The Bride of the Sunflower

A Folk Horror Story

We had not seen the sun since the middle of June.

Once the heat of the summer hit, a dark blanket of cloud rolled in and covered the entirety of the sky in a deep grey.

We all thought it would go away in a few days at most, that sheets of rain would eventually burst out of the endless sky of black, and the clouds would shrink away like wilted flowers and reveal the familiar blue underneath.

But that didn't happen.

The days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months, and the clouds showed no sign of thinning. Soon, it had been two full months since sunlight had kissed the soil of the building. The air became unseasonably cold, and our crops began to fail one by one, leaving the village people destitute and starving.

My father was on the council of village elders as the main religious adviser of the community. He used to be a priest in the big city before falling in love with my mother and straying from his holy path.

After leaving the priesthood in disgrace, my father's faith was tarnished beyond the point of repair, but even though he was no longer a man of faith, the village elders still appointed him as the main religious authority of the town. He was the closest line to God they had.

Ever since it became clear that the heavy, dark clouds were not going to go away on their own, my dad had been waking up at the crack of dawn to meet with the village elders and try his best to explain the clouds using scripture.

Every day, first thing in the morning, in the town hall, the village elders would surround my father like a herd of panicked animals.

"What is the spiritual meaning of this?"

"What sin have we committed to deserve this?"

"Is God angry with us?"

"Is this a sign that the end times are coming soon?"

My father came home every night wilted and drained of his energy. All he wanted to do was fall into his bed and fall asleep, not even bothering to eat his dinner much of the time.

My sister Mabel and I were still barely out of our childhood, so my father didn't cry in front of us. But the walls in our house were thin, and my sister and I could hear every tear, no matter how he tried to muffle them.

"They don't understand." We could hear our father sob as my mom comforted him. "I'm just a man, I don't have all the answers. I can't have all the answers."

But even though it was destroying him little by little, my father still woke up early in the morning to meet with the village elders.

I could never figure out why my father continued to put himself through this. What is guilt? A sense of responsibility? Did he still truly believe he was able to help?

I couldn't stand to see my father go through this day after day. I knew that if things went on like that for much longer, my father might not even live to tell the tale.

So one day, right before morning began to arise and my family awoke for the day, I dressed in my warmest clothes and headed out the front door to confront the village elders myself.

Though it was early August by this point, the morning was as cold as a winter's night. The clouds had not dissipated at all, even since the last time I ventured outside.

My stomach started to twist as I began my journey down the gravel road to the town hall. Without the sun, it seemed the entire world consisted of nothing but dark and cold. The gravel road leading into town was completely and totally devoid of villagers at this time in the morning, leaving me feeling eerily and completely alone.

And yet I couldn't shake the feeling that something was watching me from somewhere in the dark of the fields surrounding the village road.

I walked along the road in the dark and the cold and the silence. The world seemed so quiet and lonely that it came as an extreme shock when a man clad in black and a big straw hat emerged from the field and approached me with a smile.

"Hello, little miss." He said, his grin spreading across the entirety of his face. "Lovely morning we're having, isn't it?"

I side-eyed the man skeptically. The village I lived in was a small one. Every village knew each other or at least knew of each other. I had never seen this man before in my life, so he couldn't have lived in the village. So who on earth was this man, and where did he come from?

"Don't you know it's rude to stare like that, little girl?" The man continued, his smile unmoving. "I'm just saying hello, that's the polite thing to do, you know."

"Hello," I said, keeping my greeting short and sharp so I could move on and get where I needed to be.

"Hey, hey, hey, where are you going?" The man chided me as he continued to trail me on the gravel path. "I'm not done talking to you."

I began to walk a little faster, going out of my way to walk as quickly as possible. I had been warned about men like this, men who trail young girls to lure them into dark, unseen corners so they can do unspeakable things to them.

I refused to allow myself to become a victim of a man like him.

When I looked over my shoulder, I could see that the main was still trailing a few feet behind me. I burst into a run even though it made my knees ache.

It seemed that no matter how fast I ran, the man in the straw hat was never more than a few feet behind me. He didn't even seem to be moving particularly fast. His strides were long, calculated, and slow, but somehow I still could not escape him.

"Hey, wait!" He called out after me. "I don't want to hurt you. I just want to talk, that's all."

"I don't want to talk to you!" I called back over my shoulder. 'Leave me alone!"

But this was not enough to deter the man in black. He continued trailing after me, picking up speed and pulling me into his arms, trapping me.

I squirmed and fought under his grasp as hard as I could, but there was no hope of escape. He was just too strong.

"I just have one question for you, and then I will let you go." He said, his breath hot and sour against my face. "Please just let me ask this one question, and you can go along on your way."

At this point, I felt helpless to do anything but play along.

"What is it?" I croaked, "What do you want?"

"I'm in need of a bride." The man in black said. "I need a nice girl to marry in order for the sun to return to your little village. Could it be you? Would you be willing to fill that important role?"

I finally regained enough strength to push the man off me.

"No way!" I cried out. "For the last time, leave me alone!"

With that, I once again took off running down the gravel road leading into the village. This time, the man didn't bother following me. Thank God.

The village we lived in was a relatively small one, but it was located in the center of the deep, flat fields of corn. The straw-covered rooftops of the building appeared to stand tall over the barren flat plains of the grass and corn fields that surrounded them.

Just like my family and I, most of the villagers lived on the outskirts of the village square. The village square mostly consisted of local government buildings, shops, and food markets. The village square used to be bustling with people, mothers with children, businessmen and merchants on their way to their jobs, old ladies gossiping outside of cafes, but ever since the sun disappeared, it had become sadly and eerily empty, vacant of any visible human life.

I strolled around the winding paths that led me around the perimeter of the town square, looking for the town hall.

The town hall was a big, church like building with heavy oak front doors, so heavy that I struggled to push them open.

As I entered the town hall, I could see the silhouettes of the village elders lit by candlelight, five tall, gaunt, elderly white-haired men still wearing the judicial robes of fifty years in the past.

The village elders seemed to be just now arriving to begin their daily responsibilities, sleepily sitting at the long, heavy oak tables that sat in the middle of the front room, wrapping their robes tighter around them for warmth and slowly sipping on their mugs of steaming hot black tea.

Before I could so much as open my mouth to speak, the tallest and thinnest member of the village elders took notice of me.

He glared down at me behind the comically small wire rimmed glasses that were perched on the end of his nose.

"And who would you be?" He asked with impatience. "The council is not open for requests from the public until the afternoon. It is a weekend after all."

I cleared my throat, resolved to push through the intimidation that was creeping in.

"I'm Theodora Rayns." I said. "Father Rayns' oldest daughter"

The councilman eyed me skeptically. "I didn't know Father Rains had a daughter, only a wife."

I didn't know what to say to that, so we just sat in silence for a long, painful moment.

"What is it that you want, Theodora Rayns?" The councilman asked finally. "I'm a busy man with a full day of work ahead of me. I don't have all day."

I sucked in a deep breath before speaking.

"I came here to make a request of you.' I said. 'I plead with you to stop working my father so hard. He does not have the answers you are seeking, and he's no longer even a man of God. What you're doing to him is destroying him, destroying our family. I plead with you to find someone else to help you bring back the sun."

The elder's eyes narrowed as he regarded me coldly from behind his glasses,

Then something completely unexpected happened. Something in the councilman's expression softened, as if I had evoked some kind of empathy deep inside of him.

"I'm so sorry, dear. I know this must be hard on your father and his family." He said, "But we have no choice. If our little village is going to stand any chance of surviving, we need to clear the clouds and bring the sun back by any means necessary. You're father may not have all the answers, but he's the closest lifeline to God we have. The good of the many must outweigh the good of the one. I am sorry for that, young Theodora."

I left the town hall disappointed and carrying more questions than answers. I didn't know what else to do but hang my head and go back home to face whatever wrath my parents had waiting for me.

As I walked along the dirt road back to my family's home, I couldn't help but keep throwing paranoid glances over my shoulder.

The man who had cornered me on my way to the town hall was thankfully nowhere to be seen. The road was now as empty as it was wide. No other human being in sight, let alone a creepy man with a straw hat.

Even so, something still didn't seem quite right. I could shake the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.

I arrived home to find my parents fully awake and still stern and exhausted at the dining room table. My younger sister Mabelle was curled up on my mother's lap, her eyes red and wet with tears.

"Where have you been?" My mother demanded. "We have been worried sick about you."

"I just went into town to get some things," I said, half lying. "It was only a few minutes. I swear.'

Mabel's face screwed up before speaking, as if she were trying her best not to cry.

"We thought you were dead!" She blurted out. "We thought you had been taken from us like all those other girls."

I was taken aback. What on earth was my sister talking about?

"What?" I asked. "What girls?"

My mother began to rise from her seat in anger, but my dad held up a hand to stop her.

"Don't react too soon, darling." He said. "I think she genuinely doesn't know."

That was when the gravity of the situation finally fell over me. That was when the panic finally began to set in.

"What girls?" I repeated, more desperate this time. "What happened?"

My mom let out a heavy sigh and clutched the bridge of her nose in her hand before speaking.

"Two of the girls from the village, all around your age, have been going missing." She said. "They've been finding their hacked up on the side of the main road, the very one you walked on this morning."

Upon hearing this, my blood ran cold. I couldn't help but think back to the strange man in the straw hat who had harassed me on the path that morning.

"This is why we want you to stay inside the house, Theodora. This is really important." My mother said gravely. "Do not leave the house like that again. Do you understand me?"

I felt I had no choice but to obey my mother and stay inside my house. This proved to be mind-numbingly boring.

Though my father was one of the most respected members in the village community, my family was quite poor. And when you are poor, quality entertainment is always scarce.

I owned a few books, and I had already read all of them many times over, but due to my lack of anything else to occupy myself, I had no choice but to read them again.

Food had been both precious and scarce ever since the sun disappeared, so I didn't even have mindless snacking to turn to.

Things continued to go on like this for several long, excruciatingly boring days before the village council called everyone in the village to the town square for an emergency, mandatory meeting with no exceptions.

I dressed in my best church clothes and shiny black Mary Janes that pinched the back of my heel.

My stomach flipped and turned as I walked down the main dirt road into the village square, this time with my parents and sister in tow. But the fact that I was no longer walking alone brought me little to no comfort, not when there was a serial killer on the loose, and I may have encountered him already.

A crowd of finely dressed villagers stood nervously and buzzing with chatter. I recognized some of them as friends of my parents or adults in various positions of authority, but most of the faces in the crowd were not recognizable to me.

My mother kept my sister and me on either side of her, keeping our hands tightly grasped in hers.

"Stay close to me." My mother warned my sister and me as we approached the village square. "Do not stray from my side, or I swear to God I will make you sorry. Do you both understand?"

My sister and I nodded our heads frantically to show that we understood, already feeling the approaching heat of our mother's wrath.

So my mom, my sister, and I walked into town hand in hand into the village square with my father taking up the lead like a general leading his soldiers into battle.

By the time we arrived at the town square, a large crowd of villagers had gathered, leaving my family and me craning our necks to see the village elders and the strange, mysterious, tall figure that stood beside them.

"Ladies and gentlemen, my fellow villagers." The shortest and oldest of the village council announced. "If you could be so kind as to quiet down, we have an important announcement to make."

As if a switch had been flipped, the villagers stopped their chatter and went deadly silent, watching and waiting.

"My lovely fpls ." The short elder said. "I am proud to announce that our prayers have finally been answered! God had sent this wonderful man to rid us of the clouds, to free us of the endless dark and cold."

The crowd started murmuring again, this time excited and full of a newfound enthusiasm.

"Silence!" The tallest and most stern of the elders barked. "The head conceilman is not done speaking."

The switch was flipped once again. Once again, a silence fell over the crowd of villagers.

"I introduce to you the Sunflower man." The short council member continued. "He has proven to me that he can clear away the clouds, that he has a special gift from God."

The whispered and murmuring amongst the villagers started up once again, but this time they would not be so easily silenced. Quiet disapproving words about paganism and witchcraft rippled throughout the crowd like a stone on water.

A loud ceramic crash rang out like a gunshot, causing everyone to quiet themselves out of shock.

"I said silence!" The stern elder screamed out, having slammed a ceramic dish onto the ground, shattering it.

"As I was saying." The short conical member continued. "This man, this wonderful, blessed man, had the God given ability to clear the clouds from our sky, to bring back our sun. I know you all must be skeptical. I don't blame you. But I gathered you all here today to have him prove his abilities to you."

The short council member turned towards the Sunflower Man, whom I still couldn't see over the crowd of people.

"Take it away, Sunflower man," he said.

The crowd had fallen so quiet that the snap of the Sunflower Man's fingers felt like a clap of thunder.

All at once, a hole was ripped into the blanket of clouds, revealing the blinding blue and the halo of sunlight shown through the sky for the first time in months.

The crowd let out a collective gasp, raising their arms to the sky to praise the lord. Some even burst into tears.

As quickly as it came, the hole in the sky was sealed shut like a zipper. The sky was black once again.

"Not so fast, folks." The Sunflower man said. "Everything comes with a price, even the weather. If I do something for you, it's only fair that you give me something in return."

The Sunflower Man's voice felt familiar in a way that made me feel sick, though I couldn't quite place why.

"Well, what do you want for payment?" The short council member said, frantic. "We will give you whatever you want. Whatever amount of money, whatever amount of gold, we will be happy to give it to you."

The Sunflower Man scoffed. "A creature like me had no use for money or gold. I need companionship. I have needs that need to be fulfilled. I need a bride, a young one, a pure one, a teenage one."

I could feel the shock rippling through the villagers once again, but this time, there were no whispering or murmuring. What had just been demanded from us was too horrifying for words.

At first, the short elder seemed to be just as shocked into silence as the rest of us, but it didn't take long until he was back to groveling.

'Of course, of course, anything." He said. "Do you have a girl in mind?"

The Sunflower man didn't miss a beat.

"Yes, there is a specific girl who has caught my eye." He said. "A beautiful angel-haired girl by the name of Theodora Rayns "

It was only then that I realized why the Sunflower Man's voice sounded so familiar to me. He was that creep in the straw hat who had harassed me on the main road a few days ago.

Every single villager in attendance turned around to stare at me. Like clockwork, the crowd split in two, clearing a distance past me to the creep who had harassed me just a few days ago.

An overwhelming wave of panic began to wash over me. Despite myself, tears welled up in my eyes.

I turned to my parents, thinking they would be the ones who would come to my rescue.

"Mom? Dad?" I asked, my voice breaking."You're not going to let him take me, are you?"

To my dismay, neither of my parents reached out to me, not to rescue or even comfort me. They just stood there, their faces cold and stony. They didn't even flinch when Mabel hid behind them and cried.