12 Deaths of Christmas

by Paul Sating

  The priest turned around, looking past him, and gave a slight nod of his head. Adam didn’t have time to wonder what the gesture was about. Because in that instant Father McElroy did something Adam would have never anticipated; he reached up and pulled his white chasuble over his head, tossing it to the floor. Then Father McElroy pulled his alb down, leaving it piled at his feet. The priest was completely naked.

  “What the fuck?” The moment couldn’t recognize the delicacies of the church. If the Father McElroy didn’t appreciate his language, then the priest could put his goddamn clothes back on.

  Father McElroy wagged a finger, frowning. “See? The foul mouth is the foul soul. This language of the devil you’ve embraced in your time away? We weep for you. The church cries for your soul, Adam, and we want you to come home.”

  There was movement behind him, a light hand touched his shoulder. His mother’s hand. “We want you to come home,” she said, moving past Adam. Naked.

  Adam stumbled backward.

  “Mom?” He said, averting his gaze as she moved up alongside the priest.

  She didn’t answer.

  “We want you to come home,” now Jon, naked as the day he was born, took his place by the priest, opposite his mother.

  “I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I don’t want any part of this. You all can keep this shit. I’m leaving.”

  He bumped into something. Someone. “You’ll stay here,” Ted’s voice was close. His firm hands grasped Adam’s shoulders. Ted’s steely erection pressed against Adam’s back. “We want you to come home.”

  Adam froze as Father McElroy approached, laying his hand on top of Ted’s, pressing down on Adam’s shoulder. “It’s time for you to be reborn, Adam. That’s why you’re here and it’s what your family needs. You must do this for your family. It is what our Father commands.”

  But Adam had no intention of doing this for anyone, especially the people he’d run away from as soon as he was old enough to do so.

  In one swift movement, Adam ducked and spun, breaking free of Ted’s grip. Holding out an arm toward them, his voice shook even as he warned them away. “This — this is nuts. What the fuck is wrong with all of you?”

  The four people moved, circling Adam, closing around him. “We want you to come home,” they said in unison. “We want you to come home.”

  Tighter and tighter. Adam backed away, trying to avoid this becoming physical. He couldn’t hit any of them. But this was beyond weird! It was perverse. If violence was the only way out, it was the route he would take. “Back up!”

  But they didn’t. They stepped closer, inching toward him as they chanted in unison, “We want you to come home.”

  With each collective step closer, Adam back away. They were shepherding him toward the pool, forcing him into this corner. He wasn’t going to be part of their sick ritual. Never again. “Stay away,” his voice shook.

  “We want you to come home,” four voices said as one.

  Step.

  Adam’s heels bumped into the front wall of the pool, his hand braced against the top of it. “Back off. I mean it.”

  But they didn’t. The four naked bodies closed in around him. Their vacant eyes no longer recognizing the son and brother he was.

  “He has you in His grasp,” the priest intoned, “and we mean to free you. Free you from Satan’s claw.”

  The iron smell in the air was powerful this close to the pool. Adam’s throat throbbed as the four pressed in on him. Panic rose. He was going to have to fight his way out of this. Fight his own goddamn family! This was their choice, though; they were making him do this.

  Father McElroy stepped closer, ahead of Adam’s family. The priest’s erection was thick, pulsing. “Satan’s claw has grasped your heart and we mean to free you.”

  Before Adam could ask another question, before he warned the priest away, Father McElroy grinned and shoved Adam, sending him reeling backward.

  Adam fell over the top of the wall and into the pool. Bracing for impact against the concrete bottom, Adam only felt himself falling. He panicked, trying to upright himself and swim toward the surface. He opened his eyes as he struggled and couldn’t see anything. The water was dark, thick. Adam couldn’t make out the candlelight in the room above.

  He kicked harder, now unsure where the surface was. As he did, Adam stretched out in all directions, hoping his hands or feet would brush against a surface so he could orient himself. But he felt nothing more than the viscous water.

  Squirming and kicking, Adam tried to stand but his feet couldn’t find purchase. In a moment of hysterical confusion, he wondered how deep the pool actually was. And the water was filmy as if it was polluted by an oil–based substance. It made his movements sluggish. He swam in what he thought was the opposite direction of his fall. Up.

  The distance was impossible to judge without an indicator of which direction to head. Swimming in this baptismal felt like the inside of an oil barrel. Right before his lungs exploded, Adam’s head broke the surface.

  Gasping to draw breath, Adam pinched his eyes closed and tried to tread water with just his feet so he could wipe the goo from his eyes. Blinking away the slimy water was doing nothing.

  When his opened his eyes his vision was blurred, burning. Adam gagged. The smell of rusted metal was stronger than ever now that his head bobbed above the water.

  “We want you to come home.” The chorus boomed with more voices. No longer four. Adam rotated around noticed that the congregation of the church, 50, 60, maybe more, lined the baptismal. All eyes fixed on him. Each member of the parish just as naked as the priest who led them into this madness.

  “We want you to come home.”

  “Come home!” One young voice rebelled against the monotonous chorus, pleading with Adam to comply.

  “We want you to come home.” The chorus grew. Adam spun to discover why. Candles were being lit along the pool, running another 50 feet into this massive room. Hundreds of people stood near the pool walls as even more filed into the open spaces. They watched Adam tread water while he tried to —

  — but it wasn’t water.

  With immediate recognition, Adam vomited.

  What he was swimming in wasn’t a pool of water at all. It was a pool of crimson blood. This structure, this baptismal, massive as it was, was filled with blood. Whose blood? How much blood would it take to fill something this size?

  Crazy thoughts, he knew, but thoughts he couldn’t avoid.

  The blood rippled around him. There was no escape route with the pool surrounded by the congregation. Adam scanned the group, looking for the most elderly, the frailest. He would swim there, pull himself out of this madness, and fight his way out if he had to.

  “Please come home.”

  “Please come home.”

  “Please come home.”

  Each time the iteration of the disturbing hymn was louder than the previous.

  His skin itched.

  Father McElroy stepped on top of the wall, his arms spread out in celebration of the gathering. “Brothers and sisters, we come together on this very important day to bring Brother Adam home. To rend the devil’s mind! To rip out Satan’s hold! Pray with me as we call on our heavenly father to free this young man from his sinful ways. His behavior spits in the face of God and his son and the Holy Spirit! Pray with me and call on the spirit to rid Adam of Satan’s claw!” The priest’s cock bobbed with each powerful proclamation.

  Adam took in the congregation. There was no sorrow. There was no empathy or concern. Mindless compliance.

  And something else in those eyes.

  Joy! That’s what it was! Everyone appeared to be nearing utter ecstasy.

  He tread backward, toward an older couple. They would be the ones he would fight through, he decided.

  Father McElroy dropped one hand, leaving his right arm extended by his side. Adam watched as his mother climbed up onto the edge of the wall. With a quick nod from the priest, she turned toward Ad
am. “We miss you, son, and want you to come home. We love you, no matter the wrongs you’ve done, no matter the sin you’ve committed. We love you just the same.”

  Adam didn’t want to draw the attention to himself. To get away, he’d have to be subtle. Not even the older couple he was targeting could notice. So he remained quiet, allowing them to spread their gospel of weird.

  Father McElroy dropped his arm and Adam watched as his mother stepped back down. The priest raised his other arm and Jon stepped up onto the edge of the pool. “You’ve heard the Father, you spat in God’s eye and you need to be cleansed so that He can love you again.”

  Without another word, Jon stepped off the pool. Father McElroy shook his head at Adam’s lack of reaction. “Let us pray for this sinner as his earthly father, the man who spawned him, joins me.”

  The group picked up their chant exactly where they left off. Lemmings. But one did not pray with the group. One did not stand in robotic compliance, mindlessly uttering the same phrase over and over. One was different. Ted.

  Adam blinked the remaining blood out of his eyes, unsure that what he was witnessing was actually happening.

  Balancing on top of the edge of the pool wall, Ted kneeled before the priest.

  As the congregation prayed for Adam, he watched, mesmerized, by what happened between the two men. Ted, his father, the bigot who hated him and all he had become, turned toward the priest’s crotch and opened his mouth, accepting Father McElroy’s cock.

  Louder, the congregation chanted.

  The pool of blood. Ripples grew into waves.

  “Pray brothers and sisters,” Father McElroy shouted above the clamor. “Pray for the hand of God to purge Satan’s claw from brother Adam!”

  The priest shouted as Ted fellated him. The congregation, if it noticed what was happening between the two, didn’t break their rhythm. Over and over, their voices rose, united, in their pious chant, “We want you to come home.”

  The pool of blood undulated.

  Father McElroy threw his head back. Laughing.

  Ted’s head rocked up and down on the priest’s cock.

  Bubbles of blood exploded around Adam; huge bubbles, some larger than five feet in diameter.

  Father McElroy thrust forward.

  Waves of blood crashed against the sides of the pool.

  The congregation prayed louder, drowned out by the noise around him.

  Ted bobbed faster. Up, then down. Deep. Taking all the priest could offer. Like a good servant.

  The priest gripped the back of Ted’s head and, with one final thrust, released.

  The chanting echoed off the walls, off the ceilings. It was as if the pool of blood could feel the energy in the room. Adam didn’t care to hide his intent anymore. He swam as fast as he could, no longer caring if they were onto him or not.

  Before he could make it to the wall, the pool erupted, sending a shower of blood piercing the air, painting the ceiling, and raining back down on the congregation. Their pristine skin bled.

  The congregants screamed in joy, holding their hands up at the gift of the rain of blood.

  And then Adam saw it, a shadow on the wall, cast by hundreds of candles. A shadow much too large for anything human.

  For anything explainable.

  A monstrosity rose out of the pool. The pool with no bottom.

  Larger than life, a hand that spanned 40 feet rose up toward the ceiling, blocking out the candlelight. The congregation’s chant grew louder, orgasmic, as massive fingers extended, scraping the ceiling.

  “Our prayers have been answered and brother Adam is being cleansed!” Father McElroy screamed from the end of the pool, his cock still buried in Ted’s mouth. “God has judged him and he will be cleansed!”

  The vast hand descended on Adam, moving volumes of air as it fell. The assault of wind struck before the hand did.

  There was nowhere to run, there was nowhere to hide. Adam couldn’t avoid the reach of the hand of God.

  His lucid mind acquiesced to madness as the hand slammed down, thrusting him under the sea of red.

  The baptismal.

  To be born again.

  END

  Walking in a Winter Harvestland

  The winter of 1886 announced its arrival in September with snow. At first, it bothered no one. Snow in this part of central New York came in irregular and weird intervals. In the past, early snowfall was fleeting. After the novelty wore off, life resumed. The hearty people of Hannibal were accustomed to the odd snowfall at unlikely times of the year. This year was different.

  In 1886, the snow that fell wasn't light. It was thick, heavy, and wet. It was, by all definitions, a true lake effect snow. Virginia Sterling watched it from behind the window of her family's small kitchen.

  "Get'cha to work, now," her mother, Cecilia, called from across the small room. "Don't be wastin' time or your father'll be upset. You don't be wantin’ that."

  "No, Mother," Virginia answered and stepped away from the window, already missing the spectacle of thousands, millions, of big flakes drifting toward the earth. No one wanted Father upset. He was a loving man, but a hard one. Sometimes it was easy to forget his capacity to love once his temper took hold.

  Virginia returned to her knitting. A few weeks ago, her father went into town and traded for wool, so she could make clothes and blankets. Virginia wasn't supposed to start knitting for weeks yet, but with three straight days of heavy snow, she couldn't do her outside chores. She filled her idle time with something productive. On the farm, idle time was a sin, so the choice to knit was made for her. Virginia didn't mind; it was soothing to knit by the fire.

  "You'll need to hurry with those," her mother looked away from her own work to examine Virginia. "Snow don't appear to be letting up."

  Cecilia was a worrier, proving that Virginia was barely her mother’s daughter. Who had time to worry about so many things when there were so many things to explore? She knew she should take a few more of her mother’s lessons to heart though. Pretty soon she would be courting and starting a family of her own.

  Life in this part of New York was difficult for everyone. Isolated on the northern tier of a young country, it might as well have been the front edge of a Nordic frontier. The winters were long, gray, and harsh under the best of circumstances—hard on animals, people, and especially the soul. Even at sixteen, Virginia experienced enough New York winters to be mentally jaded and exhausted by the months-long wait for the first blades of grass to appear.

  She sighed, her fingers dancing with her tools of needle and wool. It took a few minutes to get back into her rhythm but soon section after section of the blanket came together. Knitting helped her let go of the world's worries. She loved making something from nothing, creating order from chaos, and for providing for her family in a way that she could. Her father hunted and butchered meat, and built everything else they needed through trading and scavenging. Her brother worked the fields, ensuring they had crops to get through the long winters. He chopped wood to make sure there was fuel for a fire. Her mother did all the cooking to ensure the hard work everyone else did had an end result. She tended to the cows and fed the chickens when she wasn’t busy being the foundation that held the family together. Meredith, her older sister by a year, helped by cleaning the small home and the animal stalls. Everyone did their part because everyone had to do their part.

  Knitting was her role and knowing that work mitigated the winter discomfort was one of the few things she could be proud of. Her family woke each morning ready to get their work done because she did her part to ensure their comfort and safety against the conditions.

  Indeed, what she did now was important, regardless of what her siblings said.

  Virginia jumped when the door banged open.

  Her father stomped the snow from his boots. "Good God," he barked, "snow’s falling hard."

  "It’s not letting up?" Cecilia asked.

  Roger shook his head. "If anything, it’s getting worse.
"

  Cecilia covered her flinch. Her father did too. "It'll be fine," he assured Cecilia. "Maybe another few hours and it'll blow over. It always does. Can’t believe how quickly it’s piling up."

  "And if it doesn't?" Cecilia kept glancing toward the single window.

  Roger shrugged. "It's September, it could snow for another three days and melt within the week. Don't worry, wife, it'll be over soon."

  ***

  But it didn't end. Not that day. Not the day after. Not for the next week. With each passing day, the tension inside the home grew with the depth of the snow.

  By the end of September, the decimation of the wheat and corn was complete, bringing a dark realization there would be no harvest this year.

  As the snow deepened, the green world disappeared. First, the fields were buried, and then came the farm equipment and smaller structures. The snow devoured every sign of life.

  And it kept coming.

  Day in and day out the snow fell, wet and heavy. The blanket of white extended out and up, growing deeper each day.

  Threatening.

  Roger reassured them, and Cecilia lied to them. But the children were old enough to know the gravity of the situation. The snow wasn't stopping anytime soon, and they’d lost or already eaten most of their livestock. With each fading sun, their options dwindled. To make matters worse, the road to town was long gone.

  They were alone and stranded as the world went dormant.

  ***

  "What are we going to eat, Pa?" Jacob, her brother, paced the small room, looking like a caged animal.

  Roger's face had aged over the past few weeks. Deep lines carved through what used to be smooth cheeks. His shrug, muted.

  "We have a little from the last harvest," Cecilia said. Her statement sounded more like a question. "And ... and we still have the animals."

  But they didn’t.

  Within an hour of Cecilia’s hopeful observation, the family discovered the barn had collapsed under the weight of the snow, killing all of their livestock with the exception of a single horse and Blueberry, Virginia’s favorite pig. With no other place to keep the animal alive, Virginia brought it into the house. The family fell into a dark silence, idly staying busy with the fire or occupying the pig. When the door banged open an hour later, the three women turned to see Jacob enter the house, alone.