A Christmas Horror Story (2 page)

‘Hello?’

‘Hi, honey, it’s me,’ said me. Me being Katie’s mother.

‘Hey,’ Katie replied, yawning. ‘How’s work?’

‘Did I wake you?’ Mum asked.

‘Not really, I was just resting my eyes. And I just had the weirdest dream.’ Katie stretched in her seat.

‘About what, hon?’ Mum asked sympathetically.

‘Nothing really, a family living in a forest…somewhere in Europe, I think. Years and years ago, and something else’…’ Katie shuddered, a tingle running down her spine as if someone had walked over her grave. She quickly changed the subject. ‘So, work?’

‘Well, it is nearly Christmas Eve, so I’ve had every drunken accident you can imagine coming into the emergency room. I’ve had my shoes ruined by bloodstains from a guy who got into a fight. And I’ve been vomited on twice, so there go my trousers too.’

Katie laughed affectionately; she could almost see her mother rolling her eyes at the other end of the phone.

‘That’s why you became a doctor, Mum. Seven years of medical training to be vomited on.’

‘Thanks for reminding me,’ Mum replied. ‘How are Jake and Emily?’

Katie looked at the pair lying on the sofa. Jake was nine but he was tall for his age, and wide too. Chunky but not chubby, and such a worrier. He lay asleep in his black pyjamas and with his precious ‘Tome’ tucked under his arm. He cuddled the thick book he’d recently latched onto like it was a teddy bear. Emily, at thirteen, was three years younger than sixteen-year-old Katie. She looked like a slightly smaller version of her sister. Tall and slim with blue eyes and long blonde hair. She was curled up in a ball, still wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with the words ‘Bite me’ on the chest. Each of the three children had inherited the family genes of blond and blue. But while the girls’ hair lay gently down their backs, Jake’s hair was always big and wild, not too long, but it hung over his ears and was a mass of mess. He resembled his father so much it made Katie stare sometimes, and it hurt her heart to look. It was as if when Dad had died, he had passed his spirit into Jake, making a much younger copy.

‘Are you there?’ asked Mum, bringing Katie back to the conversation.

‘Yeah, sorry,’ apologised Katie softly. ‘I’m here. And, yes, they’re OK—they’re both tucked up in bed, nice and tight.’

‘Good,’ said Mum. ‘OK, I have got to go, more drunks to see to. As if they’ll ever stop coming! You get yourself to bed. I love you. See you in the morning.’

‘OK, Mum. Have fun,’ Katie replied.

‘Oh and Katie…’

‘Yes?’

‘Nearly Christmas. This one’s going to be the best yet, I promise.’

‘I know, Mum. I know.’

There was a click from the other end of the phone as Mum went back to work. Katie put her phone in her jeans pocket and gave her siblings a gentle shake. They murmured before opening their eyes, confused and dazed.

‘What time is it?’ Emily was the first to ask, yawning as she did so.

‘Eleven. Time for bed. We fell asleep watching the shopping channel again’,’ Katie replied.

‘I thought we were watching
The Singing Factor
’,’ Jake added.

‘Still sulking about that, are you?’ Emily swiped.

Previously in the evening, after a meal of beans and cheese on toast (Katie’s signature dish), Emily and Jake had bickered over what to watch.
The Singing Factor
for Emily, or a programme on alien abduction for Jake. Katie had intervened as the two were firing insults at each other, each word more inventive than the last. Katie, seeing no better solution, had decided to toss a coin, and Emily had won.

Katie turned the lamp on, and the room lit up with a warm, yellow glow. The family living room was as cosy as could be expected for a cottage in the middle of nowhere. The floor was polished wood, with a large red rug taking up most of the floor space. The walls were a cream-painted brick, and wooden beams lined the ceiling. Four square wood-framed windows looked out to utter darkness but, if it was daylight, that would be replaced by snow-covered hills and a grey, cloud-burdened sky. In the corner of the room by a large bookcase full of dusty paperbacks stood a Christmas tree, turned brown by the light and, in truth, turning brown anyway. It held on to a meagre assortment of silver baubles. The Christmas decorations were a token effort and had an air of sadness, as if something was missing from the celebrations. In fact, it was more of a question of
who
was missing that made their hearts sink and Christmas feel less meaningful.

‘Let’s not argue,’ Katie said. ‘I’ve just heard from Mum. She will be back tomorrow, so it would be nice if you two hadn’t killed one another by then.’ She walked over to the television and sent the orange man into oblivion.

Emily stood up and stretched. ‘Well, I’m going to bed. You can see to him.’

‘Hey,’ Jake protested, and Emily sauntered over to her brother and landed a kiss on his head. She made her way to her bed, waving at Katie as she left the room.

Jake stood and opened his book. This was the ritual they’d had every night for the last year. Ever since Dad had…well, you know. It had started when Mum had taken Jake to a second-hand bookshop in town one afternoon. He’d come home with the
Tome of the Dark and Mysterious
, which he’d proceeded to read from cover to cover. The next thing anyone knew, Jake believed that Dad had died from supernatural means and was insisting that, before they went to bed, there were certain precautions he had to take to protect the family. Mum wasn’t worried; she said he would grow out of it. And ever since then, they’d all taken turns supervising Jake’s nightly obsession.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘First: shutters.’

Katie nodded. Sometime before World War Two, the owner, a Farmer Partridge, had installed metal shutters on the windows to help prevent damage from bombs. The bombs never landed anywhere near Moorside, where the cottage was, but by means of a crank handle the shutters still worked after all these years. Katie stood by one of the windows where the green handle jutted from a box attached to the wall. A chain ran from it and into the ceiling. Katie took hold with two hands and began to turn the crank. It spun slowly and noisily, and the green shutters squeaked closed, encasing the windows in metal.

‘Done,’ Katie said when she finished, rubbing her arms.

‘Good,’ Jake remarked seriously. ‘So if zombies ever attack we’ll be safe.’

‘Indeed, although not from Emily.’

He smiled. It was good to see him smile.

‘OK, has there been a full moon tonight?’

‘Not that I know of. It’s pretty cloudy out there—the weather man said we’re in for snow.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Positive.’

‘Have you invited any strangers into the house recently?’

‘Recently no and also never.’

Jake thought for a moment. ‘OK, I’m ready for bed.’

They walked hand in hand down the hallway with its cold wood floor and up the creaking cold wood stairs. Katie flicked an old light switch and two dull bare bulbs lit the hallway, stairs and landing in a buzzing neon. Katie had to duck under another beam as she reached the top. In the bathroom another bulb flicked into life. The bathroom smelt damp and mould had conquered the sickly yellow-green paint. They cleaned their teeth, smiling behind the mint foam. Then Katie tucked her brother into bed. He lay there in the glow of his night light, his ever-present book by his side. Katie always thought there was a sadness to her brother, despite his smiles. It was there behind his blue eyes. Nothing seemed to faze Emily. She was the toughest person Katie knew, but Jake…Jake was always hiding sadness.

‘Can you check my bed?’ he asked.

Katie smiled and nodded. She crawled on the floor, which was a minefield of action figures and dirty clothes.

‘Nothing under the bed a hoover wouldn’t cure,’ she remarked before standing up and checking the wardrobe. ‘Nor here’,’ she added.

‘OK then, goodnight,’ he said, turning onto his side and closing his eyes.

‘Goodnight,’ Katie replied, but he was already asleep.

And while he was asleep he dreamt. But more than a dream…it was a warning.

Chapter Two

London, Christmas Eve 1940, during the Blitz

The London sky was a deep black canvas covered by a million, billion pinpricks of light. Floating amongst the stars like gigantic whales in the sky, air balloons tethered by ropes bobbed in the night-time breeze. The balloons and sky were occasionally lit with huge beams of light, arcing and criss-crossing in circles like streaking moons.

In contrast, London itself was in shadow. Not one sliver of light escaped its dark grasp. Curtains drawn and street lamps murdered, the city huddled together, terrified that in the dark, this very Christmas Eve, enemy bombers would sooner or later come to destroy them. But there were two children who were not scared at all.

They sat in the rubble of a house that had been bombed two weeks previously. Nothing was left of the house except for the ghost of four walls and a ceiling and the mountain of bricks, wood and broken glass. The girl and the boy had made small stools of some of the bricks and sat upon them. They wore duffel coats tied with toggles in an attempt to keep warm, but they both still shivered as they wore their short school uniforms underneath. It was not the most efficient attire for keeping back the chilly night cold and they quivered almost in tandem. The boy held a gas mask in his hand, which he moved this way and that, occasionally tapping the glass eyepieces. The girl kept her mask firmly in its box, placed by her feet. She adjusted the slide on her bobbed brown hair, as if making herself presentable. Both of the children had their red leather satchels strapped over their shoulders. The boy was no older than eight, about three years younger than his taller sister, who sat next to him.

‘Mary?’ he asked in a questioning tone.

‘Yes?’ she replied, distracted by the sky above.

‘What if the soldiers think Santa is a German and they shoot him down?’

‘When?’

‘When he comes flying with his sleigh and reindeer. What if they think he’s got bombs and they blow him up?’

‘That won’t happen, Wiglet,’ Mary reassured him. ‘Santa is magic. Bullets and bombs can’t hurt him; they just bounce off.’

‘Like Jesus?’

She put her arm around her brother. ‘Yes, just like Jesus.’

Mary’s brother had been known as Wiglet ever since he began to walk with a sort of funny little toddle andhips and arms swinging. Dad had said he looked like a Wiglet, and Mum and Mary laughed and the name had stuck. That was a long time ago and Dad was gone now, fighting Hitler, and Mum didn’t laugh so much anymore. She stayed in her room mostly, crying to herself in the dark. When she ventured out, she was weak and unsure. She was sickly thin and pale, and now only wore her nightgown. Her eyes had a vague, distant look that rarely registered when her children spoke to her. Their father, on the other hand, well the children could hardly remember what he looked like. They remembered his uniform, green and neat. They remembered his hair, black, shiny and slick. But the details: his voice, his smell, the look of his face. Those had faded.

Mary and Wiglet had sat on the stairs two days before; it was early morning when the old lady with the curled blue hair and a stern look came to their home. Two days before Christmas, and no decorations adorned the house. The walls lay bare save for drab wallpaper and cobwebs. Christmas dinner would consist of scrounged food served on dirty plates, left to ferment afterwards in the kitchen sink. Mary held her brother and they listened to the muffled voices through the closed living room door.

‘We will have the children until the war is over or when you begin to feel better. This is no place for them. No place for children.’ It was the voice of the stern lady. Her voice was shrill and sharp and the door did nothing to muffle it.

‘I don’t want to leave,’ whispered Wiglet. ‘I want to stay and look after Mum.’

‘I know,’ ‘Mary replied. ‘Don’t worry. I have an idea’.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, we need to find Santa Claus. We will ask him for help.’ They used to have Christmas parties. They used to celebrate the season, but that was before the war, before Dad went and Mother’s smiles went with him.

Her brother smiled for them both and shook with excitement.

‘I’m cold. When can we go home?’ Wiglet asked, bringing Mary back from her wandering thoughts.

Mary sighed. ‘You know when. As soon as we find Santa and ask him to stop the war. So Dad can come home and we won’t be sent away.’

‘Will he be long?’ he wanted to know.

‘Just be patient. Watch the sky; he will be here.’

And they did, their eyes fixed on the sky with the giant balloons and the stars looking back to the dark city below.

‘Look’. Wiglet stood and pointed. The bricks shifted uneasily under his feet. His gas mask drooped in his free hand.

Mary looked. In the cold, cold distance there were lights that were not stars. They moved in a triangle formation of tiny flashing orange and green lights.

‘Is that Santa?’ the boy asked.

Mary could not answer. She trembled at the sight, knowing what would come next. A few bricks in the centre of the wrecked house vibrated and tumbled into the darkness with a stone jangle.

First the children heard the wail of the sirens, screaming their banshee screams, a warning to the city that disaster was approaching. The sounds of engines thrumming filled the air, twisting with a whistling sound dropping from above. Barely seen in the darkness but getting closer, bomber planes cut the distance in no time at all. And when they did, the world was suddenly alive with more light and noise than any Christmas celebration could ever hope for. The horizon burst into a catastrophe of fire and orange, and waves of hot breeze blew over the brother and sister. Suddenly the night became day as bright lines of machine gun fire sped towards their targets, hundreds of planes overhead like a demon invasion.

Mary gripped her brother’s hand and pulled him as they both went tumbling down through the carcass of the house and debris. Mary was sure they were both screaming but the sound evaporated in the hot air. The street was alive with families, terrified, running to shelters while a fire truck thundered through the streets. Mary and her brother, beyond fear that Christmas Eve, fell to the ground. There, they could only huddle against the wall as a whistling bomb destroyed the street.