The Last Unicorn Sacrifice in New Hampshire
Emily choked back a gasp when she saw the unicorn in the church courtyard. It was far from the first time she’d seen it; in fact, if it didn’t show up for too long, the parishioners started to worry.
But this time it looked wrong.
Tildy, Emily’s best friend (and maybe more), did gasp.
“You haven’t seen it before, have you?” Emily’s mom whispered, patting the other girl on her shoulder. “He’s a messenger from God. He works for the angels. That’s how we know this is the right path for us to follow.” She said the last part with a knowing nod to both Tildy and her father, who sat next to them on the pew. Tildy’s mom wasn’t there; she went to a Catholic church in Fitchburg, Mass. Tildy and her sister, Mia, normally went with her.
Tildy leveled her fear-wide eyes at Emily.
She sees what I’m seeing. Emily gave a tiny nod and a smile her friend would know was fake but their parents would think was agreement. She turned to her twin sister, Beth, whose face gave nothing away. Frustrated when Beth didn’t even look at her, Emily accidentally-on-purpose fumbled her Bible-sized hymnal and dropped it on Beth’s foot.
Beth didn’t even glare.
She must see it too.
When Emily picked up the heavy book, she jostled Beth’s elbow.
Beth started singing “The Church in the Wildwood” as the organ chords signaled the chorus.
Feeling Tildy’s look, Emily glanced at her. Her friend mouthed, “What the…?”
“Later,” Emily mouthed back, opening the hymnal with a shake. The pages fell to the well-worn hymn.
Tildy followed Emily’s lead and began singing.
“Oh come, come, come, come
Come to the church by the wildwood…”
Despite this being only Tildy’s second time at the church, she carried the tune well and Emily found herself just listening to her friend’s beautiful voice, watching her lips rather than singing herself. As the chorus ended and the choirmaster/organist took over, Emily chanced a look outside again.
Her stomach twisted. It was still there, prancing in a circle. Bone white. Wrong. Jagged hooves. Wrong. Sharp horn glimmering in the sun. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Emily didn’t wonder why the unicorn looked different; she wondered which “why” had caused the change. Had changed her.
Yesterday had been hers and Beth’s thirteenth birthday, and she had sinned. More than once. With Tildy.
***
Most people thought The Church of the Sacred Horn referenced the angels’ trumpets in the Book of Revelation. The parishioners—the True Believers, not those who occasionally visited—knew better. Reverend Thomas B. White had been given a vision made flesh of a heavenly beast who brought the prayers of the faithful to the angels.
A unicorn.
In return, they were asked only to be faithful, follow the Word of God as the Reverend preached it, and to make a single sacrifice every Easter—no more than what God had done for his Chosen.
When God was pleased with their work, His love and preference was apparent. The parishioners could see it in brilliant, holy pure-white and gold. After service and after Sunday school, on days the unicorn visited, they could touch the holes in the ground from its cloven hooves. Proof of their covenant with God.
Tildy and Mia went to the general Sunday school after service. Emily and Beth went to the “advanced” class they’d been selected for when they were ten. Tildy gave Emily a tortured look upon their separation that was only part joking. Emily did her best to give Tildy an “it’ll be all right” look, but she wasn’t sure how convincing she was. Lying was also a sin, so she might just be making the situation worse in wanting to assure her friend (and maybe more, which was also a sin).
Tildy had moved to the town of Blessed Waters just after Emily and Beth had started their “advanced” Sunday school. Since starting the program, Emily learned what it meant for their town to be blessed with its unicorn. God had promised his Chosen Few a world without illness, strife, war—and Blessed Waters was a piece of that world on earth, proof that such a thing could exist because He willed it so.
“Advanced” Sunday school was only for seven girls, selected when they turned ten, and while it explained a lot of things—like how almost all the adults in town had really good, well-paying jobs; how kids never got sick; how pets never got lost; how the local farms always had good crops and the cows always gave plenty of milk and chickens always laid plenty of eggs year round—the class didn’t explain why it was always all girls. Emily had asked about that, since Jesus was obviously a boy and Elijah had been asked to sacrifice his son.
Deacon Jim—he shared teaching the class with Mrs. Esther White, the Reverend’s wife—had told them that the message the original Reverend White (the current Reverend White’s great-grandfather) had said that it had to be pure, virginal women who were called to the unicorn. It had been so for hundreds of years, perhaps thousands of years, that such a covenant existed. One could find proof of that in the old medieval tapestries where a virgin was given to a unicorn or, among the Unfaithful, used as a lure for a unicorn by men who wished to steal God’s power. The unicorn was a most holy messenger who could travel between Heaven and earth, and therefore could only touch the purest sacrifice to God. The touch of the impure would sicken the unicorn, kill it even.
“Why can’t virgin boys be the purest?” Emily had pressed. That’s when the Deacon had grown red and reminded her that she was bordering on sinfulness by questioning the Most Holy Word.
Emily didn’t want to be sinful or go to Hell, but she had been doing a lot of questioning since Tildy had moved in. She knew if she said anything, Tildy would be called “an agent of the Fallen One” for making Emily question and they wouldn’t be allowed to be friends (not to mention “maybe more,” which was a BIG sin anyway).
The seven girls easily fit into the Reverend’s office for this class. Little TV tables were scattered by the couch, the cushy leather and plush chairs, and the few folding chairs that made a circle in the center of the room. Whoever was teaching would usually walk around the room.
As they walked through the windowed hall from the main church to the Reverend’s office, Emily saw the adults setting up the folding banquet tables and chairs in the courtyard. It was the first nice Sunday after a long winter. Only, they were all moving slowly, looking toward the main church doors…
Emily turned a choking gasp into a cough.
The unicorn was still out there. It was never out there after service where regular people, where sinners, could be so close. The other girls noticed and stopped to stare.
The other girls’ faces beamed only unbridled delight and awe. Their eyes shone and their lips opened into wide smiles.
They don’t see what I see…
She looked for Beth and barely caught a glimpse of her twin walking alongside Deacon Jim before he and Mrs. Esther shooed them from the window to the office.
“Be respectful! We’re being honored. Reverend White is being honored. Come now!” Mrs. Esther gave Emily a shove that she thought was a little harder than necessary. When she looked at the woman, she half-expected to see another monster revealed, but no. She was as perfect looking as always—though this close, Emily could see the little lines around her eyes and lips that immaculate “peaches and cream” makeup did not entirely hide. Tildy had once showed Emily a video of a makeup tutorial for the “all natural” look Mrs. Esther strove for—and it was a lot of work to look like someone didn’t need makeup!
Emily tried to weave through the group to get to her twin, but Deacon Jim had an arm around Beth’s shoulders and had sat her in one of the office’s floral-and-stripe patterned wing chairs that made it hard to sit next to someone because the armrests and backs flared out so much. Still, Emily maneuvered around to grab a folding chair—she hated the folding chairs; her butt always hurt after sitting in one for the whole two-hour long class—and set it up next to Beth.
“You saw something different today,” she hissed while everyone else was still chit-chatting around finding their seats and trying to sit next to their closest friends.
Beth furrowed her brow at her in confusion. “What do you mean?” she whispered back.
Emily blinked. What if Beth hadn’t seen the difference? What if she were reading her twin wrong? They had been drifting apart since being selected for “advanced” Sunday school—since Tildy had moved in, Emily also had to admit. What if it were just she and Tildy who were seeing…a distorted unicorn…because they had been the ones who’d sinned?
Deacon Jim tapped his forefinger on Reverend White’s shiny, wooden desk. The lip around the top was a spiral that resembled the unicorn’s horn, the namesake of the church.
“We are only one moon cycle away from Easter, girls,” he said.
Emily didn’t want to be reminded of that.
“How are you all doing?” Mrs. Esther asked. “Are you being good? Are you praying for your souls’ protection?”
Emily nodded a lie.
“Good, because as we get closer, the Fallen One is going to approach you all.” Deacon Jim was using his sermon voice. “You won’t realize it. He’s a clever one, a smart one. He was an angel once, after all. He tricked God’s first Chosen Ones—the purest first, for the corruption of the most pure is what he craves most of all—he will come for you because you’re Chosen, you’re special, you are who God wants in his Kingdom. You need to be always vigilant, for he’ll come as your closest friends, as the sweetest boys who will tell you that you’re beautiful and special. You mustn’t let them in, for even the smallest trespass destroys your purity. Remember, your promise of Heaven, of being rejoined with your family and loved ones in pure bliss, is what’s at stake.
“And the health of this town, of your families, of the people you love—their life on earth as well as their chance to get to Heaven—depends on you. Depends on you being worthy to kneel before the unicorn as a gift to God.”
Emily tried not to shake, tried to breathe normally even though her chest felt like it was being squeezed by a giant hand. I’m going to Hell. I could make other people go to Hell. She’d known that before this moment, but she felt like she knew it even more as the Deacon said it.
It’s bullshit, she heard an imaginary Tildy say in her head. God is forgiving. He doesn’t send kids to Hell.
She didn’t believe Tildy was Satan in disguise or one of Satan’s servants. That didn’t feel right.
“We have what no one else has on this earth, a living, breathing servant of God looking after us. We are the Chosen Ones, and we are bound by a special covenant directly with our Holy Lord. You, you were chosen especially for this honor. One of you, on the back of the unicorn, will be delivered directly into the House of God to protect our sanctity while we still walk this sinful earth.”
“Amen,” they all murmured, even Emily.
“And we know it hasn’t been easy for all of you. There is much pleasure in this world that you are all forsaking…” When they had been chosen, they had vowed to protect their purity more than the other kids. They’d promised to never see a movie not approved by their parents and the church, not to read a book outside of what was in the church’s library, not to wear “clothing for men” like jeans and T-shirts, and certainly not to wear any skirt or dress or blouse that was immodest—particularly as they’d begun to develop into women. Mrs. Esther had given them plenty of talks about that.
“So, let us pr—”
Reverend White burst into the room. “It has been revealed! Who among you is the Chosen! He has revealed it to me today!”
Despite the bitterness burning up her throat and the painful beats of her heart, Emily couldn’t help but sit straighter and smooth her skirt like the rest of the girls. They all had perfect enough manners to not spit out the question fluttering on all their lips.
He looked around the room, resting his gaze on no girl longer than any other before bowing his head and holding out his arms. “The Good Lord blesses us every year, all of us, and gives honor to one of our congregation to be brought to Him early. It is not easy to be a Chosen One of God, so let us all open our hearts, give strength, and pray for…Elizabeth Wilson.”
Emily mashed her folded hands to her mouth not in prayer but to keep from puking.
***
Emily wasn’t getting anywhere near her twin. Her own twin. Reverend White flanked her on one side, and Mrs. Esther and Deacon Jim seemed to be competing for who got to put their arm around her other side. The rest of the class dissipated into the crowds, each finding their respective families in either relief or dejection for not being the Chosen One. The rest of the congregation surged toward the front doors to offer their prayers and thanks to God, the unicorn, and Beth.
“What is going on?” Tildy demanded, wrapping her arm around Emily’s.
Emily shook her head. She couldn’t tell Tildy. Every so often she’d felt sick for not telling Tildy about the biggest thing in her life, about being Chosen by the church and what it meant—but they were all forbidden from talking about it to non-baptized, non-confirmed parishioners of Church of the Horn.
“Can we go?” Emily choked out over the taste of bile.
“Don’t you want to be here for your sister, for whatever honor she’s getting?” Tildy looked confused.
Emily shook her head, then stopped, pulling away from Tildy. “Just…meet me at my house?” Words flew from Emily’s lips before she realized what she was saying. “Bring your bike.”
Tildy hesitated, but nodded and left. The church was only a few blocks from their houses.
Glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one noticed her slipping away, she headed home. It was even more difficult to keep from running than it was to keep from puking.
***
“Are you going to tell me what the fuck that thing was outside your church or not?!”
Emily was fighting the blur that was trying to overtake her vision. It was all she could do to keep pedaling her bike, to keep moving. She hadn’t said a word to Tildy since they’d left her house.
“Don’t—don’t use words like that! When you talk about…about…” She clenched her jaw shut as she felt her bike waver.
“Seriously? Emily!” Tildy stood up on her bike and pumped herself several lengths ahead of Emily, then turned sharply in front of her and braked.
“Hey!” Emily’s voice squeaked as she clutched her breaks and slammed both her feet down, scuffing her good Sunday shoes.
“Talk to me! Please, Emmy, you’re freaking me out. Like for real. Please, please just talk to me? I’m-I’m scared.”
Emily blinked, taken aback at Tildy’s confession. She came from Fitchburg, which had gangs and all sorts of crime and awful things, and she was scared? She saw what you saw, Emily reminded herself. And that ought to terrify anyone. “So am I,” Emily said back.
“So tell me what’s going on. What happened today? What was that at your church? What’s happening to Beth?”
Emily took a deep breath. “Remember how your mom says you can’t take communion at our church, and if I went to yours I wouldn’t be allowed to? It’s like that. I-I can’t tell you because…because…that.”
Tildy pressed her mouth so tightly her lips almost disappeared. She took several deep breaths through her nose. People did that, Emily had noticed, when they didn’t want to yell. Tildy spoke in that I’m-calm-and-not-yelling voice. “We just saw…what looked like-like a monster, a demon at your church during mass-service-whatever you call it. We saw that. That happened. And you can’t tell me what it is?”
“It’s the unicorn.” Emily knew Tildy was aware that a unicorn protected the church, so she could say this much without breaking the rules.
“That did not look like any unicorn I’ve ever seen. And it certainly didn’t look like it came from God.” When Emily didn’t say anything, Tildy pressed. “I know you saw what I saw. You looked scared. Really scared.”
Emily took a breath. “That’s not what it normally looks like.”
“You’ve literally seen this unicorn before? It’s a real unicorn?”
Emily nodded. “It’s…it was…beautiful.” What she and Tildy had seen that morning was not beautiful.
Tildy looked down at her bike. Everyone was still at church, so there were no cars. “It doesn’t…normally look…like it did today?” she asked softly.
“No,” Emily said, running her finger over the pink ridges on her bike handles.
“Did it…? Do you think it looked different today…because we…you know?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or it could be…”
“Because we visited that creepy stone?”
“Yeah…”
Tildy looked in the direction they’d been riding. “That’s where we’re going now, isn’t it?”
Emily hadn’t thought about a direction when she’d grabbed her bike, but after Tildy said it, she knew that was where she was going. She nodded.
“You know you had nightmares last night. Like bad ones.” She took a breath. “I thought it was ’cause, you know.”
“It was the rock,” Emily said.
“So why are we going back?”
“Because…because…I have to. Please?”
With a sigh, Tildy got back on her seat and started pedaling. And while Emily couldn’t help but notice how the ruffles on the bottom of her flowered dress rippled in the wind, she also noticed Tildy’s back and shoulders were as stiff as boards.
***
