“He’s convinced this doll is trying to hurt him,” Jeremy overheard her on the phone. “No, it’s only this one doll, an elf. Yeah, you know, the one that comes for the month before Christmas and watches the kids to report back to Santa? I just don’t know what to do. I’m worried. When can I bring him in for an appointment?”
Jeremy knew his parents didn’t believe him about the elf. At only six years old, even he knew how crazy it sounded. Christmas Eve was the night the elf would go back to Santa for good, so Jeremy only had to make it one more night until Christmas morning.
But, wait, Jeremy thought. I touched him. Does that mean he has to stay?
Before he could worry any further, he heard his mom walking toward him. She picked him up and squeezed him in her embrace.
“Hey, honey,” she cooed. “How are you feeling today?”
“Okay, Mommy.”
“We’re having your favorite thing for supper, tonight,” Karen said as she kneeled down in front of him.
“Pancakes?” Jeremy asked, bouncing on his heels excitedly.
“You’re going to help, right?” Karen winked at Jeremy as she walked back toward the kitchen.
Jeremy skipped behind her, squealing with delight. As he mixed the pancake batter and his mother blared the Christmas music, he completely forgot about the terrifying elf. His favorite part of pancakes, though, wasn’t helping to make them. It was using chocolate candies, bananas, and whipped cream to make a funny face.
After supper, Jeremy ran to the living room and sifted through the gifts. Gary and Karen stood in the doorway, watching Jeremy struggle with picking out his Christmas Eve gift. The last event of Merry Month was opening one gift on Christmas Eve. Jeremy didn’t realize it, but his parents always had one gift specifically for this, and they had become experts at covertly persuading him to pick it.
“Oh, look at that red gift in the corner,” Gary said in an amazed voice.
“No,” Karen said, waving her hand at Gary. “Definitely the gold one right in the center of the gifts.”
Jeremy looked at the sparkly red wrapping paper of the gift his father pointed out, then at the shiny gold one. He looked back and forth a few times, trying to consider which looked better. The red one was bigger, but the gold one was shiny.
He quickly reached out and grabbed the gold one as he exclaimed, “This one!”
Ripping the wrapping paper off, he saw the contents of the box were a set of pajamas, a Christmas-themed book, a movie, a mug with hot chocolate mix, and a popcorn bowl.
“A movie night kit, just like last year,” Jeremy said, as Karen and Gary waited with bated breath. “Yes!” he exclaimed with a fist pump.
Karen and Gary breathed a sigh of relief. He hadn’t caught onto their game yet.
After the movie—accompanied by hot chocolate and popcorn, of course—Jeremy rushed through brushing his teeth and threw on his pajamas. He jumped into bed, clutching the new book in his arms as Karen sat down next to his bed.
His eyelids drooped before the end of the second page. By the last page, he was softly snoring, but Karen finished the story anyway. She closed the book and set it on his nightstand before kissing him on the forehead, tucking the blanket under him, turning out the light, and walking quietly out of the room to finish wrapping presents and set up the “evidence” of Santa’s visit.
In the middle of the night, Jeremy’s eyes snapped open as he heard his bedroom door creaking open. He heard a little bell jingling and threw his blanket over his head as the sound came closer.
“Mommy and Daddy said it’s not real. It’s just my imagination,” Jeremy said out loud as he squeezed his eyes shut. The jingling stopped and Jeremy let go of his breath, exhaling loudly with relief. He slowly pulled the blanket off his head and adjusted his pillow.
He was almost asleep again as he felt the blankets shift at the bottom of the bed. Without moving, he looked down toward his feet and saw Rudolph the elf walking from the end of the bed toward him—a large kitchen knife in its hand.
Jeremy opened his mouth to scream but couldn’t seem to find his voice. The elf climbed up on Jeremy’s chest and held the knife in the air, ready to plunge it down into him.
“It’s your turn, Jeremy.”
As the elf’s high-pitched voice transformed into maniacal laughter, Jeremy finally found his voice and screamed.
A little girl pulled on her mother’s sleeves as her mother stood at the counter to pay for the shirts she had just chosen at the thrift store.
“Courtney,” her mother Amy said patiently, pulling her arm out of her daughter’s grasp. “I’m a bit busy speaking with the woman behind the counter.” She put her hand on top of her daughter’s blonde-haired head in an attempt to keep her quiet, then turned her attention back to the sales associate, whose nametag read ‘Jenny’.
“These are some nice choices,” Jenny said as she folded one of the men’s shirts. “Getting started on your Christmas shopping?”
“It’s only a few weeks away,” Amy said, pulling her large purse off her shoulder.
“But, Mommy,” Courtney whined, “why is there an elf in a box?”
“What?” her mother asked with a confused sigh.
Courtney pointed to the table beside the cashier’s counter. A shiny box stood on display with a little red Christmas elf sitting inside behind a plastic window. His friendly smile just begged someone to pick him up. Amy stammered, not quite sure what to tell her seven-year-old daughter that wouldn’t ruin the myth behind the elf.
“Well,” she stalled before saying slowly, “he’s waiting.”
“For what?” Courtney’s wide eyes looked up to her mother in an intimately probing way.
“To be adopted, of course,” the young, red-headed sales associate chimed in.
“What’s adopted?” Courtney asked with an airy voice.
“When someone doesn’t have a home and another person decides to take them and give them a loving home,” Amy said quickly.
“Can we adopt him?” Courtney asked excitedly, clasping her hands in front of her face. “Please?”
Amy looked back and forth from Courtney to Jenny. With a sigh, she said, “Sure, honey.”
Jenny reached over and grabbed the box, putting it on the counter with the shirts. “Your new total will be twenty dollars even.”
Courtney’s mother rifled through her purse for the extra money. Courtney hugged her, muttering ‘thank you’ as she looked back at the elf, excited for the adventure she anticipated.
“We’re going to have so much fun,” Courtney squealed toward the elf.
She gasped as one of the elf’s eyes closed for a second and opened back up. The elf had winked at her. That was the proof she needed to know the story was true. “Mommy, the elf is real!”
“I know, dear,” her mother said dismissively as she handed the dollar bills to Jenny.
Jenny placed the shirts and the box into one large bag and handed it to Courtney. “Are you going to be your mom’s big helper?” she asked with a friendly smile.
Courtney took the handle of the bag eagerly as Amy crouched down, picking something up. It was another elf with plastic ties still wrapped around its hands and feet. “Looks like someone dropped an elf,” she said as she handed the elf to Jenny.
“That’s weird,” Jenny said with a perplexed look as she took the elf. “I could have sworn there was only one left. I must have missed one, I guess.”
“Well,” Amy said with a wide smile, “looks like you got another one just in time. I’m sure the Holiday rush will begin any day now.”
“That’s the truth.” Jenny laughed, putting the elf down on the cashier’s counter as she watched Amy and Courtney walk out of the store.
About M. W. King
M. W. King spends most of her time chasing three little monsters she calls her children, cooking for her husband, and rushing around to school or work. She struggles to squeeze her writing between all of her other hobbies, which include daydr
eaming, yarn crafts, napping, and giving facials. After six years in the Navy, she decided one tour on a ship was enough and came back to her home in New England. One of her dreams is to have one of her own stand-alone pieces published traditionally. The goal she strives for in most of her writing is to connect with others and help people realize they are not alone.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MWKing.Author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MpWKing
Our House
By Kevin Grover
It’s Christmas and the kids are in bed, warm and snug as the snow falls outside. Old Bing dreams of a white christmas, but my dreams are of a red christmas. Blood on snow gives a splash of colour in a world of black and white. Harsh landscapes that cause the soul to shiver. I don’t like christmas, not since moving to this house. I hear too many echoes from past christmases that I can’t tell which one I’m currently in. It’s a strange sensation to lose yourself in time, like losing your mind, I suppose.
It’s this house, remembering times gone by, a hundred christmas gatherings of families long gone, long dead. And then there’s my perfect little family. Will they all soon become an echo in time? Will it be their blood soaking the white christmas outside?
I am walking down the hallway, moving from room to room. The voices of past families chatter away as I make my nightly rounds, checking the windows are closed, the doors locked. Don't want anyone getting in, but there's a part of me that doesn't want anyone getting out. My wife is waiting upstairs for me in bed, angry at my obsessive behaviour. It's about being safe, keeping the world out because it's dangerous. Am I a bad person because I want to keep my family safe? We have two daughters and I'll look in on them one more time, just a peek through the crack in their bedroom door. But first my checks, ending in the front door where I'll slide the heavy bolt across, double lock the door. When I do this and hear the click of the key turn within the barrel, I sigh with relief and feel some of the tension leave me.
It's coming up to midnight on christmas. Somewhere I hear a clock chiming, one of those old pendulum swinging clocks this house once had. When I close my eyes and rest my head against the plasterboard walls, I can hear it all. I hear laughter of children from long ago, their thumping footfalls running around. There are parties and celebrations and I can hear We Wish You a Merry Christmas sung by at least five different families across several decades. All united here in this house that I have now come to possess. The joy I sense lifts me up and I want to burst into fits of happy laughter. Without realising, I find I am screaming with laughter, verging on the hysterical. My stomach hurts from laughing, my breath almost gone. I suck in some air and I’m laughing again, but at some point I realise the laughter has turned to tears. Look at me, I’m crying on christmas. Is there anything sadder?
Yes. There’s the blood covering the snow outside, a red christmas instead of a white one. Is that an echo of the past or is it something from the future? I shudder, thinking of my family, the ones so dear to me that I want to protect on christmas day. But they’ve been naughty this Christmas and Santa doesn’t like naughtiness.
I turn from the door and face the stairs, looking up to the darkened landing where I see a glow of a bedside lamp from the bedroom. I pause at the foot of the stairs as We Wish You a Merry Christmas fades away and I hear the shouting. The screaming. The party has ended. It always happens in this house as the darkness seeps out through the cracks. There’s a woman crying right there on the bottom step. I hear a pacing of a man right behind me. Can almost feel a breeze as he moves by. There's an angry curse and the woman is running upstairs. I can't see them and I am glad. It's the past, something long forgotten. Yet it's here in this house, like a maggot in an apple. No one else can hear the echoes from the house like I can because no one else understands the house like me. It is special to me, as I am to it. When I drove by a year ago and saw the house sat back from the country lane and swamped in weeds, my heart broke. It was as though there was a woman crying by the road, beaten and bruised. No one wanted to help her, just turned away as if shamed by her. And I remember getting out of my car, walking through the rusting front gate and up the overgrown path to a thing that was once beautiful. And as I stared transfixed by the front door, looking at the broken windows and a roof full of holes, I heard a weak voice.
Help me, Glen.
The house knew me, called out for my help in a female voice. With a loving touch, I caressed the front door and I knew the house had to be mine. I would take care of her, make her right. She would never have to suffer again with such neglect. So I found out it was for sale, had sat on the estate agents books for years without interest. They called it the Murder House in town. I’d put the offer in without Gale's knowledge, but I knew she would come round. Once I had done her up, she would be a fine place to bring our daughters up in. I could picture Abi and Laura playing in the garden right by the old oak that must pre date the house.
Right where I imagine the blood soaking into the snow…
I smile with pride and look around the hall at how far the house has come. The windows are no longer broken and there're no holes in the roof. The garden is a neat lawn and the gate no longer rusty. Gale didn't think I could do it, make the place great once again with what limited building skills I had. With a fresh lick of paint, new carpets and central heating, Gale is pleased with my choice. We have a big house in the country, a dream we thought about for retirement. And I hear the house speaking to me, telling me how much she loves me. And when there's no one around I whisper that I love her back. Sometimes it feels like I am cheating on Gale, but it's not like that, really. It's a love of family, like the house is my Mother who died when I was a boy. She’s always looking out for us, always making sure we’re safe and trying to protect us from the evil that’s nested in here a long time ago.
She see when you’re sleeping…
She knows when you’re awake…
As I go to walk upstairs, I see a flap of wallpaper hanging in a torn strip. They tried to cover it by moving the coat stand in front of it. But I see it like a massive flap of flesh. Someone has hurt my house and left her to bleed. There is nothing but screaming in my head, drowning out the joy. It's my house in pain, asking how I could have let this happen. I can hear the voices of past families judging me. But I wasn't the one to let her rot, had never abandoned her. Never would. We are all going to stay here and sing We Wish You a Merry Christmas on countless more christmases.
You better watch out…
You better not cry…
I take a step upstairs, my hand gripping the bannister with knuckle white tension as I wonder who has hurt my house. The doors and windows are locked, and there's no escape. Sometimes, you have to be firm when people hurt the one you love. Sometimes you have to protect family from family.
I’m dreaming of a bloody christmas…
Pausing halfway up, I hear the laughter from the past turn into tears and screams. I sense pain and suffering, smell fear. There's that rot that hides in the house surfacing in the currents of time, refusing to be washed away. Bad things happened here, but it's an old house where many people have lived. It can't all be smiles and Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas. It's the part the house doesn't want me to see, but a mother can't protect her children from all the darkness.
Or all the murders.
My head spins as I continue up the stairs, climbing up the wooden hill to Bedforshire, drawn towards the light in the bedroom. My anger is bubbling away, reaching boiling as I think of the torn paper. They’ll think it’s just a small thing, a tiny little rip that no one will notice. You might as well take an axe to the house. When I reach the landing, I see a dark red stain on the cream carpet. It’s not like the blood on the snow which to me seems so beautiful. I clench my fists. Gale likes to take a glass of red wine to bed, must've spilt it and left the stain. It's about respect, about protecting mother because she keeps us safe, provides shelter.
"Gale?" I walk to the half open door of the bedroom, my
feet creaking the boards. I can hear the tremour in my voice, the effort it takes to control my anger. There's no answer. I reach out, push the door open with enough force for it to smash into the wall. I grit my teeth, scared I've hurt the house. There's just the gentle, soothing hush like wind blowing through the trees and it tells me the house is fine. My attention goes back to the room. The bed is empty, a single lamp on my side glowing warmly. There's no Gale. I leave the room, make my way down the landing and stop outside Abi and Laura's room. The sound of children playing filters through, laughter and whispers when they know they should be in bed. Christmas is over for the year. My hand pushes the door open and I jump in, expecting to catch them out.
He knows if you’ve been sleeping…
No one is in the room. Scanning over the girl's bedroom, I find it bare. The beds are just mattresses and a wardrobe hangs open with nothing but empty hangers swinging back and forth. I still hear the children playing, but it's just the echoes of the house. Walking to Laura's bed, I sit down, the springs groaning underneath. The house, mother, tries to reach out to me, but I'm not listening. I drove them away, I remember. There was an argument. The house remembers and I can hear voices from the more recent past. My own past.
"You care more about this house than us," Gale says, her eyes filling with tears. "We might as well be ghosts!”
"You'll not leave," I hear myself say. "You'll be back. You can’t leave at christmas.”
I hear feet hammering down the stairs, a woman crying with two screaming girls. It's too much to hear and I want the house to forget it. But she remembers everything, all the joy and all he pain. I get up, look out the window across meadow and rolling hills. How could I forget they'd left me? Had I not spoken to them just before I went on my night rounds? But it's just the house, I realise, playing back the years like a repeat on telly. There’s always repeats at christmas.
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