Almost a year later, Carol McCormick was shopping for groceries. This wasn't as easy as it sounded, especially without a stroller, because her three-year-old son Kevin was tugging at her arm, pointing at everything, and screaming "MINE!" at the top of his lungs.
"No, Kevin," Carol grumbled for what seemed like the twentieth time as she pulled Kevin away from a dessert display. "We can't buy those right now." Not until your father gets a fucking job, she added in her head.
"MINE!" Kevin repeated, crying now.
Carol's patience was wearing thin. "Shut up!" she hissed, giving him a little tap on the top of his head. "People are lookin' at us, and yer gonna wake up your brother!" She wished that she could afford enough groceries to fill up a shopping cart, because then she could have just stuck Kevin into the seat of the cart and he wouldn't have to be chased all around the store. At least her new little boy was sleeping soundly in his sling.
In the breakfast aisle, Carol briefly let go of Kevin's hand to open the freezer door and take out a box of frozen waffles.
Kevin held up a bottle of maple syrup. "Mine?"
"No, Kevin. Put it back." Maybe someday the McCormicks would be able to actually put something on their toasted waffles, but not today. Carol was glad that her younger son still had a way to go before it was time for him to be weaned; that meant more food to go around for the rest of the family.
"Carol? Carol McCormick?"
"Huh?" Carol looked up at another box she was checking out and saw Jim McElroy coming towards her, holding onto Kevin. "Oh, hi, Jim. I'm sorry, was Kevin bothering you?"
"Not at all," Jim said cheerfully. "The little rascal was just trying to grab a package of lemon bars out of my shopping basket."
"Yeah," said Carol, "he's in the 'Mine!' phase right now. Stuart an' I still gotta teach 'im that ya can't have ev'rythin'."
"I haven't seen you or Stuart at the meetings for a while," Jim remarked.
Carol shrugged. "Yeah, well, we've had our hands full." She pointed to her sleeping baby. "This is my little angel Kenneth, but we're just gonna be callin' 'im Kenny while he's little."
This was when the baby opened his beady little eyes.
"See that?" Carol said proudly. "He knows his name already."
As Jim got closer, Kenny squirmed and began to wail. His mother patted him on the back, felt his bottom, and murmured soothing things, but he didn't seem to need anything, and he didn't calm down.
"Sorry," she said to Jim. "He's usually pretty quiet; we'd better go."
"Alright, then. I hope to see you and Stuart on Friday, and you're more than welcome to bring the little one." He held up his shopping basket, and Carol looked longingly at the beer inside. "Hail Cthulhu!"
"Uh, yeah. Okay."
Kenny finally quieted down when Jim walked away. Unfortunately, Carol's relief was short-lived when she realized that Kevin had run off again.
Shit, thought Carol. "Kevin? Kevin, where are you?"
She didn't have to look far: back near the desserts, she saw an irate-looking store employee with a small boy who appeared to be covered in what looked like was once a German chocolate cake.
"Does this belong to you, lady?" the employee growled, pointing at Kevin.
Kevin answered for his mother when he wrapped his sticky arms around her legs and smudged cake all over her already dirty jeans. "Mine!" he said happily.
"You'll have to buy that cake," said the employee.
Carol smacked her forehead. "Kevin, goddammit!"
"I forgot how creepy this place is," Carol remarked as Stuart parked his truck outside the McElroy residence. She looked apprehensively at her baby. "Maybe we shouldn't have brought Kenny."
"Aw, c'mon, Carol," said Stuart, "that stupid Cult of...whatever" (he wasn't sure how to pronounce 'Cthulhu') "may be kinda creepy, but it's just a group of people who haven't got anything better to do on Friday nights. What's the worst that could happen? Besides, Jim said it was okay to bring Kenny, right?"
"Uh huh." Carol felt mildly better now. The cult really did consist mostly of people who were only there because they had few other social outlets, like those Star Trek nerds and the elementary school shop teacher.
They were greeted at the basement door by a figure in a hooded black robe.
"Welcome back," came Jim McElroy's voice from under the hood, "and hail the Great Old One Cthu-"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Stuart interrupted as Kenny began to whimper. "Where's the beer?"
Jim serenely pointed to the refreshment table. "Over there, as always."
As Carol took the first sip of booze she'd had since learning of her pregnancy, it seemed to her that the beer tasted kind of funny. She shrugged it off as merely the need to get used to drinking it again.
It wasn't long before Stuart and Carol were both unconscious. Jim smiled wickedly and pulled Kenny out of his sling; it was time to finish what had been started all those months ago!
The screaming infant was placed in the center of a pentagram. The cultists surrounded him, joined hands, and began to chant over Kenny's cries...
