Midnight in Christmas River

by Meg Muldoon

  “All right. I’ll give it a try. Thanks, Mavis.”

  The bookstore owner smiled knowingly and winked at me before going back to the cash register, where a new line of readers wanting to buy more books had formed.

  By the end of the event, Mavis had sold out of every Ashcroft Black novel in her quaint store.

  Chapter 3

  Sheriff Lane Graves stood at the edge of the lake, watching the first rays of a cold metal dawn ripple across the glassy waters. The bitter October air filled his lungs, smelling of damp earth and mildew and dead things churning back into soil.

  The scent reminded him of Octobers past in the sleepy town of Cave Creek. Of the days before the accident, before his Maggie’s demise, before the curse. An innocent time when he didn’t know the dark world that lay beneath.

  There were days when he actually used to smile. And now, as he remembered that, he could feel the ache of that phantom pain in his face. In the muscles that now only knew the heavy pull of a perpetual grimace.

  Perhaps it was his thoughts of Maggie, of her death, that drew the spirit to his side that morning by Moss Head Lake.

  Even before he saw her lanky, mangled figure, he felt Lorna Larimer’s presence.

  When one of them appeared, it was as if the very air itself buckled. Like the way a mattress sagged under the weight of a broken-hearted lover.

  Sheriff Graves felt the air buckling now behind him, and that was how he knew — how he knew that her spirit was here.

  She had come to speak to him.

  To ask for justice.

  And if need be, for revenge—

  “How was the book signing event earlier, Cin—”

  “Ahh!”

  Ashcroft Black’s book slipped out of my hands and for the second time that day, I grazed the ceiling.

  “Mrs. Claus in Maine, Kara!” I said when I’d come back down. “You scared me half to death!”

  I spun around to look at her, startled, but glad that it was my best friend and not the ghoulish spirit of a vengeful murder victim standing behind me.

  Kara’s face was fixed in a confused, worried expression, as if she was truly concerned she’d caused some sort of harm.

  After a moment, she removed the nutmeg-colored scarf from around her neck and set it on the counter. She reached down and picked the book up from off the ground.

  “Judging from this, I take it the event went well,” she said, studying the cover of The Lady in the Glass. “I’m surprised, Cin. I didn’t take you for a horror fan.”

  “I’m not… usually,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck — the hair was still standing up. “But Mavis gave me a free copy and… I guess I had trouble putting it down.”

  It was probably foolish of me to do such a thing, considering that I was all by myself in the pie shop and it was the perfect October evening for getting the bejeebers spooked out of you.

  It was a cold, frosty night, and outside, a stiff mountain breeze was shaking the wind chimes and scraping dried, crinkly leaves across the quaint downtown streets of Christmas River. A swollen crescent moon hung low in the sky. The pungent aroma from leaf fires tainted the air, the smell drifting into the shop every now and then.

  Picking up that book on a night like this was just asking for trouble.

  But when I’d finished making up a batch of Pumpkin Gingersnap pies and tossed them in the oven, I’d found that the book — which had just been sitting on the counter all afternoon — was impossible not to crack open and start reading. And once I did that, it was like my hands were glued to it. I couldn’t put the novel down.

  Like I said — Ashcroft Black had a way with words and he had a gift for being able to paint crystal clear images in a reader’s mind. It was like some sort of magic — Ashcroft seemed to have the ability to conjure whole worlds using only ink and dull white pages.

  Kara took a seat on one of the barstools.

  “Jeez, I really wish I could have made it to the reading today,” she mumbled, eyeing the book’s back cover — which featured a large portrait shot of Ashcroft.

  Kara hadn’t been able to go because there’d been a large delivery at her ornament shop that afternoon, and she’d needed to be there to sign for it. The last delivery had been full of broken ornaments, and Kara wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.

  “It’s not like I’m really even into horror, either,” she continued. “But I would have loved to hear about Ashcroft’s writing process. He’s so prolific — I have no idea how he does it.”

  Kara, a budding romance writer on the side, gazed starry-eyed for a long moment into nothing as the oven timer went off.

  I grabbed the pair of mitts off the counter and opened the door. A wave of sugary pumpkin-spiked air hit me, and for a moment, I closed my eyes and breathed in deep.

  There was nothing quite like pumpkin pie, and more than that, there was nothing quite like pumpkin pie on a frosty, windy night in October.

  I pulled out the pan, setting it down on the marble countertop. Then I slid off the oven mitts.

  “Well, if the rumors are true about Ashcroft Black staying here in Christmas River to write his next book, then you still might get a chance to ask him about his writing process,” I said.

  “Do you think they are? I mean, the rumors being true?”

  “That’s what Gertrude Olson said, and she’s turned out to be a pretty reliable gossip. She said Ashcroft leased the Juniper Hollow Cabin through the winter.”

  Kara’s face scrunched up.

  “Juniper Hollow? Ugh, you couldn’t pay me to stay in that old place,” she said. “I don’t care how nice they say it is now.”

  She shivered visibly and rubbed her arms.

  The Juniper Hollow Cabin was a former hunting lodge on the way up to the mountains that had catered to well-to-do hunters back in the 1970s. The place eventually shut down after its owner fell into financial ruin, and the cabin remained abandoned for several decades until it was purchased by a couple in the late 90s. The new owners recently renovated the place, and these days, it served as a popular vacation rental that went for a rather steep price per night.

  But for all its upscale finishes, the owners couldn’t quite seem to dispel the cabin’s less than savory reputation. Rumors about the old lodge being haunted had plagued the property for decades. People said a hunting accident had taken place not too far from the cabin in the 70s, and that they had brought the injured hunter back to the lodge where he died before help could come.

  People said his spirit still lingered there to this day.

  People also said the accident hadn’t been an accident at all. That it was his friend who shot him on purpose that day over a woman. And that was why his spirit never found any rest.

  Of course, all these stories had been circulating so long in Christmas River it was hard to tell anymore where reality began and where the legend took over.

  “Creepy…” Kara said, shaking her head.

  “So you think it’s really haunted?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about any of that,” she said. “But what I do know is that there’s got to be tons of spiders up there this time of year. Spiders and bats and who knows what else.”

  She rubbed her arms again.

  “Ewww…”

  I smiled.

  I supposed that when it came to that old cabin, our priorities differed some.

  “Anyway, if Ashcroft is actually staying there, maybe you’ll still have a chance to meet him if he comes into town. He’s a hard man to miss.”

  I held up the book, studying the photo of Ashcroft on the back. There was that same indifferent look in his eyes in the photo. He was dressed in an Irish wool sweater which, combined with his dark beard, made him look like a sea captain. The look gave him an aura of someone much older than his 39 years.

  “Yep — if that’s how he dresses, he’ll stick out like a palm tree in a row of Douglas fir here in Christmas River,” Kara said, looking over my shoulder at the photo.
“I’ll keep my eyes peeled for him. And anyway, maybe I’ll luck out. Maybe he’ll wander into my shop one of these days.”

  I nodded in agreement but secretly thought there was a slim chance of that happening. Ashcroft didn’t strike me as the sentimental type.

  “Speaking of the shop, I really ought to get back and close up,” Kara said. “I’ve got to pick Laila up from Edna’s soon. It’s bingo night, you know. John’s coming home late and—”

  She stopped speaking, her eyes drifting over to the freshly baked pumpkin pies cooling on the counter.

  “Pumpkins in Prague, those look good.”

  “Yeah. They just came out of the oven though. Still too hot to eat.”

  Her expression did a little avalanche tumble when I said those words.

  Eleven months out of the year, Kara Billings was a lover of all things lemon-flavored. But the month of October, all that changed when pumpkin treats came back into fashion.

  “Ah, that’s a shame,” she said, standing up and collecting her scarf off the table in a sad, dejected kind of way.

  I smiled, heading over to the fridge. I rifled around until I found the Pumpkin Gingersnap pie I’d made earlier and set aside on the off chance that Kara stopped by today.

  I came back over with it and a bowl of freshly whipped cream.

  Her eyes lit up when she saw it, and she sank back down into the barstool with obvious glee.

  “Oh, Cin. You know me so well.”

  I grabbed a knife and carved out a big, generous slice.

  “I ought to after all this time,” I said, smiling.

  Chapter 4

  “Wait, a sec… that’s not accurate. No way would he go in there alone without backup. That’s the very first thing you learn at the police academy.”

  I stopped reading, lowering my glasses and shooting Daniel a sharp look. He was lying in bed next to me. His fingers were laced behind the back of his head as he stared up at the ceiling and listened to me read a chapter from The Lady in the Glass — I still hadn’t been able to put it down.

  “That entire horrifying scene with the ghost and the storm and the premonition, and all you can say is that it’s not accurate?”

  Daniel shrugged, looking over at me.

  “What can I say? I’m a stickler for the truth. I know it’s fiction, but it’s hard to buy into any of it with an error that obvious.”

  He let out a long yawn.

  “And anyway, I didn’t really find any of it all that horrifying. I mean — I’ll hand it to the guy. He’s a good writer. But I don’t know… all that ghostly business? It seems like a lot of nonsense to me.”

  I reached over to the nightstand, grabbing the cup of hot salted caramel cocoa I’d just made, and took a long sip. Then I raised an eyebrow at my husband.

  “Nonsense? Forty-five percent of Americans believe in ghosts. Did you know that?”

  Ashcroft had said the line earlier to the audience before his reading, and I was only regurgitating it now. But it seemed like a convincing enough fact.

  “So?” Daniel said.

  “So a lot of people find this stuff scary,” I said. “Myself included.”

  I set the hot chocolate down on the nightstand and then stared at the flames crackling in our bedroom fireplace. It was nice being inside by a fire on a night like this. Every once in a while, a stiff wind would blow outside, causing the fire to flicker and shoot embers up into the chimney.

  “Are you saying you really believe in ghosts, Cin?” Daniel asked, turning toward me and propping his head up on the palm of his hand.

  I looked down at the book for a long moment.

  “I think things happen sometimes that can’t be explained,” I finally said. “I’ve had a few moments like that before.”

  I trailed off, remembering a cold, windy night just like this over twenty years earlier. It had been a few weeks after my mom’s funeral. I’d woken up from a bad dream, scared and alone in my bedroom. And I swore that in the darkness of that night, I heard my mom’s voice saying my name softly, almost like a lullaby.

  In the daylight, I’d explained the moment away as something that had been part of the dream. But sometimes, when I thought about it late at night, I wasn’t so sure if it had been a dream at all.

  I glanced over at Daniel, who seemed to be deep in thought.

  “You’ve never had anything inexplicable happen to you?” I asked.

  He shook his head immediately as if he’d expected the question.

  “Nope. Can’t say that I have.”

  He gazed into the fire for a second.

  “I’m not completely close-minded about ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call ‘em, Cin. But I’d hate to think what Ashcroft Black writes is anything but fiction. It seems like murder victims suffer enough without having to become ghoulish spirits wandering the earth for all eternity until someone avenges them.”

  He let out a short sigh, looking up at the ceiling.

  “Just wouldn’t seem fair.”

  A wicked gust caused the boards of the house to creak loudly. A shiver ran through me.

  Huckleberry, who was sleeping at the edge of the bed, lifted his head and looked at us sleepy-eyed for a long minute, as if we were responsible for the noise.

  I patted the dog on the back, letting him know it was okay.

  He let out a big, exhausted sigh before letting his head drop again into the soft folds of the comforter.

  I smiled at the silly pooch.

  Daniel gently took the book out of my hands, placed the aspen leaf I’d been using for a bookmark between the pages, and set it aside on his nightstand.

  “I say it’s too spooky of a night to be reading this kind of stuff, darlin,’” he said. “What do you think?”

  I wiggled under the covers, moving closer to him.

  “You know — my fingers were getting cold from turning those pages, anyway.”

  He reached over, grabbing my hands and rubbing them between his.

  “Come here and let me warm you up.”

  A serene feeling came over me as I gazed into his loving green eyes, listening to the fire crackling and the sound of the dogs peacefully snoring.

  “Word on the street is that you’ve got a new fall pie in the works these days,” he said. “Something about maple or another?”

  “Word sure travels fast in this town.”

  “Only when there’s something worth talking about. Now, give me the rundown on this new one of yours, Cin. Is it a chess pie? You pairing some fruit with this maple, or is it chocolate?”

  “If you’re that curious, I’ll bring you a slice tomorrow,” I said.

  “My fiery pie baking beauty — I thought you’d never ask.”

  I let out a laugh, holding him tighter as another stiff breeze howled against the house.

  “I swear, Daniel Brightman. Some days I wonder if you married me for me or for my pies.”

  “I’d think the answer to that is obvious,” Daniel said.

  “Let me hear it anyway.”

  “Fine. If you insist, Cin, I married you for—”

  Daniel stopped speaking and looked up at the ceiling, as if truly contemplating the question.

  He rubbed his beard.

  “Actually, now that I think about it, I did marry you for—”

  I pushed his shoulder playfully before he could finish the sentence, knowing by the goofy expression on his face that he was planning on teasing me some.

  “Daniel Brightman!”

  He reached forward, wrapping his arms around my waist, giving me a rakish smile.

  “I’m just playing with you, Cin. You know the real reason I married you. Because I couldn’t live another day without you as my wife. Because you set my soul on fire. Because I’d be a pile of ash without you.”

  “That’s more like it,” I said.

  “And also because nobody on earth makes a pie like you, Cinnamon Peters.”

  My lips curled up into a smile.


  When he put it that way, I couldn’t possibly stay mad at him.

  The cold wind blew hard the rest of that night.

  But I fell asleep feeling warm and cozy in Daniel’s arms.

  Chapter 5

  When I opened the door to the old red barn, I was met by such a sonic blast of air in the form of James Hetfield’s growl, I was surprised my hair didn’t stay fixed in a Bride of Frankenstein updo for the rest of the day.

  I was tempted to just turn around and run down the leaf-scattered country lane to where I’d left the Escape, but then I summoned my courage, reminding myself that occasionally, my own pie shop kitchen got this loud with music when I was in a stormy mood.

  Of course, I was usually playing Otis or Townes Van Zandt – not Metallica.

  But to each his own.

  I let the door close behind me. The barn was a big, rustic-looking space, and it took me a second to locate the man who I assumed was Josiah Harris.

  I took the long walk over to the large table in the corner as Hetfield let loose a howl. Josiah hadn’t heard me on account of the loud music and because he appeared to be intently focused on scooping out a heap of pumpkin guts from a gourd that must have weighed as much as a fourth grader.

  “Excuse me?”

  Josiah didn’t look up. Lars’ wild drumming was winning out over the speakers.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Davis!?”

  The man with the dark beard and tattoo sleeves up and down his arms finally glanced up. He didn’t seem to be surprised in the least to see somebody standing in his barn.

  He calmly reached for a small stereo control and clicked it several times. The music receded like a wave going back out into the ocean.

  Sweet sonic relief.

  “Sorry,” he mumbled, tossing the control down. “Didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Are you Josiah Davis of Punkin’ Pumpkin Art?”

  “That’s me,” he said, gruffly, nodding to the workbench littered with saws and pumpkin seeds.

  “Great. I’d like to order a few carved pumpkins for Halloween.”