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Folk Horror Short Story - Oh, Delilah!

About this story:

Delilah has endured Marcus’s cruelty for years, clinging to the coven’s whispered promises of power, protection, and escape. But tonight’s ritual is different — a blood‑etched offering meant to prove her devotion to forces older and darker than the women who gather on the mountain. When Marcus vanishes without a trace, Delilah must confront the terrifying question at the heart of every spell: was it magic… or was it her? “The Ritual of Delilah” is a folk horror short story woven with witchcraft, domestic dread, and the haunting uncertainty of what we become when we finally choose to be free.

 

The old home stood on a hill, white paint peeling over rotted wood. Shutters hung from rusted hinges and panes of glass sparkled where rocks had left sharp shards. The original cedar on the roof peered through layers of crumbling, moldy asphalt.

Thigh high weeds brushed against her dress, leaving burs and the fuzzy down of dandelions. Crickets sprang ahead of her step, and frogs and cicadas sang as the sun lowered in the sky. She was late. Marcus had kept her, needling and berating until Delilah had decided not to come just to shut him up. Miraculously, he’d decided he’d had enough of her, leaving for the bar.

“And clean up this pigsty!” he said, slamming the door behind him. 

Her dirty bare feet stepped onto the stairs which creaked and bowed. She kept close to the railing, wincing as old bruises fought with new as she pulled herself up the steps. The porch squeaked less loudly, barely heard over the furor of the bats from inside. It was the time of day when they flew from their perches. Delilah loved to watch them swooping across the darkening sky, catching insects. She didn’t love walking among the swooping, shrieking mass of bats. According to the coven matriarch, submitting to that was part of the ritual. It showed you gave yourself over to the dark one’s.

The front room, once a dining area with a view of the valley, was now empty but for a layer of white and grey bat shit on the once beautiful floors, the view of the valley no longer visible through the dirty panes and overgrown gardens. Delilah kept close to the wall, her gaze to the floor to avoid seeing the diving, disturbed bats, trying in vain not to step in shit. She felt their wings brush past her face and scrunched tighter reflexively. She cried out when a splat of shit hit her hand. She rubbed it reflexively against her thigh, the dirt marring the white of her ceremonial dress.

“They won’t hurt you,” the high priestess had said. Outside of the coven she was known as the crazy old lady who talked to herself. Among her acolytes she was powerful. She didn’t talk to herself; she spoke to invisible beings who did her bidding.

 

Delilah skirted the hole in the floor. She shivered when she investigated the crawlspace, remembering the spiders and other creepy crawlies that lived in that cobwebbed place. The memory of her one required venture into the dark, scooting on hands and knees, still gave her the shakes. The squirming reptile that she carried out as it writhed and flailed was not as slimy as she expected. She used the Garter snake in her first spell, although Delilah still debated the results.

Entering a hallway, she left the bats behind. Some of the girls in the coven believed the hallway led to a portal which brought them out of normal time and space. ‘Why else would they need to go through the house in the first place?’ They asked each other in whispers. Why go past the bats and the dangerous creaking floors rather than around in the open? Some of the others claimed they could feel the spot where the portal transitioned one from the normal world to the world where magic worked. Delilah never felt anything as she walked down the hallway, even though she tried. She wanted to feel it. It would help her believe.

She wasn’t sure she believed any of it. Sure, after her first spell Marcus had listened to her more. For a little bit. Which gave her the confidence to ask her boss for a raise. He, too, had listened politely as she spoke and he’d agreed. ‘Was that because of the spell?’ She wondered. ‘Or was it just because I stood up for myself?’ Delilah thought it silly to have the ability to cast spells just to get a raise at work.

“You have to work your way up,” the high priestess had explained. 

 

Which was why she was here, on this golden evening, heading toward the clearing instead of cleaning her house. She had sacrificed snakes and birds and small mammals. Tonight, she would sacrifice herself. Well, part of herself.

If tonight’s spell worked, she would believe it all. ‘I promise,’ she whispered.

As Delilah padded down the long hallway, she no longer saw the moldy, green-grey walls or the grating on the right side that, back in the day, had looked out into a courtyard, but was now too matted with old vines to see through. Instead of trying to sense the tingle as she walked through the door into the courtyard, the portal to another dimension, as she had in the past, her mind wandered.

‘What did it all mean?’ She wondered. The white dresses they wore to imply purity. Delilah didn’t feel pure. She felt sore, and tired of her life. The red sashes wrapped around their waists and black hair also had meaning, but Delilah couldn’t remember what. She remembered Marcus had not been pleased when she’d come home with her golden locks died black. He’d said she looked dead.

 

‘My outside matches my inside then,’ she’d thought in response.

 

At least he hadn’t hit her. That time.

Delilah remembered the day she met the priestess. Delilah was leaving the hospital after a particularly bad beating, which she'd described as a fall down the stairs to the doctors and nurses and police officers. It wasn't her first 'fall', as the office politely reminded her, but Delilah knew better than to tell the truth. She knew, as bad as this beating had been, Marcus could and would do much worse if she told anyone the truth. 

"I'll find out, believe you me," he was fond of saying, usually as a hiss in her ear when she finally crumpled to the floor.

 

On that day, she had limped out of the hospital, a cast on one wrist and several stitches over her blackened and swollen left eye. Because of that, and the fact that she hadn't had any sleep in two days, she didn't notice the old woman pushing her cart across the courtyard. When Delilah stumbled into the cart, it was as if the woman and her ragtag belongings piled high in the cart and covered in a threadbare tarp, had just appeared as if by magic. 

Delilah cried out in pain as she tumbled to the ground. The old woman cried out as her cart went flying and her belongings scattered. Once Delilah righted herself, she helped the old woman pick up her cart, gathering up her crumpled umbrella and small carryall with the broken zipper full of dirty, smelly rags. 'Were those clothes?' Delilah had wondered.

"Thank you, my dear," the old woman said when Delilah returned her belongings. "I should do something for you."

 

"Oh!" Delilah was surprised. She had expected the woman to be mad, or to ask for money. "Oh, no. You don't have to do anything for me. If anything, I should do something for you. I was the one who knocked your stuff over, after all." Delilah bit her lip. What was she doing? She should be running away from the crazy old homeless lady as quickly as she could.

 

"Nonsense!" the woman said. "I insist. Come."

 

And Delilah found herself following the old woman to the park. There, by the pond with the ducks and the frogs and the sunshine and the people having picnics, the old woman told Delilah of the coven and the magic and what it could mean to her. Delilah couldn't tell you why she agreed to attend her first meeting. If you'd asked, she would have said something like 'she wanted to make new friends' or 'it would get her out of the house', but those weren't the real reason. Inside she knew the real reason came from how, among all that normalness, Delilah had felt something. Something strange, sinister, and foreboding. Something that convinced her she could relegate her pain to the past.

However, after months of attending the meetings, and learning the chants and the uses of herbs and batshit and snake blood, Delilah wasn't sure that she believed any longer. She was still in pain, and her reality hadn't changed much. 

When her feet hit the well-worn path that led from the courtyard through the woods, Delilah shook her head. Did it matter what it all meant so long as tonight’s spell worked? She stopped and made a promise to herself. 

"It the spell doesn't work; I will stop coming. I will find a more direct way to solve my problems." Only, she'd said that before, hadn't she?

 

She noticed that the sun was hanging just above the horizon. The lanterns would be coming on soon. She doubled her efforts, lifting her skirt and half-jogging up the mountain path to the clearing, where she could see the whole valley spread out before her. She didn’t stop long. The others were waiting, their white dresses shining in the dusky light, the semi-circle like an invitation. At the head of the circle the high priestess stood in her blood-red robe. Her old, bent frame stood straight and tall among her acolytes. Delilah wondered if the people in town would notice Ole Crazy Lady if they saw her here. The priestess raised her arms and the torches flared behind the circle, leaving the faces of the coven in shadow.

Delilah shivered as she entered the circle. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said to herself. ‘These women are your sisters.’ One of the faceless women was Delilah’s sister, she just couldn’t tell which one.

 

Without preamble, the ritual started with the priestess calling out to the demons and gods that she claimed stood beyond the circle of torchlight. Delilah could feel the gathering power as a tingle on her skin and a raising of the hairs on her neck. Or was that just the competing temperatures of the cool breeze and the warmth of the torches? She gathered her skirt in both hands and knelt on the hard ground. The circle closed behind her.

Through many minutes of droning words, Delilah had little to do but listen and bow and prostrate herself as required by the ritual. Finally, the part she had been dreading. The gleaming silver knife, curved like a mini scimitar, reflected the torchlight back to the dark. Delilah swore she heard the gathered creatures sigh, but it might have been the breeze. She wanted to run, but held herself fast, still on her knees. To break the circle now would be dangerous. If you believed that. Two of the women from the circle came forward to pull her dress down, baring Delilah’s shoulders and breasts. Goosebumps beetled her skin.

Delilah gritted her teeth as the knife swirled its way onto her skin, leaving stripes of pain and blood on her back, shoulders, and chest. Trickles of blood left cooling trails on her skin. The pain was somehow more and less than she expected. More real with less bite. The pain reminded her of when she was a teenager, using a razor blade pried from one of her mother’s disposables. Then she had been all for the pain, scoring straight lines on her upper arms and her thighs. The High Priestess said this ritual was more about the design, bringing forth ancient words in the language of blood. Delilah was sure the gods enjoyed the pain, too.

She only hissed once. Her tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth to stop from crying out. After they completed the ritual, Delilah hissed again as the rough linen of her dress scraped over her sensitive skin. Delilah hoped the fabric wouldn’t stick as the blood dried. She wondered what Marcus would say when he saw the clotted blood in the swirls of some ancient language. Delilah shook her head. If the ritual was successful, there would be no more Marcus.

 

Did she really believe that? She must, right? She wouldn’t be here, wouldn’t have submitted to the pain, if she didn’t.

 

When Delilah stood and greeted the others the feeling of the hovering ‘others’ was gone. Had they gotten their taste of blood and now were off doing whatever demons and gods did? Or did the blood bind the creatures to them, as the priestess said? Were they even now off to complete their errand?

 

The priestess was right. Delilah thought too much.

By the time Delilah and the other girls finished exclaiming over the ritual, the night was fully upon them.

“You did well,” the priestess said in her deep, seductive voice.

 

Delilah bowed her head. “Thank you, Mother.”

 

The woman walked through the gathered girls, a touch here, a murmured word there. She led them down the hillside, her dark form winking in and out of view as they passed the lanterns shining beside the path. Through the house, the bats now off for their nightly feed, and out to the main road. Delilah took one last look behind her, but the torches, which they had left burning, weren’t visible from here.

The girls faded into the dark. Ole Crazy Lady had somehow changed from her red robe to her typical ripped and dirty garb, bent over the cart, one squeaky wheel echoing in the dark as she pushed her belongings in front of her. As she sometimes did, Delilah wondered if the whole ritual had been some sort of fever dream. Only this time, she could still feel the pain.

Finally, Delilah was alone, standing in front of her trailer, afraid to go inside. Afraid of what she would find. Inside, the rooms were empty. What had she expected? Marcus was still at the bar or, more likely, with whatever new woman he was slobbering over. She knew what that would mean. When he returned, he would be angry at having to return to this so-called life. She set to cleaning the house. It would give him one less reason to beat her.

Once Delilah finished her chores, she stripped in the tiny bathroom. She had to stand on tip toe to see the designs carved into her living flesh. The caked blood flaked off when she rubbed it with a dirty fingernail. The tepid water from the shower stung. The soap was worse, but she scrubbed as much as she could reach.

Once she was clean and dry, she pulled her nightdress on, the fabric cooling the raised red welts. She huddled in bed; ears perked at every sound, but she finally fell asleep. The next morning, when her alarm rang, her eyes felt as if they were full of sand.

She awoke alone. Marcus had never come home. Delilah’s heart thumped in her chest, but she held herself in check. He could have fallen asleep in his truck. That had happened before. Delilah got herself ready for work and headed out.

She didn’t see his truck on her way to work, and he still wasn’t home when she got back at the end of the day. She waited a couple of days before she called the police.

There were side-eye glances from the older officers. Those who believed in Karma said that he had it coming. It was a few days after that before she started to believe that Marcus might never return. That was when she admitted to the police that Marcus was abusive.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” one of the women questioning her asked, but it wasn’t a serious question. They knew the answer.

There was a cursory investigation, but no one really wanted to know what happened to Marcus. They hoped he’d just skipped town. They figured he owed money to someone who threatened him. They didn’t think Delilah could have struck back and hidden the evidence. She was just a scared, abused trailer wife, who kept her head down and didn’t say shit even if she had a mouthful.

There was never any sign of Marcus, as if he’d just disappeared. Delilah believed in the power now. She was free. She went to work and she continued to attend the coven meetings, but the rest of the time she spent cleaning her house. Just in case.

It was the one thing she never prepared for. What to do if the spell worked.

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