Tag: Halloween Extravaganza

Christmas Takeover 30: Tim Waggoner: The Anti-Claus

megHan

The Anti-Claus

A Story by Tim Waggoner
3,403 words

Jessica had one bad habit: she always ran late in the morning. She was on time for everything else the rest of the day – never missed a meeting at work, never showed up late for drinks or dinner with friends. But whatever the first thing she had to do in the morning was, she was late for it. Always. She’d tried all kinds of things to break this habit. She went to bed early, set multiple alarms on her phone, got up early, drank stronger coffee in the morning, exercised, ate a good breakfast . . . But nothing helped. It was like her brain was unable to adjust to living by the clock until she was out in the world and doing things.

Today was no exception. She worked as a financial advisor, and she had an appointment with a client at nine a.m. Her Lexus’ dashboard clock told her it was 9:18, and she wasn’t even halfway to work yet. Lila – her supervisor – was going to kill her. Lila had lost patience with her tardiness and she’d taken to recording the precise time of her arrival each day. Jessica thought Lila was creating a paper trail so she’d have the documentation necessary to fire her. But Lila had it in for her for personal reasons, too. She resented the fact that clients preferred to work with her, which was only natural considering what a tight-ass, humorless bitch Lila was.

Rush hour traffic was bad enough, but it didn’t help that today was December 24th, Christmas Eve. The traffic was a nightmare, the streets clogged with vehicles as people rushed around making last minute preparations for tomorrow or heading for the airport to catch a flight to visit family in some other part of the country. Why the hell did people wait until the day before the holiday to get shit done? Why didn’t they –

Jessica saw the crimson flare of brake lights ahead of her, and she jammed her foot down on her own brakes. But she’d been going too fast, had been riding the ass of the car ahead of her, and the front end of her Lexus collided with the back end of the other vehicle with a jarring whump.

Shit! she thought. Shit, shit, shit!

She put her car in park and activated the hazard lights. She checked the rearview mirror to make sure the traffic was giving her car a wide enough berth so she wouldn’t be hit the instant she got out of the car. It looked safe enough, so she opened the door and stepped out into the cold morning air. It was a gray day – cloud cover, but no snow – and a sharp, biting wind was blowing from the east. Jessica wore a light jacket. She hated the way she looked in bulky winter coats, but now she wished she’d dressed for practicality instead of vanity. The wind hit her exposed skin like tiny daggers of ice, and she would’ve killed for a nice thick parka right then.

The car she’d hit was a big beast of a vehicle, a Cadillac, maybe, but there was no metal logo affixed to the back of the car to indicate its make. Maybe the logo had been knocked off in the collision? The vehicle was black, blacker than black, so dark that it seemed to swallow light instead of reflect it. The blackness seemed to pull at her, to demand she keep her gaze fixed on it, to step closer, touch it . . . She took a step forward, raised her hand, but then she realized what she was doing. She squeezed her eyes shut, dropped her arm, and gave her head a quick shake to clear it. When she opened her eyes, the blackness of the car still pulled at her, but not as strongly as before, and she was able to resist it. Shivering – only partially due to the cold – she stepped to the front of the vehicle to assess the damage.

She hadn’t been driving too fast, or else her car’s airbags would’ve activated, and she expected the damage to her Lexus to be relatively minimal. So she was shocked to see the entire front end of her vehicle had been pushed in, as if she’d hit a brick wall going sixty miles per hour.

Fuck, she thought. She’d had the car less than a year. Sure, it had been “certified pre-owned” instead of brand new, but it had been new to her, a symbol of how hard she’d worked and how much she’d accomplished. And now it looked as if that symbol was totaled.

Merry goddamned Christmas, Jessica.

She looked at the black car then and saw that it didn’t have so much as a scratch on it. What the hell was the thing made of? Granite?

She heard a car door open, and she turned to see a man getting out of the front passenger side of the big black car. He was tall and thin, with stick-like limbs that seemed longer than they should’ve been. His head was oddly shaped – kind of like a light bulb with an unkempt mass of dingy gray hair on top – and his neck was so thick Jessica didn’t see how it could possibly support his head. His features were overlarge and prominent – eyes, nose, mouth, and ears bigger than they should’ve been – and he had a mustache and goatee that were the same dishwater-gray as his hair. He was dressed in what she thought of as a mortician’s suit: black jacket, white shirt, black tie, black slacks, black shoes. His clothing wasn’t as dark as his vehicle’s paint job, but it was close.

He started toward her, moving with a surprising grace for a man who was all straight lines and angles, and his light bulb-shaped face broke into a smile, as if he was about to greet a long-lost friend instead of the driver of the car that had rear-ended his vehicle.

“Are you injured?” the man asked as he reached her.

She’d expected his voice to be as strange as the rest of him, but it was a pleasant baritone, the sort of voice a radio or TV announcer might possess.

“No, I’m fine.”

He pursed his lips as if in disappointment.

“Ah, well. Maybe next time.”

She couldn’t believe what he’d said, thought she’d surely misheard, but he continued before she could say anything,

“I apologize for my driver braking so abruptly. His eyesight isn’t what it used to be, and he thought he saw an animal dash across the road in front of us. He has a . . . reluctance to kill an innocent creature.”

He chuckled, as if amused by the notion. He then turned his gaze to the crumpled front end of her Lexus.

“My, my, my. This looks rather serious.”

He bent to examine the front end of her car. After several seconds, he straightened and smiled.

“You can’t drive for shit, can you?”

Jessica’s mouth dropped open in shock. This was followed by quick, hot anger.

“I’m not the one who slammed on the brakes in heavy morning traffic,” she said.

Ignoring her, the man examined his vehicle. He ran long, thin fingers across its trunk, and she thought she heard soft clicking sounds as they moved, as if his hand were a crab skittering across the metal.

“I think you may have actually scratched the paint. You must’ve hit us harder than I thought.” He looked at her, smile widening, revealing crooked, yellow teeth. “Good for you!”

He clapped his hands together as if the slight damage to his car delighted him.

It was then she realized his vehicle had no license plate. She hadn’t noticed in the post-accident confusion, and at first she thought the plate must’ve been knocked off by the impact of her Lexus striking his car. But she didn’t see any place where a plate had been attached to the vehicle. Did that mean it had never had one?

The man rubbed his crab hands together.

“So . . . what would you like me to take?”

Jessica stared at him, unable to process his words. She understood them, of course, but she had no idea what they meant.

“I . . .” She frowned. “What?”

The man released a breathy bark of a sound, which she thought might be a laugh.

“My apologies! I should introduce myself. My name is Arland Merriman, and I am the Anti-Claus.”

He extended one of his skeletal hands for her to shake, but when she made no move to touch it, he lowered his hand and continued speaking as if nothing had happened.

“Please don’t feel awkward for never having hear of me. I don’t enjoy the fame of my opposite number.” He leaned forward, as if to impart a secret. “It’s all part of the ‘anti’ thing, you know. He’s famous, I’m anonymous. But don’t worry. I like it that way.”

Jessica was beginning to regret getting out of her car, and she definitely regretted leaving her phone in her purse on the passenger seat. Whoever this odd man was, it was clear there was something wrong with him mentally, and she wanted to call the police.

Merriman went on.

“My opposite has a list and checks it twice, but I only visit with those I meet by chance. Like someone who rams into the back of my car on Deprivation Day.”

She looked at him blankly.

“You know it as Christmas Eve. But it’s a special day all its own, I assure you. After midnight, my opposite will begin bringing so-called gifts to the deserving people of the world. Usually useless junk that no one really needs, but which inject a small amount of temporary joy into their otherwise meaningless, empty lives. The universe exists in a state of carefully maintained balance. So if my opposite gives . . .”

He stressed this last word, urging her to complete the thought. She didn’t think she could speak, but she was surprised to hear herself say, “You take.”

“Exactly!” He grinned in delight. “And where my opposite selects what to give you, I give you a choice of what you want to lose.”

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, withdrew what looked like a business card, and held it out for Jessica to take. She didn’t move at first, so Merriman took hold of her wrist. She expected his fingers to be ice-cold, but his touch burned and she drew in a hissing breath of pain. Of course he’s the opposite of cold, she thought. He’s the Anti-Claus. He lifted her hand and deposited the card on her palm. She was grateful when he let go of her wrist. The skin still hurt, but it no longer felt as if her flesh was on fire.

She looked down at the card and saw it was blank. She turned it over and saw it was also blank on the other side.

“You have until midnight – when my day ends and his begins – to decide what you’d like me to remove from your life. The only rules are that it must belong to you and you must write the name of it on this card. Either side will do.”

The unreality of this encounter was getting to her, and although on some level of her mind, she knew what was happening was absolutely, undeniably real, she needed to believe that Merriman was crazy, or that this was some kind of elaborate prank. Anything, just so long as she could tell herself that there was no such thing as the Anti-Claus and that the card he’d given her was just a plain, ordinary blank piece of cardstock, nothing more.”

She looked into his oversized eyes, which were the same color as his hair and beard, the same color as the overcast sky above, and smiled as if she was in on the joke and intended to play along.

“What happens if midnight comes and I haven’t written anything on the card?”

Merriman’s smile – already wider than a normal person’s – stretched even further until the tender skin at the corners of his mouth split and blood trickled forth.

“Then I choose something of yours to take. And believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”

Jessica’s smile faded and despite her attempt to make herself believe this was nothing but a bizarre practical joke, she felt a hot flush pass through her body. Not a chill, not from the Anti-Claus.

The driver’s door of the large black car opened and a figure emerged. The driver wore a chauffer’s uniform, but while his body appeared human, his head was that of a stag. It lolled to the side, antlers broken and short, tongue protruding from the side of a blood-flecked mouth, eyes milky white.

Like roadkill, she thought. Her stomach lurched, and she thought she was going to vomit.

The driver walked to Merriman, head flopping bonelessly as he came. When he reached his employer, he raised his arm and with the opposite hand – which possessed a hoof instead of fingers – he tapped the face of the wristwatch he wore.

“Ah, yes. Thanks for the reminder, Hobart.”

The hideous thing turned and headed back to the car without saying a word. Jessica was profoundly thankful the creature hadn’t spoken. She didn’t want to hear what sort of voice would issue from the thing’s throat.

“I’m afraid I must take my leave,” Merriman said. “I have many other cards to pass out before midnight, after all. I wish you a most lamentable Deprivation Day, Jessica.” He nodded goodbye, turned, and started walking toward his vehicle. When he reached the front passenger door, he opened it and started to climb inside. But then he stopped and turned back to look at her. “Remember to fill out your card. If you don’t, I’ll be paying you a visit later.”

He grinned so wide this time that the skin of his face tore from the edges of his mouth all the way to his ears. Blood flowed from the wounds, but she could still see his teeth. All of them.

Jessica watched the blacker-than-black car drive away, its engine eerily silent. She then returned to her Lexus, got in, gripped the steering wheel, and sat for several moments, breath coming in rapid huh-huh-huh-huhs, heart keeping time with the rhythm. When she’d calmed down a little, she turned off the car’s hazard lights. She’d left the engine running as she’d spoken to Merriman, and she put the Lexus in gear and started driving forward. The engine didn’t sound good, and the steering was wonky, but the car moved, and that was all she cared about now.

She’d put the blank card on the passenger seat when she’d gotten in, and she glanced at it quickly, as if to make sure it was still there, still real. It was. She reached over, picked it up, and slipped it into her purse.

If she didn’t want Merriman to pay her visit later tonight, she had to write something on the card. Something she wanted to be rid of. She didn’t bother telling herself that Merriman and his grotesque driver hadn’t been real, that they’d been hallucinations, that she’d gone crazy. The damage to her car was real enough, and even if Merriman wasn’t the Anti-Claus and no harm would come to her if she didn’t write something on the card, she wasn’t going to chance it. She’d do anything to avoid seeing Merriman and his deer-headed driver again.

Could she write something innocuous on the card? There was a bland painting in the reception area where she worked, a water tower surrounded by bright blue sky and fluffy white clouds. She didn’t like the thing, hated having to look at it whenever she passed through the reception area. Maybe if she wrote Ugly-ass water tower painting in Reception on the card, it wouldn’t be hanging on the wall when she returned to the office after Christmas. She wouldn’t have to see Merriman again, and the workplace would be improved, at least for her.

No, that wouldn’t work. Merriman had said that whatever she chose had to belong to her. She didn’t own the painting. It belonged to the office.

She wracked her brain, trying to come up with something to write on the card, but she couldn’t think of anything. She feared there was some sort of catch to what Merriman had told her, that if she didn’t choose something important enough, he’d come to visit her anyway. Say she wrote My old toaster on the card. She could imagine Merriman coming to her apartment sometime before midnight. He’d knock, she’d open the door, and he’d say something like A toaster? It’s called Deprivation Day, Jessica. Do you think losing a toaster really qualifies as you being deprived?

And then he’d reach for her with his blazing-hot crablike hands, while behind him in the hall, his driver with the dead deer head – Hobart – would let out a wet, snuffling laugh.

She began trembling then, and she continued to do so the rest of the way to work.

“I’m used to you being late, but this is a personal worst for you.”

Lila Robinson was waiting inside Jessica’s office when she’d arrived. She sat at Jessica’s desk, a small notebook open in front of her. She checked the time on her phone and then, using one of Jessica’s pens, she noted the exact time.

Lila was a petite woman in her late fifties, with short brown hair. She wore a bit too much makeup in a futile attempt to make her look a few years younger. She wore a navy-blue blazer over a white blouse, and while Jessica couldn’t see them at the moment, she knew the woman also wore navy-blue slacks and sensible black shoes. She’d never worn a skirt to the office the entire time Jessica had worked here.

She’d considered calling off sick and going home, but she didn’t want to be alone right now, wanted to be around other people. Now she regretted her choice.

“Sorry. I got into an accident on the way here. Slowed me down.”

Her voice was toneless, matter-of-fact. After seeing Merriman and Hobart, Lila didn’t scare her anymore.

Lila seemed put out by Jessica’s lack of reaction to her words. She threw the pen down on the desk, grabbed the notebook, closed it, stood, came out from behind the desk, and walked over to Jessica until they were practically standing nose to nose.

“I’m sorry you were in an accident.” Lila sounded doubtful, as if she didn’t believe Jessica’s story. “But you could’ve called to let us know. Instead you come strolling in over an hour late. Your client got tired of waiting for you and left. I tried to convince him to speak to another of our advisors, but he declined. ‘I think I’ll take my business elsewhere,’ he said and then left. This is your last warning, Jessica. If you come in late again, for any reason, I will fire you. Do you understand?”

Jessica had heard every word, but she was so preoccupied by her experience with Merriman that she couldn’t bring herself to care. Lila’s face reddened with anger.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? No? I’m your supervisor, Jessica. The least you could do is give me the courtesy of a response.”

Jessica looked at Lila as if noticing her for the first time since entering the office. She smiled slowly.

“You are, aren’t you?”

Lila frowned. “Are what?”

“My supervisor. Mine.”

Lila took a step back from Jessica, as if disturbed by something she saw on the other woman’s face.

“Just remember what I said.”

She walked past Jessica. She paused at the doorway, glanced back briefly, then left.

Jessica, still smiling, put her purse on top of her desk and sat down. She picked up the pen that Lila had used to record her time of arrival, then reached into her purse to withdraw the blank card Merriman had given her. She placed it on the desk in front of her, held it still with the tips of her fingers, and began to write.

Tim Waggoner’s first novel came out in 2001, and since then he’s published over forty novels and five collections of short stories. He writes original dark fantasy and horror, as well as media tie-ins. His novels include Like Death, considered a modern classic in the genre, and the popular Nekropolis series of urban fantasy novels. He’s written tie-in fiction based on Supernatural, Grimm, The X-Files, Alien, Doctor Who, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Transformers, among others, and he’s written novelizations for films such as Kingsman: the Golden Circle and Resident Evil: the Final Chapter. His articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Writer’s Journal, Writer’s Workshop of Horror, Horror 101, and Where Nightmares Come From. In 2017 he received the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Long Fiction, and he’s been a finalist multiple times for both the Shirley Jackson Award and the Scribe Award. His fiction has received numerous Honorable Mentions in volumes of Best Horror of the Year, and he’s had several stories selected for inclusion in volumes of Year’s Best Hardcore Horror. In addition to writing, he’s also a full-time tenured professor who teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

Christmas Takeover 29: Mark Sheldon: You Did It Again

megHan

You Did It Again

A Story by Mark Sheldon
2,087 words

Darkness. A voice whispers, “You did it again…”

Anne snapped awake, startled; barely even aware that she had dozed off. She looked out the window to see snow falling in a mad flurry, engulfing the car in a foggy blizzard. She could only just barely make out the ghostly shapes of the mountain forest trees – mere yards away from the frosted glass of her window.

In the front seat, her father was squinting over the steering wheel, struggling to see and stay on the buried mountain road. His glasses were beginning to mist and his curly hair was matted with nervous sweat. Next to him, Anne’s mother fidgeted in her seat, nervously tugging on her blood-red hair.

“Harold, there’s a driveway up ahead!” Anne’s mother shouted, breaking the screeching silence in the car.

“Mary, we don’t need to stop. I’m fine. It’s under control,” Harold defensively replied, unable to disguise the noticeable tremor in his voice.

“Dad, please just stop the car,” Anne pleaded – although she of course did not want to miss Christmas dinner at her grandparents’, she wanted much less to continue traveling in this obviously dangerous weather.

“Harold, now!” Mary desperately attempted to take the wheel from Harold, but he pushed her hands away. As he lost control of the car, he fought with the wheel to regain control, but inevitably skidded into a massive tree trunk in front of the barely-visible driveway.

“Are you happy now? Look what you did!” Harold snapped at his wife.

“Harold, there’s a cabin up there!” Mary exclaimed as she peered through the blizzard up the phantom driveway.

“That’s lovely, but what are we going to do about this Goddamn car?”

“Once the blizzard clears and we get cell phone reception again we can call for a tow truck.”

“A tow truck? Are you out of your effin’ mind? We’re in the middle of nowhere! Do you know how much that will cost?”

“Dad, please! Can we just get to that cabin and then figure out what we’re doing from there?” Anne pleaded from the back seat, both wanting to stop her parents’ arguing and get to the warmth of the cabin.

“All I know is that I’m not paying for a Goddamn tow truck,” Harold grunted as he wrenched his door open and climbed out into the bitter blizzard.

The family trudged through the snow toward the cabin, Harold mumbling grumpily at the back of the line. It was not far from the road to the cabin, but with the blistering winds and the harsh snow, the trek took almost half an hour.

The cabin was old and small. At first glance, one would naturally assume that it was abandoned. Nonetheless, Mary politely asked, “Is anybody here?” before entering. Cobwebs decorated the long-forgotten floors and furniture of the cottage. A small table stood in one corner, and a single chair sat at an angle to the table in the other corner. Against the far wall under the window was a dusty couch. The cushions of the couch were shredded with age, torn as if by the claw of some monstrous hand.

A fireplace stood alone in one corner; old firewood that had once been piled, now was strewn about the floor. A large chopping axe hung above the fireplace.

Anne and Mary hastened to start a fire while Harold moped on the forgotten couch, watching the snow fall on the ground through the window as the afternoon light turned to dusk, and then night.

Time passed. The blizzard digressed to light snowfall. Anne and Mary were sitting by the fireplace; Anne was reading a book and Mary was filling out a crossword puzzle.

Harold’s snores reverberated against the cabin walls. Annoyed, Anne glanced away from her book and shot her dozing father an evil glance just in time to see something outside running in the snow. The shape flickered in and out of the frame of the window too quickly for Anne to distinguish what it was.

“Mom,” Anne whispered, “there’s something outside.”

“What?”

“I just saw something running outside – in the snow.”

Mary got up, walked over to the window, and leaned over her snoring husband to look out into the white night. The first beams of morning sunlight were beginning to creep through the trees.

“I don’t see anything out there, Anne…”

“Mom, I know I saw something…”

Underneath Mary, Harold snorted and rolled over in his sleep. Mary took her coat from the back of her chair and walked over to the door to glance out into the early morning.

“Please be careful, Mom,” Anne shakily whispered.

“Don’t worry, sweetie, I’m sure it was nothing to worry about.”

Mary opened the door and stepped out into the bitter air. At first, she saw nothing, but then she noticed something curled up in the snow, about fifteen feet from the porch step. Mary shivered as she stepped off the porch into the knee-deep snow.

As she drew closer to the shivering form in the snow, she saw that it was nothing more than a child – a boy, no older than twelve. She knelt by the boy in the snow; he had a vacant, manic look in his eye.

“You’re going to die,” the boy said in a hoarse croak, a slight smile crossing his lips.

An icy chill shivered down Mary’s spine – and it wasn’t from the cold air.

“Why don’t you come inside, hon?” Mary said, once she had regained her composure. “We’ve got a nice, warm fire that’ll keep you all nice and toasty.”

“A fire won’t save you,” the boy smirked.

Mary shivered again, but nonetheless offered her hand to the boy. To her surprise, he willingly took her hand and followed her, without complaint, back to the cabin.

“Where did he come from?” Anne asked, amazed to see their young visitor.

“I don’t know, but the poor thing must be half-frozen.”

“I’m fine,” the boy vacantly replied.

“What’s your name, hon?” Anne asked, kneeling down to eye-level with the boy.

“I have no name – not anymore.”

“But what about your parents, sweetie? Where are they?” Mary asked, growing more concerned by the second.

“No parents – not anymore.”

“What happened to them?” asked Anne, now feeling the same shiver of the spine that had been haunting her mother ever since discovering the strange boy.

“They changed and I made them go away.”

“But, where do you live?” Mary asked, inching ever closer to the mysterious child – despite the warning in the back of her mind.

“I live in the barn on the hill,” he responded, nodding toward the back of the cabin.

Mary and Anne glanced at each other; they hadn’t noticed a barn, but the blizzard was very thick when they first came to the cabin, so it might have been engulfed in the freezing flurry.

“But…who takes care of you?” Anne inquired, finally asking the question that both she and her mother had been thinking all along.

“I’m taken care of.”

“What the hell is all this commotion about?” Harold barked, waking out of his deep sleep. “Where’d the kid come from?”

“I came from the barn on the hill.”

“The barn on the hi…”

The room almost, but not quite, lit up from the light bulb going off in Harold’s mind.

“Barn? You wouldn’t have any tools in that barn, would ya, kid? Anything that could fix my car?”

“Harold, don’t be ridic – ” Mary started to say, before being cut off by the boy.

“Yes, there are tools,” the boy chipped in, then added quietly, “But I wouldn’t if I were you…”

Apparently, Harold hadn’t heard this last comment for he jumped up from the couch and exclaimed, “Perfect! I can fix the car and we’ll be back on the road in no time! There ain’t no way in hell I’m paying for a Goddamn tow truck.”

“Harold, this is absurd,” Mary protested, but Harold was already out the door. “Anne, stay here and keep an eye on…the boy,” Mary instructed as she ran out the door after her husband.

Anne ran to the window to watch her parents walking around the cabin through the snow, Mary pleading with Harold as she trailed behind him.

“They’re not coming back, you know.”

Anne jumped, startled, for she hadn’t noticed him come up behind her.

“Why do you say that?” she asked, shakily.

“Because…I know what’s out there. You’re all going to die.”

The slight smile on his face sent chills down her spine. These were not things a child should be happy to talk about.

“What’s out there?”

“I can’t tell you. You’ll have to see it for yourself. Just like I did.”

Frustrated, Anne hurried away from the window to sit by the fireplace and tried to read her book, but couldn’t find the will to focus. Frustrated even more, she threw her book on the floor. That was when the distant scream pierced through the walls of the cabin.

“They’re gone now,” the boy said, sadly gleeful.

In a panic, Anne ran for the door, stopped and returned to grab the axe from over the fireplace. As she ran out the door, she heard the boy call after her, “That won’t help you, now!”

She trudged through the snow around the cabin. Sure enough, the cabin was at the base of a small hill, and at the top of the hill was a barn, even older and more abandoned than the cabin. The walls of the cabin seemed to be collapsing in on themselves.

Anne was beginning to climb the hill when suddenly she was tackled to the ground by the boy who, with surprisingly almost super-human strength, wrestled the axe from her and lodged it into a tree stump that was sticking out of the snow like a tombstone in a cemetery.

“You can’t stop it now, you’re already dead!” he mocked at her, as he ran up the hill toward the barn.

Anne picked herself up and chased the boy up the hill. He ran, laughing, into the barn and slammed the door behind him. Moments later, Anne herself wrenched open the barn door and entered, panting from the exertion of running up the hill.

It was almost quiet, except for a reverberating humming coming from the upper level. The boy was nowhere in sight. Sharp, threatening tools hung from the ceiling – this had once been a slaughterhouse.

Ahead, a vibrating light illuminated a ladder leading to the upper level. Anne made her way through the ominous darkness toward the pulsing light. The closer she got to the light, the louder the humming became.

As she reached the base of the ladder, a monstrous carcass fell from above and fell to her feet. It was a beast. The creature was covered with thick, curly hair. Enormous fangs protruded from the creature’s massive snout. Blood and brains leaked and oozed from a wound in the back of the beast’s skull.

“Get her!” the boy’s voice screamed from above.

The sound of a large animal running across the floorboards reverberated from above. Anne turned around and ran toward the barn entrance. She looked behind herself just in time to see a second beast – this one very much alive – jumping to the barn floor. Anne burst out of the barn, slipped and tumbled down the hill through the freezing snow. Her tumble was broken when she collided with a tree stump, sticking out of the snow like a tombstone in a cemetery.

When the stars cleared from her eyes, she saw two things: the beast descending the hill toward her, and the axe sticking out of the stump she had collided with. With an adrenaline rush of survival strength, she grasped the axe, yanked it out of the stump and into the neck of her predator in one full swoop.

The beast let out a hideous shriek and collapsed to the ground.

For the first time, Anne noticed the long, blood red hair of the beast. She looked up the hill to see the boy, smiling down at her. Anne looked back down at the creature as it morphed into the familiar form of her mother.

As Mary’s blood leaked into the snow, her flowing red hair and the bloodstained snow became indistinguishable – from above it looked as if her hair was growing and spreading out across the snow.

As she died, crying, Mary whispered, “You did it again…”

Mark Sheldon is the author of The Noricin Chronicles and the Sarah Killian series. He has also published a collection of short stories titled Mores From the Maelstrom. He lives in Southern California with his wife Betsy.

Christmas Takeover: Robert Holt: Miracle in Worm Hollow

megHan

Miracle in Worm Hollow

A Story by Robert Holt
1,195 words

Curled up in balls to protect from the penetrating cold, the four children looked at the snow drifting in through the hole of their burrow that they had dug for shelter. Gillian caught a snowflake in her palm and looked at the intricate pattern with wide-eyed amazement.

Dillan sat up and smacked her hand. “Get it off you. You don’t know what’s in it. Might be radioactive,” he said.

Gillian lowered her head and snorted out a sob. “Sorry Dill, I wasn’t thinking.”

Dillan sat up and put an arm around her. “Is okay. Is okay, Gillian. We just have to be smart, you know. You remember how Mrs. Heaney said we needed to be smart?”

“Yeah,” said Gail, unable to hold her silence any longer. “Mrs. Heaney went out in the rain, grew toads on her back, and fell over dead. Is that the type of smart we should be taking direction from?”

Gillian was full on bawling now.

“Jesus Christ, Gail. Do you always have to be such a jerk?” Dillan wrapped Gillian in both arms and rocked slowly back and forth.

“Keep your voice down. You’re going to wake up Brandon,” Gail said through her shivering teeth. Her shivers began months ago, before the snow, even before the cold weather. Mrs. Heaney said it was nerves, whatever that means. What the kids knew but did not say was that the shivers were fear. They started when the cannibals had attacked the compound, and she had looked like a Fall leaf in the wind ever since.

Gillian looked down at the muddy and tattered piece of paper she had been carrying since her house had been destroyed by the Antediluvian. Her mouth fell open in shock. Her tears instantly dried and her grief forgotten. “Did I sleep last night Dillan?”

“Yes,” Gail answered. “And you snored.”

“Then we made it. Guys, we made it. Everything is going to be okay now,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” Dillan stopped rocking her and shifted away.

“It’s Christmas. We made it. Now we can get everything we want because Santa will bring it.”

Gail moved in front of Gillian’s eyes to look her face to face. “Are you freaking kidding me? Santa? That is our savior? That is who is going to rescue us?”

“Yes,” said Gillian. “Santa will bring us what we need.”

“Oh hell, oh hell, oh hell,” Dillan said in increasingly frantic tones. The girls turned to him. “Brandon is dead. I think he’s dead.”

The three sat there for a long time in silence. “He’s going to miss Santa then,” Gillian said. Gail started laughing. Dillan started crying.

They wrapped Brandon in a blanket and pulled his body from their shelter once the snow stopped. Gail looked around at the desolate landscape around them. When they dug their hole less than a month ago, this had been a forest. Now there wasn’t even a living tree in sight. The grass had grown though, thick and wild.

Dillan tapped her shoulder as the unspoken warning that it wasn’t safe to be out in the daylight. The cannibals were everywhere, the turkey buzzards had also grown bold towards the living, and the Antediluvian was also still at work at ridding the earth of humans.

The three kids gathered once again in the shelter hole. “We shouldn’t have used our blanket,” Gail said.

“It was Brandon’s blanket,” Gillian said. “He should keep it.”

“He’s dead and doesn’t need it anymore. And I’m cold.”

“He pooped on it,” Dillan said, killing the discussion.

After a while of counting the turkey buzzard calls from Brandon’s final resting place, Gillian grabbed a rock and scratched a bow on it. She handed it to Dillan. “It isn’t much, but I want you to have it.”

Dillan held the rock in his hands for a moment while his smile slowly spread. “Thank you!”

“That’s stupid,” Gail said. She shifted around and scratched at the mud wall revealing a cinch bag. She pulled it out and opened it.

“What is that?” Gillian had inched closer to see what she was doing.

Gail smiled at her, but her shivers made her nose twitch to look like a snarl. “You first.” She took something out of the muddy bag and slid it behind her back. She then pulled the bag shut and handed it to Gillian.

“What is it?” Gillian took the bag.

“Open it. And Merry Christmas,” Gail said.

Gillian opened the bag to see a single triple A battery. She gasped. “This will work with my flashlight,” she said.

Gail nodded. “You need to use it only when we need to. That may be the last one in the world.”

Gillian pulled her small, toy sized flashlight out and inserted the new battery. She flicked it on for just a second, squealed, and threw her arms around Gail.

Gail pulled the bag back and put what was behind her back into it and handed it to Dillan. “Your turn,” She said. “And Merry Christmas.”

Dillan opened the bag and pulled out a hunk of metal. “What is it?”

“I don’t know what it was, but it is heavy and sharp.”

He leaned over to hug Gail. “Why did you wait until now to give this to us?”

“It’s Christmas. And I thought it best to save the battery for a bit. And I was going to try to make something out of the metal thing, but I thought you might be able to as well.”

Dillan ran his thumb across the sharp edge of the metal piece. “I don’t have anything for you two.”

Gillian then let out a giggle, snatched the cinch bag and turned to her own wall. She reached into the mud pulled out something and dropped it into the bag. She held it out triumphantly to Gail. “Merry Christmas!”

Gail smiled and pulled the bag open. She pulled out a partially decayed human finger.

“What the hell is this Gillian?”

“That’s the finger of the big, bald guy that killed your mother. He caught me about three weeks ago while I was in the forest. I don’t know what he was doing, but he stuck his finger in my mouth. I bit it off and ran. He tried to chase me but the blood lured the turkey buzzards. They tore his skin off while I hid in a tree. When I finally got back I realized I still had his finger in my mouth. It was a good thing. If I hadn’t I would have screamed and then the buzzards or the other cannibals or … worse.”

“That’s pretty freaking sick,” Dillan said.

Gail crawled over to Gillian and gave her a big hug. “This was the best present I ever got. Thank you!”

Gail held up the finger, whispered a curse to it, and tossed it out of the opening. A few minutes later there was a rustling in the tall grass. The children shifted together. A puppy emerged with the finger in its mouth and its tail wagging. The children laughed and ran towards the puppy. That night they had a Christmas feast.

Robert Holt is the author of dark fiction and horror, spanning through every form of the written word, from spooky children’s stories to gruesome splatter punk. He lives in St. Louis Missouri.

Christmas Takeover: Frazer Lee: Tinsel

megHan

Tinsel

A Story by Frazer Lee
1,232 words

Tom’s breath fogged up his window then disappeared like a ghost. He tried again, but no luck – the frost clinging to the outside of the windowpane refused to melt. He wished his parents would just go to bed. He’d been kneeling here on his bed, leaning on the windowsill for what seemed like an eternity. Then – footsteps on the stairs. Action stations.

It was Mum, here to tuck Tom into bed. He lay rigidly still, breathing heavily with his arms by his side. He felt his mother’s shadow falling over him as she leaned in to kiss him softly on the head. Then she grabbed him and tickled him. He let out a loud giggle. How on earth did she do that every time? Anyone else would’ve fallen for it and believed he was asleep, but not Mum with her amazing radar skills.

They shared a laugh about it and she kissed him again and turned off the light. He listened intently as Mum closed the door and went back downstairs to the living room. ‘Must be wrapping my presents right now,’ he thought, his ears conjuring sounds of foil paper and sticky tape.

This was the most crucial part of Christmas Eve for Tom – waiting for Mum, Dad and Big Sis to come to bed. Then he had to leave it for just long enough to make sure they were asleep, without nodding off himself and missing his chance. Still listening intently, he remembered how he’d bungled the job two years ago, when he was just eight. He was older now, and wiser – an expert in nocturnal maneuvers. One day he’d be a secret agent…

Tom awoke with a jolt and shivered. His bedclothes had made a bid for freedom, leaving just his pajamas to protect him. He grabbed his alarm clock, the luminous face teasing him with the time. Four o’clock am. Oh, flipping brilliant, he’d nodded off and been asleep for hours. But there was still time. He’d better move fast and silent, like that amazing ninja he’d seen on the telly.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and ever so carefully stood up. Without a sound, he crept over to the door and removed his dressing gown from the door handle. Tom loved his dressing gown – it was fleecy and so cosy, especially good for a nippy night like this. Careful now, this was where it could all go horribly wrong. One false move and he’d wake the whole household. He reached out for the door handle, his arm rehearsing the exact distance he could open the door before it creaked. Slowly, slowly, he pulled the door open, slipped sideways through the gap, grabbed the outside handle and closed the door behind him with the tiniest click.

Heart beating, Tom stood on the dark landing for a few seconds, catching his breath. That was intense, his best ninja move ever. Satisfied he hadn’t woken his folks, he padded gently across the landing towards the stairs. The soft, soundless carpet beneath his feet, he allowed his mind to wander a little. He began thinking of the prize that awaited him at the end of his mission, remembering how wonderful his presents had looked under the tree last year. They’d gleamed in their shiny wrapping paper like treasure, begging him to squeeze them. He’d picked up the biggest first, giving it a gentle rock to hear and feel what was inside. It didn’t take a genius to realize it was the games console he’d wanted. The box had matched the dimensions of the one in the shop exactly – he should know, he’d examined the display case at the supermarket enough times while Mum spent an age at the deli counter. Tom felt a rush of panic. Had he dropped enough hints about the music player? Maybe she hadn’t noticed during her massive quest for breaded products and two-for-one deals on the way to the checkout. Maybe he hadn’t been clear enough about the colour of the headphones – oh no, what a disaster. His pace quickened as he reached the foot of the stairs.

An animal hiss erupted in his ears as he stepped into the hallway. Tom searched the gloom for the source of the din, dropping to his knees to peer under the sideboard. Wild eyes suddenly glared at him from the shadows there, along with more violent hissing. It was Fudge, the family cat. Whispering as loud as he dared, Tom told Fudge to be quiet. The animal shrank back beneath the sideboard with a final exasperated meow. The cat had almost been his undoing, but failure was not an option. He had to go and squeeze and prod at all the parcels bearing his name.

Downstairs was even chillier than his bedroom, cold seeping into the hallway through hidden nooks and crannies. Tom pulled his dressing gown tighter and snuck into the living room. It was pitch black inside, owing to Mum’s annoying habit of switching everything off and unplugging it every night, “to be on the safe side.” This often drove Dad to distraction; especially if he’d set the tellybox to record late night sports shows. An acrid metallic smell filled the room. What had they been wrapping in here? ‘Only one way to find out,’ thought Tom as he edged his way around the perimeter of the room, feeling along the cabinet, then the wall. Finally, he felt the Christmas tree as he brushed against it. Baubles clinked icily as he located the power cord and followed it, crawling across the floor to the power socket in the corner. He felt the cold metal pins in his hand and turning the plug right side up, inserted it into the wall. Something wet dripped on his hand just as he pressed the switch. Something heavy and slick slid across his head.

Tom scrabbled backwards in shock. Looking up, he saw the fairy lights twinkling. But they were red, not clear, as they had been earlier today and all last week since they’d decorated the tree. He stared, mouth agape, as he realized the lights weren’t red after all. Rather, it was what hung around them that gave them their crimson glow.

The Christmas tree was slicked with blood and covered in strands of flesh and hair. Mum’s hair, and his sister’s. He could pick out his Dad’s tattoo on a piece of bloodied skin that dangled above a bauble like a handkerchief. Drooping branches struggled beneath the weight of the innards scattered across them like red tinsel. Ruined organs steamed like butcher’s offal at the hot kiss of the lights. Eyeballs hung there like baubles. He could recognize some of the pieces – he’d seen them in the big pop-up anatomy book at school – a section of intestine here, a tangle of veins there.

Tom scrambled to his feet. Nausea hit him and he vomited stomach bile onto the living room rug. Turning fearfully around, he saw his family lying lifeless on the sofa like grotesque dolls. Their bodies had been torn apart. Flesh ravaged and ribcages exposed like the hulls of broken ships.

The room swam, and Tom sank to his knees, a dry scream dying in his throat.

Then, he saw them.

Cold eyes, watching him from the dark black of the fireplace.

Watching him touch his presents.

Frazer Lee’s debut novel, The Lamplighters, was a Bram Stoker Award® Finalist for ‘Superior Achievement in a First Novel’. His other works include The Jack in the Green, The Skintaker, and the Daniel Gates Adventures series.

One of Frazer’s early short stories received a Geoffrey Ashe Prize from the Library of Avalon, Glastonbury. His short fiction has since appeared in numerous anthologies including the acclaimed Read By Dawn series.

Also a screenwriter and filmmaker, Frazer’s movie credits include the award-winning short horror films On Edge, Red Lines, Simone, The Stay, and the critically acclaimed horror/thriller feature (and Amazon #1 movie novelization) Panic Button.

Frazer lectures in Creative Writing and Screenwriting at Brunel University London and Birkbeck, University of London. He resides with his family in leafy Buckinghamshire, England just across the cemetery from the actual Hammer House of Horror.

Christmas Takeover 26: Christa Carmen: A Christmas Carol

megHan

A Christmas Carol

A Story by Christa Carmen
4,511 words

An eight-foot demon with curving horns and hooves the size of dinner plates clomped down Fair Street to thunderous applause. Following in the creature’s wake were smaller, goatish imps, their muzzles stretched into lecherous sneers, the tips of their teeth tinged red with blood.

Annie Pichler turned to Chiao Chin and made devil horns atop her own head, the tips of her crimson fingernails reflecting the nearby streetlights. “This is nuts,” she shouted over the din. “What enlightened city official thought a Krampus parade was a good idea? The bars are going to be full of assholes in goat masks tonight asking intoxicated women if they’ve been naughty or nice.”

Chiao pursed her lips and shook her head. “Can you stop overanalyzing everything? This is supposed to be fun. At the very least, in no time at all, we can be two of those intoxicated women getting hit on in bars.” She laughed and smacked Annie lightly in the shoulder.

Annie’s expression turned sly. “Why wait?” She fished a flask from the depths of her purse, which she tipped toward Chiao in an understated toast. She took a generous swig, and then another, until Chiao looked nervously to where two on-duty officers stood, watching the parade.

“Maybe because there are signs all over, declaring this a dry event.”

“Booze is a great cure for paranoia,” Annie said, holding the flask out to her friend.

She frowned. “What’s in it?”

“Obstler,” Annie said.

Chiao scrunched up her face.

“Austrian schnapps,” Annie clarified. “My grandmother sends me two bottles a year, one for Christmas, one for my birthday. It doesn’t matter that those two occasions are six days apart, she sends them as reliably as the phases of the moon. Subsequently, each December, the ‘fruit-brandy-from-the-Old-Country’ section of my liquor cabinet undergoes ample restoration.”

A Krampus costume that took two people to man stomped past. Chiao watched with interest, then suppressed a shriek as a demonic elf lunged at her from beside a giant, mutilated teddy bear. The elf cackled and skipped gleefully on his way, rubbing his hands and scanning the crowd for his next unsuspecting victim.

Chiao shuddered and wrapped her arms around her peacoat-clad torso. “Okay, so, Grandma Pichler’s idea of love is to outfit you with Austrian liquor. Still, it’s a Thursday night, and you’re not normally a pregamer, so which is it? Trouble in paradise, or trouble at the Lilith Center?”

Annie pulled a cigarette from the pack in the front pocket of her bag and lit it. She took two long drags before answering, the smoke unfurling from her nostrils like steam from a departing train. “Things with Lionel are fine.” She took another drag. “Great, even. And Lilith Center is good. I acquired several new housing locations, and Lionel said our director’s pleased with the progress I’ve made.”

Chiao watched the parade participants go by another moment then turned to Annie and held out her hand. “Give me some of that,” she said.

Annie raised an eyebrow but handed it to her, amused. Chiao took a tentative swig, then a bolder, longer one, her face contorting at the apricot taste, struggling to get the spirit down. A moment later, she handed the flask to Annie, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“So, you decided getting drunk now is a good idea after all?” Annie asked with a smirk.

Chiao blinked watering eyes. “More like every time we talk about your job, I’m overcome by an intense urge to consume the nearest alcoholic beverage. I don’t know how you do it. And, no offense, Annie, but I don’t know how you do it. You, of all people. If someone told me, or any of the Alpha Delta Pi sisters back in college, that you’d end up working for an organization that funnels women out of sex trafficking rings and into safe houses across the country, I don’t think any of us would have believed it.”

Annie gave her a stony look. “Shit, Chiao, tell me how you really feel.”

Their conversation was interrupted by the rising blare of demented Christmas music. A maniacally decorated parade float featuring a white-furred, grinning Krampus paused before their section of the crowd. Krampus’ antics were supplemented by an intoxicated Santa Claus dancing wildly and throwing middle fingers at the reindeer flanking the float below.

Chiao refocused her attention on Annie. “I’m not saying we don’t think you’re a good person,” she continued, “I’m just saying… well, I’d have been a hell of a lot less surprised if you’d ended up partner at a big-time firm. You went to the one of the best law schools in the country and graduated summa cum laude, for Christ’s sake. I just hope you didn’t take this job to make Lionel happy. If you guys broke up, would you wake up one morning feeling that your entire career had been derailed?”

Chiao looked like she expected Annie to be further offended by this confession, but Annie merely narrowed her eyes and cocked her head. “Of course, Lionel has something to do with it. I wouldn’t have even known about Lilith Center if we hadn’t started dating. But I’m not doing this work because of him. I’m doing it because I’m good at it. I’m good at juggling the moving parts, at getting the victims out of shitty situations and into new, better ones.”

“Of course, you’re good at it,” Chiao proclaimed, “but you would have been good at anything you tried.” Her features softened. “As long as you’re happy, your friends are happy. Just don’t lose sight of your long-term career goals, that’s all.”

A demonic Nutcracker weaving its way through the crowd snapped the teeth of its wooden mask shut behind Chiao’s ear. Chiao let out a little scream. “Jesus,” she said, moving closer to Annie, keen to change the subject, “they’re really committed to bringing these creepy-ass legends to life.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” Annie said. “They’re the same bozos we see each morning on the subway, but ballsier because they’re in costume.”

Chiao wasn’t convinced. “They’re figures rooted in centuries’-old beliefs. There’s a reason they’ve persisted for so long.” Without warning, she squealed and grabbed Annie’s arm. “Jesus Christ, what the hell are those?”

Annie craned her head, squinting against her mounting drunkenness and the glare of floodlights. When she finally caught a glimpse of the approaching Yuletide creatures, a chill ran up her spine. “I have no idea,” she said tonelessly. “They look like… plague doctors, or something, with masks like the skeletons of birds.” The float inched closer, halting when it drew even with the medical building, the awning of which Annie and Chiao stood beneath.

There were five of them in total, dressed more-or-less the same. They wore long, flowing skirts in a variety of colors, sweaters, and grandmotherly kerchiefs, with strange straw slippers on their feet and mittens covering their hands. The skirts were of the coarsest fabric, and several of them were patched, and the kerchiefs wrapped around their heads draped generously down their backs. But it was the masks that drew Annie’s eye the most, far simpler than any they’d seen, long, white beaks of hoary linen, featureless yet harsh. As the creatures moved about the float, the masks opened and closed like gasping fish, and with each closing of those awful beaks, Annie felt the resulting clap in her bones.

The creatures carried wicker baskets on their backs; from several of these baskets protruded the mangled limbs of dolls. Three of the creatures held grossly oversized tools in their hands, prompting Annie to want to check the side of her flask for the words ‘DRINK ME.’ The tallest, huddled in the front left corner, wore a violet skirt and dishwater-grey sweater. Its slippers were mismatched—one red, one navy—and its kerchief, mustard yellow. It did not menace the crowd with its large, sharp clippers so much as it mimed shearing some unseen thing. Annie was reminded of the glinting clippers her mother had used to trim the hedges, a memory she had not recalled in years.

The second creature handling a tool wore a patchwork skirt of random patterns. Its sweater was mauve with large white buttons and its scarf was vibrant red. This creature’s scarf was tied further back on its head than the others, making it all the more obvious the creature had no facial features of which to speak. It held in its mittened hands a broom made of twigs and swept invisible debris onto the street.

The final creature to wield a weapon—for that’s how Annie had begun to think of the trio’s tools—wore a floral skirt and an olive-green sweater. Its massive wooden scissors slashed at the air like a dangerous bird, and once, the creature turned so quickly, a dangling leg from its basket lodged between the scissors’ blades.

The hollow claps of the masks weren’t the only noises the creatures made. At first, Annie thought she was too far away to make out their words, thought them to be singing or chanting some Christmas carol or poem. But when the din of the crowd ebbed, Annie could discern what it was they said, a single syllable, meaningless—at least to her ears—repetitive, unnerving:

“Ga…Ga… Ga… Ga…,” they intoned, over and over again, not in any sort of pattern or in unison; there was no method to the chant. The creatures croaked their respective ‘Ga’s’ at their own discretion, resulting in an eerie cacophony, an otherworldly chorus.

Annie felt the skin beneath her sweater rise in gooseflesh at the sound. She tipped the flask to her lips but was dismayed to find it empty. “Hey,” she called to Chiao, who’d somehow moved several feet away from her as they’d watched the bird-masked crones. She held the flask upside down and shook it for good measure. “What do you say we get out of here? Lionel’s probably out already, and I’ve seen enough of these stupid costumes.”

Chiao looked about to protest, then shrugged. “Sure, let’s go.”

They moved quickly through the still-rapt crowd and headed down Washington Street, the welcoming glow of the bars ahead like a beacon in the night.

Annie had never been to the Bockshorn prior to getting together with Lionel, but since they’d started dating one year ago, it had quickly become their spot. Granted, it was Lionel’s spot with everyone else he knew as well, so Annie was not surprised, upon entering, to see him surrounded by hangers-on.

“I’ll get us some drinks,” Annie said to Chiao when the other woman pointed toward the restroom. At the bar, she ordered a glass of schnapps—no sense diverging from what worked—and a dry martini for Chiao, then made her way to a table at the other side of the room and waited to catch Lionel’s eye.

When he saw her after a moment’s time, his expression shifted from merriment to fear. A tall blond man strode up and handed Lionel a shot, which he downed without hesitation. “Be right back, Steve,” he said, pushing the blond man aside, “I’ve got to say hello to my girl.”

Annie stood in preparation for his approach, and Lionel kissed her on the cheek. “Where’s Chiao?” he asked, scanning the bar over Annie’s head.

“She’s in the bathroom. We only have a minute.”

Lionel led her past a bank of pool tables at the back, and Annie tried to walk casually, her gaze on the jukebox ahead. When they’d situated themselves as far back in the dark corner as the room would allow, Lionel leaned down and kissed her hard, first with passion, then rather desperately.

Annie allowed the kiss to go on for several moments then pulled away and blotted her lips. “We don’t have time for this. Tell me now, Lionel, what did Jonathan say?”

Lionel’s eyebrows furrowed, clouding his handsome face. “He still thinks it was some sort of unfortunate mix-up, some miscommunication or wires that were crossed. But he’s trying to get the women you sent there returned, and if that happens, we might not be able to cover our tracks.”

Anger rose like a wave in a tempest and Annie scowled and gripped Lionel’s hands. “I don’t understand. The new houses are foolproof. The managers know how to document false intakes. If it was the hotel we sent them to that brought attention to the rerouting, it’s your crisis to fix, not mine.”

“All right, all right, come down, Annie, like I said, for now Jonathan still thinks it was a mistake. To be honest, I’m a bit more worried about the two hundred other women we’ve rerouted than the two in some hotel in Texas.”

Annie was about to respond, about to say she was pretty goddamn certain that their past and present indiscretions were equally vital to keep hidden, when she heard Chiao calling her name.

“Over here,” Annie called, then dug her nails into the palms of Lionel’s hands. “It’s almost New Year’s,” she growled. “Do whatever you have to do to fix this.” Then she spun to face Chiao, straightened the hem of her sweater, and affected a lightheartedness she did not feel.

“Sorry,” she sing-songed. “We were just on our way back over. The drinks are on that table there. I got you the usual, a dry martini, but if you want it drier, I’ll get you some more olive juice.”

“I’m terrible,” Chiao cried, “barging in on your reunion. I’m so sorry, Lionel, what a way to say hello.”

“Hello yourself, Chiao, and you’re quite forgiven.” He put an arm around each woman as they walked to the table Annie had secured. As was always the case, Lionel’s entourage soon flocked to his side. Annie went to work drowning her worries, and found that by her fourth glass of schnapps, she was able to relax, even enjoy herself a little.

“How was the Krampus Crawl?” one of Lionel’s friends asked. Annie thought his name might be Todd. “We wanted to go, but Washington Street was already closed, so we decided to get annihilated instead.”

Annie sipped her drink and smiled a lazy, crooked smile, before remembering the clap of the creatures’ beaks. In her hesitation, Chiao slid forward in her seat and enthusiastically addressed the maybe-Todd. “It was so creepy,” she slurred.

So much for it being a Thursday night. Chiao was as drunk as she was.

“The costumes were insane,” Chiao continued. “Like nothing I’ve ever seen. Furry Krampuses, maniac Santas, Abominable Snowmen, animal-faced demons, and trolls.”

“The worst were the beaked things,” Annie said, before realizing she’d spoken at all. When the collective eye of the group fixed her in its sight, she wished she could take back her words, or better yet, disappear. “I mean, it was stupid, really. Idiot frat boys in costumes. An excuse to get out and about in the dead of December, I guess.”

“The beaked things,” a woman Annie had never seen before said, “were they dressed like old women, featureless, said only, ‘Ga?’ ”

Annie shivered, remembering the giant wooden scissors. “Yes, those were them.” She observed the woman more closely: tall boots, jacket trimmed in fur, long auburn hair and dangling earrings. “You were at the parade as well?”

“No, but I know the creatures of which you speak. My grandmother was from Gastein and when I was a little girl, she’d frighten me and my sister into doing our chores for fear of the Schnabelperchten.”

“Schnabel-what?” Chiao said disbelievingly.

“The Schnabelperchten,” the woman repeated. “Offshoots of the witch goddess Perchta. Perchta, like Krampus, makes her rounds on winter nights to reward and punish accordingly. The Perchten, or, Schnabelperchten, specifically, are a horde of birdlike creatures who enforce Perchta’s interest in tidy housekeeping. They move in groups of four or five, chanting their ‘Ga, Ga, Ga’s.’ Their beaks are inspired by Perchta’s prominent nose and are usually made of linen and twigs.”

“Yes,” Chiao said, her hair falling in front of her face as she nodded, “the noises their beaks made gave me the creeps.” She paused and pushed her hair back, thinking. “What’s with those packs on their backs? And the giant tools?”

The woman’s eyes moved from Chiao to Annie, and Annie couldn’t help feeling as if her gaze lingered too long. “The Schnabelperchten inspect homes for tidiness, though sometimes make ‘accidental’ messes themselves. They sweep and clip and trim and tidy, and the packs on their backs are to remind children that, like Krampus, the Schnabelperchten may abduct those who fail in their duties.

“Worse, however, than the possibility of abduction, the Schnabelperchten are known to employ Perchta’s favorite method of punishment. They use scissors to slit open and gut their victims, while the shears and broom remove ropes of intestines from the open cavity.”

“Jesus,” Lionel said, sounding more disgusted than engrossed. “It’s Christmas, not Halloween. Why would anyone pass along such a horrible legend? Why are you sharing this story at all?”

“Then what?” Chiao asked, morbid curiosity getting the better of her. Lionel shot her a look that went unnoticed.

“They fill the hole with tow and shavings, straw, dirt, pebbles, and any other assorted garbage they can find. Then the whole grisly mess is sewn up with a needle made of iron, and the Schnabelperchten move along to their next house.”

Annie couldn’t listen to this drivel another minute. “I don’t know who the hell you are,” she said, concentrating hard on every word, “but my grandmother was Austrian too. She never filled her grandchildren’s heads with such nonsense. Disembowelment and death because of a dirty house? A little extreme, don’t you think?”

The woman stared as if she could see into Annie’s very soul, and Annie forced herself not to squirm.

“There is more to being dirty than keeping a dirty house,” the woman said. Her voice was matter-of-fact, her eyes, unblinking.

Annie stood and placed a hand on Lionel’s shoulder. “I’m getting a drink. Chiao, Lionel, care to join?”

She stormed from the table without waiting for a response, but halfway to the bar, realized how drunk she really was. Lionel’s detailing of their situation, of the fact that the women in Texas might still be viewed as a mistake, echoed in her mind. She needed to be on her toes tomorrow, attentive and alert. Going into the office dehydrated and fuzzyheaded .

“Another schnapps?” the bartender asked.

“Actually, I’d like to square up.”

As she was paying her tab, Chiao appeared by her side. “Annie, are you okay? That woman was such a weirdo, she just disappeared after you left. I asked Lionel if he knew who she was, and when we looked up, she was gone.”

“She’s as crazy as those bird people chanting ‘Ga’ at the parade. Who gets off on scaring innocent people like that? Anyway, Chiao, I’m heading out. Tell Lionel for me, okay?”

“Tell Lionel what?” Lionel asked, sidling up to Chiao. Annie swallowed a sigh. Lionel would try to escort her home, and she wanted to be alone. “It’s been a long night,” she said with as much finality as she could muster, “I have… a lot to deal with at work tomorrow.”

To her surprise, Lionel nodded. “I understand. Text me when you get up in the morning, okay?”

Annie agreed, kissed him goodbye, and favored Chiao with a quick embrace.

“You sure you don’t want to stay a little longer,” Chiao asked. “We can share an Uber home.” Annie’s phone buzzed in her hand. “Can’t,” she said, and headed for the door, “My Uber’s already here.”

The ride to her apartment was cold but quick, and she tipped the driver accordingly for skimping on the heat. At the door of her apartment, a swish sounded from somewhere behind her on the street, but when Annie spun around, there was nothing but shadows and the first fat drops of rain. She turned her key in the lock and pushed her way inside, wanting nothing more than to wash her face and slip between the sheets.

She’d changed into sweats and, with a water bottle in each hand, was preparing to make her exodus down the hall, when the muted swish reached her ears again, this time from the other side of her door.

A spike of adrenaline shot through her veins. “Is someone there?” Annie called. A prolonged swiiiiiish was her response. “Who is it?” she choked out, her voice quavering in the empty house. Annie took a shaky breath and held it.

She was chiding herself for her foolishness and stepping again toward the hall when an answer to her question came from behind the door. “Ga…”

Annie’s blood turned to ice, then exploded with heat, her righteous anger at Lionel’s nerve creating tunnel vision. She flew to the door and pulled it open without checking the sidelight window; as she regarded what stood before her, she’d never hated herself more for her impetuousness.

The Schnabelperchten from the parade were huddled on her porch, their sharp beaks like pointing fingers. The three with tools were at the forefront of the grouping, and with a single jab of the scissors, forced their way inside.

Before Annie could speak, before she could react, before she could think of where she’d left her phone, the Schnabelperchten began their feverish inspection, spreading over her home like bats filling a cave.

“You can’t be in here,” Annie said, not recognizing the shrillness of her voice. “If you don’t get out of my house right now, I’m calling the police.”

None of the five paid her any mind, moving methodically, delving into every crook and crack. Food was swept from refrigerator shelves, mail pulled from its slot, bottles of schnapps were tossed to the floor, reduced to shards of glass glinting from liquid amber pools. In what couldn’t have been more than a minute, Annie’s perfect home was destroyed, the effort employed by the creatures to achieve this result as little as elbowing a dollhouse off its ledge.

Annie tried to protest, to demand they stop, to threaten them again with the police. It took a moment to realize her words were being drowned out, that the chorus of ‘Ga’s’ had become all-consuming. One of the Schnabelperchten must have slipped upstairs unnoticed, for she saw it reappear on the landing. It held in its mittened hands a nondescript folder; Annie’s protests turned to ash in her mouth.

They formed a circle at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for the more industrious of their group to proceed. When the creature with Annie’s folder reached the ground, they turned and approached Annie with the synchronism of dancers.

“Ga… Ga… Ga… Ga…” Their chant fell in time with their slippers.

“Please,” Annie said, tears springing from her eyes. “Please, my house was clean. You were the ones that made it dirty. You were the ones that made the mess.”

The Schnabelperchten with the folder was ushered to the front, where it removed a document despite its mittens. It held the typewritten letter up, but Annie vehemently shook her head. “No,” she said, “you don’t understand. That was a joke, a onetime thing.” Blindly, she stepped back, but collided with the wall, and her tears fell faster still.

“It wasn’t my idea, you don’t understand. The whole thing was Lionel’s fault.” This entreaty, too, was met with only ‘Ga’s,’ and another page extracted from the folder. This time, the Schnabelperchten offered the paper to Annie, indicating it wanted her to read it.

She didn’t have to. Annie knew what it was. A list of all the nonexistent safe houses she’d established, phony destinations to send the foreign, victimized women she was supposed to help. Women who believed they were being rescued, liberated, from months—or years—of hell.

The second page of that document would be a list of businesses, private homes, inns, and hotels, entities that would buy the trafficked women for a price that Annie and Lionel split. It’d been Annie’s idea to make a profit off the women rather than sending them on to secure homes. She reasoned that working—regardless of the jobs being less than minimum wage, or in some cases, nothing but room and board—as hotel maids or personal cleaners was a far cry from drug running and prostitution and had gotten Lionel to buy into her plan with little more than this rationale.

Annie had only used one of her charges to clean her own home on a single occasion, informing the exhausted, non-English speaking woman of her intention via a letter she’d composed using Google Translate. This was the first document the Schnabelperchten had confronted her with, another file she’d been too careless to erase. Sure, Annie had led the woman to believe it was a job interview of sorts, then sold her to an offshoot of Hyatt Hotels. She’d only discovered months later she’d sent the woman to a separate state than that in which her children resided, but what was done was done; there was nothing Annie could do.

Annie felt the night’s unending schnapps roiling in her stomach and placed both hands against the wall to steady herself. “We already got caught,” she pleaded. “My boyfriend told me tonight. We’re going to be confronted tomorrow, we’ll have to own up to it all, and I’ll be forced to bring the operation to an end. If you leave, I’ll clean up everything, the house, the center, my life. I’ll make it like it never happened. I’ll make everything okay.”

“Ga… Ga… Ga… Ga…” The creatures advanced on her several steps.

“This isn’t happening,” Annie whispered. Then louder, angrier, accusatorily, “You aren’t real. You’re characters from a children’s storybook. Someone sent you into scaring me straight.”

The Schnabelperchten with the scissors moved so swiftly, Annie didn’t have time to flinch let alone move away. The blades met in the middle, slicing through muscle and flesh, so smoothly she felt no pain. As she watched, helpless, the creature with the mustard yellow scarf approached, its clippers aimed at those insides already cascading to the floor.

The Schnabelperchten with the broom crumbled up the evidence of her misdeeds, fluffing it into worthy stuffing. Her last coherent thought before darkness pressed on the edges of her vision was the unfairness of being found with proof of her guilt inside her mangled body.

“Please, she croaked, “she said you’d fill me up with sticks and stones. Please take those damning pages with you.”

The Schnabelperchten removed a needle of iron from its pack, and carefully prepared the incriminating document with its thread.

Annie summoned every last ounce of her strength: “Please!”

She should have expected their response:

“Ga… Ga… Ga… Ga…”

To Annie, it sounded like ‘God.’

THE END

Christa Carmen’s work has been featured in anthologies, ezines, and podcasts such as Fireside Fiction, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror, Outpost 28, and Tales to Terrify. Her debut collection, Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked, is available now from Unnerving, and won the 2018 Indie Horror Book Award for Best Debut Collection. Christa lives in Rhode Island with her husband and their bluetick beagle. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in English and psychology, a master’s degree from Boston College in counseling psychology, and is an MFA candidate at the Stonecoast Creative Writing program, of the University of Southern Maine. You can find her online at her website.