by Tim Curran
She tiptoed slowly towards the tree, which was softly illuminating the room around it, grasping at Mr Hops and holding him close to her pounding heart.
The presents were already stacked high around the glowing tree and the stockings were stuffed full to their brims, so Santa must've been finishing up his snack before moving on to the neighbour’s house; Emily had to hurry if she wanted to see him.
She shuffled around the tree and there he was! It was really him, knelt down on one knee stuffing his face with something, but that wasn't where she left the mince pie and milk. She looked over at the mantlepiece, confused to see the refreshments indeed gone. So what was he eating?
“Santa?” she called out in a timid little voice.
Santa sprung up to his feet, as if surprised by the little girl’s presence behind him.
“Santa, is that you?” she asked tremulously.
Slowly Santa began to turn around, and as he did, something caught Emily’s eye. She looked down by his boots and noticed it: Santa’s midnight snack lying there in a pool of red. She looked back up in horror to see his beard stained red. He had feasted upon Emily’s dog, Patch; his blood-soaked collar still hanging from the old man’s dripping mouth.
Emily couldn't believe her eyes, this thing was not Santa, it couldn't be! Its mouth snarled like a feral animal, revealing two rows of razor sharp, jagged teeth. Its long hooked nose scrunched tighter with every snarl and as she stared into its crimson eyes, she felt her legs tremble and knees buckle as her bladder gave way, releasing dark yellow urine all over the living room rug.
The creature stared at Emily with a wild look in its eyes and as the little girl screamed for her parents, the monster opened its jaws wider than seemed physically possible and pounced.
Emily’s tiny body jerked and jolted as the creature clamped its teeth down, devouring her head in a single bite.
Mr and Mrs Milton thundered down the stairs at their daughter’s shriek, but as they rushed into their living room, they couldn't have prepared themselves for the nightmare which stood before them.
It didn't take the creature long to notice them, as it sucked the last leg of the little girl into his mouth like it was a string of spaghetti before grinning at its next victims.
The screams of Emily's parents soon transformed into bubbling gurgles when the creature darted across the room and thrust its claws into the couple’s stomachs, pulling out their intestines and shovelling them into its mouth.
When all of the snacks were gone, it climbed up the chimney and made its way to the next house; it was Christmas Eve and it still had a lot of stops before sunrise.
The End
About the Author
J. L. Lane is an English author, poet and artist, currently residing in the county of Cheshire. She is best known for her short stories in many horror anthologies, including two in the anthology entitled 'Fifty Shades of Slay' by Alucard Press, and has many more short stories due to be released. She has previous published work in the mythical fantasy genre and has a completed horror novel.
She is active on social media and shares news of her work there.
She is also the Founder of Anthology House Publishing, an up and coming publishing service which serves as a completely free platform for authors and readers alike.
She has enjoyed writing for as long as she can remember. It was a passion she inherited from her father and one she hopes her sons will inherit from her one day. Writing has always been her dream.
https://www.twitter.com/J_L_Lane
https://www.facebook.com/J.L.LaneAuthor/
The Christmas Spirit
By
Lisa Morton
“Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
Ray handed her a small package wrapped simply in tissue paper with a length of hemp cord wound around it.
Elise looked up in surprise; the clock on the mantel read just after four. “
Why so early?” She regretted the words as soon as she said them; she knew Ray would think she was refusing the gift. She tried to recover with a smile as she reached for the present.
He handed it over. “Just open it.”
She did, with an odd knot of dread in her stomach. Things hadn’t been good between them for a while, ever since the fertility experts had been unable to help them conceive. Elise had inherited Great Aunt Priscilla’s house a month ago, and they’d decided to get out of the city, leave London and spend the holiday at the old country place before they put it on the market. It was an isolated cottage, situated near a peat bog in the Yorkshire countryside. Aunt Priscilla hadn’t actually lived in it for years, having forsaken the isolation for the relative comforts of the city. It’d taken them six hours to negotiate the holiday traffic coming up from London, and the place was a slight let-down – neither old enough to be romantic and intriguing, nor nice enough to bring a decent price. “Dear God,” Ray had said as he’d pulled their bags from the car, his feet crunching on ice and gravel, “someone actually lived out here?”
The inside was dusty and dim, with just enough furniture left behind to make it function as a residence. Elise had brought a few Christmas decorations along, but the strings of twinkling lights and fragrant green wreaths did little to enliven the gloom.
That arrival had been two days ago. They’d quarreled and retreated to silence since; today, the 24th, Ray had spent most of the day in the village while Elise had puttered in the kitchen with a roast and Christmas pudding. Now she tried to act happy as she unwrapped the gift, but she was imagining it as something sarcastic and cruel – a baby name book, perhaps.
It was a book, an old hardback bound in plain green cloth. She opened it and read the title page:
The Christmas Spirit
By
Mrs. H. Warren
Privately Printed by the Author
1895
“I found it in the antique store in the village,” Ray said. “The proprietor thought the author might have lived around here.”
Elise flipped forward a few pages, looking for a clue about why Ray had bought this, but she found only a first chapter about a young widow spending Christmas with an eccentric aunt. She looked up at Ray, trying to seem merely curious.
“Remember last week, we were talking about how people once read ghost stories to each other on Christmas Eve? I thought maybe we could read this aloud tonight. Might be fun.”
“Oh, yes – of course.” Elise closed the book and saw the author’s name in gilt on the spine – Mrs. H. Warren. There was something vaguely familiar about the name, but she couldn’t place it. “I wonder who she was, and why she had this privately printed…”
Ray laughed as he headed for the kitchen, going for the wine. “She probably wasn’t good enough to sell to a real publisher. Nowadays she’d just put her self-published e-book online.”
“Probably.”
By the time Ray came back with a glass of Merlot, Elise had read the first two pages. “Actually, it’s not bad.”
He sipped the red wine, settled into the worn old green couch before the hearth, and said, “Read it to me.”
“Now? Shouldn’t we do it after dinner, when it’s dark?”
Ray shrugged. After eight years of marriage, Elise knew that gesture meant he wasn’t happy, but he didn’t think it was worth fighting over. She relented. “Tell you what: Pour me a glass of that, and I’ll start reading.”
Smiling, Ray rose, heading to the kitchen.
The smell of the roasting meat filled the house, a small fire glowed from the hearth, and Elise tried to feel comfortable in the house, but she couldn’t. She remembered visiting it once as a child. That had been in June, but even then the house had been chilly, and there was something Elise could only describe as “oppressive” about its atmosphere. Her Great Aunt Priscilla had lived here then, surrounded by frilly pieces of the past – ceramic dog figures, tatted doilies, ruffled pillows, framed photographs of other people’s children – but Elise wondered if all the manufactured chee
riness had been her aunt’s attempt at covering up the essential gloom of the house.
There’d been something else on that visit, something Elise had never confessed to her skeptical husband: She’d been playing outside, alone, in a small out-building that served as a combination storage shed/garage. She’d felt an odd sensation, like a chill without a cold temperature, and had turned to see a man watching her. He was inside the garage, in the farthest, darkest corner. Even shadowed as he was, she saw quite plainly his old-fashioned suit, his handsome face, his large hands. “Hello,” she said.
He didn’t answer.
“Do you know my aunt?”
He continued to stare.
Eight-year-old Elise felt another chill, and turned to race back to the house. She bounded into the kitchen, where her mother and aunt were preparing tea. “Aunty Priscilla, who’s that man in the garage?”
“What man, dear?”
“He wouldn’t tell me his name, but he’s wearing very old clothes, like something from an a black and white movie.”
Priscilla, already a pale, older woman, had gone completely white. Elise’s mum had noticed, grabbing at Priscilla’s arm in concern. “Are you all right? What is it?”
“Oh, it’s…” Priscilla shook her head before continuing, “…there’s no one there, dear. Just a pile of old cans with some towels draped over them. You’re not the first one to see something there.”
“But I did see a man.” Elise turned to her mother. “Mummy, there is a man out there, come see –”
Mum had cast a quick look at Priscilla, whose expression remained carefully blank. “I’ll be right back.”
Priscilla just nodded.
Elise led her mother across the yard to the outbuilding. She raised her hand to point. “He’s back –”
She broke off as she realized they were alone. No man in an antiquated suit; just what Priscilla had described, a stack of containers and cleaning cloths.
“There, darling, you see? Aunty Priscilla was right. There’s no one there.”
Elise hadn’t openly protested, but she knew what she’d seen. A man.
Or…something that was not a man.
That’d been nearly thirty years ago. Not long after that, Priscilla had moved and the house had been forgotten, until a few weeks ago when Elise had been shocked to find that Priscilla had died with no other kin and had left her estate to her grand-niece. There wasn’t much – a small bank account, some old belongings, a family album that Elise found fascinating – and Elise doubted the old cottage would be worth much. Unless it could save her marriage.
She heard footsteps overhead, and wondered why Ray had gone upstairs. Perhaps he’d forgotten something –
Ray returned from the kitchen, extending a full glass to her. She took it, puzzled. “Were you just upstairs?”
“No. Why?”
“Odd. I heard footsteps.”
Ray set the rest of the wine bottle on the table near the couch and resumed his seat there. “Ooh, that sounds like the beginning of the ghost story right there.”
“Hardly.” Elise sipped her wine, then picked up Mrs. Warren’s book. “This was written in 1895, so don’t expect CGI effects.”
“Just read.”
Elise cleared her throat and began. “Chapter One…”
The Christmas Spirit
By
Mrs. H. Warren
Chapter One
At twenty-three, I was too young to be a widow, or at least that’s what everyone told me.
But accidents don’t care who’s too young or too old; they’re impartial when it comes to age. Otherwise, my Henry would still be alive, instead of moldering in a grave at the age of twenty-four.
“A freak accident”, they called it. No one could have foreseen the machinery blowing apart in quite so spectacular a fashion at the exact instant that the factory foreman – Henry – was walking past. A plate-sized cog wheel caught him in the head. They said the machinery could never have been expected to do that, that it was really quite safe. They told me it had been instantaneous, that he hadn’t suffered.
I, on the other hand, certainly had.
Henry and I had been married for two years. At the time we were wed, I had no family to speak of except dear old Aunt Vanessa; Henry, on the other hand, had family, but despised them all and invited none of them to the wedding. Until we could start our own family, we were really all each other had.
But we hadn’t been blessed with children yet. We’d bought a lovely little place just outside Manchester; it had enough room for the son and daughter we hoped for. We clung to the notion that my own mother had had me late in her life – she’d been in her thirties – so perhaps ours would simply arrive later.
Then my world was taken from me. Henry was dead. There would be no children.
He’d left me with enough money to survive on for the immediate future, but when he died it was two weeks before Christmas, and I was quite naturally devastated, to the point where Aunt Vanessa feared I might attempt something foolish. She wrote me letters daily, urging me to join her for Christmas. “Dearest Jane,” the letters would say, “you know how I care for you and worry about your future, because you’re really all I have left.” She even suggested that I might consider a permanent move.
I wasn’t ready yet to give up our little Manchester home, but the idea of spending Christmas alone also held no appeal to me, so on the 21st of December I wrote her back to tell her I was coming. It took me a day to make arrangements, and I was off.
The train north was decent, but finding transportation from the station to Aunty’s cottage proved more difficult – Carlton Abbey, the village where I disembarked, had no regular cab service. I finally found a man who agreed to drive me out in his open hay wagon, but because it was now late in the day, we’d have to wait until tomorrow morning.
“Nobody goes out that way towards dark,” he muttered, in the thick local accent.
Luckily the village inn had a room to let; it was clean and quite tolerable. The bartender’s wife was a kindly middle-aged woman named Sarah who had broad hips and vivid red cheeks. She brought me a bowl of savory stew once my bags had been taken upstairs and surprised me by asking if she could sit with me and talk for a few minutes. “Of course,” I answered.
She pulled out one of the sturdy pub chairs and addressed me with a serious tone. “I don’t mean to pry, miss, but…how much do you know about that old house and your aunt?”
The question surprised me. “Not much about the house, and only a little more about Aunt Vanessa.”
“Have you visited these parts before?”
I shook my head. “No. I’ve only met my aunt a few times, and those were always when she visited my family. We never came to see her.”
Sarah thought for a moment, and then said, “The house is not right.”
“Whatever do you mean? Is it unsafe?”
“In a manner of speaking. And your aunt – she’s not a bad sort, but there are things about her you don’t know.”
“Such as…?”
Sarah caught her husband watching her from behind the bar as he polished glasses with a towel. She lowered her eyes, pulling away from the table. “It’s not my place to say more. Just…be cautious, miss.”
She left, returning to the kitchen. After a few moments her husband followed, and I heard a muffled conversation occur between them.
I finished the excellent stew and returned to my upstairs room without seeing them again. The bed was comfortable enough, the fireplace kept the temperature at an adequate level, but sleep eluded me. I kept going over Sarah’s words in my head. Something was wrong with the house? And my aunt apparently possessed – what, disturbing qualities she’d kept hidden from the rest of her family?
I would find out the answers to these questions soon enough.
###
Elise lowered the book. “And that’s the end of Chapter One.”
Smirking, Ray said, “I think I’ve seen this m
ovie before. It’s not exactly wildly original, is it?”
“It does feel a bit like a Hammer horror movie. Still, I like its earnest tone. Shall I keep going?”
Ray poured himself another glass of wine, and Elise realized he was already drunk. “Why not? Let’s hear all about Aunty.”
Elise returned to the book. “Chapter Two…”
###
The next morning – the 23rd – dawned chilly and gray. Outside, snow was falling; it had already piled up against the sides of Carlton Abbey’s few buildings. I wondered if my trip to the house would be delayed, but Mr. Murphy, the wagon driver, appeared at the inn at exactly 8 a.m. He handed me a rough woolen blanket. “Here, miss – you’ll need that for the trip.”
We loaded my bags onto his buckboard wagon. The two horses drawing the contraption stamped in the cold, their breath coming in cloudy snorts. Finally we took our places on the open driver’s bench, tugging hats and cuffs and blankets into place. Mr. Murphy gave the reins a little flip, and off we went.
It’s possible that, at some point in my life, I’ve been colder, but if so I have no memory of it. I wondered if we wouldn’t have been better off in a sleigh, but the snow hadn’t built up much yet and the simple but tough wagon served fine. Mr. Murphy wasn’t a loquacious companion, but I did learn that he made this trip once a week, bringing food and supplies to my aunt. Occasionally he brought her into the village so she could tend to various matters, but I was the first visitor he’d brought out to her.
The trip took about an hour. By the time we passed the peat bog and the cottage appeared behind a whitened hedge, I wondered if I might have frostbite. I was moving stiffly as I stepped down from the wagon and heard a voice from the house: “Oh my dear, my Jane, come inside at once!”
