The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E13 - Christmas 2015

Episode Date: December 20, 2015

It's episode 13 of Season 6 and time for our 2015 Christmas special featuring stories about frightening festive fears."Christmas Tree Camera" written by Manen Lyset and read by Jesse Cornett & Nichole Goodnight & Rima Chaddha Mycynek. (Story starts at 00:08:40)"All Children Look the Same" written by David Ault and read by David Ault & Erika Sanderson & James Cleveland. (Story starts at 00:15:25)"Someone, Somewhere, is Lonelier Than I Am" written by Matt Dymerski and read by Peter Lewis & Nikolle Doolin. (Story starts at 00:54:35)"Silent Night" written by Liam Hogan and read by Erika Sanderson & David Ault. (Story starts at 01:35:35)"Tales of a Mall Santa" written by Jimmy Juliano and read by Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 01:49:20)"The Good Thomas Shea" written by Victor King and read by Jessica McEvoy & Corinne Sanders & Jesse Cornett & Jeff Clement. (Story starts at 02:08:00)Click here to learn more about Manen Lyset Click here to learn more about David Ault Click here to learn more about Matt Dymerski Click here to learn more about Liam Hogan Click here to learn more about Jimmy Juliano Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett Click here to learn more about Nichole Goodnight Click here to learn more about Rima Chaddha Mycynek Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson Click here to learn more about Peter Lewis Click here to learn more about Nikolle Doolin Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy Click here to learn more about Corinne Sanders Click here to learn more about Jeff Clement Podcast produced by: David CummingsMusic & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings.Christmas illustration courtesy of SabuAudio program ©2015 - Creative Reason Media - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are you all doing up here in my cozy Christmas cottage? Oh dear, is it that time of year again? Oh my, I am behind my time, aren't I? You've scurried in here out of the snow, expecting to hear some Christmas stories, haven't you? Well, let's see what we can do for you. Of course, I'll have to rouse our little family of narrating. out of their warm and comfy beds. They sleep so soundly downstairs on these cold nights.

I'll tell you what, let's have some fun. You can come down to the dungeon, I mean come down to the basement with me, and we can meet and greet everyone so they can wish all of you the most festive greetings of the holidays. Now, just wait here while I go down and prepare them for your visit. Have to make sure they're decent, don't you know? Shirts tucked in, hair-combed, makeup just right?

You know how the men are. So wait here until I call you down. Yes, just let me get you malodorous wine. The listeners are here and they're expecting stories. So get to your feet and paste a smile on your filthy faces. I shall unlock yourselves one at a time, and you are to come to the stairs, and with the most pleasant and delightful tones,

wish everyone the very best of the season. If any of you steps out of line or tries to, escape. I swear there will be dire consequences. Do you understand me? Now, be friendly, be nice, and pretend you love being on this podcast or else. All right, my dears, come, come, come, come, come join me as our wonderful little no-sleep family offers their greetings to you. Oh, look who it is. Malikaiang, Pasco, at Bagong Ta-Ong. Happy holidays and happy new year from Alexis Bustow.

Oh, another language from Alexis. Oh, my, how ecumenical. Next, yes, yes. Hello, this is David Alt, and I hope you have a lovely Christmas and all very best for 2016. Thank you, David. Well done. I think I'll force you

I think I'll ask you to write a story for this episode What do you think of that Oh yes and here we have Happy Holidays from Corinne Sanders And you as well Corinne Yes yes And now

This is James Cleveland Merry Christmas everyone Oh my another Englishman Quite a few of those about these days aren't there? And up next? Hey, this is Jessica McAvoy, wishing you a very Merry Christmas. Very kind of you, Jessica. Very kind. And next, wait, wait, listen. Can you hear that piano playing? Well, that can only mean it's time for. This is Brandon Boone, hoping you all have a happy holiday. Happy indeed, Brian.

And you little musical mouse you. Oh, and look who it is. Hi, this is Erica, wishing you all a very merry Christmas. Another Brit. Well, at least it's a lovely lady this time. Ah, how nice. Oh, and now? This is Jeff Clement, wishing all of you a very merry Christmas.

Ah, finally a Canadian to bring some great. Class to the show. Delightful, eh? Yes, yes, step forward. I wish you Merry Christmas and a happy new year. Happy holidays, dear listeners, from Nicole Goodnight to you and your own. Wasn't that a lovely song? Thank you, my dear. Thank you. Thank you.

Oh, now here he is. This is Jesse Cornette. And I just wanted to wish you all a very happy holiday and Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. For you, your family, and all of your friends. Well said, Jesse, yes, yes. Come here, my dear. Don't be shy. This is Rima Chathamisenik, wishing you a wonderful holiday season. Wonderful, wonderful.

Now, here he is. Come, come, put a big smile on your face, young man. Hey, this is Mike Delgadoio sending each of you the warmest holiday wishes. Yes, warm wishes indeed. Oh, yes, it's your turn, my dear. This is Nicole. I hope you have a happy holiday and a wonderful new year. Oh, yes, yes.

A new year is soon upon us, isn't it? And finally we have... Oh, yes. Why don't we all take a few steps back as he draws near? All right, that's far enough. All right, you stay there and make your statement, please. Hey, you, happy holidays. From whoever it is that's currently controlling Peter Lewis's body.

Oh, well, he's gone. You could all relax. I do worry about that boy sometimes. Well, now that our merry band of voice actors and musical maniacs are ready for you, let's go back upstairs and sit around the fire as they entertain us with their frightful festive features. All right now, if you're sitting comfortably, we'll start with a little story about how technology has wormed its way into Christmas. A young man named Manin Lyset wrote this tale,

so let's listen as Jesse Cornett, Nicole Goodnight, and Rima Chathamacanek perform it for us. So just look over there and smile for the Christmas tree camera. Last year on Boxing Day, I found a really cool ornament in the clearance box. And it had a built-in camera to record a unique perspective on your holiday celebrations. I grabbed the last one from the store's dusty shelf and brought it home for less than ten bucks. I forgot about it until my wife, my two daughters and I decorated the house earlier this month.

I told my daughters about the camera and said we'd secretly catch Santa in the act. I had an old costume in the attic and intended to deliver some gifts in full. view of the camera on Christmas night. My girls were overjoyed, went back and forth trying to find the best place to put the ornament on the tree. They had no idea Daddy repositioned it later, so it could actually catch the living room and the good angle. In the nights leading up to Christmas, I turned the camera on to make sure everything

was working properly. In the morning, I previewed the footage, just long enough to confirm the thing was working. Satisfied, I inserted the micro-euro-eastern. card back into the ornament and slipped in a new battery in anticipation for the big night. Daddy didn't want to disappoint his girls with a failed recording. We enjoyed Christmas Eve as a family, playing board games and eating way more junk food than there was room in our stomachs. Like we do every year, we let our daughters open one gift from Mommy and Daddy before going to bed. The girls, still riding their sugar high, could be heard giggling in their bedrooms from all the way upstairs.

From time to time, my wife and I can hear one of them shush the other, claiming she'd heard hoofs on the roof or bells jingling. Eventually, our kiddos dozed off. My wife kissed me on the cheek and headed to bed while I turned off all the lights. I retrieved the costume and tiptoed to the living room, getting ready for my big feature film debut. I did everything you would expect Santa to do. I ate most of the cookies.

I drank the milk. I pet my large stomach and said my ho-ho-hoes, and I dropped a few presents by the fireplace, all in full view of the camera. A pretty good acting job, if I do say so myself. On Christmas morning, the girls came running into our bedroom to wake us up. They excitedly insisted we watched the video before opening the presents. I transferred the footage to my laptop,

forwarded to where Santa showed up, and pressed play. My girls squealed with delight and jumped in front of the screen, frantically waving at Santa while obscuring the video from my view. It brought me so much joy to see how happy the girls were. I was too lazy to stop the video, so it continued to play in the background while we unwrapped our gifts. I spotted a box I had not seen the night before. It was small and wrapped in a blue foil paper I did not recognize. My name was on it, but my wife's not. seemed as surprised as I was to see it there.

Noticing my confusion, my youngest daughter spoke. I was ready to dismiss her elf comment as just another weird thing kids say, but my wife wasn't so quick to ignore it. Honey, what elf? My daughter pointed to the laptop. By then, the video had ended, and all that was left on the screen was a preview of the first frame. Panic struck me like a bird and a jet propeller. I know my wife didn't dress up as an elf.

I scanned the video, clicking forward and back, until I saw what my daughter had seen. There was someone in the living room. He walked into the corner after I had turned the lights off. He stood there watching me parading around to Santa. The video went completely quiet after that. It was as though the camera failed to record a single sound. The strange, tall man in an elf costume. stood perfectly still for over an hour, watching the camera from a distance. After a while,

he walked over to the plate of cookies and bit the head off a gingerbread man. I glanced at the plate and saw his teeth marks on the decapitated cookie. The man then quietly approached the Christmas tree. I thought the audio wasn't working, but as he reached the tree, I began hearing his slow and steady breaths. He reached towards the ornament, and the video stopped. In a terrified frenzy, I grabbed the blue box he'd left behind. I ripped the bow off of it and tossed the frilly thing away. I frantically removed the wrapping paper, opened the box, and looked inside. There, on a bed of bubble wrap was the battery I'd put in the camera the night before. My wife took the ornament and opened the back.

The battery was missing. I don't know what scares me more. What the camera caught or what the elf might have done after he turned off the camera. One of the fondest memories from Christmas is visiting Santa and telling him what gifts you want for Christmas. Well, you remember how I asked David Alt to craft a story for us? Well, he has, and it's about his time spent playing Jolly St. Nick for the kiddies. But I'm afraid his experience wasn't as merry as we might think. He'll perform his tale for us and get his friends Erica Sanderson and James Cleveland to join him.

So let's listen as we hear all about the children who sat on his lap. Well, you know, I'm sure after a while he realized all children look the same. I used to love Christmas. Decorations up on the 1st of December, Advent calendars, tree, all that sort of thing. Go to church for the annual carol service, get asked why I didn't go more often, avoid the question, then get the stockings out for Santa. You know, the real meaning of Christmas. I don't do it these days, though.

I'm sure there's still some tension as we approach Christmas Eve, but it's not excitement anymore. Not now. To begin at the beginning. Two years ago, I was a jobbing actor going from small role to small role, doing a bit of teaching to try and make ends meet, when I saw a job advertised to be Santa in a grotto through December. It was a decent wage and solid work right up to and including Christmas Eve. Sure, I knew that it would be long hours with snotty kids asking for stuff their parents couldn't afford, but I also knew that there'd be those children who believed.

Those were the children I'd be doing it for, the ones whose bubble hadn't been irreparably burst by cynicism or older siblings. The worst thing, though, from November onwards, is the fact that the Christmas music gets played all day in the shops. There's only so many times you can wish it was every day before the kids start singing and you're eating. ears begin to bleed. I was thankfully cushioned from that noise by the grotto walls, which were constructed in such a way as to make visitors feel that they were coming into a real log cabin with a genuine fake electric fire, tiny tree and a stack of cuddly toys to give out as gifts for the especially magical children. The rundown was simple. Welcome in, photo with Father Christmas, give present, rinse and repeat. The photos would cut.

up on a screen in the corner so parents could be happy with the one that was taken before going out to purchase it at an overly inflated price. I suppose my story really gets going on the 13th of December. By this time I was well into the swing of things and my stocks of Christmas spirit still hadn't run dry. The date is significant, not because it was an unlucky Friday the 13th, although it was the start of all this. Perhaps it was just me being childless and so forth, but I was getting the form of child blindness. You see, they all started to look the same to me. They were all called Jake, Lily, Alfie or Freya, and all seemed to be blonde. They would come in wearing pink sweatshirts for the girls or blue track suits for the boys,

leaving me wondering when gender-neutral clothing would finally become a thing. Or they'd be part of a family that were all wearing novel. multi-Christmas jumpers. Yes, I had to laugh at the tenth Santa jumper I'd seen and Rudolph appeared on quite a few as well as snowmen and Robbins. One particular girl that day wore a jumper with a partridge in a pear tree. I remember that one distinctly. She had a mole under her left eye and looked so piercingly at me from behind her mother's legs that I don't know if I was more unnerved by her than she was of me. Of course I thought nothing of it at the time, although I couldn't quite shake that lingering feeling of the stare from that little girl, even after I'd gone home,

take away and beer in hand. Some kids were weird, end of story. Or so I thought. You can imagine my surprise then, when on the next day that same girl returned. This time it was just her and what I took to be her father. I hadn't seen him the previous day. The stare that she'd given me then had made me take slightly more note of her and her family than others. I had dismissed it as one of those things, but she then came back with her father. Parents were divorced, kid gets two visits to Santa. Made sense, I suppose.

She had no novelty Christmas jumper this time, but still had the mole under her left eye on that same piercing stare. Oh, I think I've seen you before. I watched as bemusement spread across the father's face. I don't know what you mean. I was caught slightly off balance by this. Surely she was the same girl as yesterday, wasn't she? Thinking quickly, I came back with, Oh, well, I came down the chimney to visit you last year, didn't I?

Of course you did Santa. She came to sit beside me to have her photo taken with no encouragement needed from her father, who was now relaxing again. I pressed the button to initiate the camera mechanism. There was a flash, and when the photo came up on the screen, I did a double take. Instead of looking at the lens, the little girl's eyes were boring into me. Dad said it looked lovely and asked me to hurry up. I was thrown well and truly off kilter. It wasn't a good photograph at all.

She wasn't even smiling. I dazardly picked a parcel off the pile for her, and as I handed it over, I saw around her neck a pendant in the form of two turtle doves. Her father led her away, and as they left, she turned around, eyes searing my skull again, and cheerily announced, See you soon, Father Christmas. The door shut behind her. I was at a loss for words.

My mouth felt dry, and I was seriously doubting my judgment. I had seen her before. She was the same girl as yesterday. The eyes, the mole, the stare? Our resident elf put his head round the door, and I said I needed a comfort break. I was, after all, very weirded out by the whole thing. Now I know what you're thinking.

Partridge in a pear tree jumper, two turtle doves on a chain, there's going to be a pattern. I'm not sure I saw it in the heat of the moment, but looking back now, it emerges clear as crystal. Those 12 days of Christmas. But everyone knows that they start on Christmas Day, they don't finish on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, the words have a new meaning now. Anyway, I said that I hadn't quite made the link as yet, but Suffice it to say, I didn't have the best night's sleep. I saw those eyes everywhere in my dreams, and I was up a couple of times feeling as though I had some weight on top of me. The Christmas

spirit was running a bit dry, but my shift the next day, the third day, passed almost without incident until five minutes before closing. I was breathing a sigh of relief when there came an urgent knocking on the door. It had been quiet for about half an hour. hour and I was counting up the presents ready for the next day. The elf, Doug, his name was, popped his head round the door. Sorry, Santa, just one more family. I sat transfixed as the little girl, that little girl, skipped in, then another, and another. They stopped like some sort of demonic troop in a line in front of me, then said in unison, hello, we're the pool family. We're the pool family. I'm Lily, I'm Lily, I'm Millie, I'm Billy, and you're Santa.

A slightly harangued woman came in after them, smiling apologetically. I'm very sorry, Father Christmas, you must excuse the triplets. They've been at stage school today and just had to come and see you. I was stunned. No, more than that, I was shaken to my very core. I think the mother noticed. I know, they're very theatrical. Are you going to sing for Father Christmas, children?

She clapped her hands, and the three girls rearranged themselves into a closer triangle, watching me without blinking all the while, and began. On the first day of Christmas? No, no, no, I mean, that's very nice, but no singing needed. How about some presents? The girl stopped their chorus and stood in a neat little light. in front of me. The first one stood there, arms outstretched. Uh, here you go, uh, Millie.

She's not Millie. I'm Millie. She's Billy. I was sweating rather profusely by this point. Oh, Billy, of course. Silly me. That's for you and these are for you two. Sod the names, I just wanted them gone. Thank you, Santa. See you soon. That was when it dawned on me that there really was a pattern after they sang that bloody song to me. And yes, the French for Hen is pool, hence the pool triplets. Was I really going to have to see them, see her again?

And why did they come in with different parents each time? I'd had several more beers that night to help with the thoughts racing around my mind, but they weren't enough to stop the nightmares. The night was plagued with those piercing eyes and the little mole underneath the left one. Weekdays before the school's finish tended to be a little quieter and I was glad for the rest. Sure, you'd get the new mothers bringing their babies in for their first Christmas photo with Santa, or some preschoolers that simply cried and left. I have to admit I was dreading going in nonetheless, even though I thought I must be entirely overreacting,

but also because I could feel it in my gut that that little girl would be there. I'd read enough horror stories to tell me that much, and you don't start a countdown without finishing it. Nevertheless, I told myself that I had to go in, not least for the money, but for the fact that I was obviously letting it all get to me. I must just have been working far too hard. Sure enough, though, at around 11 o'clock that next day, in the little girl wore with a big I Am Four badge. She clearly wasn't four. She was about eight, but her grandparents, as they were that time,

introduced her to me as Robin, our little birthday bird. Hello, I've been expecting you. I hoped my trepidation wasn't too obvious. Happy birthday. And how old are you? I'm four. Can't you see that, Sally? Her voice was clear, cold, and noticeably older than four should be.

Of course you are. I was feeling somewhat aggrieved that this little girl was playing me for a fool. The photo was taken, the present given, and the girl in front of me all the while had a look on her face that mocked and infuriated me. Grandparents didn't seem to notice a thing and I was confused that they didn't. didn't they hear her response or see her expressions? Again, the girl wasn't looking at the camera for her photo, yet they seemed pleased with it anyway. I motioned to Doug the elf that I wanted a break whilst he was ushering in the next family. After their mercifully normal visit, I asked him whether he noticed anything about the girl with the I Am 4 badge.

No, not that I know of. But did she seem to be 4? Wasn't she a bit older? Are you on something? She might have been five, tops, no more. Really? She looked about eight to me. Eight? I can tell you don't have kids, mate.

Maybe it was that I didn't have kids, but that changed things for me from that point. I wanted answers, and I knew that something was up. Moreover, I knew then that she was going to be coming back for another eight days right up to Christmas Eve, and there wouldn't be anything I could do about it. Well, nothing that wouldn't end me up in a cell smaller than the grotto.

Oh, the irony. And so the fifth day of her advent arrived, and with it a chavvy little kid with a track-suited mother pushing a pram, complete with screaming sprung. The girl was now bedecked in a tasteless, sparkly top, and, you guessed it, five thick gold rings on her fingers. The mother was first to speak. speak.

Go on, Chardonnay, get your present from Santa. I smiled. Whatever the hell was going on here, I had to applaud their innovation in costume. She pranced over to me like a model on a catwalk and held out her hands. The rings sparkled and the contemptuous look emanated from those piercing eyes. I handed a present over. The mother got her phone out and snapped a few photos disinterestedly. Oh, come on then. Gavin needs changing.

They shuffled out. No Christmas magic, no official photo, nothing. It was quiet. It was a Tuesday still in term time, so I called Doug in again. Did you recognise that girl in the last family? Why? Did they nick something? No, I mean, have you seen her here before? Yesterday with the I Am 4 badge? What really? She was six, if anything.

Come on, no way. Maybe you just see them for longer. Hey, you didn't get a photo with her, though. Management won't be pleased. Sod management, that mother wasn't going to buy a photo. Yeah, I know. But rules are rules. Get a photo next time, no matter what.

That was when a thought struck me. Hey, how long do we keep photos on the system for? 24 hours, that's all. So the parents have to buy them there and then. There are probably back-up somewhere, but I don't know where. I'd have to ask. Why? I want to know if you can get hold of any photos from the last four days, any at all. I'll see what I can do.

He looked back through the gap in the door. Quick, get back in. There's another family coming. I spent that evening wondering whether I was seeing things, especially given how little sleep I was getting. The eyes were there, the mole on her left cheek, prominent as ever, the added malevolent, mocking smile. but there was something going on, and I was determined to prove it. Photographic evidence, that's what was needed.

But how could she have looked four on one day and eight on others, but only to other people? Wednesday lunchtime and the girl arrived wrapped in a large goose-down coat against the winter chill. This time, her parents, a well-to-do couple with matching knitted bobble hats, ushered her in with exaggerated gasps of excitement at meeting Santa. The mother, breathless and excited, whispered to her. Look, Jennifer, it's Father Christmas. The mother then looked at me. Oh, Father Christmas, we came to see you last year,

and you gave Jennifer here such a lovely present in her stalking. She's been writing her list for you. Has she? Well, why don't you come over here and tell me all about it? I'd love to be able to have a photo with you so that I can remember to bring some extra magic on Christmas Eve. The girl smirked, her eyes growing narrower, as if she knew what I was planning. Yes, Santa.

She sat down next to me, eyes burrowing holes into my consciousness and turned to face the camera. I pressed the button and smiled to myself. This time I'll get her, I thought. The flash went off, the shutter clicked, the image displayed on the screen in front of us. She turned and spoke very deliberately to me. This year, I'd like a surprise for Christmas. I'm sure I could do that. My retort was maybe a bit too abrupt as the smile on the parents' faces wavered.

I decided to vouchsafe. Surprises are one of my favourite things, you see. My overt warmth reassured them, and they turned to go, motioning for the girl to follow. She paused, then turned to me. I like surprises too. Christmas surprises are the best. I can't wait to see what's inside. Something in her tone made me shiver.

She skipped out. I had to take a moment to collect myself. Doug put his head round the door. You're okay? I could see you on the monitor. You look like you've seen a ghost. No, I'm fine. Look, can we be able to be.

put the sign up for a break. I need to check the camera feed. Yeah, I guess. It's a bit slow out there anyway. What do you need? At last family, I want to see the photo. Mate, that's a bit weird. Just show me the last photo. I want to check something. We went to the console and Doug loaded it up. There she was, piercing eyes and mole on her left cheek. I asked him whether he'd seen her before. No? Can't say I have. Look, are you going to be able to last through Christmas Eve? You're seriously weirding me out. Yes, I'm fine. Look, can you do me a favour? Save that photo, print it out. Mate, you can't take pictures of kids home. That's not what I want it for. Leave it in a drawer. I want you to help me tomorrow. If I'm right, we're going to have a particular visitor and I'll need you in there too.

Um, okay. Just don't tell the managers. If it's a quiet day, it should be fine. A slow day it was. Pumped up on caffeine to help me stay alert, I waited, ready for the arrival of my daily visitor. At 2pm, in she came with her swan handbag, gliding over to me with her parents in tow like a pair of grey-coated cignets. As Doug ushered them in, I made my special announcement. Ah, our special visitor has arrived.

Not only are you especially magical, but you are also our 1,000th visitor to the grotto this year. Please come over here and have your photo taken so that we can give you your exclusive present. The parents stood honking with joy as the girl stepped forward to claim her prize. I'd wrapped one of the cuddly toys in different wrapping just for this so that I could lend the whole thing a small degree of credibility. She breamed herself and then posed as Doug used my camera to take her picture. I handed over the parcel. She turned her striking eyes to me.

The mole under her left eye bobbed with mocking mirth. But I do love surprises, and I'm very much hoping for one on Christmas Eve. Always with the surprises and something on Christmas Eve. I shall see what I can. do. They wheeled off, leaving me and Doug in their wake. After a moment's pause, Doug turned to me. What the hell was that about? Show me yesterday's photo. I want to check it with this one. Mate, I can't. Management found it when you'd gone and asked me what I was keeping it for. And I tried to tell them that the family didn't want it, they made me throw it away.

What? Shit. Look, just give me the camera. No way. You're not taking this home. Why not? It's my camera. You've got a picture of a little girl on there. You know I can't let you take that away from here. Breach of contract, child protection, all that sort of thing. You can't take it with that photo on it. You have got to be kidding me.

Mate, I can't. I'm in a supervisory role here. If you want the camera, you'll have to delete that photo first. I gave in. Okay. Keep the camera in your locker overnight then, and we'll do the same. Same thing tomorrow, deal? He looked nervous, but it seemed to be the lesser of two evils. He shuffled out again clutching the camera as if it were a small vat of nuclear waste.

The rest of the day passed quietly enough for a Thursday, apart from the increasing lack of restful sleep I got at night. Now the nightmares contained not only the eyes and the mocking smile, but also sardonic laughter and blood. Lots of blood. I realized that a whole week had now passed with that girl coming to see me. The other children were almost insignificant now. My days were becoming saturated with that one particular child.

Her and her mole and her eyes, those monstrous eyes. I was determined to find out what the hell was happening. I turned up with my laptop in hand, ready to download that photo and today's photo. With them both, I could show Doug what was going on. that the same girl had visited me every day for a week so far. I sat in the grotto watching the hours tick by, handing out presents with little enthusiasm, anxiously waiting for the girl to walk through that door. It was just after lunchtime when she came in, but not in the way I expected at all.

Doug opened the door wide and in came a pram, in which four limbs sprawled out, clearly too big for the space allowed. I stared. It was her. The mother was undeterred by my disbelief. She was speaking in that annoying way new mothers do to their babies, taking the milk bottle out from her hands. Who's that? She picked the girl up and held her cradle in her arms. How was she doing that? She was eight, for goodness sake. You don't hold an eight-year-old like that. And still she was going on in that sing-song voice? What do you want from Santa Daisy? What do you want? You're our special one-thousandth visitor this year.

I could hear my voice faltering, unsure as to whether this was all just a massive practical joke. Doug gave me a look of disbelief. It was then that the mother's sing-song voice came back into focus. Are you looking at Santa? Can you see him? Oh, Santa, I think she likes you. I turned to see the girl's eyes fixed on me. Her face was a mask of sheer, malevolent joy, and she watched me flash from confusion to horror to bewilderment.

I thought you said you liked surprises, Santa. The mother seemed delighted that her daughter was so vocal, immediately laughing about how clever she was. I turned to her. Didn't you hear that? Yes, I did. She's such a clever girl, aren't she, Dizzy? I slumped back in my chair. That was when it hit me that only I could see and presumably hear, that little girl.

Yes, Santa, I can see you like surprises. I've got another one for you soon. She was mocking me, goading me. It's been lovely to see you. you, but I'm feeling a bit tired. I hope you have a lovely Christmas. I gave them a present, and they left. Immediately, Doug ran over to me. Are you serious? The Q's getting longer out there, school's finished, and I need you here. What are you playing out with that baby? You look like it was speaking to you or something? You saw a baby. It was pointless hoping for him to say no.

I knew what was coming. I saw a baby. He had a vein on his temple that was beginning to pulse. After a beat, he looked back at me. Take the suit off. Go home. I'll be Santa for the last couple of hours. But I need you back here first thing tomorrow.

It's the weekend before Christmas and I need you here. And sane. You're sure you saw a baby. Get out. Go and sleep. now. Would that I could have done. Doug chivied me to get out of the costume

while he called in a favour to get another elf there for the afternoon. Once home, I tried to get everything right in my head, but nothing was coming. I paced round my flat, feeling caged, seeing the girl's piercing eyes in every poster, every photo and every TV program I watched. If I closed my eyes, the blood was there, and I heard faint laughter anywhere I went,

just at the threshold of hearing. And sleep was fitful as usual. The next day was incredibly busy, being the last Saturday before Christmas. The intensity helped to bring back some Christmas spirit as child after child sped through the process of being photographed and receiving their present. I was bracing myself all the time for that girl.

And as the day drew to a close without her, I was half happy and half worried. I needn't have been either, as at 5.30 she danced in, attired in a ballet dress, pirouetted in front of me before plucking a present from the depleted basket and waltzing out. All she left me with was a knowing wink as she rounded the corner outside. Her mother popped her head round the door, shrugged amiably, and mouthed sorry at me. I breathed a sigh of relief. That was it for the day.

No crazy shit happening, no horrible or awkward comments. just a brief flash of those eyes and gone. My sanity was allowed to remain intact for one evening. Doug seemed a bit more relaxed at the end of the shift too, given I hadn't gone crazy today. I knew that there were just three days to go, three days to work out what was happening, three days of the countdown left.

Sunday was even busier than Saturday. Hundreds of families streamed through. There was no way to have much of a lot of. a conversation with them at all, because all the time I was getting looks from Doug to hurry things up. I barely even noticed her when she came in. I did a double take when I heard her father speak. Hi, Santa. This is Daniel. The accent was French. Hello, Danielle. Good to see you. No, Santa. My name's Daniel. Can't you see I'm a boy? That was when I had to stop, to look and see who was in front of me.

Her family looked very confused at my calling their son, Danielle. Ah, yes, I see. Daniel, I have a question for you. She smiled sweetly. And what is that, Santa? What do you want? You know that already, Santa. I want a surprise. Christmas Eve isn't far away now. You know that too. Well, make sure you're fast asleep on Christmas Eve, otherwise I can't deliver your presents.

I can't wait to see what you're going to do on Tuesday, Santa. It's going to be so much fun. His, her parents were coming over to lead her away by this point, but I had no answers and all the weirdness, the fear that sleeplessness was threatening to explode within me. I tried one more time. What do you want? I didn't even notice the looks on their faces. I was transfixed by her eyes. She remained looking, smirking at me until she got out of the door. Doug smiled at them as if begging them not to sue and close the door behind them. Fucking pull yourself the fuck together for fuck's sake. I'm not going to let you ruin this. I'll be okay, Doug. I just need...

You'll just pull yourself the fuck together and get on with it. I don't even think that you'll be back next year. Tuesday comes and you're gone. Understand? Suits me. He glared and slipped out to usher the next family in. We stayed busy for the rest of the day, and when the time came to close up,

Doug simply said nothing and waved me out of there. It certainly was now long past my idea of a good Christmas, and my holiday spirit had been diminished to such a point that I couldn't even consider my favorite time of year was three days away. The dreams were still there, the laughter, the blood, the eyes, and now screams as well. 7 a.m. rolled round and I knew that it was going to be a long day ahead. A Monday, the day before Christmas Eve, schools had finished for the holiday, so it would be busy again. I don't think I could stay away if I tried. I had to find out what was going on with that girl and what the hell she was doing.

doing. Doug gave me a look that was frostier than music, not a happy jolly song. I changed in silence and went into the grotto. The presents were there and ready, the camera set up, and I could hear the faint cries of children outside. I took a couple more caffeine pills to gee me up, then sat back. The onslaught was relentless, and for five hours I sat handing out presents. Doug didn't think I needed a break. He just kept sending them through. It was only once I was absolutely bursting that he gave me two minutes to run to the toilet. What made it worse was the grotto was open until 7pm.

The shops were open late, so we had to be too. At half past six, she came in through the door. Ah, good. I was wondering when you'd come, Piper. The mother was thrilled. How did Santa know your name, Piper? The way she said it, it was obvious the girl she was perceiving was around three years old. Of course, to me, she was the same girl with the same eyes, the same smirk, but in a little sailor-type suit.

Let's cut to the chase, Piper. What do you want? Oh, Santa, you know what I want by now? What's going to happen tomorrow? You're still not asking the right question, Santa. I guess you never will. By this point, her mother was looking a bit aggrieved at my harsh tone towards her little one. Go and get your present, Piper. Piper stepped forward and held her hands out.

What's the right question, Piper? Say please, Piper. You'll find out tomorrow, Santa. Tell me! The words had left my mouth even before I'd realized it. Come on, Piper. We're leaving. I shall be complaining to the management about this. Oh, Santa, what have you done?

Bad Santa, Santa. The parcel left my hands even more precipitately than the shout had done. It was a cuddly toy, but it was enough to knock the departing child off balance. It was a futile and utterly stupid gesture, I know, but the lack of sleep combined with the goading and stress of the past ten days was too much. Doug jumped in and pulled the family out before locking the grotto shut behind him. An hour later, I was at the local police station, answering questions over my conduct, facing potential charges of assault and attempting to take pictures of underage children for my own purposes.

Doug had handed in my camera and told the story about the fake 1,000th visitor stunt I pulled. He submitted the complaint from the French family who'd visited whilst on holiday on that 10th day, Yes, they were from lords. I told my story as best I could, but of course they didn't believe me. The duty solicitor who sat with me advised me that my sleep record and stress levels could be taken into account as mitigating circumstances. It was a long, sleepless night in the cells. As far as I could see, my love of Christmas was now turning into a place on the sex offender's register and a prison sentence. It was now Christmas Eve.

my favorite day of the year, and I was a sleepless zombie inside four close concrete walls. At 2 p.m., however, I was allowed to walk free. At 1135 that morning, Doug, who was filling in as Santa for the day, was found in pieces all over the grotto. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson and two of their children were similarly plastered over the walls. The alarm was raised by security, and I can imagine that several Christmases were ruined for the children who peered around the door to see the festive bloodbath that was decking those halls. Police had reviewed the CCTV footage and seen who had perpetrated the carnage. Me. There I was.

Santa suit on, without the beard and hat, snarling up at the camera whilst emptying arteries everywhere, before somehow exploding where I stood. Of course it wasn't me. It couldn't have been me. I was under police observation all day. I was brought in for questioning again and eventually released as the police couldn't charge someone who had such a cast iron alibi. The official line said that Doug had gone crazy and done it himself, but I can guess what happened. They were all killed by whatever that girl was and the CCTV altered by it to match. I did do some research into what it could be. I heard stories about children seeming to visit Santa's over and over again offering presents or different grottoes across the world sporadically being shut down close to Christmas

but nothing concrete. Nothing to suggest that what happened to me has definitely happened elsewhere. So that's why I don't go out in December anymore. All my shopping is delivered and I wait inside for it all. to be over. I don't want to go out and meet that girl again anywhere. I don't want her to know that she got the wrong Santa that day. Or maybe it wasn't personal. Maybe she just didn't like Father Christmas and it was whoever it was in the costume that was going to get it. All I know is that I'm not going to dress up like that ever again. And I'm going to stay childless. There are some unfortunate folks

who don't spend Christmas under the mistletoe with a mug of hot cocoa and a fire in the hearth? No, just ask author Matt Demoski. He tells us about the people who have to work on Christmas, and some of them don't actually mind it. That is, until the quiet and boredom take them into places where they really don't belong. We'll let that old Peter Lewis tell us about it, and Nicole Doolin will join him, as they explain the sentiment, Someone, somewhere is lonelier than I am. Statistically, somewhere in the early hours of Christmas morning, more people are asleep than at any other moment during the year.

Me? I'm working. And I love that the world is quiet. That's less people to bother me, and more thickness for the walls of darkness and solitude that surround this place. As the off-hours network manager, I'm typically alone in my duties, and I don't have to manage much of anything. I don't have to train people or deal with customer issues. All I have to do is make sure are extremely expensive. The expansive network doesn't go down or lock up or implode when nobody else is around. With today's technology, that means I spend the vast majority of my time sitting around and browsing things online.

I'm pretty sure I've seen the entire internet. I used to cover my tracks by deleting my connection history from the network log, but one week I forgot, and nobody. and nobody cared. I quickly got the sense that nobody was even looking, and if they did, they wouldn't give a crap about the browsing history of an off-hours network manager.

I mean, realistically, what else was I supposed to do? Cooped up in this half-dark, half-rainbo server room, alive with the breath of endless banks of computers, and the cooling system needed to keep it all from melting. I used to joke to myself that my ultimate responsibility here was to literally pull the plugs out of the wall if the air conditioning ever stopped working. Something no software could ever do and something a monkey could have managed. But my little joke ceased being funny when I realized that was actually, probably, most likely the case. I'm a glorified button pusher.

Once I'd seen the entire internet, I grew bolder. I began looking at files on our own network. I had excuses lined up if anybody came to ask what I was doing, but nobody ever did. We did quite a bit of work with military contractors, and it was rather astounding to sift through bid documents, designs, and plans that dealt in the billions of dollars. It was all protected and encrypted, of course, except I was the acting network administrator. Score one for the network being far too big for anyone to lock down perfectly. There were files, emails, and logged communications from practically everywhere,

and a few places I'd never even heard of. We weren't military or governmental, but we did business with them all. VPs discussed third-world coups over lunch. Accountants logged tax tricks that were clearly illegal, but heavily obfuscated, and ready to be pinned on Patsy's hired for the task of taking the fall, and soldiers emailed their families back home. That was the thing about these memos and emails. Unlike the swarm of crap on the internet, they were real.

One soldier's email chain ended two months ago, and the subsequent data linked to his widow trying to get money out of our insurance department, despite their best efforts to renege on the payout. These were real people being churned through the system. Was that widow asleep somewhere right now, ready to fake her way through Christmas morning with her daughter? Or was she still awake with anger and despair, gnawing at her.

I mean, I had access, and the system was the system, and I knew it was inevitable. Alone in here, ad infinitum, I'd eventually do it. Why not now? I closed the widow's insurance payout ticket, taking it away from the current person assigned to it, then reopened it without an assignee. A simple matter. With a few manipulations, I created a fake employee in a department with a redundant sounding title. Then I sent it on over to pay processing, doubled the amount, and marked it as approved.

It was nothing to a giant corporation, but everything to a single person. As a final act, I deleted all traces of my actions. Huh, that was it. Maybe what I'd done was illegal, but it seemed the morally right thing to do. She'd be getting an email confirmation before she woke up. That seemed like a Christmas present and a half. And I couldn't be caught in any case. There was simply no trace in the system that I'd had anything to do with it.

And hardly anybody knew I existed anyway. way. The system was the system, and if through some impossible feat, a mid-level manager noticed an issue, he'd simply pass a ticket up to me. And that ticket would most certainly be lost in the shuffle. I felt oddly great for a little while, until I realized it's Christmas. Everyone's asleep. If I ever had an opportunity, opportunity to do more like this and get away with it, it was now. I delve deeper into the files, looking specifically for military communications with signs of distress. Somehow, I think I knew it the moment I saw it.

The message log hung there in the emptiness, alone, like me. Nobody had read it, and nobody was even aware of its again. existence. It was encrypted in a unique way and hidden by rare system priorities. No users had the rights to access it, and the file had no traceable origin. This was a message intended to be read by no one. But the access process did exist within the system, even if nobody actually had the rights to it. I couldn't resist. And so it began. Surprised how easy it is to play chess against yourself. The game is uniquely suited to cold decision-making, and your next move doesn't depend on prior states. You can spend a few hours reading a book, come back to the board, and

legitimately make a move in your own best interests before doing it all again as the opposite player. Of course, your opponent is perfectly matched to your level of skill and there's no bragging, so nothing really gets decided. I did find, curiously, that Black won more than 50% of the time. At some point, I'm pretty sure the human brain forces you to stop doing things you realize are pointless. Once chess became agony instead of welcome distraction, I had only the books left. And when I'd memorized all the books, I went for a lot of walks. They don't take very long, though. I've got seven chambers here.

One has the shower and the toilet and the marks I make in the wall for each day that passes. One chamber has my bed, my books, and a picture on a nightstand. The third chamber has a kitchen area and a table. that serves adequately as a ping-pong arena against my only opponent, the wall. The fourth chamber has the computers and communication equipment. Screw all this stuff. It's all held together by rubber bands and scotch tape. You know, I think I finally managed to send a message out somewhere.

But I always think that, don't I? This time, with everything going unbounded, with time slipping into time and thought, slipping into thought, I really think I've done it. This message is going somewhere. It has to be. A fourth chamber has a wall of tell. televisions and radios, incoming only.

Some goddamn genius got hired to make televisions and radios that couldn't be repurposed to send a message out. I hate that guy. I've been in and out of half these things, even burrowed into the wall myself, and the crap back there just won't give me a break. I used to watch the TVs, but they just remind me how cooped up I am. And everyone out there seems to be getting dumber and more outraged at everything all the time.

I wish I could shout loud enough for them to hear. The fifth chamber has, of all things, a couch. What am I going to do? Have a guest over? There are fake blinds, too, always down and closed because they only show onto concrete. Was this room just supposed to make me feel a little less trapped? Idiots. The sixth chamber, offset a bit from the rest by a small tunnel, houses a vast little factory and furnace room.

that keeps me alive. Air conditioning, carbon scrubbing, an automated hydroponics bay, geothermal power plant that works. That shit could run for a hundred years all by itself. If it hadn't been made by the lowest bidder. See, I know I'm not supposed to send messages out. I know that.

That's the fundamental design of this whole place. Thing is, there's somebody down here. I mean, I might be losing my mind. I get that. But I can feel the curve of insanity ahead in the road. And I don't think I'm there yet.

I really think there's a person in my furnace room. And I checked. I went over every crack in the wall. Every nook and cranny in the air vents. Even rechecked the welded shut elevator like I do every day. There's no way in or out of this place. Yet there's someone in my furnace room. I can guess what that means for me. And none of my guesses are good.

I suppose there's no point in hiding, though there's literally nowhere to go. And I chose this, so it's pretty much my fault. Time to face the music. And more supposing better to die now than to spend forever down here losing my mind. down that long, small, concrete tunnel with the weirdest sense of anticipation. The furnace room had always creeped me out for some reason. It wasn't meant for anything but maintenance access, so it was like a series of mechanical caves and burrows that went on longer than I'd ever reached.

It was always breathing and moving and clinking, even during my supposed. at night hours. I hated it. So, of course, an intruder had to have appeared there. Anywhere else would have been too simple. Crawling between the water recycler and a furnace duct, I tried to get a long vantage on whoever was back there. I froze as I saw a shoe move out of sight up ahead.

Scraping across cement, it had been pulled forward by someone else crawling through the maintenance tubes. That was it, proof that someone was down here. Was there a way out? I was immediately taken aback at the ragged and unfamiliar sound of my own voice. The only response came in the form of someone scrambling away in the distance. Please, I won't hurt you. Eventually, I retreated back to the tunnel.

If there was somebody in there, they'd have to come out sooner or later. I pulled the couch over, tilted it up on its end, and used it as a makeshift barrier in the tunnel. It could easily be moved, but it would make a noise. I moved through my chambers carefully noting the placement of every object. Nothing had been moved, and I could find nobody around, so the possible intruder still had to be in the furnace room. I decided to get some algae paste from the kitchen to eat. There was really nothing else to do. I couldn't risk crawling around in there with some stranger on the loose.

Here, I'd at least have a clear view of what I was up against. The alarm went off as I was eating. Distracted as I was by the thought of an impossible intruder, I was initially terrified. But then I sighed and went to deal with it. How long did I wait? A half hour, an hour. It didn't matter. Eventually, a voice radiated down the tunnel.

In the kitchen, I sat up straight. It was a woman. Practically running to the sixth chamber access, I poked my head around the edge of the couch. How did you get down here? I didn't see anybody, but her voice came from right around the opposite corner at the end of the tunnel.

Processing her words made my head hurt a little. It had been a long time since I'd heard any. speak. But all that mattered was getting out of here. How did you get in here? Whoever she was, she paused. But only if you tell me where we are. Court-martial me if I ever get out of here. What was the use of hiding the information? We're 11,000 feet underground. Seriously? And I could start a new life. Life.

One second. What is the state of earth? I sighed. It was just an overseer using the comm system to simulate an intruder. Had I imagined the shoe? Or perhaps it was an adjunct

testing me. I hadn't heard from any of them in over a year. But they'd been bound to check in sooner or later. Like business. As usual in the TVs, radio chatter seems normal, too. A few wars going on, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Is that so? She stepped out from behind her corner hesitantly. Holy crap, she was really down here. A brown-haired woman in her early 30s crept down the tunnel. She wore unfamiliar clothing but seemed otherwise normal. You're not armed, are you? I looked her in the eyes across the edge of my couch. Why would I be armed?

No one should be able to get down here. She approached me cautiously, and I retreated a chamber. She slowly moved the couch out of the way and entered my space. proper. As she looked at me, I suddenly felt very self-conscious about my thickening stubble and unkempt hair. Sorry, I haven't had visitors in a long time. She circled around me, checking out each chamber with narrowed eyes one by one. Though I followed her from room to room, she never completely turned her back to me. We stopped outside my bedroom,

and she did not enter the bathroom area. What is this place? My prison... Can we go now? Are you a prisoner? What was your crime? What justifies burying you 11,000 feet down? It occurred to me that she really had no idea

where she was. This wasn't an act. What if she chose not to reveal her method of entry? Oh, no. I was joking. I'm military. She set her jaw. I don't think she believed me.

Here, come here. These TVs, I watch the world here. I listen to the radios, see? She remained at the edge of the chamber watching me, warily. Why? What could I tell her? There's a problem. See, it's like this.

Say there's aliens. They want to take over the earth for whatever reason. They're assholes, right? Except if they've got brains, they'll understand. Understand what? She slowly moved around the edge of the room, drifting toward the direction of the furnace room tunnel. I could tell I was losing her.

Say there are monsters, too. Shit, I don't know, mind-controlling parasites. Things with eerie eyes that'll eat you alive, or one that, like, rips out of your bones. seriously, your bones, like fate's worse than death. Anything and everything. Her eyes went narrower, and she stiffened. I was highly aware of her body language

and knew I needed to reassure her. No, no, no, I'm not saying this stuff exists. I don't know. Some people do, though, and some people are scared out of the goddamn minds. So if I see on the TV that people are in trouble, that those aliens are attacking or stuff is getting people or anything that seems to be condemning the human race

to fates worse than death, well, then I give them the better option. I give them just death. The glimmer of understanding grew, in her eyes. I decided to push the offensive. Yes, I can tell. You get it. Aliens can't take us over if we threaten to kill ourselves rather than surrender, and we can't be trapped in fates worse than death if we kill ourselves first. I moved along the wall, touching embedded electronics. All this, all this, it's attached to every single nuclear weapon in every single country, all over the world.

That's why you're so far down. None of those forces can find you or reach you. They can't stop you from activating the Dume's Day suicide pact. I nodded excitedly. My eye is wide. Right, right? That's... What he said when he brought me down here. The only defense we have against nightmare is the power of self-sacrifice. That's our mantra. I thought about that, and my hope slowly began to ebb as I realized something.

If you're not with them, then who are you? I haven't heard from my commanding officer in over a year. The TVs look fine. They could be faked. They're just signals. If the politicians told the enemy, whoever or whatever the enemy is, and the politicians would have told them

because Doomsday Suicide Pact is useless unless the enemy knows about it. You know. Dr. Strangelove style, then those signals could easily be fake. Everyone on the surface could be dead right now, or being kept alive as brains in jars, or being enslaved. Then how do you know anything at all about the situation up there? I glared at her.

My CO is supposed to check in every single. so often over a secure line. I haven't heard from him in over a year. The equipment broke. God damn government contractors. But I fixed it. I thought I fixed it. But he's still not out there. She looked down at my uniform for a moment, thinking. If the signals are being faked, then the enemy up there has come. complete control of the planet and masterful deception abilities. In that situation, would you detonate the system and destroy all life on the surface? If they killed everyone or enslaved them or worse, well, then they can all go to hell.

What if there are still human beings fighting for survival? What if there's even one person left up there? I smiled weakly. All thoughts that I've had in an endless, mad cycle over and over every day. The fate of the world literally rests on me. Please take me out of here. My hope rekindled in a burst of warm fire as she finally. just nodded.

No man should ever have to make that choice, let alone by himself. Almost sobbing, I nodded in agreement. She began to move toward the access tunnel when red lights began to blare, and a loud noise echoed through the chambers. What the hell is that? Why did it have to happen then? I was almost out. Despair coiling around my heart. I carefully walked to the seventh chamber in my underground bunker.

The heavy metal doors slid open in response to my handprint and a single button lay within. Above large red numbers counted down. 21, 20, 19. Coming up behind me, she studied the room and shouted over the alarms. What is this? I said nothing. Instead, I pushed the button. The alarms ceased, and the chamber slowly resealed itself.

Standing outside, I could only look at the cold concrete beneath my bare feet. But she figured it out. Bonner home. It's not something you activate, is it? It's something you don't do. I nodded absently. The alarm goes off at random three times a day, 60 seconds to push the button and stop the process.

If I'm dead, if the forces worse than death, have managed to disable, kill me, then it'll go off automatically. The only way to be sure she backed away from me. I can't take you with me. She began moving down the surface tunnel backward. Her eyes on me as I slowly followed her. God, I can't take you with me. How long have you been down here? She'd have known if she saw the bathroom and the thousands of marks on the walls that each marked a single day for nearly ten seconds, probably trying to comprehend what she was condemning me to.

I'm so sorry. She slammed the door to the furnace room behind her, just like that. I was alone. Had I ever really had a guest over? I did eventually manage to get through the door, but there was no trace of her by then and no trace of an escape route.

I knew then that I was going insane. What if the signals are fake? What if they're not? What if there's one single person still alive in fighting for the fate of the human race? And I'm alone on a dead world. What if the surface is covered in slimy, horrible, extra-dimensional creatures? It's a utopia up there. And some horrific series of bad luck just cut off the...

the line to my bunker. They could be drilling down to rescue me, even now, if I just had a single communication, a single message, a single voice, if I just knew something. But I didn't know, and I couldn't go on. Court-martial me, if you can. I decided to let the timer run out at the next alarm. Tat there, staring at the button,

letting the alarms blare, letting the red lights flash. I held the picture from my nightstand close. Nine, eight, even notice a difference down here. Would I? The surface could be obliterated by a hundred, thousand nuclear explosions. And I wouldn't feel a thing. Eleven thousand feet down. Would I? Three. Two, I took in a deep gas as the timer actually hit zero. Much louder alarm began going off. Deep in the walls, something began to move, vibrating the concrete beneath my feet. Oh shit, oh,

Oh shit, it was actually happening. A single number blinked on the screen above. Zero, zero, zero. Zero. The words final system initiation flashed above, and then new numbers appeared. 60, 59, 58. So it wasn't really only 60 seconds.

I thought that was always cutting it a little short. I laughed out loud, barely hearing myself over the incredibly loud alarms. What was the louder alarm even for? There was no way to sleep through the first set, unless the vibrating beneath my feet. Why would anything vibrate down here? Running out to the other chambers, I heard a loud drilling sound coming from some.

where above. Dust drifted down from the ceiling. They were drilling me out. Were they bringing down my replacement? Was my shift finally over? Being hard, I ran to the button and slammed my hand down on it. It stopped at six seconds. The alarms all ceased, and the door to the seventh chamber slid closed once more. Laughing happily, I moved back out into the other rooms. Then I frowned. The drilling had stopped. It was eerily quiet, once again.

Confused. I waited. It wasn't until I'd done the same thing for two more alarms, that I realized what you bad. bastards did. You added fake proximity alarms and fake drilling vibrations to the final initiation. They're randomized, too. So I can never be certain they're fake. Every time I feel like giving up and letting the end come, letting all the bombs go bright. I, because maybe this time I'm being rescued at the last second.

Maybe this time, the drills are real. I laugh a lot these days. Laughing all the time could have been a hallucination. The signals could be fake or not. The rescue could be the same old trick, or not. Who knows? It's the ultimate joke, and you've played it perfectly on me. If you want to know how I feel about it, you know where to find me.

I'll be here screaming your names married to all of you. Straight from hell here. in the flame. I finished reading the message log with a terrible sinking feeling in my heart. What the hell was this? Some kind of joke? The file's details said it had been made today. In fact, the last few lines had been added as I'd read it. But where was it coming from? Where did the file originate. This couldn't possibly be real, could it? Was there a poor and tortured madman underneath the earth right now with the power to destroy everything at his fingertips? I could imagine some sort of ridiculous budget cutback eliminating the department that had overseen him. If the project

had been kept secret, would anyone even know what had been defunded? Holy, I couldn't find the source. All I could do was hope that this was a Christmas joke being played on me for my off-hours browsing habits. Or, if it was real, I could only hope that this unknown soul would hold out. And for how long, indefinitely? Did all our lives hinge on the lonely suffering of one solitary man? In my half-dark and very isolated server room, I couldn't help but feel for him. Merry Christmas to you, friend.

Wherever you are. You know, that writer from the days of old, Charles Dickens wrote a Christmas tale about what might happen in the future to old Ebenezer. Ah, but this tale from author Liam Hogan also takes place in the future. But I'm not sure the chance for redemption is quite as promising. Let's listen to Erica Sanderson and David Alt, as they show us how important it might become to make this a silent night. It was the night that everything was silent. In homes across the country, people cowered beneath their Christmas trees.

Only real ones would do, the pine scent masking their fear. The trees groaned with brightly coloured baubles. The more, the better to try and confuse Santa's senses. It used to be said that he knew if you were naughty or nice, and that he'd come for you if you had been bad. But the truth was much simpler. Any noise, any movement, anything that gave away your heart. hiding place, and that would be that. In one living room, made double by the height of the

collapse of the floor above, there were unusually two such trees. Under the larger, a family huddled. The youngest was a mere four years old, small for her age, and so perhaps the only one among them who would be truly safe. But the sooner she learned the dangers of this night, the better. Her sister, 18 months her senior, held her by the hand and snuggled close, stilling her wimpers. The night was cold, and the small fire eating away at the dampened yule log offered little in the way of either heat or light. Under the other tree, the eldest child, Tommy, lay listening to the wind howl, his grandpa beside him. He'd begged, cajole, and nearly threatened to be allowed to this privilege. Earlier, Bramps had ruined the traditional telling of the holiday tale and had been in disgrace ever since.

But as the long night dragged on and the danger lurked ever closer, mother and father had finally relented. Besides, Tommy was getting bigger every year, and there really wasn't space under either tree. After a long while of listening to the noises of the night, Tommy finally said, "'Gramps!' Gramps started, and fearfully, checked his watch. It was still early. Santa wasn't due for another hour. He let out his breath in a plume of vapour. Yes, Tommy. As they were lying close together under the prickly cover of branches and needles, he could speak just above a whisper and still have Tommy hear him. That story you told,

is it true? Gramp sighed. He'd already got into a heap of trouble on that account, and yet he was the oldest person in the village. At 43, he was perhaps the oldest for miles around. It was hard to tell, because travelling wasn't easy as it had once been, and when his time came, which could very well be tonight, who then would know the truth? About the presence. Yes, Tommy, it's true. Tommy took a moment to digest the full horror of this. His parents had passed it off as a sick joke, But he'd known that it wasn't the sort of thing that Gramps did, which was why he had been so eager to leave the family tree for the first time and join Gramps under his.

What sort of presence? Gramps blinked. Truth be told, he could hardly remember. He'd been younger than Tommy was now. That first year it had all changed. Oh, wonderful things. Magical things. Games that made moving pictures and sounds.

make-believe worlds of bright colors, toy cars. Tommy knew cars, but couldn't understand why you'd want to make a toy out of them. They were dull, uninteresting things, and only good for hiding in or sheltering from the rain. Why? Why did he... it change? Gramps thought for a moment. This was the crux of it, and he wished he understood it better, but he'd been there. so young. On that first night, very few kids his age or older had survived. Those who had had been lucky enough to take shelter beneath the Christmas tree, among the presents that would never

be opened. There was a war. Of this, he was quite sure. He remembered one of the toys he'd got the year before, tank, and how his mother had not approved of the way he'd lined it up against his other toys, the foam shells knocking them over one by one to the sound of electronic explosions while his dad looked on beaming. There was a war. A war in distant lands, a war won by drones. There were no prisoners, no wounded, and no civilian casualties. I mean, nobody who wasn't a terrorist, wasn't a baddie. The drones went from house to house looking for hidden weapons, seeking out and killing the enemy, and that was that. The war that had seemed to last forever came to an end in a single fortnight.

It was amazing how it all came back. For almost 40 years he'd hardly thought of it. He'd been too busy surviving. They all had, after the adults had gone. But he was getting ahead of himself. It was the first Christmas after. The celebrations were barely over and everyone was happy, everyone was joyous. You know that word?

I haven't used it in a long while, joyous. We all went to bed that Christmas Eve certain that there were only good things in our future. Under the Christmas tree? What? No, no, this was before all of that. We slept in our normal beds, but with stockings hung on the bedposts and a plate of mince pies and carrots put out for Santa. Tommy looked at him, disbelieving. Carrots?

For Santa? "'Grantz laughed, a muffled exhalation "'that shook the broken red bobble nearest his head. "'No, no, not for Santa. "'For the reindeer's, Donner, and Blitz, and, oh, and of course, good old Rudolph.' Tommy bit his lip. "'So many things that he didn't understand. "'It was like a nonsense poem,

"'like the battered copy of Alice in Wonderland "'that Gramps used to read to them, until one of the wild dogs had ripped it apart. Was this all made up as well, he wondered? Gramps shook his head slowly. But the reindeer didn't come that year, or ever again. Nor did Santa. Not the Santa I remembered, the real one, not these killing ones.

He patted Tommy's head lightly and fell silent. Tommy waited for a moment, then another. What happened? Gramps took a deep breath, and then another, shaking his head to hide his trembling. I awoke to the sound of screams, of guns. I didn't know where I was for a moment, and then the bedroom door was flung open and a dark figure stood in the doorway. Hide, my father said. Quick, they're coming. Hide, for God's sake, hide. It was the last I ever saw of him, alive.

I hid under the bed with my brother. I heard more shouts, my mom screaming at my dad for the combination to the guns safe. My dad telling her not to be stupid that guns wouldn't help, not against them. My dad was in the army before the droves, so I guess he knew. The front door slammed open or perhaps shot. And there were a couple of loud bangs, and then there was silence. We could still hear shots and screams, but they were distant and growing more so. I was trembling and desperately needed to use the bathroom, so I edged out from under the bed while my brother hissed at me to stay put.

I crept downstairs. The front room flickered with coloured lights from the tree, and as I looked about me wondering where my parents were, something red, flitted past the window. A strange humming noise that suddenly stopped. Gramps ran his worn hands over his face. I dived under the Christmas tree just as the door was blue. blown off its hinges, just as my brother was creeping down the stairs to see where I had got to. I... I like to think it was quick for him, but from what everyone who survived said, he wouldn't have been safe anyway. But I sometimes think I should have stayed under that bed and shared my

brother's fate whatever it was to be. There was a tremor in Grabs' voice, and something hot and wet splashed onto Tommy's hand. You see, in those days there were so many times. They didn't check as closely as they do now. I even pushed aside a branch and saw the damn thing hovering over a lifeless body. Oh, you see, it, it sees you, end of story. But somehow I survived. It was a drone, of course, dressed in a red cloak, someone's sick idea of a Santa. Tommy gasped.

I thought you said you'd won the war. We did. All the drones were ours. They were brought home and put into story. We don't know for sure what happened next, but smarter boys than I have guessed, and it makes a strange kind of sense. Gramps levered himself up slightly so he could look Tommy straight in the face. Some idiot down at the depot gets bored of standing guard over a warehouse of tin soldiers. Maybe he's had a Christmas drink or two, and suddenly decides to reprogram them, decides to turn them into the military's very own Santa's delivering presents to the whole country.

only he didn't do a very good job of it. We guess he managed to remove most of the safeguards and retargeted the drones on the civilians, the children, the adults, everyone in fact except the very young. Thank God he left that protocol in. At the least capable of hiding, of staying quiet, they're the only ones who turned out to be safe. He probably tried to disable the weapon systems as well,

but did they rearm themselves or did he just mess up? I hope he was their first victim when they awoke as programmed that first Christmas Eve. When I think of my parents, my brother and all the others, I hope he was the first. We survivors didn't know then that Santa would be back, that he would be an annual event. We lost a lot of people that second year, all those who laughed at the childish fears of the more timid kids, or simply too busy looking after all the little babies to count the days. We lost more the year we thought we were grown up enough to attack the depot. I was there on the fringes.

We thought, since it wasn't Christmas, they'd be defenceless. We were wrong. We did manage to kill a few of them, though, and more have fallen by the wayside since. There's no one to repair them, after all. Perhaps one day they'll be dead. Perhaps even in your lifetime. Until then, thank God. they weren't programmed to cope with Christmas trees.

What was Santa like before? Before. Oh, he was a big, jolly man, dressed in red just like the drones, but with a flowing white beard and a hearty laugh. He had a sack of presents slung over his shoulder, and everywhere he went he used to call out peace and goodwill to all men. He used to say peace.

Gramps fell abruptly silent and held his roughen finger against Tommy's lips. In the distance, the first shots rang out in the cold night air. Santa had arrived. We heard earlier the perils of playing Santa can be many, and the terror of repeated children visiting Santa isn't limited to the UK. As we learn from author Jimmy Giuliano, he too experience the nightmarish children at Christmas time, and it makes us wonder if there is something insidious going on with children around this time of year. We'll let Mike Delgado and Jessica McAvoy perform this one for us,

as we hear more tales of a mall sound. A few years ago, I was broke and renting a tiny home in a small town in central Wisconsin. So when I spotted an ad in a classified section for a mall Santa position, even though I was never a big fan of Christmas, I decided, what the hell? I desperately needed the extra cash. I was hired the next day. The first couple of days went all right. Boys, girls, fat kids, smelly kids, they all had their lists and were eager to talk my ears. ear off about it. Some tugged at my fake beard, others jumped on my lap so hard I was afraid that

cheaply constructed plywood Santa Throne would crack and collapse. But it was an okay gig. But then, he showed up. He was no more than eight or nine years old with brown, bowl-shaped hair. He wore a red and white striped shirt that made him look like a human candy cane. I peered at him As he stood in line alone, no mother or father in sight. When it was his turn, the boy gently climbed into my lap and stared with an unnatural focus, directly into my eyes. I asked what he wanted for Christmas, and he just sat in silence, eyes piercing mine. I repeated the question and patted him on the shoulder with my white glove.

No response. He leaned in close. His breath tickled my ear. here. He placed one hand on my fake beard and the other behind my hat. He said, he hopped down and disappeared through a crowd of people. When I got home that evening, there was a small present wrapped in green wrapping paper and tied with a red bow sitting on my kitchen table. I picked it up and shook it. Something rattled inside. I unwrapped the paper in the cardboard box and remove the object within. It was a garage door opener.

I turned it in my hand, thinking it may have been dropped off by my landlord. I walked to the garage and clicked the button on the new device a few times. The garage door stayed shut. I called my landlord and he said he hadn't been over in a few days. The opener was not for him. My thoughts returned to the young boy with the candy cane sweater from the mall, and I shuddered. I checked the doors and windows before I went to bed, making sure they were all locked. What little sleep I got that night was with the garage door opener still palmed in my hand.

The candy cane kid returned the next day. Climbed on my lap and said nothing. He just stared. Frank Sinatra's jingle bells crackled from the mall's speaker system. The boy leaned in and said, I have a gift for me. He hopped down, waded into the sea of shoppers, and was gone. I expected another gift that evening when I returned home, but thankfully there was nothing.

I slept a tad more soundly, but in the middle of the night I was awoken by the crashing of glass coming from the kitchen. I grabbed the lamp off the dresser and yanked the electrical cord from the wall. I clutched the lamp like a baseball bat. I gently nudged open my bedroom door. That's when the giggling began. The giggling of a mischievous little boy. I called out and the giggling stopped. Tiny footsteps pitter-pattered on the linoleum floor.

floor, I ran into the kitchen just in time to see a red and white striped sweater and short little legs wiggle out the broken window and into the night. On my kitchen table was another gift. I flipped on the light and tore open the wrapping paper, another cardboard box. I reached inside and pulled out my second present, a half-used roll of black duct tape. I'd had enough. The next morning I tossed the garage door opener and duct tape into a lunch sack, tossed the bag into the passenger seat of my car, and drove straight towards the mall. I was determined to talk to the mall manager and get to the bottom of this. I was halfway to the mall, driving on a side street near the edge of town when I heard the noises, pounding and muffled screaming coming from my trunk.

I slammed on the brakes, clutching the steering wheel tightly, breathing slowly. There was a silence for a moment, but then the pounding and screaming returned. Turned off the ignition, remove the keys, and instinctively grabbed the lunch sack from the passenger seat. My head was on a swivel. I peered at the small houses on the street, scanning the windows from furious bystanders. Thankfully, there was no one. I stepped outside, moved to the rear of the car, and inserted the key into the trunk keyhole. I popped it open slowly and dread filled the pit of my stomach. The candy cane boy lay in the trunk of my car, feet and hands bound together with black duct tape. The boy's mouth was gagged and he was trying to scream.

I stumbled backwards, dropping the sack on the concrete. The half-used roll of black duct tape rolled out of the bag and the garage door opener tumbled a few feet away. I fumbled with the garage door opener and my finger accidentally clicked the button. The garage door of the house of the house. In front of me, rumbled open? I gawked at the rectangular device in my hand. Did that just open that garage door? A man dressed in a blue robe stepped outside from the front of the home.

He walked towards me looking extremely confused. What is going on? Car in the street, trunk popped open, me hunched over clutching a brown paper lunch sack in one hand and a garage door opener in the other. I wondered if he could see the boy in the trunk from his vantage point. But I didn't wonder too long. I bolted. I crisscrossed through yards running for what felt like hours.

My legs operated on adrenaline, and I never slowed down once. I found myself at a bridge, and without thinking, I heaved that garage door opener and duct tape into the river. I plopped down, and I stared into nothing. I had no clue what to do or how once. What just happened was even possible, so I slowly trudged back to my car. I expected it to be gone or surrounded by cops, but it was just where I left it. But the trunk was now closed, and my keys still dangled from the keyhole. I approached cautiously, turned the key, and opened the trunk.

The boy was gone. I spun around scanning the neighborhood. I saw no one. I eyed the house where the man had approached me earlier and it was dark. I looked closer and saw the candy cane boy at the front window, standing motionless, watching me. He brought his finger up to the mouth and made a shh gesture. No idea what to do. Not a single clue. So I slammed the trunk closed and sped to the mall, determined to get answers and prepare a possible alibi for whatever the hell was happening to me.

I skidded into the parking lot, parked exceptionally poorly, and marched into my manager's office. I told him everything, and he listened to me with one eyebrow arched the entire time. His first question was, Have you been drinking? I was pissed off, and I demanded that we examined the security footage from the last few days. You'll see that candy cane boy, I said. He's trying to set me up. The manager allowed.

it, if only to temporarily stop me from dangerously careening entirely over the edge of sanity. We walked to the head of security's office and the three of us watched the tapes. No Candy Cane Boy. Everything else looked exactly as I remembered it. The cute who dropped an ice cream cone on my lap, the girl who placed the Mickey Mouse doll on my shoulders, but no Candy Cane Boy appeared in the footage anywhere. Didn't make any sense. I left the mall in a daze. I turned back and the manager and the head of security suspiciously watched me leave.

The head of security moved his walkie-talkie to his mouth and said something I couldn't make out. My pace quickened. I hopped into my car and I sped away. I expected another present when I got home. There was nothing. I examined every single square inch of my tiny rental. looked inside every cabinet, opened every cupboard, checked behind every doorway. I fastened the board over the broken window with a dozen nails.

Even though I was dead broke, I didn't care what the landlord charged me for punching holes into his wall. Sleep was impossible. At any second, I expected the cops to come barging inside or for the spotlight of a police helicopter to shine through my window and blind me. My eyelids were seconds from dropping when the giggling return. A terrible, playful giggle. It was right outside my bedroom door.

I crept out of bed and moved to the door, checking to make sure it was locked. Satisfied, I peered through the crack underneath the doorway, out into the hallway. My eyes immediately locked with the eyes of the candy cane boy, staring back at me inches away. He giggled again. I scrambled backwards on all four. along the thin and dirty carpet. I heard the boy stand up and his footsteps echoed down the hallway

as he sprinted away. I contemplated going out into the hall and I contemplated calling the police but neither seemed like a good idea. So I sat there all night waiting for the candy cane boy to return but he never did. Sunlight streaming through my window

finally gave me the courage to open my bedroom door. It creaked open Sitting in the hallway was another pristinely wrapped gift. The red bow sparkled in the morning sun. I picked it up off the floor and I read the tag. Do not open until Christmas Day. It was three days until Christmas. Seeking answers yet utterly terrified of the unknown,

I didn't open the gift. I decided to follow the candy cane boy's instructions. I placed the gift. on my kitchen counter next to the microwave, threw my Santa costume into a garbage bag and drove to the mall. I dumped the bag on my manager's desk announcing loudly that I quit. I didn't even ask for my last paycheck. I stopped off at a hardware store and purchased a small pre-lit Christmas tree for $9.99. It was my first Christmas tree since I was a kid. I placed the Candy Cain Boy's gift at the base. I had no idea what I was doing, but this made the most sense.

to me. Maybe if I got more into the Christmas spirit, the candy cane boy would leave me alone, I reasoned. It was the only thing I could think of. I didn't leave the house for the next three days. I looked for my picture on the evening news, glared through the crack in my curtains out onto the street, and prepared myself for the authorities breaking down my door and charging me with kidnapping. But all was quiet. Nothing stirred. Christmas morning arrived. I won't. I won't. I was quiet. I was wanted to open my gift. I shook it delicately in my hand and something small rattled from the inside, but I couldn't do it. I was terrified of what I might find. I drove to the pharmacy instead. It was one of the few places open in town. I spent nearly the rest of my cash on Christmas decorations.

Bowes, stockings, ornaments, a plastic reindeer and Santa, a train set, I bought it all. I returned home decorated my house like the North Pole, and I waited. I didn't open the present, and the candy cane boy didn't come back. I reasoned the tormenting would be over. Amazingly, my ultra-festive Christmas decoration plan worked. I moved out the next week, taking what few possessions I had with me, along with the gift. It sat next to me on the passenger seat, slightly jostling up and down as my car roared south down the interstate. I moved back to my. hometown, borrowed some cash from my parents and rented a small house in town. The first thing I did was deck out my place in Christmas decorations. I hoped that would keep the candy cane boy away,

but I knew he was lurking. Others heard him too. They'd mentioned the strange noises coming from the basement or the scratching from inside the walls. My friend insisted the place needed a new water heater and that the landlord ought to get the pipes checked out. But it wasn't the water. heater, and it certainly wasn't the plumbing. It was the hushed giggling, and it was the faint pitter-patter of those tiny feet. They were never far away. And when I heard them, I'd buy a new car for my train set or order a new nativity scene for the living room. That seemed to stop his nosing around for a little bit. I figured it would work forever, or Christmas cheer, less tormenting from the candy cane boy. I left the decorations up year.

people thought I was a freak, but I didn't care, and I still didn't plan on opening the Candy Cain Boy's gift. But six months ago, I began dating a girl. I fell for her hard, and I knew I couldn't take her back to my winter wonderland. Pat would send her running for the hills. So I took down everything, the lights, the tree, the decorations, and I shoved everything into the attic. And when the candy cane boy didn't come back, it filled me with a weird sense of courage. So this past Christmas, I decided to open his gift from a few years ago. I resolved to put the candy cane boy behind me forever. On Christmas morning, I retrieved the candy cane boy's gift from the attic. I sat on the couch in my blue cotton robe and I gently tore the tape from the wrapping paper.

I delicately slid out a cardboard box and unfolded the flaps. I reached inside and I pulled out the mystery object. It was the garage door open. The same opener I chucked in the river. I was sure of it. I clicked the button and I heard my garage door rumble open. I stumbled to my feet and something caught my eye outside. It was a car, stopped in the middle of the street with its trunk popped over.

A man was crouched in the road. He was holding a brown paper sack. I opened the front door and walked outside. What's going on right now? I said, partially to myself and partially to the man in the street. The man took off running and he was gone. I staggered to the car in a daze knowing what I'd find in the trunk, but not wanting to look. I reached the car and turned my head away, slamming the trunk shut as I heard the

muffled screams coming from within. The keys still dangled from the keyhole. The car was gone hours later. I'm not sure who picked it up. And the candy cane boy returned for another visit that night. I saw him hiding behind the curtains in my front room before I went to bed. When I woke up, I found another gift outside my bedroom door. I opened it immediately.

Inside the box was a piece of newspaper, torn from the classified section. It was an ad for a mall Easter bunny in my town. Now accepting applications. It has been wonderful having all of you with us this year, but the fire is dying down, and that means we just have time for our final tale. This one from author Victor King

is about a family who experiences a tragic event. event and how the repercussions continue to echo on well after it occurred. Performing the tale are Jessica McAvoy, Jesse Cornett, Corrin Sanders, and Jeff Clement. So listen closely to the tale entitled The Good Thomas Shea. Thomas Shea is a psychopath. At the age of 10, he was given an IQ test by one of his teachers on a hunch. He scored a 124 and was immediately moved into the school's gifted program. Over the next few years, his teachers would refer to him as a model student,

while the school psychologist would note worrying aspects of his personality. At the age of 15, he would commit a crime that would shock a child. small Connecticut town. A brutal attempted murder on my brother, Kevin Collins. Between all of the theories surrounding Thomas Shea and the possible reasons behind the attack, there was only one constant. My sister, Sarah Collins. My sister Sarah was the middle child between me and my older brother, Kevin.

At nine, she fell in love with Voltax. volunteering at a local animal shelter, and would spend the next few years involved with some kind of charity work. This, combined with her overly friendly attitude, led her fellow students to nickname her, St. Sarah. She was an artist who often said, beauty can be found in the ugliest places. All you have to do was look at it with the right eyes. She excelled at most subjects, even though most of her time was spent doodling in her notebook. When she was 11, my brother Kevin bought her her first camera. The walls of her bedroom were soon covered with photographs she had taken in the woods around our neighborhood.

That was the same year she first met Thomas. He was sitting alone at a lunch table when she decided he looked like he needed someone to talk to. A simple act of kindness turned into daily lunche. meetings as an unlikely friendship grew. Tommy spent a lot of time with my sister in and out of school. He came over more and more and would stick around well past the established neighborhood curfew of when the street lights turn on. When he was 14, he would often eat dinner over at our house, yet he remained distant to

everyone in my family except Sarah. When a conversation began, he would continue chewing his first. food while leveling his steel-gray eyes at the speaker. Even at a young age, he had the ability to silence someone with just a look. And when the specter of Thomas Shea was at our table, our meals became much less talkative. Tommy would help clean the dishes before he joined Sarah out on our back porch for another hour or so of quiet talking. Last time I ever saw Thomas was on Christmas Eve.

when I was eight years old. I was sitting beside our decorated tree, playing with a doll my parents had let me unwrap before they went out to a co-worker's party. My game was interrupted by three sharp knocks. I got up off the ground and went into the foyer to answer the door. I pulled it open with the chain still latched to see Tom standing in the cold December air.

Hey, Kelsey, can I come in? I closed the door and pulled the chain off before reopening it. Tommy stepped inside, stomping the snow off of his boots onto our welcome mat. Is Kevin around? I nodded, yes. He's upstairs on his computer. Why do you want to see him? I already knew the answer.

Kevin had recently become more outspoken about Sarah singing. Tommy. He believed she was too good for him, combined with Tommy's reputation, had convinced Kevin that any kind of relationship between the two of them would end in violence. He spent the next few days persuading my parents that the only way to protect Sarah was to ban her from seeing her favorite son of a criminal. They agreed, and Thomas Shea was no longer allowed into the Collins family home. Yet, here he was. Tommy knelt down, so he was face to face with me. Do you still like singing?

The flat tone of his voice sent a chill down my spine. Yeah. I tried to mask a growing fear. Good. Can you sing a song, A Christmas Carol? Sure. Um, how about, um, good king Wenceslaus?

That's good. Stay down here, and no matter what you hear, keep singing, as loud as you can. I could only nod in understanding. Tommy stood up and walked towards the staircase. He grabbed the railing and turned back around to face me. The look he gave me was a silent command. get out. I sprinted back to the living room

and jumped onto the one couch we had that couldn't be seen from the foyer. I spun around and stared directly at the wall standing between him and me. Even with wood, sheet rock, and paint separating us, I could feel him there. This loss looked out on the feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about Deep and crisp and even Brightly shone the moon that night Though the frost was cruel When a poor man came in sight Gathering winter fuse Footsteps began to slowly ascend the stairs Hither pageant stand by me

If thou knows it telling Yonder peasant who is he Wherein what is dwelling Sire he lives a goodly Hence underneath the mountain Right against the forest fence of St. Agnes Fountain. The footsteps stopped.

Everything inside me screamed, Do something. I don't know if that something was to shout a warning, run and call the police, or roll over and start crying. Fear stopped my thoughts at, Do something. Bring me flesh and bring me wine.

Bring the pilot. I heard a door quietly open, a few heavy footsteps later and it shut. Be him dine when we bear them thither. Voices came from Kevin's room, hushed at first, but slowly growing louder. The voices turned to shouts. Through the winds, wild lamented, bitter weather. The shouts turned to yells. Then came a sickening, dull crack.

I stopped singing as crack after muffled crack filled the house. One, two, three, four. Then, an eerie silence. I raised my voice, while all the courage I could muster forced me to slowly get off the couch. Sire, the night is darker now, and the wind blows stronger. Fails my heart, I know not how. I can't go much longer. I tiptoed into the foyer and to the base of the stairs.

Mark my footsteps now my page, tread through in them boldly. My trembling hand met the banister as I pulled myself onto the first step. Thou shall find the winter's rage, freeze thy bloodless cold. At this point, my song was more of a security. blanket than the result of Tommy's command. In his master's steps he trod where the snow lay in did. Step after eternal step, I reached the landing in the middle of the stairs. Another series of dull cracks caused me to wince before I continued my journey.

He was in the very sod, which this was. Saint had printed. I got to my brother's bedroom door and slowly moved towards the handle, another crack, followed by a muffled scream. My song was little more than a whimper now. I gripped the door handle so tight I thought my fingers would snap.

I put all of my strength into pushing the door open. Tommy said, stood in the middle of my brother's room over a writhing Kevin. Blood speckled the dark blue walls black and turned the white ceiling into a gory mosaic. In his right hand, he held the claw hammer that had covered my siblings back with inch-wide holes. Kevin's body contorted as every muscle pulled against each other. He gasped like a fish pulled onto dry land, with an empty gaze locked onto his attacker. That wasn't the worst part.

The worst was the cold gray eyes staring at me through blood-matted hair. Without a word, Tommy slammed the door shut. I don't remember anything after that, or before that, for that matter. Everything but my impromptu caroling was a blur. I was found in the hallway, sobbing next to my brother's bedroom door, being comforted by my sister. Kevin was a high school quarterback. He was popular with more friends than I could possibly remember at the time. He worked a part-time job for money he mostly spent on my sister and me.

He was the life of the party, event, or even room he entered. He had also just celebrated his 18th birthday. He survived the attack, but he'd never play football or do much else again. He would spend the rest of his days being fed through a tube, and grasping at the brightly painted mobile, my parents hung over his bed. The same one he had when he was in his cradle, my teary-eyed mother would tell me. Tommy was arrested at his house, wearing the same clothes he wore during the attack. He was tried as a minor and placed in a mental institution.

Just like the school psychologist had predicted years earlier, he showed no remorse. I privately blamed Sarah. She was the one who invited a monster into our home. Sarah's personality flipped. She became quiet and withdrawn. The only people she talked to were the junior and senior burnouts. Drugs replaced art. Her good girl image changed to baggy black hoodies and dirty jeans.

One night, I walked into her room to see her passed out on her bed, still wearing the same clothes she had snuck out in. The entire room stank like weed and beer. But that wasn't what infuriated me. In her arms was a stuffed teddy bear. Tommy had won her at the Big E. A plastic star pinned to its chest, a tiny white cowboy hat sewn to its head,

and a mocking smile stared at me from across the room. I never hated anyone as much as I did her in that moment. My parents told me to lay off my sister, but I couldn't. Every time I looked at her, I saw Kevin lying on the floor of his bedroom. She was the reason Kevin was in a bed instead of in college. She was why dad had a mistress now. She was why mom drank more than usual. She knew it, too.

One night, I woke up to the feeling of someone watching me. I lifted myself off of my bed as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. A dark figure sat on the toy box across from me, fumbling with something in its hands. Hey. Sarah's weak voice called out. Get out of here. I could see her bow her head, as she seemed to do so often those days. I just need you to listen to me, Kel.

I fell back onto my pillow and locked eyes towards the bedroom door. Get? She sat silent for a moment before speaking back up. I know you hate me. Right now I hate me, but there's... I'm sorry. She stood up and placed whatever was in her hands on the top of the toy box. Her footsteps were soft as she must.

made her way across the room. She quietly opened the door, and I saw my sister for the last time. I will never forget how she looked at me that night, even though I could never find the right word to describe it. I love you, Kelsey. Those were the last words my sister would ever say to me. With a quiet click of my door handle, she disappeared from my life. She was 17 years old. She ran away from home that night. There would be a massive police search, but it would turn up nothing. I didn't care.

I didn't even tell my parents about her late night farewell. That wasn't my sister who left. It was the person who nearly got my brother killed. She had left a neatly wrapped box on my toy chest before she took flight. I took one look at it and threw it into my dresser drawer. I never wanted to spend another moment wasted on Sarah Collins. Years flew by, and I left for college, hoping to escape my parents' constant fighting. I kept my past hidden from everyone except my boyfriend, Mike.

All of those years, and I was still angry at her. I decided the day after she left, I would never end up like Sarah. In all those years, I never even so much as drank, let alone touched any kind of drug. My life wasn't going to amount to a murderer and a failed police search. The year that I had decided I had finally put my life together was the year it all fell apart. It was Christmas time again when I found myself shopping in the Danbury. mall. I had bought presents for my parents, my close friends, and was in the process of buying a gift for Mike. We had a running joke between the two of us about how we were going to stop being

adults and just live in a blanket fort, and I had come to the conclusion a perfect gift for him would be the first pieces of building materials. I was standing in the bedding section of a J.C. Pennies when a group of carolers caught my ear. It's strange. What was a little bit of the will unlock an old memory, a smell, a sound, seeing a familiar face. In my case, it was a Christmas Carol and the sight of white linen sheets. The bag I was holding dropped to my side as every little detail came rushing back. Sarah was at the house that night. She had told me Tommy was coming by, to let him in. Then she went somewhere. She was in the basement. Why was she in the basement? She was crying. I remembered that now. But she was doing something else. Laundry. She was doing laundry.

She had to clean her bed sheets. She had to clean her bed sheets. She told me it was because she had gotten hurt, playing with Kevin. No, Kevin told me that. That it wasn't the first time. All of the skeletons came screaming out of the closet. Tiny memories that seemed so insignificant at the time played one after another. Kevin smiling and handing me a CD I really wanted. I don't see why I can't play with you guys.

It's a grown-up game. I fell to my niece, a memory of Sarah and I talking alone in her room. Why do you like Tommy? He's weird. A question asked by a much younger me. She put her pen down and thought for a moment. We help each other. Why was I just recalling? this now. Kevin's bedroom door appeared before me. Behind it, Kevin and Sarah.

Don't tell anyone. Kevin's voice from a decade before echoed in my mind. I threw my hand over my mouth. Oh my God. Sarah. I screamed so loud, the entire store fell silent. I just jumped and ran out of the store to my car. I ran every red light until I was back at my dorm room. Hey, babe. You get your shopping done? I barely heard Mike's voice from the kitchen. He turned to the corner only to see me sobbing on the ground with my back against the door.

He ran over and dropped down next to me. I didn't hear a word, he said. All I saw was Sarah. And I back in her room. Okay, but he's scary and weird, just saying. I remember my eight-year-old voice muttering. Sarah smiled and picked her pencil back up to continue her drawing. Yeah, he is, but he's also kind.

He listens to me. He watches out for me. I do the same for him, and the same. same for you. It's, it's like we make each other better. Beauty can be found in the ugliest places. Eight-year-old me snorted. How can you be so positive all the time? She tapped her pencil against the pad. Sometimes, sometimes hope is all you have. One day things will get better. I turned to my sister and she looked at me the same way

she did the night she left. Despair. I had a word for it now. That weekend, I went home for the second time since I moved out. I went to my room and opened the dresser drawer. There was the still-wrapped box from Sarah.

I tore back the paper to see a framed photo of the two of us. Me, smiling, as my big sister hugged me from behind. I turned the frame over to see a yellowed note taped to the back of it. Remember us for what we were, not what we became. I know why my parents told me to lay off Sarah. I know why Tommy was tried as a minor for such a violent crime. I know why Sarah had been depressed.

after Tommy was taken away. I just know it too late. Mom and dad didn't know what to say. Her own sister hated her because her boyfriend attacked her rapist. Sarah was truly alone. She was told every day with my icy glares and my parents deafening quiet.

It was her fault. How much would have changed if I knew she was the victim. How far would a, it wasn't your fault, have gone? That's all I could think about as I stood over Kevin's bed. I have no idea how long I just looked at him, debating whether or not I should finish Tommy's work. He woke up and lifted his head before I made a final decision.

A sloppy smile spread across. cross his lips. Coffee! He yelled out as drool hit his pillow. I just stared at him. I wanted him to confess, to say, I'm sorry, the same way his victim had the last night I saw her. But he didn't. He just smiled and drooled.

I left. without saying a word. I spent a few hours after I got back to my dorm, searching for Sarah Collins on the internet. I had this childish fantasy that kept playing over and over again in my head. She probably cut her hair into one of those pixie cuts I see on all of the art students.

When I found her, she'd be at an art gallery. Her photos would be hanging on every wall while patrons gawked at her genius. She would be standing in the middle of the room talking to some investor through a smile, a glass of champagne sparkling next to a diamond wedding ring. Next to her would be Thomas Shea.

He'd be standing awkwardly next to his wife in a gray suit that matched his eyes. I'd walk in and she'd recognize me instantly. I would apologize, eyes and she'd accept we'd be a family again. A real, honest to God, family. The fantasy ended when I saw her obituary. Her coping mechanisms had caught up with her.

She died on an operating table, trying to fix a badly damaged heart valve. I had missed her by two days. I went to her wake with Mike, my side, not knowing what to expect. Each step onto the carpet towards the viewing room was a milestone. Then the book caught my eye. Black plethe with photos written across it and gold lettering, sitting in the middle of a white table by the door. I slowly lifted the cover. Inside was a collection of black and white photos she had taken away.

over the years. I flipped through each picture, carefully admiring every detail. When I got to the last two pages, I couldn't help but smile. The left page had a photo of Sarah and Tommy, standing side by side at the fair. She held a familiar teddy bear in her left and Tommy's hand in her right. The right page was similar. The two of them sat at a white table outside of a cafe. She had her pixie cut. He had his suit.

I flipped over the last page, hoping to see one more picture. Instead, a note was taped to the plastic sleeve of the cafe picture. Sarah Collins saw the good in everyone and everything, despite having a life that did everything it could to convince her otherwise. She braved storms that would destroy the strongest of people. She spent her time on this planet, trying to capture the world as she saw it through the glass lens of her camera.

She was the definition of beauty and grace. She was strong beyond words, and too rare. My life had one constant. Sarah Collins. The note was signed by Thomas Shea. To one and all for listening to our festive frights. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast,

I wish you and yours are healthy and happy holiday season and a very happy new year. Run along and enjoy the darkness.