A Christmas Gift for my Dark Narratives Fans

A story to bring a chill on a cold winter's night

Hello, lovelies!

I hope this December season finds you well. It’s been quite a year, and that’s putting things mildly. I’ve been thinking of things to include in this newsletter — a year-in-review, a glance ahead at the future — but I think maybe we’re all tired and need a bit of rest. Which is why I’m skipping that all in favor of a story. I think this one is a lot of fun - please enjoy it :)

Catch you in the new year with fresh content — more guides, more news, and more deep dives!

NO ONE SHOULD BE ALONE FOR THE HOLIDAYS, the billboard intoned from the side of the highway.

It was one of those black ones with white letters, like the fundamentalists put up, but if there was a phone number on there to call and learn about Jesus, I was driving too fast to see it.

The next sign was more cheerful, all red and green: WELCOME TO HOLLYVALE!

The radio dropped signal, sound going fuzzy at the edge of its broadcast area. A moment later, "No Place Like Home for the Holidays" came over the radio with a crackle of static, coming out half-garbled. Something felt weird about the song, and it took me a minute to realize the words were wrong, like someone had added an extra verse:

Wherever you go for the holiday,

You cannot afford to be alone

You deserve to be happy, and the only way

Is for you to open up your home.

"Weird remix, but okay," I said aloud, to dispel the creepy feeling crawling up my back. I quickly switched off the car stereo. "They'll make anything into a Christmas song these days. I'd rather have Mariah Carey, thanks."

The rest of the journey passed in silence, just the sound of the highway bumping along beneath my tires, the wind whipping outside my window when I rolled it down for a cigarette.

#

The town of Hollyvale got its name from its founder, John Holly. When I was a kid, the place was like any other small town in Nowhere, USA -- half-vacant shopping centers stitched together along the main drag, "Building for Lease" signs in every other boarded-up window, the usual collection of Wal-Marts and Taco Bells. But like most Christmas-named towns -- North Pole, Alaska or Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or Christmas, Michigan, I guess Hollyvale leaned hard into the Christmas Spirit. Maybe it helped with tourism. The town was more vibrant than I'd ever seen it, anyway.

Main Street looked like one of those chintzy Christmas villages that people buy for their mantels, rows of buildings done up with twinkling lights and gingerbread-icing trim, cone-shaped trees outside, a blanket of snow across every roof and awning. And since Hollyvale is one of those small towns that lives right on the highway, recycled Rt. 66 Americana, it was impossible to get anywhere without taking the forced-slow drive down Main, traffic lights at every block pretty much forcing me to stop and look at the light-wrapped trees, the tinsel snowflakes, the winter scenes painted in storefront windows.

They'd even erected a wrought-iron archway where the shops ended, where Main turned back into country highway for a little while. Die-cut letters spelling HOLLYVALE, holly leaves and berries punched out of the metal on either side. It looked like the gate to a cemetery.

#

I underestimated traffic and got to Mom's house an hour later than I'd planned.

I almost didn't recognize the place.

Mom had always liked putting up a few decorations for the season, but this year the yard looked like something out of a magazine. She'd decorated like she was afraid the spirit of Old Saint Nick himself would come down and punish her if she didn't build him a shrine. Plastic light-up Santa Clauses stood beside wicker reindeer; inflatable snow globes held a constant storm of fake snow; the tree and the hedges and the windows and the eaves hung with twinkling lights that danced and flashed like an airport runway.

Mom answered the door before I knocked.

"I heard the car," she said.

"Really getting in the Christmas spirit, huh?" I responded.

We hugged, her bony body crushing awkwardly into my soft one, and neither of us seemed to want to linger. We pulled apart quickly.

"It's something to do. With your father gone, I've had a lot of free time."

Gone. It had been almost a year and I'd never heard her say the word "dead." She always fell on euphemisms: gone, not here anymore, went away. I guess denial was her favorite stage of grief.

She stepped aside so I could come in and I saw that the inside of the house was just as festively manic as the outside: lights and garland, glistening tinsel, a whole Christmas city laid out on the mantel. The house had always been small, but it was jam-packed with enough ornaments and decorations to be downright claustrophobic.

"Do you need help getting your bags?" she asked.

"Oh, no, this is it," I said, holding up the small duffel. "I packed light."

Since I won't be here very long, I didn't add. I hadn't been home for a holiday in years, and I'd only come this time because I couldn't bear the thought of Mom tottering around by herself. We'd always had our issues -- plenty of them -- but I couldn't be so cruel as to leave her facing a lonely Christmas as a widow for the first time.

"Of course. You'll be wanting to go back to your big city job," Mom said.

"It's an important job." And then, because I didn't want to stand here and defend my life choices to my mother on Christmas Eve, I set down my duffel bag and forced on a cheerful smile. "How 'bout you give me the tour and show me what you've done with the place since I've been gone?"

#

"Are you seeing anybody?"

We'd managed to make polite conversation for all of fifteen minutes, the amount of time it took for her to show me every room of the house and point out all of the little decorating projects, before the dangerous topics came back around.

She set a kettle on the stove and handed me a bowl of cookie dough, rolling pin, and plastic cookie cutters shaped like stars and trees, a wordless instruction there was no point in fighting.

As it happened, I had two partners waiting at home -- a polycule, if you want to be cute about it. It was an arrangement I had no intention of trying to explain tonight. It was a part of my life, like most things in the decade since I'd left Hollyvale behind, that I did not want shared, analyzed, judged or discussed.

"Nobody new in my life," I said, because it wasn't really lying and I still didn't like to lie to my mother.

"That's a shame." She clicked her tongue. "Youth is a terrible thing to waste. But I'm glad you're here. No one should be alone for the holidays."

I wouldn't have been alone. Right now, Josie and Bastion would be nestling on the couch, watching Die Hard with a big bowl of popcorn. Right now, I could have been between them, warm and cozy and a glass of wine into the night.

"This is a lot of dough," I said, deflecting. "Are you trying to feed an army with cookies?"

"They're your father's favorite. Remember how we used to leave them out for Santa? He couldn't wait for you to go to bed so he could eat them."

That forced a smile. "And carrot sticks for the reindeer."

"He threw those away."

Maybe if he'd eaten a few more carrots and a few less cookies he wouldn't have had a heart attack and left me alone with you, I thought, shocking myself with my own nastiness. If Mom's favorite stage of grief was denial, maybe mine was anger. Maybe I'd been grieving all my life, even before Dad died; grieving the family I'd wished I had, the life I'd missed out on. I thought I'd moved past all that, but there's something about coming home that brings you right back to who you were at sixteen.

The tea kettle whistled, and Mom mixed up two mugs of cocoa, handing me one. I swallowed down my bitterness with one scalding sip.

#

"So what's new in your life, Mom?"

We'd retired to the living room, overstuffed with a Christmas Eve feast she'd prepared as if expecting a whole extended family. Like she'd cooked in preparation for a spouse and grandkids -- her way too, I guess, of grieving for a life she wanted and didn't have. Ham and potato salad and dinner rolls, two slices of pie. It threatened to come back up, sitting uncomfortably at the back of my throat.

We'd traded cocoa for wine, and she'd poured generously. There was a shine in her eye, a hard keen edge, and I thought maybe now she'd be ready to talk about something real. I thought, mollified by food and drink, I might be able to stomach some reminiscing. Neither of us had really talked about Dad or how we felt. Not at the funeral -- too crowded -- and not in the busy months that followed, where pain could be so easily buried by work and distraction.

"I've been going to a new church," she said. "It's been helping so much. New Life Church of the Reborn."

"That's great," I said, and tried to sound like I meant it.

"It's the best thing to come to this town. Everyone is going there now. Remember Molly and James from down the street?"

I frowned. "I thought they were Jewish."

"That doesn't matter. Anyone is welcome to start a New Life!"

She tittered as if she'd said something very funny, and my gut twisted with uneasiness. I suddenly did not want to talk anymore -- not about Dad, not about Mom's cultish new church, not about the countless small agonies of my childhood. But my mother didn't notice my discomfort; she was staring off into the distance, glassy eyed, her head some place else.

"They're really getting into the Christmas spirit now, you know. It's not at all what you'd think. I know that now."

"Mom..."

"They knew all about it in the old days," she continued, and I could hear the slurring kiss the edges of her words. "Did you know Christmas Eve used to be a time for ghosts?"

"It's in that song," I said, uncertainly. "Ghost stories. And that Dickens book."

"Yes. Now finish your wine. You have to go to bed or Santa won't come."

She laughed again, and I felt my insides curdle.

#

A noise woke me -- thump, thump -- and a sleepy part of my brain thought: reindeer? But it was fleeting, chased away when I remembered where I was. Who I was. How old.

Not reindeer. A knock at the door.

I glanced at the window, frowning at the dark. Who could be here at this hour? What could they possibly want?

I struggled free of sheets, sweaty and tangled from uneasy dreams, and pulled on a robe over my night things.

"Mom?" I called into the darkness of the hall.

No answer. But beyond, I could see light, a flickering dance of flame, and I sped up my pace, practically sprinting into the kitchen.

The table was still set for dinner, our leftovers laid out, picked-over and nestled among the good company china, a table setting for three. Had we forgotten to put it away? I couldn't remember. But I realized, staring at it, that something else was strange. The table was covered in candles, tall wax tapers and squat votives, hurricane wicks behind glass. Laid out like an offering were all the cookies we'd baked, and more still -- sugar cookies and snickerdoodles and ginger snaps, piled high in stacks tucked between candles and plates.

There were photos, too, framed snapshots. My dad stared out from a dozen frames, blank photographed eyes peering up from all directions.

At the door: thump, thump.

"It's time!" my mother cried, hurrying past me from the hall. She was dressed in her Sunday best, her hair curled and coiffed, done up with lipstick and eyeliner and mascara like she was ready for a night on the town. She must have still been drunk, but she was steady on her feet as she swept through the kitchen and to the front door.

It had to be well past midnight. I glanced at the clock on the stove: 3:02.

No! I wanted to yell, as Mom reached the door. Don't open it!

But it was too late. She flung it wide and there, filling the frame, was a looming shadow with my father's face.

If I hadn't had so many photographs in front of me to compare, I might not have recognized him. His flesh was sallow and waxy, pulled tight over his skull. His sunken eyes were dark and empty, his lips peeled back from yellow teeth. Most of his nose was missing; in its place was an ugly gash, twin jagged holes like something had gnawed off the skin.

A part of me wanted, more than anything, to run to him. To wrap him in a hug and apologize for leaving him behind. But a bigger part of me, the part controlling my arms and legs, was frozen with revulsion. This creature, this rotting abomination, wasn't my father. It was a cruel cosmic joke.

"You came," my mother breathed, falling forward into his arms with a quiet, choking sob. "I left the lights on for you. To guide you home. Like they said."

My father wrapped her in his arms, pulling her close, and she pressed her face into the collar of the suit he'd been buried in.

He opened his mouth wide and bent over her, digging his teeth into her neck.

Blood, thick and dark and red, painted the door frame in thick spurts.

She screamed, but not for long.

Seeing her body slump to the floor was what -- finally, too late -- unrooted me from where shock had frozen me in place. I reeled back from the scene of horror, looking around frantically for something, anything, I could use as a weapon.

Dad's vacant eyes rolled up, gaze locking on me. He had my mother's blood all down his front. Stepping over her, his movements erratic and disjointed like a poorly coordinated puppet, he started toward me, teeth bloody and sharp and flashing in the candlelight.

For a year, I had lived with regret that my last memory of my dad would be his dead face in his casket. That I hadn't come to see him before he died. But I'd trade anything to get that memory back, because now whenever I think of him all I'll be able to see is his bloody chin, his vacant eyes, his sharp yellow teeth.

"What the fuck," I whispered, and my shaking hands found the handle of a skillet in the sink. I pulled it out, sudsy and dripping with scraps of soggy food, and held it in like a bat. Ready to swing. "What the fuck."

Dad lumbered close. I dodged sideways, his outstretched arms just brushing past me as I feinted left. I spun around and swung the frying pan at the back of his head, full force. CRACK! The force of the collision rattled through the bones of my hand. I dropped the skillet and ran for the door.

Keys, keys. I needed the keys. Mine were in my bag in my room -- but Mom's were on a hook by the door, and I didn't think she'd be needing her van anymore. I grabbed for them desperately, jumping over Mom's body on the floor, but something caught my ankle and I pitched forward, landing hard on my elbows. I kicked my foot, looking back to see Mom, her hand wrapped around my ankle, her eyes blue-white and milky. Her mouth yawned open.

I kicked her in the face and crawled forward, heaving myself to my feet and stumbling down the porch steps.

"Don't go!" Mom's voice, wet and gurgling from the blood, called out from the door behind me.

"No one," Dad's voice, a dry rasp, joined hers. "Should be alone for the holiday."

I dared to look back at them from the driveway, just one last glance. Dad's eye had popped out from the force of the impact to his skull; it dangled onto his cheek. Mom's head lolled sideways, the muscles torn from the bite no longer able to hold it upright. They were no longer my parents. If they had ever been my family, they were not anymore.

My family was Josie and Bastion and our apartment overlooking the city. And if I stayed here one more minute, I'd never make it back to them. I'd never make it home.

I jumped into the van.

I reversed into the street and peeled away, tires screeching. Ahead, moving in a herd of helter-skelter bodies, were a dozen corpses. They shambled up the street toward me, eyes trained on the glow of Christmas lights, those homing beacons that guide planes home to land.

I gritted my teeth and hit the gas, braced for impact. Bodies thumped wetly off the bumper, bouncing away. The van rocked side to side as the tires rolled over one lump in the road; in the rearview, the corpse looked up from the street, half-flattened, and stared after me with an expression of vague surprise.

I blew through all the lights on Main Street. There was nobody around to stop me. Hollyvale belonged to the dead now. The town was crawling with corpses -- some old and decayed, some fresh and bleeding. Red splattered over the snow like stripes on a candycane.

The van stereo came on by itself, a raspy, staticky voice crooning:

No one should be alone for the holidays,

No body should be forced to rot alone

If you want to live forever in the dark lord's grace

Call upon your loved ones, bring them home....