12 Deaths of Christmas

by Paul Sating

The man turned to me, his tone bordered between male aggression and hidden vulnerability. “Look, dude, I don’t know what your deal is, but you need to leave. Go back down to Olympia, or Tacoma, or wherever the hell you came from. I don’t really care. But leave us alone. We’re not to gonna get caught out here. Not for you. Not for no one.”

  Janie, for her part, was more sympathetic. “You’re not from here, are you?”

  The man moved to his car. He paused at his open door. “Janie, come on. Seriously.” His voice shook.

  When the woman named Janie looked at me again there was a marked sadness in her eyes. I knew I only had seconds of her attention left. “Please, I don’t know what’s going on, but … my boyfriend is coming up. We were going to meet him at Smithy’s, but that got weird … he kicked me out and closed early. If you’re closed too, I—”

  She looked on the verge of crying. “You shouldn’t meet him here or anywhere. The —” she lowered her voice, “the first snow is coming.”

  What the fuck was everyone talking about?

  “The white night.” Tears filled her eyes. Stunned, I wanted to tell her I was sorry even though I didn’t know what I was apologizing for. But she was already racing to her own car. Her coworker saw her running and hopped into his, slamming the door and peeling out of the parking lot. Within seconds, her car joined the race, kicking up loose clouds of snow and leaving me alone on the side of an empty grocery store with no clue what was happening.

  “The white night?” I headed to my car, checking my cell phone signal, hoping for a sliver of a chance to call Max.

  There! Two bars. Enough for a call. I launched my phone app and punched in Max’s name. I don’t think I breathed until I heard the phone ring.

  “Hello?” Max’s quivering voice was distorted by noise. Wind, maybe?

  “Hey babe, is everything okay? I wanted to call you—”

  “I can’t get through. They’re making us turn around,” Max whined. The urge to save him from everything was overwhelming.

  “What? Who?”

  “Fuck if I know. State troopers? Sheriffs?” His anger was a facade for his fear. “I was going to try to get back into the Hoodsport and see if I could get enough of a signal to pull up my GPS. See if there’s a way around.”

  I sighed. There wasn’t, and I told him so. Turning around would only take him farther away from me.

  “What you want me to do?” Max bit. I let it pass.

  “Can you ask them to let you through?”

  A battering of strong wind cut off his reply. Something else, a piercing sound, lay in the deep background, well underneath the interrupting sound of wind.

  “Max? Are you there?”

  When I heard his voice again, it sounded scratchy, distant. Only broken phrases came through. “Not likely … Closed … An accident … Cops …”

  “Max?” I shouted as if that would make it easier for him to hear me. “Max, are you there?”

  “Messy … Something … Flying … Telling us … Abandon …”

  Abandon? Abandon what? “Max? Are you there?”

  “Running … Oh, my God!”

  And then he was gone. The phone, dead. I still had two bars.

  “Max? Max!”

  I looked around the parking lot as if it was going to provide me with the guidance I needed. Max sounded panicked. Frightened. And what was he talking about? What was he supposed to abandon and what was that comment about running? Without an idea of where he was or what he needed, I was helpless.

  And I was alone. The entire town felt vacant. No stores opened. The dark interiors of the houses on Main Street sent clear signals that my troubles weren’t welcomed. Under normal conditions, it was thirty minutes to my parent’s cabin. Tonight, with the snow rolling over the area, it’d be an hour, at least. They couldn’t help.

  Max was out there alone, and I was helpless. The possibilities of what might be happening to him chilled my skin more than the freezing night air.

  Fuck the storm. I could drive in the snow, even with my sports coupe. I would have to be careful, but Max needed me. That was the only thing that mattered.

  ***

  Ten miles outside of town, the snow blanketed the frozen landscape around me. The conditions forced me to take it slow, though my heart pushed me forward faster. The lack of tire tracks on either side of the road was disorienting, making the winding road over the mountain difficult to navigate. As difficult as navigating my way through a struggling relationship. The indented layer of snow to my right informed me of the ditch hidden there, a cautionary guide. Without a shoulder, I had little room for error. Night had fallen. The cloud-covered sky spewed millions of snow pellets curving toward my windshield. I stayed near the middle of the unmarked road to remain safe. But mile after mile, with no traffic coming the other way, my fear grew. What I was seeing was an aftermath of the events of that phone call.

  Another fifteen minutes I wrapped around the mountainside and saw red and blue dancing off the snowscape. Pulling my foot off the gas, I drifted to a stop. Those lights belonged to police cruisers. An accident?

  My throat seized when I came around the bend.

  Two police cruisers barricaded the road, crisscrossing the narrow lanes to prevent traffic from getting through. There were no cars in front of me so I was able to pull up to them as close as I dared. For some reason, I felt safer being in their presence.

  Until I got out of the car.

  The night held an uncomfortable weight, urging me to turn around and head back to my parents’ cabin. A sense of growing dread sank into the pit of my stomach. Those lights flashed blue and red in an alternating silent dance. Shadows flashed across the hillside to my right and against the trees to my left, where the hillside dropped away toward the lake.

  The cruisers stood alone. No accompanying cops.

  “Hello?” I called out. Only the wind answered me and it wasn’t willing to help. “Can you hear me?”

  Dread washed over me as the snow hit my face. It wasn’t icy and harsh like it had been when it started falling, but wet and cold. The flakes were getting bigger; that meant a true storm was rolling in off the ocean. And when storms hit, Ember Lake shut down. I needed to find Max and get the hell back to the cabin.

  But it was hard to keep my cool when it felt like I’d stepped into a dead world.

  Shielding my eyes against the snow, I approached the police cruisers. The flashing lights prevented me from seeing much of anything. The world beyond them was pitched into complete darkness. I shielded my eyes to make out as much as I could. It was too quiet here. Too devoid of life. When I got within a few feet of the cruisers I wish I’d never had seen anything at all. I should have stayed in my car or even listened to the two employees at the grocery store. Or Smithy. I should have never left the cabin.

  The passenger side door of the nearest cruiser was open. The dome light was out, pitching details into obscurity. What I could see made me thankful to be as blinded as I was.

  A police officer’s limp body slumped halfway through the open door window. Dead.

  “Oh my God,” I groaned. A dark pool of blood shadowed the bottom of the door.

  Putting a hand to my mouth, I glanced at the other cruiser. Two police cruisers meant at least two officers. One wouldn’t allow the other to suffer like that.

  Unless something happened to him as well.

  Moving backward, one methodical step behind the other, I kept an eye on the dead officer. The irrational part of my brain watched for signs of reanimation. Nothing about this entire experience was rational.

  Fortunately for me, not the cop, he didn’t move.

  I glanced over my shoulder as I backed up. Snowflakes reflecting red and blue lights weren’t helping. I was exposed. Vulnerable. I couldn’t see anything beyond what was immediately in front of me. But if whatever had killed the cop was out there it could most likely see me. The only thing that stopped me from scurrying to safety was the fact that Max was out there, beyond
those cruisers.

  It was the thought of Max that held me together.

  Until I saw the second cop.

  Vomit curled in my throat at what remained of him. Strewn across the hood of his car, a half torso, identifiable as a human only by the torn uniform. A display, a testament to the evil lurking in the blackness. I gulped for oxygen as I began crying. I’d never seen a dead body ever before. In the last minute, I’d seen two.

  But this … this was beyond imaginable.

  A human body torn in two?

  Unsure if I was trying to satiate my morbidity or not, I looked at the ground in front of the cruiser for the officer’s lower half.

  “Max …” I groaned a reminder. I needed to get to Max.

  My instincts screamed against my sudden decision to go back to the officer slumped through the cruiser’s window. I thought I saw a holster on him. If he had a holster, he might still have his weapon.

  Fortune smiled through the black. His right side was exposed, the holstered weapon still there. I reached out with a shaking hand I couldn’t control. When my fingers wrapped around the pistol grip I gave it a yank, ready for his cold hand to slap down on mine.

  Somewhere in the blackness, a horrendous screech ripped through the storm, a pitch outside the human range. A screech from the depths of hell.

  I pissed down my pant leg.

  The holster refused to release. I yanked harder. My chest heaved with exertion and a primal plea to flee.

  Then I saw it. A leather strap between the grip and the hammer held the gun in the holster. Stupid. With a simple snap, I pulled the gun free, blindly aiming it into the darkness. I had no idea where that screech came from, no idea even what I was aiming at.

  The gun felt heavier than I imagined it would. This was the first time I’d held one and didn’t know how to aim the damn thing. I saw people on television closing an eye when they shot but I never knew what they were actually looking at when they did that. This wasn’t the time to learn either. I’d aim the best I could because I had to.

  I moved through the narrow gap between the cruisers. I wanted as many obstacles between me and the thing that had done this as possible.

  A long line of cars stretched down the hill. The traffic that Max was tied up in. Was he in it, waiting to get to me? But Max wouldn’t do that. He was stubborn but he wasn’t stupid. Something had happened to those cops and Max wouldn’t have waited around to figure out what it was. The bravest thing he’d ever done was agree to move in with me, and that took a year of effort. The driver’s door of the first car in line was open, the dome light illuminating the empty interior. A popular rap song thumped from the speakers.

  The next car was also empty. It’s engine, like the one in front of it, still running.

  Car after car, I made my way down the line. Each vehicle was running as if their drivers were expected to return soon. My hope for Max grew. His car wasn’t in the line. I passed at least forty vehicles without seeing his. Each vehicle, empty.

  But that feeling crumbled toward the end of my search. Max’s Infiniti sat near the end of the line.

  Empty.

  I scrambled to it, searching the back seats, hoping he was sleeping. I knew better, knew I wouldn’t find him. But I searched just the same. It was futile.

  How had everyone disappeared into the night? Did the deaths of those two cops have something to do with the disappearances of so many people, including Max?

  Wait. Not finding him meant he was alive, didn't it? Besides the shredded cop and his limp partner, there were no signs of struggles around any of these other vehicles. So everyone must have fled after word spread down the line of what happened to the cops. And the narrow road didn’t give them space to turn their vehicles around to flee. They would have been forced to run. So, if Max’s car was in this line, I could take solace in the fact that he was out there in the night, somewhere.

  Then I heard the screech again. My heart stopped beating.

  I didn’t think it through. I didn’t mean to abandon hope of Max. But I was out in the open and there was something unnatural above me in the black night sky. I was alone.

  I turned and sprinted back toward my car.

  I was halfway up the hill when it rang out again. My skin prickled and my spine went rigid with a sharp tingle. Distant, that sound still pierced my psyche. Nothing from nature sounded like that. My thighs burned, the accumulating snow on the road making the uphill sprint difficult. As it deepened, my footing slipped more often than not. I almost fell on my face, catching myself, stinging my hand in the process.

  The dancing red and blue lights beckoned me forward, encouraging me when I didn’t need it. Somehow I knew, whatever made that sound was responsible for the disappearances of all these people and the deaths of those two cops.

  The screech cut through the night, this time much closer. I spun, raising the gun into the blackness hidden behind the driving snow. Above the trees, a rhythmic beat that sounded like a single bass drum being struck in time. At first, it was low, barely audible behind the wind, but second-after-second, it grew in volume and density. It wasn’t a drum.

  It was … wings.

  Massive wings. Flying toward me.

  The screech sliced through the night, this time above me. I fell to the ground, covering my head. The tree branches shook. From my new vantage point, the world had grown larger. The cars now provided more shelter from the storm as I lay in the snow, wishing I could disappear.

  The wings beat on, passing by as if the thing was surveying the area beyond just this part of the mountain pass.

  I needed to make a break for the car. I could use these vehicles as shelter. The close mountainside protected me, ignoring the reality that something had frightened all these motorists into the night and they had been in the same situation as I now was. My car was another hundred yards away. I needed to get to it. It would get me to town and a stronger cell signal. Worse case, I’d have to call Max when I got back to the cabin.

  I refused to acknowledge my cowardice.

  Without another thought, I stood and sprinted uphill. Fifty yards. The thumping was growing again. That demon in the sky was coming back. It called out, the high-pitched screech mixing with an animalistic growl.

  Thirty yards.

  The beast swooped down close enough to beat air against my face. I glanced up but couldn’t see it.

  There was something besides the beating of the wings.

  Rushing of air.

  Something fell out of the sky toward me. I dodged the blackened shape, barely moving before it hit the road with a wet thump.

  A carcass.

  I retched right there in the middle of the road, staring down at the remains of a human being. I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. There was no head, both feet were missing, and the chest cavity was ripped open. Bones encased in chunks of meat jutted out in a grotesque proclamation of a feast enjoyed. The open chest looked emptied of its organs.

  Tearing my eyes away from that obliterated corpse, I ran, slipped, and got to my feet again. My thighs felt like knives were being thrust into the most vulnerable weaves of sinew. Between the physical exhaustion and mental terror, I couldn’t catch my breath. Slipping again, I tried to focus on my only hope for escape. My car.

  The wind howled as it split around the mountain, a burst weaving its way down the tight confines of the road. Tree branches cracked in protest as the night howled its rage. I didn’t notice the cold anymore.

  The screech sounded, moving away. In that sliver of hope, I found renewed energy. Ignoring my burning muscles, ignoring the thick queasiness below my rib cage, I surged ahead, dashing between the police cruisers. There was a brief respite when I yanked open my car door and jumped in the driver seat. The car roared to life, blaring Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer into the tight interior. Panicked, I ignored it as I backed up to a driveway marked with reflective light sticks. I aimed for the smooth white lane between those two markers, trying to suffocate the
anticipation of hearing that screech again.

  Seconds sludged by, urging me to move quicker, but I denied the temptation. I tried focusing my thoughts on my family and the love of my life. They anchored my fading sanity.

  How many more times would Dad ask Mom when we were going home? Did she even feel alive with him anymore? Would Dad’s innocent repetition distract her from worrying about why I wasn’t home with Max yet? Where was Max? Was he someplace warm? Safe? My poor mother. She would be an angel if angels were real. Poor Max. Putting up with me. Loving me like he did. Does.

  Thinking about them helped me keep an even, safe speed heading back into town. Haste would put me in a ditch, forcing me back out into the night, exposed to that terror in the sky.

  I tried to stave off the tears for Max. There was no way I could help him if I was stranded or worse, but that didn’t do much for the pain of knowing he was out there, lost and freezing.

  Hopefully, he stayed with the other motorists.

  Hopefully, he had someone to help him where I couldn’t.

  The streets in town were completely empty. The houses that hugged the road were dark. My familiarity with the town was the only thing that made navigating the streets possible. The deepening snow blanketed everything, covering the road, making it indistinguishable from the sidewalks. The soft orange glow from the streetlights made this all the stranger.

  Keeping a firm grip on the wheel, I pulled up my phone, hoping against hope that I’d get a break and a signal. The indicator displayed two bars again. I swallowed. Careful to avoid putting myself into a skid, I slowed to a stop, dialing Max’s number. It rang six times before going to voicemail. I called again. Voicemail.

  Throwing my head against the headrest, I began crying. Even a simple phone call might have made the difference.

  I tried one more time. This time I left a voicemail.

  “Max, honey, it’s me,” I cried. “Please pick up. It’s me, baby. Please. I—I haven’t heard from you. Please, please call me as soon as you get this. I … I just need to know you’re okay.” I ignored how desperate I must have sounded. Desperation served the moment.