Creepy - Promises We Make In December: Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Episode Date: December 28, 2021

Written by: TW Grim and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Find our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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The promises we make in December by T.W. Grimm. Part 1, Chapter 1. I spent the month of November watching the cold rains beat the landscape outside the window into submission, waiting with leaden anxiety in my heart for them to eventually give way to the crisp white snows of December. As per usual, I've been spending most of my waking hours barricaded in my office, with the lights dimmed, and a blaze crackling away in the fireplace. Also, as per usual, I have a bottle, a glass, and a bucket of ice on my desk at all times. Presently, it's a bottle of Bacardi, but I doubt that it'll last the night.

I'll have to stagger out to the master living room and raid the bar for another one. One of these days, I'll get around to installing a mini bar in my office. I'll put that on the to-do list right now, in fact. Note to self. Put a goddamn mini bar in the office, a sad old pisspot. Quit fucking around already. I guess I'm what you might refer to as a functioning alcoholic. I get soused all day, every day. but still managed to more or less keep it together enough to get by.

I started drinking when I was still in my late teens. At that point, I was a social drinker, mostly because I was still socially adapt enough to have a circle of friends. Most of them were hooligans in training, scruffy and volatile young men who were destined to occupy a jail cell in the not-too-distant future. We would regularly meet up in the old, woods after sunset to pass a bottle of cheap vodka or sherry around a smoky little campfire,

chasing the booze with a glass pipe stuffed with foul Mexican brickweed and talking bullshit long into the night. The shadows would flicker and dance in the treetops high overhead, and far above it all loomed the fathomless depths of the night sky, a vast spray of brilliant lights that slowly shifted and turned into the unknown future, that lurked just ahead of the sweet, buzzed-out reality of the here and now. Those nights were the best times of my life. I miss those nights with all my heart.

I was a bright kid, despite the company I kept, and my grades were good enough to graduate high school with a full scholarship. I had absolutely no desire to go to university, but it was my only option to escape the memories that were trapped within the walls of my mother's house. I somehow made it to my second year before I was kicked out for piss-poor grades and erratic behavior.

My mom begged me to come home. I can remember her strained, quavering voice trembling into my ear over the phone, saying, Please, John, please come home. You can stay in your old room, just the two of us, just like old times. It'll give you a chance to get your mind,

sort it out. Please? I closed my eyes and imagined the sharp gleam in her eyes, the endless stream of pointed questions that were fluttering at the tip of her tongue, and said, I can't do that, ma, I need to keep looking forward. I really don't know how else to put it. I mean, I just, I can't go back. Can you understand that? I need to keep looking forward, or I'll explode. I still. I still, stayed in the city and moved into a one-room bachelor apartment. I slowly wrote my first novel while working the swing shift at a nearby factory, a grubby and cheerless little place that manufactured plastic fencing for construction sites. I would get up at one in the afternoon with a pounding hangover,

go to work for 2.30, and not punch out until 12.30 in the morning. As soon as I got home, I'd crack open a beer and tell you. type away on my old dell until the sun began to peek over the tops of the office buildings that towered over the eastern horizon. This was my life. I was 21 years old, and I had no friends, no money, and a future that was at best uncertain, and at worst, downright fucking bleak. My entire existence was cheap beer, the fencing factory, and a word-divor. document that was slowly growing and evolving into a novel during the wee hours of the night. I wasn't looking forward, not really, but I wasn't looking backward either. That was all that mattered.

Eventually, the endless nights of patient toil produced a vicious little bestseller called From the Darker Side of Midnight. The critics heralded me as a gifted prodigy. The book sold well, and the movie that followed was a modest hit. I left the factory and the bachelor apartment behind and bought a large, fancy house in a sheltered suburb. I wrote more books and continued to drink. Somewhere along the line, I married and divorced three different women before I finally admitted defeat

and gave up on the idea of marriage entirely. So I didn't need a wife. They already had a faithful mistress in the bottle. She never judged, she never scolded, and she didn't care if I got shit-faced and took a leak in a potted plant at some hoity-toity award ceremony. The bottle was always there for me, and I loved her for it. But there's always December, waiting patiently at the end of the year to shove me down into the darkest corners of depression. No matter where you go, no matter how blackout drunk you get, December is always. always waiting with the memory of my father, and the grim circumstances that snowballed from

his death, a harrowing series of events that ultimately guided the direction of both my writing career and my life. My stories are about loss and fear, childhood terrors, and the things that wait for us on the darker side of midnight. I write so that I can relive my childhood trauma in a safe, controlled fashion. The writing is my therapy, although whether or not it does more harm than good is up for argument. The booze is, well, it's the booze. It does what I need it to do. My father died on Christmas Eve. Did I already mention that? He died along with 19 other men, some of whom were the fathers of other kids at my school. None of this is a secret, of course. but it's far from the whole story.

I've never told that to anyone. Not my former friends or ex-wives, not mom, not a single soul on this planet. But here we are. December has arrived once again, and the doctor says that if I don't sober up, this one might be my last.

I think that maybe it's time to get it all out. The final therapy session. Maybe I'll find some sort of peace after it's done. Who knows? I'll just pour myself another drink to steady the nerves, and then I'll begin. Chapter 2. On the morning of December 14, 1984, I watched my father leave for work for the very last time. I was nine years old and scared of my dad, who was large and loud in a gruff, sharp sort of manner.

He was one of those men whose faces have been frozen into a permanent scowl by the trials and tribulations of life, and he would bellow like an enraged bull when he was angry with me, which seemed to be pretty much all the time. I often imagined him as the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk, when he came stopping through the door after work, towering and belligerent at the scent of an Englishman in his home. I would hide away from his surly disapproval in my bedroom and write little stories on blank sheets of typewriter paper, stories about heroes embarking on fantastic adventures to alien worlds. I would carefully draw in the illustrations afterward in Cran, then staple the pages together and file it away with the others, my own little series of comic books.

I wish I knew what happened to them, those crudely rendered little. little comic books of mine. My mother probably threw them all out at some point while she was cleaning up my room, or maybe I threw them out myself. Who knows? Precious things get cast aside because no one knew that they were precious, and then they're gone forever. This is the way of the world. Even though I was almost deathly afraid of my dad, I loved him, too. He was a totemic figure of strength and authority, and I craved his approval. Sometimes I would get up extra early, just so I could catch a glimpse of him before he left for work.

I'd peeked down from the safety of the landing at the top of the stairs and watched as he laced up his boots and zipped up his jacket, his keys softly jingling like sleigh bells in the ring that hung from his belt. On this particular morning, I was desperately fighting the urged to sneeze, frightened of what might happen if dad caught me spying on him. I struggled against the sneeze and wondered what would happen if I ran down the stairs and gave him a hug, just like the kids on TV did with their TV dads, but I didn't dare. It was early in the morning, and he was tired. I was afraid of being pinned in the spotlight of his disapproving glare.

On some deep, murky level, I knew that my father was deeply disappointed with me, his delicate and fine-featured son, disappointed with my timid demeanor and artistic leanings. His only son, a thin, pale-faced kid with an introverted personality and a head full of curly brown hair, hair just like his mother. I knew it, and it hurt, because my father was my hero. I wanted his approval, more than anything in the entire world. I lost my fight to suppress the sneeze, and it ripped out of me in a long, tortured, Ha-choo!

Dad craned his head to look up the stairs and barked, Is that you, Johnny? Why are you out of bed? I froze and desperately searched my brain for an appropriate response. I ended up squeaking out, I have to pee. And I cringed inside. Dad scowled up at me and he shook his head. Well, come on then.

Get down here and use the bathroom if you have to go. What's wrong with you? The old carpeting on the stairs felt coarse and dry beneath my bare feet. I looked up at my father as I gingerly stepped around his intimidating bulk and, for a brief moment, I teetered on the edge of saying that I missed him. that he worked too hard, and I didn't like it when he was so tired all the time. But all I could do was lick my lips with a dry, nervous tongue and continue on walking to the bathroom. While I was in there, I discovered that I actually did have to pee, and by the time I was done, Dad was gone.

I watched his truck recede into the distance through the window, twin twinkles of red sinking into the darkness far down. the road. Six hours later, the principal poked his head into my classroom while Mrs. Finch was teaching us math and asked if he could borrow me for a second. Mr. Cole was trying his best to sound casual, but it was obvious that something was very wrong. I felt a shiver crawled down my spine, and I followed him down to the office with my stomach turning in knots. My mother was waiting for me there, and her face was wet with tears. There's been an accident at the mine, honey, she said. Come on, we need to go.

A methane explosion triggered a collapse in several of the shafts, killing five men outright, and trapping twenty others deep down inside the earth. The cave-in had left the mine too unstable to be entered by the rescue team, leaving them no option but to carefully drill a long, narrowly. shaft to let in fresh air and act as a supply tunnel. After much debate, the company declared that the rock was probably too unstable after the explosion to dig a tunnel wide enough to rescue the buried men. When a journalist asked how they planned to resolve the crisis at a press conference,

a spokesman for the company tugged on his tie and uncomfortably said, Frankly, we don't know, not just yet. For now, we wait and hope for the-for-reve-all. a positive conclusion to this unfortunate series of events. On December 23rd, the miners all wrote handwritten notes to their loved ones by Lamplight and sent them up the shaft in a bucket. I was there with my mother and the families of the other miners, as well as the flashing bulbs and excited babble of what seemed like dozens of reporters.

The card we received from my father was simple, and to the point, It read, Nora and Johnny, please stay strong and know that this will all be over soon. No matter what happens, I will always be there with you. I promise that I will be home for Christmas. My mother knelt in the snow and cried over that grimy piece of lined paper for a long time. I cried too, but I didn't really understand why. Dad was going to be home for Christmas, after all. He'd said so right there in the note, hadn't he?

Dad would never let anything stand in his way. He was my hero, and even though I feared him, I loved him too. On December 24th, at 6.38 p.m., something triggered another larger methane explosion, which in turn sparked a devastating coal dust explosion. The entire mine caved in, and the 20 men, Trapped below were declared dead on Christmas Day. The rest of that awful, awful December is fuzzy and scattered in my head. I can remember crying hysterically beneath my bed, curled up in the fetal position,

in a scattering of dust bunnies and lost pieces of Lego. I can remember that my aunts and my grandmother brought over covered dishes of food that I couldn't force myself to eat. I remember that my mom seized hold of the Christmas tree on New Year's Eve and threw it across the living room, hurling it over her shoulder with an agonized shriek that made my hair stand on end. The tree crashed into a table and broke a lamp. One of my aunts came over the next morning and cleaned up the mess.

She brought over a new lamp, and no one talked about what had happened to the old one. Then it was January, and my mom started talking about how the company would soon make amends for what had happened to my father. In the meantime, she was forced to get a job in town at a thrift store to make ends meet. Suppers would often be late, and I spent a lot of time by myself in an empty house, staring at a wall with the TV blaring in the background. Mom was tired and irritable. She cried a lot at night when she thought I was asleep. She muttered under her breath about what the company had done to our family. Then it was May, and a man in an expensive-looking suit came to the house

with a sleek leather briefcase in his hand. I watched in secret from the top of the stairs as he sat with Mom at the kitchen table, exchanging stiff pleasantries and soft, muted voices. The man slid a large envelope across the table and said, We believe this is a fair compensation for the tragedy that has befallen you. We hope you accept our offer in good faith. Mom carefully opened the envelope and looked at the papers inside. Her face slowly drained of color as she read through the papers,

and lips thinned out into a narrow little slash. She waved them in the air. and hissed. What the hell is this? This is what you call fair compensation for my husband's life? This? He died working down there in that death trap. And this is what you call fair compensation?

I couldn't even bury him. I had to go to some bullshit ceremony at the town hall with everyone else. And now this, you can go to hell. The man in the suit started to protest. And mom cut him off. Her eye is blazing. She spat. The breadwinner in this family was crushed under the weight of your precious coal,

and you're saying this is the best you can do? How far do you think this is going to take us? My God, do you have any decency at all? Any of you? The man held up his hands and sputtered. He followed the law right to the letter, ma'am. Twelve weeks is standard. If you feel that you're entitled to more,

you'll have to contact a lawyer. Mom threw the papers in his face. He flinched back in his chair, and she bounced to her feet. Her hands clenched into fists. She leaned forward and pounded them on the table as she yelled at the man in the suit, punctuating her words with a savage rhythm of frustrated rage. Standard? She shrieked.

To the letter, you horrible son of a bitch, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do you hear me? Ashamed! Get out of my house, you bastard. Get out of my house right here and now. The man pursed his face into a careful, practiced expression of mild dismay. He shook his head inside, and a company won't give you a better offer, ma'am, and that's a fact. I advise that you take this and be grateful to have it.

Mom let out a strangled gasp, and her hand flicked out in a blur. Whap! The man's head rocked back, and he looked up at her and shone. the outline of her hand reddening on his cheek like magic ink. She roared, I said get the hell out of my house! And the man scrambled for the front door without looking back. After he was gone, Mom crumpled into herself

and broke down into an ugly crying fit on the floor. The keening and the slobbering profanities gradually gave way to heartbroken tears, and Mom crawled around. ground on the floor, on our hands and knees, picking up the scattered papers in a bewildered, broken manner that made my heart feel constricted in my chest. At this point, I slithered into my bedroom and quietly shut the door. My stomach hurt. All I wanted to do was to crawl under the covers and put my pillow over my head. Spring became summer, and money was tight. We ate endless

packages of hot dogs and boxes of mac and cheese for dinner, and mom took a weekend job at a tailor's shop to make ends meet. My world became an isolated haze that consisted of enduring the drudgery of school and the boredom of sitting by myself in an empty house watching family ties while I waited for mom to come sputtering into the driveway in her rusty old Ford Fiesta. I had a growth spurt, and there was no money for new clothes. Eventually, Mom could no longer ignore the problem, and she took me into the thrift store where she worked, her face, a mask of stone-faced shame and anger.

She bought me whatever she could find that wasn't a tattered leftover from the Nixon era, and we drove home in silence. I was teased at school the next day for the wide cuffs on my pants, and a huge collar on my shirt. The other kids called me disco man and had a great old time laughing their asses off at my expense. I somehow managed to hold off the tears until I was back home and safely sequestered in my bedroom.

I wondered if the man in the suit had ever been teased for wearing secondhand clothes, and I decided the answer was probably no. Men like him are the ones who point and laugh. They have no idea what it's like on the other side. The year slipped away, and it was December again. My mother refused to put up the Christmas tree and ended up slapping me across the face when I pressed her on the issue.

My grandmother came over to confront her about it, and they got into a screaming match, an hour-long blowout that ended with mom sobbing on the couch as grandma put up the tree and decorations by herself. I got a brand new of winter boots that year, courtesy of Grandma, and a box that was filled with an assortment of shabby old toys from the thrift store. Mom watched me open my presents while slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table, chain smoking and drinking coffee with her mouth turned down in a tired, bitter grimace.

She looked like she wanted to cry, but there were. no more tears left to give. I was unnerved by the silence, and I finally ventured a timid... Thanks, Mom. Merry Christmas. She stubbed out her cigarette and rasped, Merry Christmas, kid. I promise you that it's going to get better for us.

One way or another, things are going to get better. Shortly after the New Year rolled in, she packed all of Dad's clothes and possessions into boxes and donated them to the Salvation Army. She took down any framed picture with Dad in it and put them in a shoebox, which she then stowed away, far into the cluttered depths of the hallway closet.

Some of Dad's more valuable items were sold to a pawn shop, and others were sold to members of our family. Anything else was unceremoniously put out with the trash. And just like that, Dad was no longer a presence in our house. He was gone. It was if he'd never been there in the first place. Two months later, I stepped off the school bus and found a black 82 Camero parked in our driveway behind the fiesta. My life was about to take a turn for the worse once again.

Chapter 3 I walked into the house and found a pair of large, gaudy-looking, snake-skin boots sitting by the front door. There was a strange man sprawled out on our couch with his feet up on the coffee table. Dad had always forbidden us to put our feet up on the coffee table, and I was shocked to see it happening. I stared at the man's gray work socks and called out, Mom, are you here? The stranger on our couch gave me a wide, toothy grin and said,

"'How you doing? Your mom's in the bathroom. She can't hear you.' I blinked at his heavy mustache and silver-plated belt buckle, unsure of what to say or how to react. He raised an eyebrow at my silence and grunted, "'You one of them special education kids or something?' "'I greeted you, son. Now you're supposed to greet me back. That's how it works.' i felt my face get hot and i stammered oh yeah hi i'm uh who are you my name is dan none of that mr stuff just plain old dan your name's johnny right i cast a sideways glance towards the short hallway that led to the bathroom silently urging my mom to hurry up and save me from the awkwardness of interacting with this long-haired stranger that smelled strongly of cologne and lullone and lulled and lest to hurry up and save me from the awkwardness of interacting with this long-haired stranger that smelled strongly of cologne and lullone and leather, this unwanted interloper with his many glittering rings and his smug, aggressive demeanor.

Dan smirked at my discomfort and pulled out a cigarette tin that matched his belt buckle. He lit one with a flashy-looking zippo and studied me dispassionately. His eyes were as cold and blue as the march skies outside the living-room window. They seemed to bore right through my skull and crawl across my brain. "'seeking out my fears and weaknesses. "'I shoveled my feet and waited for him to speak. "'Finally, he said, "'Well, I suppose it's time we met each other,

"'seen as how I'm your mom's new boyfriend and all.' "'Mom walked into the room at that exact moment and squealed. "'Dan, come on. "'I thought we'd talked about how to break it to him.' "'No sense beating around the bush,' Dan scoffed. "'Kids old enough to understand how it is. He turned to me and added, We're going to get along just fine, you and me.

And we're going to be pals. I was speechless. I realized that my mom was wearing one of the two good dresses she owned, the red one. The black one was for weddings and funerals. The red dress only came out when she and dad would go out for one of their infrequent date nights, which was usually dinner at a burger joint or a moment. movie on Half Price Tuesday. I hadn't seen the red dress in so long that I'd forgotten it existed.

Boyfriend, red dress. I put two and two together and croaked. Are you going out like tonight? I won't be too late. Dan's taking me to a Chinese place. Can you believe it? I've never had Chinese food before. My mother's eyes were sparkling. She looked young and vibrant. I, I, realized that she was wearing makeup. I hadn't seen her apply anything but maybe a little touch of lipstick for almost two years. The change was startling. She looked like a different person entirely. She looked like a movie star. Mom put on a long figure-hugging jacket that I didn't recognize and gave me a preoccupied smile. There's pizza in the fridge for supper. Dan bought it for you. you can heat it up in the microwave.

What microwave? We don't have a... Hey, you do now, Dan Grin. Big old microwave, best one they had. He'd stuff up real fast. Oh, you'll like it. He heaved himself off the couch and sidled up to put an arm around my mother's waist. That coat looks real good on you, baby. It's classy.

Are you ready to hit the road? Mom paused at the front door and said, be in bed by ten at the latest, kiddo. No later than ten, I mean it. If I don't see you tonight, I'll see you in the morning. Be good. Dan dropped me a wink over the top of her head. Don't put nothing made a metal in that microwave.

Otherwise, there'll be sparks flying like crazy in there. Dan held open the sagging screen door from my mom with a flourish and a grin. He stared at me for a moment after she stepped outside, and his grin faded. You heard your mother, pal. Don't wait up for us. You hear us coming in. You make yourself scarce. He closed the door, and I was left standing there alone in the living room with my jaw hanging open. Outside, the Camaro's engine growled to life, and Dan peeled out in a spray of gravel. When they were gone, I wandered into the kitchen and inspected our new microwave oven. I had never used one before in my life.

I decided it was squat and ugly, and I didn't like it, not one bit. I ate the pizza cold, straight out of the box. Dan's shiny, fancy microwave could go to hell as far as I was concerned. After I was done, I went into the hallway closet and dug out the box where mom had hidden the last visible traces of my father. I carefully selected a framed picture that I deemed to be my favorite, a faded Polaroid of my dad's, standing in front of his truck with his arm around Mom's shoulders. I hid it beneath my mattress. He was my father, my hero,

and I missed him more than ever. Mom could forget him if she wanted to, but I would always remember his face. For even more from Creepy, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit Creepypod.com. You can also follow us at Creepypod on social media and YouTube.

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