Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  “I don’t think those are real—not in the sense of being attached to an animal or a demon,” Cole said.

  Annabelle nodded. “That’s the man I saw in my dream. That’s him.”

  “Then we are going to need him,” her husband said. He and Trip glanced at one another, and each pulled out one of the weapons Mr. Carlisle had given us. In his other hand, Trip drew his normal revolver—or rather, his usual one. I had enspelled it so often that it was certainly no longer normal by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Cover your ears, ladies,” Cole said—an unnecessary reminder, as we all had already done so. We were none of us greenhorns.

  They let loose with a hail of bullets cutting across the creature’s claws—or the creatureless claws—in a straight line at what would have been the wrist on a human. The claws didn’t react at all, further cementing my opinion that they were some kind of animated construct rather than a living being. And when they were severed from the rest of the hand, the entire construction simply crumbled away into nothing, leaving only Hattie’s beau. She ran to him, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around him.

  She helped the injured Marshal to his feet, his damaged arm pulled in close to him.

  “Can you walk?” I asked.

  “Yes. But I’m confused. What just happened?” he asked.

  “We need to bandage that arm,” Annabelle suggested, pulling a roll of fabric out of the pockets of her calico trousers.

  I explained my theory that the demon had somehow managed to transform him into a corporeal person again in order to distract us. He listened as Annabelle wrapped the bandage tightly around the wound, stanching the blood flow until we could get out of here and take better care of it later.

  Hattie kept patting him, moving her hands along his face and torso as if reassuring herself that he was real. “Is this going to last?”

  She hadn’t directed the question to anyone in particular. I answered it, anyway. “Who knows? He’s here now, and we can use his help. The demon might have given us an advantage he didn’t mean to.”

  “He needs a weapon,” Hattie said.

  I turned to Trip and pointed at the single non-P.I.-agency, non-enspelled gun in his arsenal. “I think we should give him that one to carry.”

  Trip’s eyes narrowed as if he were trying to read my mind. “Afraid to have someone with a demon-created body carry a spelled weapon?”

  “Something like that.” Really, I was concerned that Federal Marshal Grant Madsden, for all that he seemed real and on our side, might not be what he said he was.

  So we gave him a gun. But not one of the more powerful ones, just in case.

  The eight of us continued our descent into the darkness.

  Chapter 10

  Along the way, we continued to mark the tunnels leading off the main descent into the cavern.

  When we came upon the cave-in, it was sudden. It happened not inside a giant echoing chamber, as I had assumed, but in a cramped tunnel, a narrow spot in the path down, which made me wonder again about the demon’s strength. He was strong enough to pull a ghost out of the ether and make him corporeal, but not strong enough to create a monstrous dragon—he was only able to create claws.

  My guess was that without an original form to use as a pattern, such as the ghost’s former body, the demon had no way to create and animate a creature.

  Similarly, I suspected he didn’t have much ability to toss rocks around inside the cavern. He had managed only to pile up the loose ones and fill up this narrow passage.

  “I don’t think this demon is as powerful as the P.I. Agency thinks it is,” Trip said, echoing my thoughts as he so often did.

  “Let’s move back up the path, away from the cave-in, and work there,” Cole suggested.

  “Hattie, are you okay?” Trip shot me a look for using the slang word I had so despised in his own language. I ignored him. I might eventually have to admit that okay was a useful word.

  Hattie looked up at me and nodded, then turned her attention immediately back to Grant.

  Annabelle and I traded glances. I didn’t know if we would be as strong without Hattie, but I wasn’t sure we could count on her full attention and participation, either. Not as long as Grant was in pain.

  Our plan was fairly simple. We would summon the demon, force it into its own corporeal form, trap it, and kill it.

  Simple in theory, anyway. There were a lot of pieces to it, and it would take more power than I liked to consider. Still, it was a solid plan.

  I hoped.

  Chapter 11

  We moved far enough back from the cave-in that we couldn’t see it any longer, choosing a wide spot in the path to do our work and make our stand. I immediately began drawing sigils on the beams holding up the ceiling. Trip and Cole consulted over one of the manuals Cole had taken from our former employer.

  “Can I help you?” Annabelle asked, glancing at Hattie, who still hovered around the very real form of Grant Madsden.

  “Yes, please.” I showed her where to mark and how to draw the sigils I needed. Once she took over wielding the chalk, I followed along behind her, reinforcing the structural support with magic.

  “You always could twist the company-approved spells into something better,” Trip said, moving away from Cole and toward me.

  “That’s nice work,” Hattie said from directly behind me.

  I jumped a little—I hadn’t heard her move closer to me—but said, “Thanks.”

  A cold wind blew through the cavern, raising goosebumps on my arms. It was followed almost immediately by the sound of whispers echoing in the dark.

  “Anyone else feel like we’re in a Beadle’s Dime Novel?” Cole asked, but his good humor was more strained than usual. The constant darkness, the cold, the strange noises—they were getting to all of us.

  “Let’s begin,” I said.

  Grant moved to set up the recording device Mr. Carlisle had given him. It fit neatly on a tiny natural shelf in the cavern. He directed it at the spot we had chosen to contain the demon.

  Carefully, Annabelle and I used Trip’s chalk and sketched out a pentagram on the floor with enough room at its edges for a person to stand or walk by. Then we enclosed the symbol in a circle.

  From my pack of magical supplies, I pulled out a smudge stick—a bundle of sage. I lit the end, blew on it gently, then tapped out the active flame in a brass bowl I brought with me. I handed the bundle to Annabelle and pulled out a jar of sea salt. I was guessing that was something a demon up here in the Rockies didn’t encounter often. I began walking along the edge of the circle around the pentagram, pouring out salt crystals as I went. Annabelle followed behind me, waving the smudge stick up and down through the air around the circle.

  When we were done, the air in the cavern was hazy with smoke and the beginnings of magic.

  I had planned to ask everyone to join the circle, but Grant Madsden’s addition to our group had changed the magical calculus. I needed to find out what I could do with him. And more important, whether we could trust him.

  I moved to the wall where he and Hattie sat, their foreheads leaning together as they whispered. I crouched down beside them. Holding my hand out to him, I said, “Will you let me read you?”

  He glanced at Hattie, who nodded.

  They both stood, and Grant held his hands out to me.

  I took his hands in mine, and they felt perfectly normal. Perhaps a little clammy, but that could be caused by pain or anxiety.

  Closing my eyes, I drew in a deep breath and allowed my magical senses to open fully for the first time since we had entered the mine.

  All around us, I could sense the silver the miners were after. It stretched out in veins that stood out in shining lines to my inner sight. The glowing metal ran like roots through the earth. There was still plenty here to be mined.

  But at the center of the mine sat a darkness, a brooding entity, malevolent and foul.

  I didn’t know if it was the demon, or
if the demon was merely connected to it. In any case, I pulled my consciousness back from the malevolence, not wanting to draw more of its attention than we already had by our mere presence. Instead, I focused on this wide spot in the downward path, this space only, with its five other people showing up as flares of self-awareness, brighter than any metal could ever be. Hattie Hart’s joy at Grant’s presence blazed from her in a bright red, shot through with streaks of gold. Annabelle Swansby’s aura was the blue of the turquoise stones I’d fallen in love with when I had come to the West. Her husband’s was the green of summer grass. They were the perfect complements for each other, and I could see the way their power drew from each other.

  Trip looked as he always looked in my magical sight. His aura was the gold of protection, his role in the world perfectly aligned with his spirit.

  I glanced down at myself. My own aura to my eyes appeared purple, as it often did—although since I had connected with Trip, it was beginning to be shot through with gold streaks as we became more intertwined, and as I learned to continue to protect him. And if I looked closely, purple streaks were beginning to appear in his, as well.

  I turned my magical gaze to Grant. His aura, like Trip’s, had the gold of protection, but it was a rose gold, the perfect combination of the red that flared from Hattie and the gold of their protective connection.

  I drew my magical sight back inward, closing my eyes and allowing my other senses to quest outward.

  I knew what I was about to do was invasive, and under any other circumstance, I would have avoided it. But I needed to know more about Grant Madsden.

  I inhaled and pushed against him with my magic, shaping it into a spiritual spear that I drove through Grant’s chest to read him.

  As if it were coming from a distance, I heard Hattie protest, heard a scuffle as Trip and Cole held her back from interfering.

  Grant grunted but made no other noise. His hands tightened on mine, but otherwise, he simply waited as I read him.

  He was real, and he was who he said he was.

  And he loved Hattie.

  If the demon had planted anything evil inside him, it was buried deeper than I could find. I pulled the magical spirit-spear from him and dissolved it back into myself.

  Dropping his hands, I opened my eyes and said, “He’s one of us. We can begin.”

  Perhaps I should not have wasted any of my magical energy that way, but I knew we couldn’t go into creating a spell against the demon unless we had that information. And I heard several small sighs of relief from the other members of the party, too.

  We gathered in a circle around the enclosed pentagram, reaching out and taking each other’s hands. Six isn’t any kind of magical number. We didn’t have any advantage in that sense.

  But we came carrying powerful weapons and equally powerful magic.

  The last time Trip and I had killed a demon, we had trapped it in a circle like this, held it steady there while we shot it full of silver bullets. I was hoping for a similar outcome here.

  But first, we had to summon it and bind it in our circle. As we had planned, Hattie and Annabelle and I began working to send our magic flowing through our hands. We sent the power coursing through us, clockwise around our circle, or deasil, as my grandmother had called it as she taught me the old ways of magic use.

  I felt the power as it poured through us, moving faster and faster with each revolution around our circle. Next to me, Trip stiffened as the power hit him, gathering up what natural talents he had in that direction and flinging it into me.

  As it went through us, the magic left behind an almost electrical charge. All the hairs on my arms stood up straight, and what little loose fabric I wore floated upward. A silent wind whipped around the cavern, and in the distance, I heard the deep moan of the demon resisting being called.

  Hattie began to chant to force him into our circle. We used different magical languages, but it didn’t matter. It was important to share meaning, not language. And in this, our wills were united. I added my incantation to hers. In a few moments, I heard Annabelle began to speak as well, I thought in English, but I wasn’t certain—I was too deep into my spell to hear anything more than the cacophony of voices that blended into harmony as our magic combined.

  Inside the containment circle, a shape began to form. It pulled against us, even as the men added their voices to the holding spell.

  Whatever this demon was, it was stronger than I had anticipated. I couldn’t reconcile the evidence we had with the feeling of its power against me—and I didn’t have time to think about it right now. After it had been vanquished, I would consider what I might be learning now.

  Inside the circle, it coalesced from mist into a shape that seeped out of the rock itself, flowing up out of the ground, its shape vaguely human but covered with scales, its face contorted with anger.

  And I recognized it.

  “Damnation,” Trip breathed out. Apparently, he recognized it, too.

  This demon was the same one he and I had killed—thought we had killed—in Rittersburg.

  But surely not. Perhaps these demons had similar forms? I glanced at Trip, my voice faltering as he raised one shoulder and a shrug, his eyes crinkled in concern.

  And then the demon laughed. Not the same kind of laugh it had used earlier as part of its whisperings. This one was a deep, full belly laugh—a villainous laugh.

  “I see you got my message.” Its voice was rough, deep, and triumphant.

  Our chanting stuttered to a stop, but it was okay. Our circle was set. The demon was trapped.

  “Message?” Annabelle asked.

  Trip shook his head. “Don’t respond to it,” he reminded everyone.

  “But we have so much to say to one another,” the demon said. “We didn’t have a chance to speak last time we met.”

  Dread speared me through the stomach. It was the same demon.

  “Then again, perhaps I should simply kill you all,” it hissed.

  Forcing myself to avoid even looking at it, I pulled my pistol, loaded with silver bullets, from my holster.

  “Everyone move to this side,” Cole ordered, taking over the operation, just as we had agreed.

  “So you come to do battle on your holy day?” Its voice took on the cadence of many voices, its tone one of pure malignance.

  We continued to ignore it.

  All six of us gathered together on one side of the demon, on the side of the circle closest to the exit. As we prepared to fire, though, the ground inside the circle cracked. The pentagram we’d so carefully drawn broke down the middle, the edges of the circle falling apart from one another as a chasm grew in the trail. And the demon let out a horrific laugh.

  We all opened fire at once. As a silver bullets hit it, the demon jerked and jumped. But he did not fall.

  The dread in my stomach turned to utter terror as the monstrous creature in front of me grew bigger, more solid than I had ever seen any demon look before.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” it said pointing first to me and then to Trip. “You spoiled my fun. You destroyed one of my forms. And you will pay.”

  Grant Madsden had come to stand beside me, and I handed him my pistol. “It’s loaded with silver bullets. Use it.”

  I began calling up more of my magic, but this time, I had another idea. If the silver inside the mine could weaken the demon, we needed to use it. I couldn’t say anything aloud to Hattie Hart or Annabelle Swansby, but they had already given what magic they possessed to our circle.

  If I could get to that magic, I could use it.

  I concentrated, trying to drag out what was left in the circle we’d drawn.

  “I know what to do,” I whispered to Trip. “Protect me.”

  But before I could gather enough magic, the demon sent another crack through the floor, knocking us off our feet. A giant wind from the bowels of the earth blew over us, hot and sulfurous smelling. I knew why they thought it was a fire demon now. The air whipping around us s
ent my hat spinning across the room, pulled my hair out of its bun and sent it flying around my face. I fought to concentrate, even as I realized the demon was using the air to slow down the bullets being fired at him. I crawled up toward the entrance, knowing that it was far too far away for me to make it if we didn’t take out the demon now.

  Hattie screamed something, but I couldn’t make it out. All three of the men continued to rain bullets onto the creature, but he deflected them with a single flick of his hand.

  The demon’s next words were spoken as if directly into my mind.

  Fight me on your holy day? Let me bestow gifts on you. A chill wind blew through the cave, and I shivered.

  Merry Christmas.

  It was as if I had been flattened to the ground by a giant hand holding me down and sending bright sparks of pain through me. It ripped into my mind, and my vision grayed out for several seconds. I could feel the demon rifling through my thoughts, and I shoved my plan down as far as I could, erecting a wall around it, concentrating on the pain to block out what he wanted to know.

  He almost got it. But I deflected all the pain into repeating my name. “Ruby Silver, Ruby Silver, Ruby Silver. Mr. and Mrs. Trip Silver.” I repeated the words to myself over and over again until I heard the demon laughing wildly.

  Ruby Silver. Demon hunter. This is your curse. Forevermore to be trapped in this land you profess to love. To be unable to use the metal that is your namesake. To be Called, forced to hunt the very monsters you wish to kill. To live the life you think you want—but without reprieve. So mote it be.

  I didn’t even know exactly what it meant. But I felt his curse slam through me. It left me retching on the floor of the cavern.

  I managed to stand. When I dropped the wall around the intention I had formed, it shot out of me like a bullet from a gun, gathering the silver ore I sensed feel in the earth all around me.

  I had barely enough presence of mind to scream, “Run!”