her now and she craned her head around ever so slightly to see.