Written for the Spooky Season Writing Challenge, Week 1
I had a bad feeling from the moment I saw the goat.
Dede had brought it home from the village next to ours in the bed of his rusty old truck. He had bought it for Kurban Bayram and would slaughter it on that holiday, in honor of the prophet Ibrahim’s faith in God. I had watched, even assisted with the slaughter every year, had happily eaten the meat. I wasn’t squeamish about animals being killed.
But this year, something about the way that goat looked at me gave me the feeling of ice-cold water running down my backbone.
From within a forest of potted begonias spread across her wide front porch, Nene watched me as I stared at the goat. I stood stock-still, face to face with the brown and white animal that was tied with a rope to the bed of Dede’s truck.
“Do you like it?” she asked, her face a maze of wrinkled laughter. She was holding a pail in one hand and the little milking stool in the other, on her way to relieve the single cow she looked after. Even at this age, even after surgery on both bad knees, she refused to give up that cow.
I looked from the goat to Nene, then back to the goat. Its strange, rectangular pupils seemed to be begging me for something.
“Do we really have to kill it?” I asked, my voice coming out in more of a whine than I had intended. “Can’t we keep it and get something from the butcher instead? I can look after it.” I wasn’t sure why I was volunteering for more chores, but the words flowed out of me unbidden.
Nene laughed. She hobbled across the wide, stone-paved driveway that separated her house from ours, toward the tiny barn where the nameless cow spent her days and nights. I had never seen that cow leave the barn, not since she was first led inside, bucking and straining against her rope, five years prior.
As Nene approached me, she gave me a mischievous wink. “Alright,” she said. “Just for you, we won’t kill it. We’ll let it go.”
Then she chuckled to herself as she walked into the dark, airless barn.
I knew Nene hadn’t meant it about letting the goat go. But I wished she had.
I turned and faced the goat again. It bleated once, its eyes fixed on mine.
Somehow, I felt it in my bones: it wasn’t right that the goat should die.
That night I couldn’t fall asleep. Through the window I had left cracked to catch the cool night air, I could hear the goat’s anguished bleating. It sounded almost human, like a woman pleading for something I couldn’t make out. I pictured the goat, imprisoned in the truck bed, helpless against its fate with the blade.
I shut the window and put my pillow over my head, pressing its muffling softness against my ears.
The goat continued to scream.
The goat was eerily silent the next morning as I stepped out onto the front porch to feed the chickens, the bucket of kitchen scraps swinging in my hand. To reach the chickens’ wire mesh enclosure, I would have to walk past Dede’s truck and under the strange judgmental eye of the goat.
I padded carefully across the paving stones, thankful for the cool shade provided by the ancient grape arbor that stretched out above me. I felt the goat’s eyes following me, but I refused to look at it. Arriving at the edge of the driveway, I skirted past an overgrown patch of four o’clocks and reached for the latch that would grant me access to the chickens.
A loud, almost human shriek from the goat made me jump. My fingers fumbled uselessly on the latch; scraps flew from the bucket, jolted free by my sudden movement.
Reeling, I hurled the scraps at the chickens and ran back across the driveway to my house, slamming the door shut behind me. From the kitchen, my mother called out to me, admonishing me not to slam the door.
Outside, the goat continued to bleat.
I stayed inside as much as possible that day, hiding in my room and claiming I was studying. But by early evening, my mother was demanding I go out and buy bread for the next day. I steeled myself for the unavoidable encounter with the goat. It’s just an animal, I told myself. But I remained uneasy.
Outside, the goat was still screaming from the truck bed. When it saw me, it went silent for a moment, meeting my gaze and seeming to stare right into my soul with its uncanny eye. Then it shrieked again, not breaking eye contact. It rose up on its hind legs and yanked sharply upwards with its head against the rope that bound it.
I felt something inside me break. I knew the goat would be slaughtered, and I knew there was nothing I could do about it.
Its rectangular pupil followed me as I walked down the gravel path, worn paper notes folded in my pocket. It followed me as I returned twenty minutes later, one white plastic bag bulging with crusty loaves clutched in each hand.
As I reached for the latch to the front door, the goat screamed once. I froze where I stood, not wanting to turn around and face the helpless creature. Then I hurried inside. But as I pushed the door closed, I couldn’t help but venture one pitying glance in its direction.
It watched as if waiting for something. For me.
The next morning we rose early. Dede led the goat down from the truck bed and onto the straw laid out across the driveway. Nene instructed me to bring a bucket of water for the goat. To calm it, she said. I felt a rock form in my stomach. Was it not cruel to give the animal this one final kindness before Dede slit its throat?
I pumped the handle, its squeaks like the goat’s screams in miniature, and watched the cool water flow into the bucket. I shuddered, took a breath to steady my nerves, and picked up the heavy bucket.
The goat drank greedily, its eyes blank and unreadable. I glanced over at Dede, who had his back turned to me. On the table was the knife that would soon take the goat’s life. My hand moved a millimeter toward it as I envisioned a plan to cut the rope and set the goat free.
Just then Dede turned, picked up the knife, and took a step toward me and the goat, smiling at me with his few remaining teeth as if he had divined my plan.
I stepped aside and held my breath for the inevitable.
Dede laid the goat out on the ground. It began to scream again, its legs kicking and thrashing. Its eye found me and held my gaze.
The knife made its cut.
I turned away, my breath shallow and strained.
The goat was silent after that.
The rest of the day was spent skinning and butchering. I tried to stay far away from the bloody scene, but as Dede, Nene, and my mother cut and sliced the goat’s body into smaller and smaller pieces, they continually called me over to help. Sometimes it was to bring a clean towel or a bucket; sometimes it was to carry a wrapped package of the goat’s flesh, still warm from life, down the gravel road to a neighbor.
As the sun sank lower in the sky, I was charged with helping Nene in the kitchen. I chopped onions and cucumbers, mixed the salad, stirred the simmering stew of goat meat and chickpeas. I stared into the pot and, for a moment, thought I saw the goat’s face staring back at me.
At dinner I didn’t want to eat the meat. I picked at salad, pilav, bread. When prodded, I swallowed a few chickpeas, carefully avoiding the cubes of brown meat. This was usually one of my favorite dishes, but the thought of eating the goat made a hollow knot in my chest.
I felt Nene’s eyes on me from across the tablecloth. When I looked up, I could read her face instantly. Eat your meat, child, it said to me.
I looked down, took a lump of meat in my spoon. I felt a sick sensation rising in my stomach.
I left the spoon where it was and tore off a chunk of bread instead.
I didn’t sleep well again that night. A faint howling sound leaked in through the closed window. A windstorm? In summer? I strained my ears, trying to sort out what it was.
Then clearly, loudly: the sound of a goat, screaming.
Like a shot, I sat straight up in bed.
None of our neighbors kept goats.
I sat there in the dark, waiting to hear it again, but all I could hear was the sound of my own breathing.
Then finally, once more: a half-human, half-goat wail. Like a woman pleading for something.
I dove under my pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, as if my eyelids could block the uncanny sound from entering my brain.
The goat screamed all night.
The morning came, blissfully silent.
Too silent.
I walked outside to feed the chickens, threading my way past the empty truck bed, past the killing place still stained with blood. When I reached the chickens’ mesh enclosure, the bucket fell from my hand.
Every single one of them lay unmoving on the bare earth. I moved closer, cautiously; perhaps they were just ill?
But no. Every tiny chicken neck had been slit open. Beside each feathered body, the dusty earth was stained with blood.
I screamed and ran up the steps to Nene and Dede’s house. Nene was standing over the stove in the kitchen. She turned to face me as I pulled the screen door open and rushed inside. Her wrinkled face was a question mark.
“Nene, the chickens,” I panted. “They’re all dead.”
Nene gave me a puzzled look and hobbled out toward the mesh enclosure. Dede came out too, calling after us, demanding to know what was going on.
We stopped in front of the chicken enclosure. I pointed, but I didn’t need to. Dede and Nene stood silently for a moment. Then Dede let out a note of surprise, a long, falling note that trailed off into a raspy silence. Abuuuuuuu.
None of us could make sense of it. Could it have been a prank, committed by teenage boys who thought they were being funny?
Over breakfast, Dede, Nene, and my mother talked about the chickens, theorizing what might have happened, which family’s misbehaved son might be the culprit. I looked down at the eggs in the pan, their yolks gleaming gold. In my mind’s eye, they transformed into chickens, a knife slicing across each of their throats.
Uneasiness followed me the rest of the day. We moved from house to house, visiting all the neighbors and friends, drinking endless cups of tea, sitting on matching pink couches and at tablecloths spread out on thickly carpeted floors. I kissed the hands of countless elders.
I was wearing my new pale blue dress, the one I had picked out excitedly off the rack the week before. I no longer felt excited about the dress, about the holiday, about any of this. My mind was stuck in a loop: Goat. Eye. Throat. Chickens. Goat. Eye. Throat. Chickens.
Finally, impossibly, the day came to an end. I laid my head onto my pillow and closed my eyes. The image of the dead chickens seemed to be burned into my retinas.
Outside, the goat began to scream.
I scrambled to my feet and stood in the center of the dark room, listening, not moving.
I wasn’t imagining it. There was definitely a goat screaming.
It sounded otherworldly, nearly human, like the goat I had watched die.
In the morning, it was Nene’s turn to scream.
I raced outside in my pajamas, searching for her.
Nene stood just inside the doorway of the dark, dusty barn, the milking stool and pail lying abandoned on the ground beside her.
In front of her, the dairy cow lay on the ground, its neck a mangled mess of fat and flesh. The barn smelled sharp, like iron. Flies crowded hungrily onto the open wound.
I felt something warm and wet under my toes and looked down at my feet. My bare right foot lay in a river of red, angry blood.
Nene had been upset about the chickens, but she was furious about the cow. She marched us back to every house we had been guests at the day before, not to drink tea and share gossip but to mete out justice. Our horrified neighbors denied all knowledge of and involvement with the killing of our livestock. Nene hobbled home in tears, my mother comforting her, Dede promising we would get another cow. Someday.
None of us felt much holiday spirit after that. I hid in my room, the carnage of the past few days playing on repeat inside my head. I tried to read or study, but the bloody images in my mind left no room for any other thoughts.
At dinner I said nothing. The adults’ conversation moved from hushed conjectures to angry shouts. I cleared away the dishes, mechanically scraping the leftovers into a bucket for the chickens. Then I remembered about the chickens, and I stared at the collected scraps, not knowing what to do next.
The night was still and soundless. Even the frogs and the crickets seemed to have taken a vow of silence in solidarity with their fallen comrades.
I couldn’t sleep at all. I paced back and forth in my small bedroom, worrying what the next escalation might bring. We didn’t have any other animals, not even a dog since Yaman had died a few months ago. Would one of us be next?
Something flashed at my window. Two bright stars behind the glass.
I strained my eyes to make sense of the shape surrounding the glowing lights.
A goat’s head, still as the windless night.
In horror, I moved backwards, away from the window. The cool blankness of a wall pressed against my back.
The goat began to scream.
This time, it sounded more human than ever. A woman. Pleading for something.
It disappeared from the dark frame of the window, still shrieking. The sound seemed to be moving toward the driveway.
Toward Nene and Dede’s house.
I threw open the door to my bedroom and raced down the hall, nearly slipping on the carpet in my haste. I pulled the front door open and searched the moonlit yard for the goat.
My breath caught in my chest. The goat was walking steadily, with purpose. Up the driveway. Past Dede’s truck. Up Nene and Dede’s front steps.
“No!” I yelled, my bare feet slapping on pavement as I ran up to Nene and Dede’s front porch and stood in front of their closed door, my arms stretched out wide to block the goat’s path. I glared into the animal’s ghostly, glowing eyes.
“I won’t let you hurt them!” I said to the goat.
It blinked, and the two lights of its eyes winked out briefly before reappearing, ghost-white like the moon.
The goat took a step toward me and bleated once, softly. Pleading for something.
I relaxed my stance and let my arms fall to my sides. I reached one hand out and stroked the goat’s head gently. Its hair felt whisper soft beneath my skin.
Then it turned and ran, its hooves clopping across the paving stones, and disappeared into the fields behind the chickens’ empty enclosure.
Dede kept his promise and used the money from the sale of the lemons that winter to buy Nene a new dairy cow. I named the cow Beyaz, after her hide like bright moonlight, though I kept the name secret from Nene. Our neighbors forgave us for her angry accusations and questioning, and the family at the end of our gravel road gave us a few chicks from their flock. They grew into three black hens and a large, proud rooster.
I didn’t see or hear the goat again after that night. I sometimes wonder whether it was really there at all, or whether it was a dream I had, my mind’s attempt to explain the terrible killings of the animals.
When Kurban Bayram comes again, Dede says, we will choose an animal, following tradition.
But this time, it won’t be a goat.
Read more about Wendy Cockcroft’s Spooky Season Writing Challenge here:
This was sooo spooky. That goat made itself known and it most certainly wont be forgotten.
I felt this one viscerally. I lived in Jamaica as a kid for a year (my mom was a missionary) and I remember a goat sacrifice, clearly. I can still see every single moment in my mind. It was a pivotal moment for 3-year-old me (it's shocking what I remember, considering my age).