The Ghosts of Christmas Present
Written for the just_writing community Christmas challenge - a ghost or horror story of up to 500 words inspired by a song title or lyric.
Three Christmases in a row I've heard that high-pitched giggle downstairs, now. The first year, I'd crawled into bed after Midnight Mass and a bottle of whisky, and I thought perhaps it was some refracted echo of the carols - those soaring descants always seem to linger in the air long after the song is ended.
The second year, drunker than ever before, I just about remember thinking “oh, it's her again” before - presumably - passing out.
This year, however, I finally got my life together and got sober. It's just after midnight, and the house is cold and dark, and I'm wide awake all of a sudden, the noise ringing in my ears and my skin prickling up in goosebumps. It was a giggle, wasn't it? While I know that burglars rarely giggle, and almost certainly do not return each year, I still reach for the cricket bat I keep up here to allay such fears.
At the top of the stairs, treading carefully to avoid that floorboard that always gave me away, I pause and look down the flight, into the hall. Am I imagining flickers in the dining room, where there should be no light? Down a few steps for a better view, if I lean against the banisters just so. The candles on the mantelpiece appear to be lit, and I can see a shadow - no, two shadows - on the wall opposite the door. Whoever it is, they are right by the fireplace. A long-buried, awful, go away! memory tries to surface but I suppress it. Just. I shake, gripping the bat tighter, afraid I'll drop it and give the game away.
I make it to the foot of the stairs. I can smell her perfume now - for one of the shadows is definitely a woman. The other is harder to make out - he? is distorted somewhat oddly in shadow, not a familiar shape at all. I tread lightly in the hall, not wanting to disturb them before I can see them face to face. That memory is nagging at me again, but I refuse to acknowledge it.
As I reach the door of the dining room, the shadows move together and merge, and I - well, I guess you could say I lose it. Yelling, bat above my head, I charge into the room and I hit, I hit, I hit, I hit, I hit with the bat and there's blood and there's bone and there's screaming and there's the smell of that perfume and the smell of the blood and the sound of the screaming and the sound of the screaming and the sound of the screaming - and silence. And I'm sitting on the floor in the empty dining room, cradling the bat and sobbing and sobbing like a child who has lost everything. And in that moment I remember. Oh God, I remember.
Three Christmases in a row I've heard that high-pitched giggle downstairs, now. The first year, I'd crawled into bed after Midnight Mass and a bottle of whisky, and I thought perhaps it was some refracted echo of the carols - those soaring descants always seem to linger in the air long after the song is ended.
The second year, drunker than ever before, I just about remember thinking “oh, it's her again” before - presumably - passing out.
This year, however, I finally got my life together and got sober. It's just after midnight, and the house is cold and dark, and I'm wide awake all of a sudden, the noise ringing in my ears and my skin prickling up in goosebumps. It was a giggle, wasn't it? While I know that burglars rarely giggle, and almost certainly do not return each year, I still reach for the cricket bat I keep up here to allay such fears.
At the top of the stairs, treading carefully to avoid that floorboard that always gave me away, I pause and look down the flight, into the hall. Am I imagining flickers in the dining room, where there should be no light? Down a few steps for a better view, if I lean against the banisters just so. The candles on the mantelpiece appear to be lit, and I can see a shadow - no, two shadows - on the wall opposite the door. Whoever it is, they are right by the fireplace. A long-buried, awful, go away! memory tries to surface but I suppress it. Just. I shake, gripping the bat tighter, afraid I'll drop it and give the game away.
I make it to the foot of the stairs. I can smell her perfume now - for one of the shadows is definitely a woman. The other is harder to make out - he? is distorted somewhat oddly in shadow, not a familiar shape at all. I tread lightly in the hall, not wanting to disturb them before I can see them face to face. That memory is nagging at me again, but I refuse to acknowledge it.
As I reach the door of the dining room, the shadows move together and merge, and I - well, I guess you could say I lose it. Yelling, bat above my head, I charge into the room and I hit, I hit, I hit, I hit, I hit with the bat and there's blood and there's bone and there's screaming and there's the smell of that perfume and the smell of the blood and the sound of the screaming and the sound of the screaming and the sound of the screaming - and silence. And I'm sitting on the floor in the empty dining room, cradling the bat and sobbing and sobbing like a child who has lost everything. And in that moment I remember. Oh God, I remember.