He's Got to Go

The mountain retreat was a safe haven for those lucky souls who had made the climb to the summit when the bomb exploded.

Nobody knew who had dropped it. There was even talk of extraterrestrial attack but without proper radio activity there was no way of knowing. 

The signs had been there for those attuned to the stirrings of disaster. Omens, whispers, rumours and talk. Troop movements added to the sense that something was afoot. Something bad was coming and the public were not being told. 

Whether this was because world leaders were caught unawares or whether the desire to stop a panic outweighed any semblance of normal compassion it's hard to say. Whatever the case it was only those who had some kind of foresight who made provisions for the coming event and fled to the remotest shelters they could reach.

One of those, the mountain retreat, was way above the treeline near the peak but just below the snow cap. The sun-facing slope on which the abandoned monastery was built meant that the shelter never froze over or suffered from excessive snow build-up. 

This side plateau on which the retreat sat offered a comfortable but hard life for it's denizens, it's montane tilth allowing for crop growing and the keeping of upland goats for meat and milk. Fresh water was abundant in the crystal streams and energy was harnessed from the wind. For all intents and purposes the mountain sanctuary was self-sufficient and self-sustaining. A community could last up there for years.

The group comprised mostly of married couples with some singletons and a gaggle of children. With the company came all the requisite strengths and flaws of the human race, together with some extremes in the form of Van Rin, a husband who in normal life had continually sought the pleasures to be had outside of his own marriage. For the new and precarious life they had journeyed for, avoiding at all costs the dreadful global fallout from the bomb, he had solemnly vowed to his wife he would remain faithful from that day forth.

There was also a handful of very elderly women, who had remained with the monastery when their sect was irrevocably depleted ten years earlier. These indigenous people were treated as elders by the newcomers and had years of experience of how to live on the harsh mountain. Keeping pretty much to themselves, the elders lived separately in an out-building, where they cooked, prayed and slept, as it appeared they had always done so.

There was naturally a language barrier between the community and these elders. The newcomers, largely European, had made their way there to the mountain range over many weeks and with it lying on a completely different continent, there were now several languages being spoken, the common denominator for the Germans, French and Dutch, being English, which was fine by the small group of Brits who had heeded the signs and made the massive journey too. Van Rin, true to type, attempted had used his own linguistics to attempt some salacious anglicising with one of the British wives as she walked to the toilet block one night, an action which resulted in a swift and vengeful beating by her enraged husband.

As the days rolled by on the peak, despite the elders' tongue being initially unintelligible to the Europeans, one word they continually used both in everyday speech and in prayer was recognisable to them and, in so being, really quite alarming.

It was yeti.

To the incomers this word was steeped in myth and folklore and generated a somewhat uneasy feeling akin to being frightened. With strident images of the Zebruder Big Foot film and abominable Hammer Horrors darkening their dreams, the community came together and sought some reassurance from the elders that there was no threat to them or the sanctuary stronghold. 

Using sign language and drawings it steadily became clear that the indigenous people worshipped the yeti as gods and had done so for thousands of years. 

The present monastery was the latest incarnation in a long line of temples dedicated to the mountain creatures stretching back into time immemorial and the elders were the guardians of both the faith and also of the sacred beings themselves. 

A growing air of otherworldliness permeated the sanctuary and as the sun began to set Van Rin was asked to wait outside of the meeting area as he had allegedly felt one of the German wives' behinds. He had protested loudly and gone off to raid the alcohol store for the rest of the night, brooding over the forbidden fruit of the married women in his midst stuck on this mountain and as such all for the taking and in particular the beautiful French woman Edith.  

The commotion over, the elders continued to draw pictures in the grit it also became clear that a much darker facet if their faith was emerging, a facet so disturbing to the Europeans that it felt like a taboo had been shattered. Some of the group were visibly shaken and a couple physically sick. 

The elders carried out human sacrifice to appease thier Gods.

The sacrifice must be a human adult, a resident of the monastery and must also be male.

From the pictographs appearing in front of the Europeans, in the past it was the males of the sect who had been sacrificed, a rite they carried out willingly as it was their divine duty for one of their kind to offer themselves to the glorious and eternal yeti each and every five years.

When the males were reduced to but a couple, the numbers were boosted by acolytes joining the sect from zealous travellers searching for the truth among the snow-bound pinnacles. They had to go willingly for the Gods to be satisfied, the flesh had to be given freely.

Eventually the men ran out. 

That was five years ago.

Then the bomb fell, the rite was stalled and the yeti roared their disapproval. The elder women could hear their anger and sense them approaching ever closer to the fastness of the monastery, their wrath growing every day.

The enormity of what the elders had just explained dawned on the group and a tremendous and heavy dark cloud descended on them. 

A male was needed to willingly offer himself to the yeti.

A male from the Europeans.

Over the next few days as the mood of the community sank it was hoped that by some miracle the elders would produce a hidden male member of their sect and save the day.

But this didn't happen and as expected no volunteer came forward from within the newcomers.

The elders grew more and more agitated and prayed ever more loudly by day and night, the word yeti reverberating around the retreat like a warning bell.

It was discussed nervously at group meetings, spoken about during chores, whispered about in the dining room and a plan began to form. 

The men would draw lots, the short straw would do it.

And so it came to pass that all the males of the community took their turn and revealed their straws. 

The shortest straw was drawn by Francois, a Frenchman, who, submitting to this pure wisdom of chance, immediately accepted his lot and readied himself for the coming sacrifice the following morning.

That night Francois and his wife spent their final night together. She cried and cried and no matter how much he tried to console here his wife was simply bereft. He explained to her in the gentlest of tones that he accepted his fate willingly and that his actions would save the wider community for a good five years, five years of peace and safety away from the nuclear winter killing the world below.

His wife, inconsolable, ran out of their quarters, towards the elders' sanctum, where she hammered on the door screaming.

"There has to be another way! My François doesn't deserve to die. I love him. He belongs with me. He belongs with me. Please! Save him!"

On getting no response at all, the distraught woman turned and head bowed trudged back to her shelter.

As she passed the goat stables she heard a voice.

"Hello Edith! I've been waiting for you!"

Van Rin stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of the now frightened Frenchwoman. 

"What do you want?"

"I want you Edith! I want you! After all, your husband won't need you anymore will he!"

Edith screamed but it was muffled by Van Rin's palm and he dragged her into the stables, be here he repeatedly violated her, choking her in between so hard that she stopped breathing entirely.

Van Rin, now terribly scared, shook her body but Edith was quite clearly dead. 

He ran back to his own quarters and quietly returned to his bed next to his wife, who with her eyes wide open, was certain her husband had relapsed back to his old adulterous ways and that somehow she would take her revenge.

The following morning came, the morning of Francois's sacrifice to the gods of the mountain. 

He had become aware that Edith was missing earlier, after waking up from a fitful sleep. He had been waiting for her during the night to return as he knew she would after ridding herself of the agony she endured and eventually seeing the sanctity of Francois's offering.

A handful of community members helped him look for Edith including Van Rin's wife. She found her lying in the stables, her face a blueish grey. She had obviously been strangled.

Uproar ensued and the company swore to find the murderer, whom they knew was in their midst. 

"Justice! Let Justice prevail!" Was the loud cry from the members as they searched for clues and evidence, a trail of which led to the living quarters of Van Rin. 

"Where were you last night Van Rin?"

"I was here. With my wife!" 

"Is that true? Was he here with you?"

"No. He wasn't. He was gone most of the night!" Replied his wife, her eyes flashing with anger at her lecherous and murderous man.

"Then you are charged with murder Van Rin! Take him to the cellars to await trial!"

The sad and awful killing of Edith had distracted the community from the equally solemn and terrible task also required of them that morning, to offer Francois's life to the waiting Yeti, an act which now, in the cold light of his wife's demise, felt to them like martyrdom.

"The mountain gods will be even happier" commended the elders.

Francois was taken for one last meal and to spend time with his wife in the makeshift mortuary, where he knelt beside her and prayed that they would be reunited soon.

But Van Rin's wife wasn't happy at all. 

She felt it to be a gross act of cruelty to send Francois to his death on the morning he had found out his wife had been murdered by her husband.

No, the real offering should be the murderer. Her husband Van Rin. He's got to go. Not Francois. That would be simply wrong.

She enlisted the help of two other wives, who felt equally as aggrieved and, having gagged him first, dragged Van Rin to the sacrificial gang plank overhanging the lower slopes hundreds of feet below where the Yeti dwelt and waited. 

Van Rin looked pleadingly into his wife's eyes and shook his head. He didn't want to die. 

She pushed him over the edge and as his gag fell out he began to scream uncontrollably before hitting the crags far below, his head splitting like an egg.

The rest of the community came to see what the screams were about and when they saw Van Rin's wife walking off the gang plank, they knew instinctively what she had done and simply stood in silence around her.

The elders arrived and wailed, there anguish growing ever louder. They grabbed Van Rin's wife and shook their heads violently, falling to their knees crying and moaning, eventually retreating to their shack and barring the doors and windows. 

They knew the sacrifice had been unwilling. The meat was tainted. For the first time in a thousand years the meat was tainted and the gods would not be appeased.

As the community stood shivering and confused on the plateau in the cold morning sun, a strange menacing sound began to emanate from the lower fells. 

At first a grunting, then a growling and finally a loud snarling, as the affronted Yeti made their way up the rocks to the high monastery and fully encircled the hapless residents, who were now screaming for their lives. 

It was no use. All the tainted meat had to be consumed and the stronghold purged if the rite was to be corrected and the balance of the mountain gods fully restored.

For a whole day the peaks echoed with the noise of grinding and munching as the Yeti ate and the elders watched nervously whilst their gods then slept on the blood- soaked terraces, their bellies full of the brash imposters and the ancient nature of things returned to the sacred mountain once more.