Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  He continued to tug against her, but she held him firm. Panic flashed across his face as he looked at me.

  “Mama!” I cried out. “Let go of him! Let go!”

  Slowly, her head turned toward me, tilting slightly, as if she was regarding me for the first time. That’s when I realized this wasn’t my mother anymore. She was channeling someone. Or something.

  Laurence’s sudden cry of pain had me gasping. And then I saw it. Heard it. With a flick of her fingers, his wrist snapped. Broken.

  Oh. My. God.

  He reeled backward, clutching it to his chest.

  “Try using magic now, sorcerer.” The voice that came out of my mother’s mouth was the complete opposite of the one she’d had before. A low, animalistic rumble. Almost indistinguishable.

  Whatever had gotten ahold of her had forced its way in. Unless she’d been too weak to fight it. Or it had been too strong, which from Laurence’s broken wrist, seemed the right answer.

  When she whipped my way again, she grabbed the front of my coat yanked me close. Her nostrils flared as she inhaled deeply, and her lips split in a pleased grin.

  “Found you,” the spirit she was channeling said.

  Terror gripped me. Was this the evil spirit, the poltergeist, who was determined to steal my life energy? Had to be. Arianna had said it would latch itself onto me until it had drained me completely. Like a leech.

  “Mama, it’s me, Katherine,” I pleaded, trying to reach my mother somewhere inside. I didn’t know how much good it would do, especially with a spirit as powerful as this one, but I had to try. “You have to fight it! Please!”

  Then, with its grip on my coat, it lifted me onto my toes and threw me backward hard. I landed against the door, my head hitting the wood and pain exploding. I landed on my knees,

  Snarling in triumph, my mother jumped up in bed, crouching low like a wild beast about to pounce its prey.

  A squealing siren blared, causing her to scurry in panic and fall off the bed, covering her eyes. A red light flashed above me, and when my gaze shot up, I found Laurence standing there, his unbroken hand on the emergency call button. The sound of hurried footsteps came from the hall. I crawled away from the door, just as it flew open, revealing five male and female nurses. They rushed into the room, grabbing my mother by the arms and legs as she began to lash out, kicking and clawing at them. She gnashed her teeth and spit, fighting with every ounce of strength she had to get free.

  Working together, they were able to avoid her blows and lift her back onto the bed. One of the female nurses actually climbed on top of her, pinned her body down as the others tried to tie her limbs to the bed with straps I hadn’t noticed before.

  Laurence was at my side suddenly, pushing me toward the open door. “We should go,” he whispered in my ear. I knew he was right, but I was having a hard time ripping my gaze from the scene before me. My mother might not be my mother right now, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to hurt her. She couldn’t control what she was doing.

  That’s when I saw the syringe one of the male nurses was holding. He checked the dosage of medication inside and uncapped the needle. Sedative, most likely.

  I didn’t want to see this, so I trudged to the door.

  “Marc… Anders…” My mother gasped, her voice back to its normal tone, but strained as her body continued to struggle against the nurses.

  I spun around to see her brown eyes staring at me with helplessness and desperation. She was trying to push past the spirit but was losing the battle. Her eyes continued to change from brown to black and back again.

  I fought the urge to run back to her side.

  “Marc Anders!” she shouted one last time before another growl rumbled up her throat. As her eyes blanked again, the male nurse plunged the syringe into her arm, and her eyelids fluttered closed.

  Chapter 7

  Laurence tugged me out the door and into the hallway. We sped-walked down the corridors toward the entrance, and this time, when we passed the security guard, he didn’t say a word. Maybe he wanted to, but we were rushing out the main doors before he could get anything out.

  It wasn’t until we were back in the car, doors shut and locked, that I felt it safe to let out the breath I had been holding. Laurence didn’t waste any time. With his only working hand, he threw the car into reverse, pulled out of the parking spot, and sped out of the lot and onto the highway.

  I touched the back of my head and looked at my fingers. No blood, but the spot was definitely tender. A nice sized bump was forming, too.

  “We should go to the hospital to get your wrist checked out,” I said softly.

  “No way,” he replied. “Not with that thing following us.”

  I guessed he had a point, but an angry purple bruise had already painted his hand and up his forearm. It looked extremely painful, and from the way he was holding it against his chest, it seemed he’d lost most mobility in his fingers as well.

  Sour bile rose up my throat. The spirit had snapped his wrist like it had been nothing more than a toothpick.

  Opening the glove compartment, I pulled out the bottle of over-the-counter pain killers I had stashed in there for emergencies. I twisted the cap off.

  “How many do you want?” I asked him. “Three?”

  He took the entire bottle from me and poured a bunch of pills onto his tongue. Then, using his knees to balance the wheel, he took an old water bottle from his car door holder, used his teeth to pop the top, and took a huge swig.

  “You’re going to get a stomachache,” I muttered as I snatched the bottle back, closed it, and put it away.

  After swallowing, his face twisted in disgust. “I’ll take it over the pain of this wrist.”

  I wasn’t going to argue with that. From the swelling and bruising, it looked like he’d probably need something a lot stronger than some glove compartment Motrin.

  “We’re going back to Divine Magic,” Laurence said. “We’re safer there.”

  Slumping back into the seat, my mind raced with everything that had just happened. Those moments when my mother had been nervously looking about the room…had it been because she had sensed or seen the poltergeist and I hadn’t? Must have been. But if it could hide from me, that made this whole situation even more dangerous. I wouldn’t be able to see it coming.

  We drove for some time in silence. Laurence drove over twenty miles per hour over the speed limit. He normally stuck to the rules when it came to driving, but I understood his sudden need to be where he believed was safe.

  “Marc Anders?” he said unexpectedly, eyes fixed on the road.

  “Hm?”

  “I’ve been trying to rack my head about it since we left, but I don’t understand what it means. Or why the poltergeist said it. Marc Anders? What does that mean? Is it a name?”

  “I think so,” I said, “but I don’t think it was the poltergeist that said it. I think it was my mom. I think she was fighting the thing.”

  “Then that’d mean it was something she wanted us to know. It’s important.”

  I nodded. “I think so, too.”

  We turned off the exit for downtown Fairport, and only then did Laurence slow his speed. I had to admit, being in the city made me feel a little better. Safer.

  “We’ll ask Arianna. Maybe she’ll know what it means,” he said.

  “And maybe she’ll know what to do about your wrist.”

  He glanced down at it and winced. “Yeah, I don’t know how I’ll be able to take the level one test now. I may have to reschedule it again.”

  I frowned. I knew that was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew better than me about magic and the need of both hands.

  “We’ll see what Arianna can do.” I gave him a reassuring smile.

  After parking in front of the store, we walked inside. At the sound of the bell chiming, Arianna appeared from behind the beaded curtain, holding Zach in her arms. Seeing my baby again made me flush with relief, and I strode over to take him.
She gladly passed him over, and I pressed my lips against the top of his fuzzy head.

  “How’d it go?” she asked, looking us over. When she spotted Laurence’s wrist, she sucked in a sharp breath. “That good, huh?”

  “The poltergeist followed us there,” Laurence explained. “It forced its way into Kay’s mother…”

  Her eyes widened in shock. “What?”

  Laurence glanced my way, silently asking if I wanted to chime in.

  I sighed and swayed side to side as Zach chewed on his fingers. “She was channeling it. Unwillingly.”

  “And it broke your wrist?” she asked Laurence.

  “And threw Kay across the room.”

  Again.

  “Looks like you have a pretty powerful poltergeist on your hands here,” she said.

  “There’s another thing,” Laurence said. “Before we left, she had said Marc Anders. Kay thinks her mom was trying to tell us something. Like a clue. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Arianna shook her head. “Not off the top of my head, but there’s one way to find out.”

  “One of your aunt’s books again?” I asked.

  She chuckled. “Nope. Just the handy, dandy internet. We’re not savages.”

  She spun around and disappeared into the back room again, only to return a minute later with a laptop in hand. Opening it, we walked over to her side and peered at the screen. She typed in the name Marc Anders into the search bar.

  The second she hit GO, the screen filled with the name, mostly from articles or news captions. And other reoccurring words followed after it.

  Murderer. Serial killer. The Westwood Stalker.

  Icy-cold dread snaked through me, making me shiver.

  “Looks like Marc Anders’s has been around the block,” she said, quickly skimming the information on the screen.

  From what I could gather during her rapid clicking, Marc Anders was known for following his victims—all women between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five—kidnapping them in broad daylight, holding them in a large storage container in the back woods on his property, and repeatedly raping them before killing and burying them in shallow graves.

  “Why would your mom say the name of a known serial killer?” Laurence asked me from over my shoulder.

  “You said she was channeling the spirit at the time she said the name, right?” Arianna asked, and I nodded. “Do you remember me saying that poltergeists were once souls of those who’d been so corrupt, something had happened during their transition after death?”

  “You mean…” My words trailed off as the information sank in.

  “Yep. We now have the name of our spirit.”

  “And…that’s a good thing.” Laurence’s tone revealed he was unsure.

  Arianna rolled her eyes. “Follow me, here. To get rid of a poltergeist, the spirit must be joined again with its earthly body and burned, in order for it to be cleansed from the living world and the spirit world.”

  “So, now that we have the spirit’s name, we can find his body,” I finished.

  “And burn it,” Laurence concluded.

  “Exactly.” Arianna pointed to something on her screen. “And it says here, Anders was captured, sentenced to life, where he died only two years later during a prison riot. He’s buried in Westwood cemetery.”

  “That’s only thirty minutes from here,” he replied.

  She snapped her laptop shut. “All right. Looks like it’s time to go grave robbing.”

  I blanched. What? Grave robbing?

  Laurence seemed just as taken aback. “Uh… You seem a little too excited about digging up some guy’s bones.”

  She shrugged, unfazed. “It’s not my first time disturbing a grave. Most cursed and charmed objects are in tombs or buried with the dead.”

  It was still hard for me to wrap my head around. Arianna, who was such a young girl, had spent her college years traveling the world and stealing magical pieces from some pretty powerful people, dead or alive.

  “Kay, you can stay here, if you want. It’ll be safer for you with all the wards I have on the place,” she suggested. “Laurence and I can go and…”

  “We can’t leave them alone,” Laurence interjected. “Not with the poltergeist determined to get to her. And no offense but I don’t think your protection spells will be able to hold it off forever. The thing snapped my wrist like it was nothing. Kay doesn’t have magic. She can’t defend herself.”

  “Okay, then you stay with her,” she said shortly. “I’ll go alone.”

  Laurence took a minute to consider this, but then he said, “I don’t like that idea, either. It’s already dark. You shouldn’t be out there alone.”

  Arianna let out an aggravated sigh. “I can take care of myself, you know. Level three, remember?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  As they continued to bicker back and forth and talk about me as if I wasn’t standing there, annoyance jabbed at me. I was getting tired of this constant need to bend over backwards to protect me. I was tired of being left behind. Even Jade had made me stay at the vampire club, Red, to keep me away from Xaver, and that hadn’t gone to plan.

  After months of tiptoeing around my anxiety, I was done being coddled. This spirit was attached to me. It was my problem, and I wasn’t going to be hiding from it and allowing others to fight my battles for me.

  My grandmother’s words echoed from my memory. You’re only as strong as you let yourself believe. Believe you can move mountains and you will.

  As much as I loved and missed my mother, I couldn’t become like her.

  “I’m going,” I said, snapping them both out of their squabbling. They stared at me in disbelief, but I ignored it and passed Zach over to Laurence’s good arm. “Me staying here means I can lead the poltergeist to Zach, and I’m not risking that. I’ll go, get Anders’s remains, and come back.”

  “No,” Laurence replied shortly. “Not a chance. It’ll follow you.”

  “I’ll go with her,” Arianna said, chin lifted. “With your broken wrist, I’m the better one of the two of us to spellcast if it comes down to it.”

  That was a nice way of putting it. Not because she was more powerful or a higher level than him but because of his wrist. Since she had been working with him for some time on his magic and readying him for his test, I suspected she was doing all she could to not hurt his ego any more than he did on his own. Confidence was a big part of the craft, or at least that’s what I’d been told. It was Laurence’s lack of certainty in himself that was holding him back.

  From his hesitance and narrowed eyes, it appeared he wasn’t on board with Arianna and my plan, but after a moment, he sighed, defeated. “Fine. I’ll stay behind.”

  “Great!” Arianna perked up instantly. “Now, let’s get something to splint that wrist and help speed up the healing. Then, I’ll get the shovels out of the back.”

  After constructing a makeshift splint and sling from a broken crate and a shredded bedsheet, Laurence drank something resembling tea but smelling nothing like it and claimed the pain had eased. He still made grunting noises whenever he’d moved too fast or bumped his hand against anything.

  But despite all that, he swore he would be able to stay behind with Zach.

  We took Arianna’s Volkswagen Beetle this time, a cute little white thing with a canvas roof and tiny interior. The typical car I’d expect for a young woman to drive. Until she explained it had been her Aunt Marla’s car that she’d inherited after her death.

  Arianna’s personality was on the inside, with fast food containers, extra sweaters and jackets, and loose CDs littering the front and back seats.

  As we drove toward Westwood, I picked one of the CDs up and examined the cover. It was mostly red and black, with the silhouette of a crow on the front. Gothic. Dark. And I couldn’t even pronounce the band’s name.

  Kat… Kat…a…ton….

  “It’s a Swedish metal band,” Arianna confessed, snatching the CD from my hand an
d tossing it in the back seat. Then, she reached over to the stereo and turned it to a Christmas music station. An instrumental version of Oh Holy Night played softly from the speakers. “I’m sure it’s nothing like what you listen to.”

  “And how do you know that?” I tried not to sound offended when really, her comment irked me. “I might like it. I’m always up for trying new things.”

  She slid me a sideways glare. One that had “yeah right” all over it.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You remind me of my aunt,” she said, hands tight on the steering wheel. “The one who always has her ducks in a row. Always manages to have everything together, even when things are falling apart. Not like that’s a bad thing,” she quickly added.

  Me? Was that really how I came off to people? Because I usually felt like everything would cave in and combust at any moment.

  That organized, level-headed person? That sounded more like my grandmother than me. Growing up, she always seemed to know just what to do and what to say. I wanted to be like that—that strong. But with all the chaos in my life, my anxiety and growing fears…

  “But your aunt also ran an underground black-market business, didn’t she? Even she was diverse,” I said.

  Arianna chuckled, her body relaxing some. “I guess you’re right. She also was one tough cookie. Strict. Always pushing me to do better. Do more. I used to think I could never please her. It was hard to handle sometimes.”

  Now she was really describing my grandmother.

  “But it was better for me in the long run,” she went on, eyes fixed on the road. “Because of her, I became a level three witch and was able to travel the world, something I’d always wanted to do. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish half as much without her constant nagging.” A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

  I hadn’t even thought about it before, but Arianna and I shared a life without our mothers. We were also both raised by another family member, then had ended up losing that person, too.