On Sorry Night, just a few days before Christmas, you have to snuff the lamps, douse the flames in the fireplace, and spend the night in the cold and dark. If you don’t, the Vours will get you.
They’re the monsters you can’t see, the ones that crave the heat and light. The ones that feed on your fear and then swallow you whole. I should know. When I was a child, I saw it happen, and I’ve lived with that fear ever since.
That night, Jeremiah and I came in the back door just after sunset, chased by a cold December wind. Pa stood at the window with his back to us, clenching his mug and gazing out into the snowy night. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the whiskey bottle on the kitchen table.
“You remember to bring them cows in?”
Pa was a giant in thick boots and faded overalls. I shivered as he turned to face us. His eyes were empty and cold like the winter fields outside, and just as dead. He got like that when he drank. I think that after Ma died, some part of him did, too.
I saw the color run right out of Jeremiah’s cheeks. “Oh, I — I forgot, Pa.”
He smiled at me, but I knew he was afraid. It was my fault. I’d begged for a piggyback ride before the sun went down, and before the chores were done. That was why he’d forgotten to put the cows in the barn.
“You got straw for brains?”
“No, Pa.”
“I think maybe you do. I think we best find a job a boy with straw for brains can do.”
Pa slammed his mug down so hard the whiskey splashed out of it. He dragged Jeremiah out the door by the arm, grabbing a rope and lantern from a hook outside as they headed for the cornfield. I followed, running and slipping on icy mud in the dark.
Pa strode up to the old scarecrow that loomed on its cross over the field. With one yank, he ripped it from its nails. Then he tore off the head and threw the body to the ground. Pa looked like some kind of fairy-book monster, holding up that burlap head in his giant fist. He threw it at Jeremiah’s feet.
“See there? Straw for brains, just like you. Now get up on that post, boy — you’re gonna do yourself some scarecrowing.”
Jeremiah’s breath came in sharp bursts of steam.
“But — but Pa, there ain’t no corn. It’s the winter.”
“No corn, no crows. So it’ll be an easy job, won’t it?”
Pa thrust Jeremiah up against the post. Then he snatched one of my brother’s wrists and lashed it to the crossbeam with the rope. Tears streaked down Jeremiah’s face as Pa tied down the other one.
I cried for my brother, too. Even though he was ten years old, four years older than me, he was still scared of the dark. He said he could feel monsters in the night, waiting in the shadows to come and get him. He called them the Vours, evil things that come for children on the longest, darkest night of the year.
Pa lit the lantern and put it down beside the post.
“Pa, please.” My brother’s voice shuddered and his body shook. “Not tonight. Any night but tonight.”
“How long does Jeremiah have to stay out here?” I asked.
“’Til it’s done.”
And then my father made me leave my brother tied up in the freezing black air. I looked back over my shoulder at Jeremiah. His coat had fallen open by his throat, and the St. Giles medal he always wore gleamed in the lantern light. I silently prayed for St. Giles to protect Jeremiah’s soul from the Vours.
Pa sent me to bed, but I wouldn’t sleep, and after a while I sneaked back into the kitchen. Pa was passed out, facedown at the table, the empty whiskey bottle turned on its side. I threw on my coat over my nightgown, pulled on my big boots, and ran to the cornfield.
The lantern cast a flickering circle of light at Jeremiah’s feet. It reflected on his St. Giles medal, which shone like a heart on fire at the center of a dark cross. I dashed up to him and threw my arms around his neck, my tears wetting his frozen skin. His teeth chattered behind his lips, and ice frosted his eyelashes.
“It’s coming.”
“I’m here,” I said, struggling to untie the knots around his wrist. But the rope was so tight, and my fingers were numb.
“Can you see it? The shadow — moving! Coming for me!”
I looked around, but all I could see was the flickering lantern, the black shapes of the barn and the house, and endless fields of white. The wind moaned.
“It’s just me, Jeremiah. I’ll get you down.” I pleaded with him, but he kept screaming.
“Get it away!”
Suddenly the lantern flared up, white-hot, and the glass shattered. I cried out and covered my head as kerosene spattered over the snow, flames snapping up at the air around us. The headless scarecrow on the ground caught fire and crackled as it burned. A billowing pillar of smoke rose up like a giant black snake, coiling around my brother up on the cross.
God forgive me, I ran. I ran as fast as I could, the cold burning in my lungs, Jeremiah’s screams burning in my ears. I didn’t save him. I didn’t bring him back.
This isn’t how the horror ended for us — this is how it began.
As I ran, the screaming suddenly stopped, and I heard something much worse. It was Jeremiah’s voice, but different, lower, resonating across the field like a demon’s olden chant:
When dark creeps in and eats the light,
Bury your fears on Sorry Night.
For in the winter’s blackest hours
Comes the feasting of the Vours.
No one can see it, the life they stole,
Your body’s here but not your soul. . . .