Haunted Holidays

by Roberta Simpson Brown

  “My family will be hungry when they get here,” Kate said, “so we will eat an early supper. You won’t starve ’til then.”

  “Gee, Mom,” Richard persisted. “I’m hungry now. Can’t I have just a little piece?”

  “No,” Kate told him. “Now get on to town and pick up the folks. We wouldn’t want them to have to wait in the cold.”

  “Okay,” Richard agreed, and he took one last look at the pies before he and his dad climbed in the wagon and headed to town.

  While they were gone, Kate finished preparing the evening meal and left everything, except the pies, on the woodstove to keep warm. She wrapped a couple of last-minute gifts, and finally heard the wagon coming.

  The reunion was a joyous one. It had been almost a year since Kate had seen her family, and there were lots of hugs and chatter.

  “Mom,” said Richard, “are we going to eat soon? I want a slice of pie.”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Okay!” said Kate. “You win!”

  Nodding at Richard and her little brother, she said, “Why don’t you boys go to the barn and take a look at our new calf while we put the food out?”

  The boys dashed off to the barn, and Kate and her mother and grandmother set out the food. Kate was starting to call the boys in to eat when her brother ran to the door, screaming.

  “Come quick! Richard was getting some hay from the loft and the ladder slipped and fell on him. He’s not moving!”

  Ralph, Kate, and the others were out the door, running to the barn as fast as they could move. Richard was on the barn floor with the ladder across his head. A tiny trickle of blood ran from his ear down the side of his neck. Ralph reached him first and checked for a pulse. There was none. He was gone.

  Kate remembered hearing her own screams before she fainted. When she woke up, Doc Carter was standing beside the bed. Others were quietly sitting or standing about the room. Suddenly, it came back to her. She threw back the covers and wobbled to the table.

  “The pie!” she sobbed. “I’ve got to give him some pie. He’s hungry!”

  Ralph put his arm around her.

  “Come back to bed,” he told her. “He’s not hungry now.”

  The food was untouched on the table, but it was the pies that Kate focused on. This couldn’t be happening! Surely Richard would come walking in and they would all sit down to their meal.

  “I must insist that you come back to bed,” the doctor said. “You have to rest now. You have had a terrible shock.”

  Kate suddenly snatched up the pies and flung them against the wall. Then she fainted again.

  Days passed. Kate was vaguely aware of the funeral. She sat numb and unfeeling most of the time.

  Her family stayed a week as they had planned, but not to celebrate the holidays. They stayed to help Ralph and Kate get through the grief, but the sadness prevailed, and eventually they had to go home.

  Slowly, life had to be lived again. Kate never forgave herself for refusing to give her son just one piece of pie.

  “Why?” she would say. “It was such a small thing that he asked me to do.”

  She only made one other egg custard pie. She set it out to cool, and a sudden chill filled the kitchen. She felt the presence of someone in the room with her. She looked at the end of the table, and there she saw Richard, standing and smiling at her. When she took a step toward him, he vanished.

  Maybe Richard had come to say it was all right. Or maybe he was reminding his mother that she had denied his last request. In any case, it was too much for Kate to bear. She never made another egg custard pie, and even though it was Ralph’s favorite, he didn’t want her to.

  The Christmas Puppy

  According to those who knew him, Roberta’s grandfather, Louis Franklin Simpson, was a much-admired storyteller and entertainer. Traveling was in his blood, so he didn’t spend a lot of time on the farm. He liked to join the turkey drives and provide the drovers with entertainment in the form of songs, dances, and stories.

  Turkey drives in Kentucky were akin to cattle drives in the west. Drovers would herd turkeys in droves to market. It was a known fact, however, that the turkeys were in charge. If something spooked them or if they got tired, they took to the trees to roost. The drovers had no choice but to camp for the night at the location selected by the turkeys. Since these sites were sometimes quite isolated, the men especially enjoyed the talents of Grandpa Louis. He was their only distraction on these lonely nights.

  Grandpa Louis died before Roberta was born, so she never got to meet him. She did hear some of his stories that he passed on to her dad and uncles and even her sister. One of Roberta’s favorites is a Christmas story her dad passed on to her. When she thinks of this story, she says a special thanks to Grandpa Louis, whom she never met, but who brings her so much joy through his stories.

  The Carson family lived somewhere in north central Kentucky when Grandpa Simpson heard about them. Phillip Carson and his wife, Margie, had one young daughter named Madie. Christmas was coming, and little Madie had decided what she wanted for her special present.

  “I want a little white puppy,” she told her parents. “Will you please get one for me?”

  “I don’t know,” said her mother. “I don’t know who might have one.”

  There were no pet stores then in that part of the country, so the parents couldn’t go down and put in an order.

  “I think the Wades’ dog just had a litter of pups,” said her father. “I don’t know if they have a white one or not. We could go over and take a look.”

  “You have to promise to take care of it if we get one,” her mother told her.

  “Oh, I will! I promise!” said Madie.

  “And don’t get your hopes up until we find out,” said her father. “Even if they have a white puppy, Mr. Wade might have already promised it to someone else.”

  “Could we go tomorrow?” asked Madie. “It wouldn’t take long. They just live a mile or so down the road.”

  “All right,” her father said. “We’ll go in the morning.”

  Madie hardly slept that night, and she was the first one up in the morning. She gulped her breakfast and milk and waited impatiently for her parents to finish. Finally, they were in the wagon headed down the road.

  They received good news when they arrived at the Wades. There was one white pup in the litter.

  “You are welcome to him,” said Mr. Wade, “but he’s a little young to leave his momma right now. He will be the right age about Christmas.”

  “I’ll come pick him up on Christmas Eve,” said Mr. Carson.

  Madie didn’t want to leave the puppy behind, but she knew it was for the best.

  “He could tell that he was going to be my puppy,” she said. “I could just feel it!”

  Madie used the time while she waited for Christmas to fix the puppy a bed in a large basket. She used one of her doll quilts to line the bed so it would be comfortable for her new puppy when he arrived.

  Just before Christmas, Phillip Carson and Madie went into the woods and cut a perfect Christmas tree. That night, Margie, Phillip, and Madie decorated the tree with homemade ornaments, ropes made out of paper, and cotton for snow. They popped corn and laughed together as they prepared for their favorite holiday of the year. This Christmas at the Carsons’ home was not to be as happy as they thought, though.

  Four days before Christmas, Phillip took the wagon and horses into town for some last-minute baking supplies. While he was in town, a heavy snow mixed with sleet began to fall. As he neared his home, he could feel that the roads were already slick. Suddenly a small animal rushed through the bushes and startled the horses. They reared in the air and tried to run, but the wagon slid into a ditch by the side of the road. As Phillip climbed out of the wagon, the horses lunged forward and knocked him against the bank. His head hit a rock, and he never regained consciousness.

  Instead of a Christmas party at the Carson home, there was a wake. When the funeral was over and
the neighbors had come and gone, Margie and Madie were left alone with their grief. That night was Christmas Eve, but they did not feel like celebrating.

  “I wish Daddy had brought my puppy home before he died,” Madie said.

  “I’m sorry,” her mom told her. “I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

  “But Daddy promised,” said Madie. “I think he will find a way. The dead can walk on Christmas Eve, Momma. Maybe he will bring my puppy home.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Margie told her little daughter. “Come, let’s say our prayers and go to bed.”

  When Madie woke on Christmas morning, she thought at first that it was like any other Christmas. Then she realized that this year, her dad would not be there. Her mother was still asleep, but Madie lay there wide awake, listening. Something had caught her attention. Something was at the door. She heard scratching and heard a tiny yelp. It sounded like a puppy!

  “Momma! Momma! Wake up!” she called out. “Something is at the door. Hurry!”

  She and her mom threw the covers back on their beds and ran to the door. Madie opened it and saw a small white puppy standing there on the porch, looking up at her.

  “Daddy brought my puppy!” she said. “Look, Momma! He brought it just like he said!”

  “I’d like to think that, Madie, but I am sure Mr. Wade brought it by for you,” her mom said.

  “Mr. Wade would have left tracks!” said Madie.

  “Well, bring it in and we’ll find out later,” Margie told her daughter. “What are you going to name it?”

  “Christmas,” said Madie. “I’m going to call it Christmas!”

  A few days after Christmas Day, Madie and her mother went to thank Mr. Wade for bringing the puppy by on Christmas morning.

  “I didn’t!” he said. “The pup was simply gone when I went out in the morning. It was too young to find its way to your house by itself. It’s a mystery to me!”

  It was a mystery nobody ever solved. Could the puppy have come by itself? If so, where were the tiny tracks? Could Phillip Carson have risen from his grave and brought his little daughter the Christmas gift he had promised her? Madie believed the latter explanation.

  She and Christmas had many happy years together. On Christmas Eve, she always said a special thanks to her father. She knew that he would be close to her forever, and so would Christmas.

  Christmas Message for Mother

  Roberta tells this story about a family that lived near her when she was a girl.

  My older sister, Fatima, and I always wished for a brother, but we never had one. I have chosen to include Simpson in my professional name in order to carry on the family name. We were lucky, though, to live by a family that had only three boys, so they became our big brothers.

  Fatima was closer to the boys than I was because they were her age; I was ten years younger than Fatima. When the oldest boy, Fred, was killed in an automobile accident, we were as heartbroken as we would have been if he had been our real brother.

  Fred’s family was soon faced with another tragedy. The father died of a heart problem. With him gone, the middle son, Carl, and the youngest son, Clyde, told their mother, Anna, that they could not run the farm. They had military careers in mind. Carl joined the Marines, and Clyde joined the Army.

  Anna remained on the farm alone, but the boys wrote faithfully to her. She looked forward to the coming of the mail because it usually brought a letter from one of them.

  Then, suddenly, the letters from Clyde stopped coming. Days, and then weeks, passed with no word. Anna began to think the worst.

  It was close to Christmas, and Anna missed her family very much. Carl wrote, trying to encourage her to believe Clyde was all right, but she knew in her heart that he wasn’t.

  My sister Fatima had married and moved away by then, but she and her husband came home for Christmas. She visited Anna as soon as she arrived home and learned that Clyde hadn’t written.

  “I have lost a husband and a son,” Anna said to Fatima. “I can’t lose another boy.”

  “I am sure you will hear soon,” Fatima told her.

  “I prayed to hear something about him by Christmas, but tomorrow is Christmas Day and there won’t be any mail,” said Anna.

  Fatima felt sad for Anna, but she was right. No mail ran on Christmas, and they had no phone. Anna would just have to wait and hope for news.

  Fatima fell asleep on Christmas Eve thinking about Anna. In the early morning hours, she had a vivid dream. In her dream, she heard someone call to her from outside. She looked out the window and saw Fred, looking as alive as he had been before the car wreck.

  “Come in!” said Fatima, happy to see him. She knew Fred was dead, yet it seemed natural to be talking to him.

  “I can’t come inside,” Fred told her, “but I have come to give you a message for Mom. Tell her that Clyde is okay. He has been wounded and has been in a hospital. He wasn’t able to write for a while, but she will get a letter from him next week.”

  And then he was gone.

  The dream woke Fatima, and it was so real that she actually got up and looked outside. Like the Christmas carol, it was truly a silent night. She knew the message was real, though.

  After breakfast on Christmas morning, Fatima hurried down to Anna’s house.

  “Clyde’s okay!” she told Anna. “You’ll hear next week.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Anna. “Who told you?”

  “Fred told me to give you the message,” Fatima said. “I know it’s the truth.”

  Fatima then told Anna everything she could remember about the dream. It wasn’t real news, but it was real enough to give Anna hope. Hope was the gift she needed that Christmas.

  The next week, there was indeed a letter in the mail from Clyde. But Anna already knew what he had written. In the letter, he said that he had been injured and could not write to her while he was in the hospital. He was okay now and would be coming home on a furlough.

  Fatima never forgot that Christmas Eve visit from Fred. Was it only a dream? Or had he somehow crossed the bridge between life and death to bring a message his mother so badly needed?

  The Greatest Gift

  Lonnie remembers this story about his uncle one Christmas.

  Uncle Lilburn Brown came to visit us once a few weeks before Christmas. We were all excited about what we hoped Santa would leave us under the tree that year. I thought a bicycle would be the greatest gift any boy could get, and my brothers and sisters chimed in with their wishes for other material things.

  “Those are all good things,” Uncle Lilburn agreed, “but I heard about something that happened last Christmas that made me change my mind about what kind of gifts are important for Christmas.”

  “What’s better than a bicycle?” I asked.

  “Let me tell you what happened,” he said, “and you can decide for yourself.”

  We gathered close as he told us this story.

  “I was over in Wayne County last December visiting some relatives,” he told us.

  “I got there after Christmas, and they were still in awe of what had happened to their neighbors.

  “The family of four lived down the road from them and, like most of their neighbors, they were looking forward to Christmas. The father and mother did not have expensive gifts, but there was a doll for the little girl and a BB gun for the little boy. Of course, there would be sticks of peppermint candy and an orange in their stockings.

  “Christmas was a week and a half away when a snowstorm hit, bringing ice and freezing rain. The family had finished supper and were sitting around the woodstove when they heard the animals acting up in the barn. The father put on his coat to go see what was causing the ruckus.

  “‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ he told his family, and walked out into the storm.

  “The children sat close to their mother as she read them a Christmas story. Outside, the wind whipped the snow around, but inside all was calm.

  “The fat
her braced himself against the wind and stepped off the porch. It was slicker than he realized, and his feet flew out from under him. He landed on the graveled path that led to the barn. He hit his head in the fall, and everything went black for a few minutes.

  “When the darkness passed and he could see again, he tried to get up; but the bump on his head had left him dizzy. He called out, but the wind carried his voice away. He had to get his wife’s attention some other way.

  “He managed to dislodge some of the pieces of gravel from the snow, and he began throwing them against the living room window one by one.

  “His wife didn’t notice at first because she was involved in reading, but then she realized that something was hitting the window besides sleet. She also realized that her husband had been gone for several minutes. He should have been back already.

  “She opened the door and saw him on the ground. With the help of her son, she pulled him inside and got him to bed. She gave him hot soup and tea, but he continued to shiver and his fever continued to climb. Pneumonia was inevitable. By the end of the week, he was gone.

  “Gone was the joy that had filled their hearts. Gone were their plans for a wonderful Christmas. Christmas carols fell on deaf ears, and grief filled their hearts. Neighbors helped as much as they could, but when the funeral was over they went back to their own homes.

  “The children asked if their father would be home for Christmas, but the mother only shook her head as the tears rolled down her cheeks. They got ready for bed, but the mother, who had never had to take care of the fire at night, put extra wood in the stove before turning out the light. It was now Christmas Eve, but the mother and children were totally exhausted by death and grief.

  “About midnight, the mother woke to a strange plinking sound against the window. The children woke a minute later. The sounds were just like the sounds their father had made the night he fell outside.

  “Then the mother became aware of a roar from the flue. It was on fire! They had to get out of the house. The three pulled on their coats and ran outside. If they hadn’t heard the sounds, they might not have awakened in time. What could have made those plinking sounds against the window? They looked under the window and saw a small pile of gravel there!