I'll Be Home for Christmas

by Tom Becker

  She was talking to her like she was a little girl, but for once Holly nodded meekly and did exactly as her gran told her.

  14 December

  Holly and Mart were standing beneath the elm on the green when Dr Marshall’s 4x4 barrelled past, charging into the lane leading out the village. The big vehicle only made it a few metres before becoming becalmed on the white drifts. Wheels spun helplessly in the snow. Across the village, doors began to open, drawn by the noise. Holly tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear and thrust her hands in her pockets.

  “Didn’t you say he was going to take the twins abroad?” she said.

  Mart nodded. “Then the snow came. No one’s going anywhere now.”

  A group of villagers had appeared with shovels to help dig the vehicle out, but Dr Marshall was still jamming his foot down on the accelerator, trying to force the 4x4 forward. Over the snarling engine, Holly could hear the twins shouting to be let out of the car.

  “I thought I saw something last night,” she told Mart. “At Gran’s.”

  “Maybe Gwen Piper wants to make friends.”

  Holly punched him in the arm.

  “Ow!”

  “You’re not funny,” she said. “And what I saw wasn’t friendly.”

  Mart nodded at the 4x4. “Why else do you think he’s trying to leave?” he said.

  15 December

  That night the wassailers came forth, swathed in thick black cloaks and carrying bells and torches. They carved a fiery path through the village, singing and banging on doors, urging people from their homes. When Holly and Gran emerged, they were swept up by the procession. The carols sounded richer and darker than they had the previous year, solemn echoes from an earlier time – ‘Good King Wenceslas’, ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’, ‘I Saw Three Ships’. Gran slipped her hand in Holly’s and gave it a squeeze, keeping hold as the procession snaked through the lanes on to the village green.

  They came to a halt beneath the boughs of the elm tree, a large, torch-lit circle forming around its mottled trunk. The carol ended and another song began – a melody Holly didn’t recognize, sung in a tongue that barely resembled English. An older song, a song of the soil. The hairs on Holly’s arms stood up as the voices of the wassail rose to meet the keening wind. There was a movement on the other side of the tree and the ring parted to reveal Fran. She was dressed in a similar gown to the one she had worn as the Rose Princess, only this one was a deep crimson, and there was a crown of holly upon her head. Bells rang out across the green as Fran stepped forward, biting her lip. Billy Youds, white-haired and broad-shouldered, gravely handed her an ornate silver wassail cup. Fran pressed the cup to her lips and drank, liquid spilling down her chin and leaving a black trail upon her gown. She continued to gulp until the cup was empty, gasping when she was done.

  Around Holly people were clapping and cheering, but all she could do was stare at Fran, who looked almost dazed as she handed the cup back to Billy Youds. The old man raised it up to the skies and the wassailers joined in song once more.

  16 December

  When Gran went to visit a friend in the afternoon, Holly huddled beneath a blanket on the sofa and watched TV. Flicking through the channels, she came across a Christmas film in which a boy was left alone in his family’s house and had to defend it from a pair of burglars. He fought them off with a series of ingenious traps and was safely reunited with his parents. As the credits rolled, Holly looked around her living room and wondered what she would do if someone tried to break in. Would she hide in the cupboard under the stairs, or grab the heavy poker by the fire to defend herself? But the thought only drew her eyes back towards the chimney, and Holly was glad when she heard the back door open and Gran call out hello.

  17 December

  “What is it, Mart?”

  He had called round in the middle of dinner, much to Gran’s annoyance. As Holly stood in the hallway, she could hear the peeved scrape of cutlery across a plate from the dining room.

  “I went back to the graveyard,” Mart said, fidgeting with a toggle on his duffel coat.

  “Well done you. See you tomorrow.” Holly went to close the door.

  “Wait!” he hissed. “There are five more!”

  Holly frowned. “Five more what?”

  “I checked the other headstones. Since Gwen and Evan Piper, five more people have died on Christmas Day. That makes seven in thirty years!”

  The door to the dining room creaked open. Holly heard a loud harrumph.

  “You’re freaking out over nothing,” she told Mart quickly. “It’s just a coincidence. It’s winter, right? Lots of old people die in winter.”

  “That’s the thing – they weren’t old people. I checked their ages on the headstones.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “They were our age, Hol, all of them!”

  18 December

  In her dreams, Holly found herself walking down a long dark corridor lined with identical doors. She stopped by each one in turn, counting twenty-four until she came to one scored with deep scratches. Her heart thudding painfully in her chest, she realized it was her own wardrobe door.

  Holly sat bolt upright in her bed, her skin drenched in sweat. She glanced across the dark attic room towards her wardrobe, and was relieved to see that the door looked the same as always. But it was still a long time before she fell asleep again.

  19 December

  A hoarse yell jolted the village from its wary vigil. Racing to the window, Holly saw Rob Youds running through the snow towards Dr Marshall’s house with a large bundle in his arms. He was calling out for help. Holly slipped on her boots and ran out of the front door, almost bumping straight into Mart. He was out of breath, his face pale.

  “What’s going on?” Holly asked.

  “It’s Fran,” he said, gulping for air. “We were out by the pond and one minute she was skating and then, crack, she was gone. Rob went over to help, but Fran was splashing and screaming and it took him ages to pull her out. Her skin had turned grey and I don’t know… I don’t know if she was even breathing.”

  Holly glanced back towards the doctor’s house. Rob and Fran had been ushered inside by Mrs Marshall, a concerned crowd already gathering by the front door.

  “It’ll be OK, Mart,” Holly said. “You’ll see. It was just an accident.”

  “Says you.”

  Holly gave him a sharp look. “What do you mean? She fell through the ice, right?”

  Mart shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said. “Rob had Fran by the hand and he was pulling as hard as he could, but he couldn’t get her out. She was bobbing up and down in the water, but it looked like…”

  He trailed off.

  “It looked like what, Mart?”

  He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Like something had hold of her,” he said quietly. “Something that didn’t want to let go.”

  20 December

  It was as if the crack in the ice that had appeared beneath Fran’s feet had carried on into the village. There were bitter arguments in the street; in the local pub that night, two men came to blows. Fran remained at Dr Marshall’s house, suffering from shock and pneumonia. Holly heard a rumour that Billy Youds went back to the pond after dark, carrying a shotgun. But if something had been in the freezing water with Fran, it had long since gone.

  21 December

  Holly and Gran arrived for the evening carol service to find the church deserted, empty pews stretching out like a ribcage. They took a seat at the front, huddling together against the cold. Gran fished out a couple of wrapped sweets from her pocket and offered one to Holly. Several minutes went by before anyone appeared, and then an elderly couple eased themselves into the pew behind them. Every cough, every shuffle echoed in the silence. Eventually the choir came out and performed in front of the meagre congregation, filling the nave with their spiralling voices. Afterwards Holly took Gran’s arm and they made their way home slowly through the snow.

  Gran unlocked the back door and imm
ediately went to put the kettle on. “It’s bitter out, tonight,” she said, rubbing her hands. “How about a hot drink?”

  Holly went through into the living room and switched on a lamp.

  “I’m OK, thanks!” she called back.

  And stopped in her tracks.

  There was soot on the carpet, a thin black trail leading straight from the hearth to the door. The wind let out a thin moan down the chimney – in Holly’s mind’s eye, a pair of narrowed eyes stared at her through the darkness. In the kitchen Gran was humming away to herself, the kettle on the hob whistling along in a merry accompaniment. Holly stopped herself from going through to tell her. It was just soot, no need to frighten Gran. Not yet.

  The trail led out into the hallway, snaking up the steps towards Holly’s room. The walls seemed to close in around her as she crept up the stairs, casting hesitant glances back towards the lights downstairs. She pushed open the door. Moonlight was flooding in through the window, drenching her room in a milky glow. Everything was how she had left it – there were no threatening shadows lurking behind the door or beneath her bed. The trail of soot had come to an abrupt halt. Holly sank down on her bed and let out a deep sigh of relief.

  Gran’s voice floated up the stairs, calling her name. She rolled over, but her reply died in her throat. The wardrobe door was ajar, the handle stained black in the moonlight. Holly ran over and flung open the door, peering inside. Nothing but piles of neatly folded clothes. She pushed aside her shirts on the rail.

  The Christingle was gone. In its place hung a single ice skate, strung up by the laces. Its blade glinted wickedly in the light.

  Like something had hold of her, Mart had said about Fran. Something that didn’t want to let go.

  Holly slammed the wardrobe shut and slumped into a ball in the corner of her room, burying her face in her hands.

  Which was how Gran found her, minutes later.

  22 December

  “I’m so sorry, my love.”

  The two of them sat in the living room, nursing mugs of hot sweet tea. By now it was nearly one in the morning. Gran’s face was drawn as she gazed into the fire dwindling in the hearth.

  “I suppose I always knew you’d find out some day,” she said. “But I wanted to keep it from you for as long as possible. The fear, I mean. I’ve been living with it for so long, I wish he had come for me.”

  “Evan Piper, you mean,” Holly said coldly.

  “Evan Piper is dead.”

  “But something’s out there, isn’t it? Something bad.”

  For a time the only sound was the ticking of the clock. Then Gran got up and opened a drawer, handing Holly a creased photograph. A little girl in a snowy field waved at the camera, wrapped up in a woollen overcoat, scarf, hat and gloves. It was Holly’s mum. She stood in the shadow of a tall snowman with a lopsided coal grin, who leaned precariously over her. On the other side of the snowman a second girl with pigtails grinned a proud, gap-toothed smile.

  “Hello, Gwen,” Holly said softly.

  “She was a sweet girl,” Gran murmured. “But not smart and strong like you. She couldn’t bear the fact that the other children… I wouldn’t say they picked on her, but they didn’t want to be her friends. One Christmas morning, Gwen went out to the pond alone. No one knew whether the ice broke beneath her, or whether she chose to…” She trailed off. “Evan blamed the village for what happened. At the funeral he started shouting wildly: if only Gwen hadn’t gone to the pond alone, if she had only had a real friend. We were all too shocked to reply – and in any case, what could we have said?

  “After that Evan shut himself away in his house – wouldn’t answer the door, became a shadow in the window. Then, the Christmas after Gwen’s death, they found him. Evan had hanged himself from the elm on the green. He was ragged and dirty, his skin was covered in scars. He’d been … clawing at himself. The grief.”

  Holly shuddered. “That’s terrible.”

  “An absolute tragedy, my dear,” Gran nodded. “But still we didn’t understand. It took us so long. When one of Billy Youds’s girls vanished on Christmas Night, we thought she’d run away. It wasn’t until later, when a little boy disappeared after Midnight Mass, that we realized something was out there… A hunter. Years would pass by without incident and we would tell each other it was over. But then another child would be taken.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why keep it a secret?”

  “Because this isn’t a man the police can arrest, Holly!” Gran hissed. “It’s a beast, a monster. And on Christmas Night, it comes for the children. Your mother thought if she took you away, she might be able to save you from him. But when she died, I was all you had left, I didn’t have any choice! I’ve been doing everything I can to protect you.”

  “Protect me?” Holly laughed incredulously. “How? By hiding oranges in my wardrobe? Singing carols? All that stuff with the wassail cup and Fran – what good did it do her?”

  “You shouldn’t mock things you don’t understand.”

  “I know, I know.” The words were sour in Holly’s mouth. “It’s all about traditions and roots in the stupid soil. But we’re not talking about crops and harvests, are we?”

  “There are different kinds of harvests,” Gran said darkly.

  23 December

  Mart called late, just as a shivering Holly was burrowing deeper under the covers of her bed. She reached over to her bedside table and snatched up her phone, which was resting beside the photograph of her mum and Gwen Piper.

  “Hey,” she said quickly. “You OK?”

  “I guess,” he said morosely. “But Mum and Dad are fighting downstairs.”

  “What about?”

  “They won’t say. But Mum’s scared something bad’s going to happen. She wants to phone the police.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea,” Holly said. “Somebody’s got to do something, Mart.”

  Over the phone Holly heard a distant shout and a glass smashing. Mart went quiet. She could picture him at that moment, swivelling in his bedroom chair, staring up at his model planets.

  “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid, Hol,” he said.

  Gwen Piper’s gap-toothed smile beamed at Holly from her bedside table.

  “I promise,” she said.

  24 December

  The blizzard began around lunchtime on Christmas Eve, fat flakes tumbling down from an already darkening sky. The village huddled in silence. From her window, Holly watched the snow descend on deserted streets. Fires burned in every hearth, smoke rising up from the chimneys in silent, slender trails.

  Gran did her best to put a brave face on things, tuning the radio to Holly’s favourite station and making a Christmas buffet for tea. But neither of them were hungry. As night fell, the church bells rang out in warning. Holly could see Gran was fighting to stay awake, but she had stoked up the fire so much the heat was only making her sleepier. The crackling lullaby continued as the clock ticked on towards midnight. Finally, Gran’s eyelids drooped shut, her chin slumping against her chest.

  Holly waited until she was sure Gran was asleep before going through into the hallway and closing the living-room door behind her. Moving quickly and quietly, she put on a thick coat and boots and slipped out of the warm cottage into the night. The blizzard had stopped, leaving a perfect white carpet over the lanes. The air was sharp with cold. Lights glowed watchfully around the edges of firmly drawn curtains.

  Holly hurried down the lane and past the green, trying to block out the image of Evan Piper’s body swaying in the wind beneath one of the branches. She was doing her best not to think, not to question what she was doing, not to lose her nerve. In the distance, the Piper house gradually emerged from the darkness, its eaves sagging under the weight of the snow. Holly reached the gate to find it stuck fast – when she climbed over the fence she caught her jeans on the barbed wire, ripping them open.

  She pressed on, skirting around the side of the house. The snow here had
piled up into drifts, forcing her to wade through it. By the time she had reached the back door, she was out of breath. Holly tried the handle and found it open. A part of her had been hoping it would be locked, and that she would have to give up her plan and return to Gran’s warm cottage. But there were no excuses now. Her heart thudding in her chest, Holly stepped inside the Piper house.

  Somehow it was even colder inside than out. Holly edged through a series of dead rooms, the walls covered in faded bruises. Floorboards groaned beneath her feet. The building felt more than empty – hollowed out, somehow. Pressing deeper into the house, Holly tiptoed through a doorway and entered the room she had looked into three weeks earlier. Deep scratches disfigured the walls. The darkness in the hearth was as thick as tar. Crouching down, Holly took out the photograph of her mum and Gwen from her jeans’ back pocket and unfolded it. She laid it carefully down in the middle of the fireplace.

  “Here,” she whispered. “Take this. You’re not the only one to lose someone they love.”

  She stayed in a crouch, not daring to look up into the chimney. The house seemed to hold its breath. Then the chimney shivered, covering her in a light dusting of soot. From somewhere up inside the flue there came a long, shuddering sigh – to Holly’s ears, the sound of something very old and very tired settling to sleep. A small smile crept across her face. She stood up and turned away from the hearth.

  She was halfway out of the room when a harsh rasping noise stopped her in her tracks. Returning to the hearth, she kneeled down beside the photograph. Her mum and Gwen’s smiling faces had been obscured by a black cough of sticky soot.