The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S8E11 - Christmas 2016 Special

Episode Date: December 18, 2016

It's episode 11 of Season 8 and time for our 2016 Christmas special featuring stories about frightening festive fears."It's Cold on Christmas Eve" written by Michael Whitehouse and performed by G.M. Danielson & Jesse Cornett. (Story starts around 00:04:20)"It Had Antlers"‡ written by Manen Lyset and performed by Jeff Clement & Erika Sanderson & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts around 00:14:50)"My Dad, Chuckles, and a Blue Striped Hat"‡ written by J.M. Kendrick and performed by Dan Zappulla & Elie Hirschman & Kyle Akers. (Story starts around 00:35:00)"Countdown to Christmas"† written by David Ault and performed by David Ault & Erika Sanderson & Nikolle Doolin & Oliver Gyani. (Story starts around 00:52:10)"The Yule Tithe"† written by C.M. Scandreth and performed by Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 01:15:00)"Christmas Land"† written by Elias Witherow and performed by Peter Lewis. (Story starts around 01:40:15)"Let Nothing You Dismay"† written by Colin Harker and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy & Peter Lewis & Atticus Jackson & Matthew Bradford. (Story starts around 02:08:00)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about the Sleepless Live 2017 Tour Click here to learn more about The Simply Scary Podcast Click here to learn more about Michael Whitehouse Click here to learn more about Manen Lyset Click here to learn more about David Ault Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth Click here to learn more about Elias Witherow Click here to learn more about Colin Harker Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & David CummingsChristmas 2016 illustration courtesy of SabuAudio program ©2016 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dear, you're here. Well, well, you've picked a rather late hour to show up. Did I forget to shot off the vacancy sign on our cozy Christmas cottage? It seems I did. Ah, well, you've made it here through the snow, so I suppose we owe you some stories. Have a seat and I'll pour you a drink. Eggnog, all right? Oh, yes, yes, yes. I've heard. You'll say, you know what? You might not be too late. Yes, I do believe our merry band of voice actors are downstairs in the rumpus room, still singing their Christmas carols. Why don't we go down and listen?

Yes, yes, follow me and we'll listen at the door. They're so shy, they might stop singing if they know we're spying on them. What's that? Oh, I know. Last Christmas, you thought you heard them all moaning and begging to be released from their chains. That was just our little joke. You know, a bit of festive imprisonment and torture to lighten up the holiday season. Nothing more.

No, no, I can assure you that all our voice actors are joyously thankful to be able to be here, singing carls for you. Yes, yes, here we are. I can hear them now. Let's listen. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We wish you a Merry Christmas.

You hear? Listen to how warmly they're greeting you and sending you the finest wishes of the season. Oh. Oh my. Uh, well, I don't understand what... Could someone fix that? Oh dear. Oh.

Oh, listen to those jokers pretending to be upset and frightened and mistreated and starved and unnecessarily probed. Oh, they love a good prank, don't they? Well, why don't we ignore their shenanigans and return to the fireside so we can listen to them perform their delightfully. dark Christmas stories. Come, come, sit comfortably, get warm and snuggle in, because it's time for our stories now to begin. Oh, lovely little home there.

Now, for our first tale, we have a special guest joining us. Yes, it's a special Christmas present, if you're not yet aware, of the spooktacular new audio storytelling show called The Simply Scary Possible. It's by our friends over at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, with our own regular voice actor Jesse Cornett's being a big part of their production team. If you like well-done productions of original horror stories, and I think it's safe to assume you do, then you simply must check out the Simply Scary Podcast over at simplyscarypodcast.

Over at simply scarypodcast.com. No bells, no whistles, Just scary. It's hosted by the talented voice actor G.M. Danielson, and we are proud to welcome Mr. Danielson and Jesse himself as they act in our first tale. It's from the pen of Michael Whitehouse and tells the tale of a man walking home from work on Christmas Eve. A chance encounter leaves the man second-guessing a charitable decision. So welcome GM Danielson and Jesse Cornett as they remind us that it's cold on Christmas Eve.

It should have been a perfect Christmas Eve. A thick layer of snow had floated down gently from the sky all day. Wishing my colleagues at the office a Merry Christmas, I put on my long winter coat and scarf and walked out into the snow. It crunched beneath my feet, and as it was, If it did so, I was reminded of being a kid, of how special it was when the snow came. Then I thought about my own two kids back at home, waiting for me with my wife. That made me smile.

That was until someone grabbed hold of my arm from a darkened doorway. I recoiled at the sight of a homeless man in front of me, his face worn and gray, no doubt from countless nights sleeping in the cold, and his long matted beard gave both the impression and stench that he hadn't bathed in an age. Spare some change. Opening my wallet, I hope to find a small note, but all I had were three-twenties. I'm all for charity, especially at Christmas, but as the man looked down at the larger notes, I had to dash its hopes. Sorry, I don't have anything smaller. But it's cold on Christmas Eve. I didn't know what else to do, so I simply said sorry and walked away. It was 6 p.m., and the sun had long since set. The streetlights lit the way,

and as I walked towards the outskirts of town, I took in the silence. No cars, no people. Everyone was home, I suspected, wrapping presents or preparing a feast for Christmas Day. Considering how cold the air was, I was looking forward to doing the same when I got home. An icy wind blew down the street towards me. I stopped for a moment to adjust my scarf, pulling it closer to me. Looking up at a street lamp, flakes of snow silently moving in front, I saw a bird sitting on top of it. It looked like a crow, or a bird with black feathers at least, but it was difficult to tell. The streetlight was overpowering, and so the details of the bird melted into the brightness set against the jet black of the sky.

It appeared strange to me, more so because of its apparent size than anything else. But for the first time I left the office, the feeling of festive cheer had completely abandoned me. Looking up at the bird, I now felt an emptiness, a loneliness even on that forlorn street. I felt sorry for it, all alone on Christmas Eve. And just as those thoughts passed me by, it made a noise, something akin to a squawk. The sound unnerved me, and it evoked in me a sense of unease. Instinctively, I look back towards where I had come. almost expecting to see someone creeping towards me.

But on that snow-covered street, we were alone. A chill seeped through the loneliness, and as it did so I felt my bones grow colder. And so I continued onwards, trying to fill my mind with thoughts of my family, of a comfy armchair waiting for me in front of the television, maybe a drink or two to keep the cold at bay. A noise above startled me.

At first I thought it was the wind, but it was in fact only wind-like. There was something off about the sound. Looking upwards, I saw that I was standing directly underneath another streetlight. Flakes of snow danced above me, resting on my eyelids and face. As I wiped them away, I could see it. The bird. It was sitting directly above me on the lamppost. Yet I still couldn't make out its detail, and now I was beginning to be unsettled by the size of the thing.

I couldn't be certain, as the streetlight snow blended together to warp what I could see. Staring at the bird, for a moment it would appear to be the shape and size one would expect. But when it shifted its weight slightly, I could swear there was more. to it. Its black outline more substantial, confused with the night sky. Thoughts deep within me unstucked my feet and pushed me on. Get home, they said. Leave this place. I decided to listen. Picking up the pace, I walked further down the street, but as I passed each streetlight, I heard the same noise above, like the wind, or was it feathers? Another thought reared its ugly head.

It sounds more like cloth rustling in the darkness. That impression frightened and overcame me. I began to walk faster. Yet again, the noise above sounded, as if the thing, the bird, or whatever it was, was moving from post to post. It's following me. Now I ran as fast as I could. my footfalls sliding in the snow.

The night air stung my lungs, and yet as I passed each streetlight, the noise of cloth, of wind, of feathers above, followed. Move faster. And I did, around street corners, between parked cars, across usually busy roads now silent in the snow. Finally, after several minutes, the noise had ceased. As I reached my home street, I could run no longer.

standing still I caught my breath just for a moment. Looking across the street, our Christmas decorations twinkled in the garden. All I could think of was warmth and of the comforts of home. Something cold then touched the back of my neck, and I felt what I can only describe as talon-esque fingers, hard yet knuckled, reaching down underneath my collar and touching my spine. I let out a scream and reached behind me, flailing at whatever was there, out of reach, out of sight. But without laying eyes on it, I knew the truth.

The thing that had been following me had grabbed hold of my coat at the back, with talons or fingers, or something else entirely. For how long it had been grasping onto my coat, I could not say. Pulling at it, I could not dislodge it, and so I did only what I could. Threw my coat to the ground, leaving it in the snow. Running across the street, I reached the gate to my garden. But in my eagerness to get inside to safety, I slipped on a piece of ice and fell sharply onto my back on the ground. That was when I saw it.

Standing there, across the street from me was not a bird or a thing. But a man, the homeless man I had met outside the office. He pulled on my long winter coat and did the buttons up. He then looked at me and said, It's coming from behind his matted beard. He then walked away from me down the street, back to whatever obscure place he'd come. Asher and dancer and prancer and vixen, Comit and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.

But do you recall that there are monstrous beasts roaming our dark countryside? Well, we're reminded by author Manin Lyset. You see, his family had a terrible encounter one Christmas years ago, and it left his family devoid of any Christmas cheer thereafter. Performing this tale are Jeff Clement, Eric. I'm Erica Sanderson and Nicole Goodnight. So watch for them coming from the woods, and if you see something, check if it had antlers.

As I sit by the living room window of my family home, watching snowflakes slowly wafting down from the sky onto the picturesque white landscape and listening to the bleats of bucks roaming the woods, I can't help but be reminded that it's the holiday season. The season of cheer, as they say. It's that time of year again when a house should be full of decorations, merriment and families sharing laughs by the fireplace.

That's what the holidays are supposed to be like. Garlands, wreaths, Christmas trees, snow globes, and ornaments galore. But that's not the case in my family. Here, Christmas is a bleak affair. No gifts, no tree, no music. It wasn't always like this. I remember a time when we'd all gather around the fireplace and our PJs with cups of hot cocoa, telling stories as we waited for the stroke of midnight so we could open our gifts.

That all changed one year when what should have been a fun get-together turned into tragedy, fractioning my family and ruining Christmas for every year to come. Growing up, we were close to my mom's side of the family. Even though they only lived about 20 minutes away, we'd find any excuse to invite one another to the other's house overnight and celebrate whatever needed to be celebrated. That day, we were hosting an early Christmas dinner. Aunt Maude and Uncle Frank were taking their kids out of town that year,

so it was decided we'd have our traditional Christmas party a weekend early. My mom had gone all out, decorating the table and a silky red cloth and ornate centerpiece, enough candles to light up an entire house, our finest silverware, fancy cloth, napkins for the adults, and printed napkins for us kids. Dad had cooked the biggest turkey we could buy and baked all of our favorite cookies and cakes. We all gathered around the table. Laughing, sipping wine. Yes, even us kids were allowed a tiny glass for the occasion.

And being merry. Uncle Frank, of course, being the merriest of all. As night wore on and the candles shrunk to half their length, he got louder and louder, dominating the conversation with broad hand gestures and hearty laughter. After a while, some of the younger kids started getting bored of sitting around, listening to the adults talking about their tax breaks or whatever topic had come up. This was evident by how much Tyler, my little brother, was fidgeting around in his seat and kicking

his legs out under the table. He whispered something to one of our cousins and they both slipped out of their seats, ducked it under the tablecloth and started crawling around to play God-nose-buck-game of make-believe together. I ignored them and grabbed the last chocolate home and cookie while no one was looking. Suddenly, I felt Tyler's bony little arms grabbing my leg tightly, causing me to nearly choke on the cookie. Let go, I grunted and kicked him off. No sooner had I done so than he and my cousin both emerged from the opposite end of the table. I remember thinking what a quick little bugger he was for managing that, but in hindsight, night, maybe that was the start of things.

Maybe it hadn't been him at all. Still, I couldn't have known what was going to happen that night. No one could have predicted the turn of events. As night wore on, the conversation drifted from the dining room to the living room. Eventually, people became tired, so we cemented our sleeping arrangements to accommodate for our guests. Normally, us kids would have all slept together on the two soapes. beds in the basement. When we pushed them together, we'd have this giant megabed to share. We loved it. Unfortunately, apparently some neighborhood kids had broken one of the windows

down there the night before, because we woke up that morning to find its shattered pieces on the floor and a small bit of snow that had drifted in from the now unprotected window. We hadn't had time to replace it, and the plastic wrap my dad had stuck to the frame did little to keep the cold air from seeping in, so we had to make alternate arrangements that night. I kept my bed. My sister was on a cheap fold-up mattress on the floor next to me. My parents were in their room just across from mine. My brother was on the couch in the living room. My aunt and uncle were in my sister's bedroom upstairs, and their kids were in my brother's room next door to them. One by one, we went to bed, some later than others.

I was always a very light sleeper in my childhood, so it was no surprise the commotion upstairs woke me up in the middle of the night. I grabbed my flashlight and wandered out of bed to investigate. Aunt Maude was trying her best to escort my very drunk Uncle Frank back inside and up the stairs, but he was fighting to get out the door. It took me a moment to notice the shotgun. in his hands. I'll get it next time.

I rubbed my tired eyes. What's going on? Aunt Mod shot me an apologetic look. Sorry we woke you. Your uncle saw something in the yard. A buck! Uncle Frank waved his shotgun in the air, but Aunt Maude quickly grabbed his arms and lowered them.

Damn thing got away. I would have made for a great breakfast. I say? Aunt Maude frowned. I'll get him back in bed. So sorry we woke you, dear. I shrugged. It's fine.

Aunt Maude practically had to push Uncle Frank up the stairs. I heard his heavy footsteps as he waddled to the bedroom. I rolled my eyes and turned on my heels, walking a few steps toward my room when I heard a little huff behind me. Kind of like that sound. horses make when they exhale angrily, or when a teenager is really annoyed at their parent? Tyler must have woken up, I figured. He usually slept like a brick, but the living room was right next to the stairs and entrance, so I couldn't blame him for being stirred from his slumber.

Not wanting to wake him more than he already was, I lowered the flashlight and turned to face him. I could see his little silhouette in the darkness, standing over the sofa. Go back to sleep. He didn't answer, or even move. Tyler, I am serious, go back to sleep. Uncle Frank's just drunk again. Mom and Dad won't be happy if they catch you out of bed this late. He remained still as a statue.

Annoyed, I raised my flashlight and pointed it at him. But when I saw his face, I felt my hands. go cold and numb. It wasn't Tyler. It looked nothing like him. It was a boy, I think, but his face was covered in dirt. His eyes were pitch black. His hair looked more like a bird's nest than anything else, and it looked like two branches were sticking out of it. He was incredibly thin, but I wouldn't say he was emaciated. He just seemed naturally small. It's hard to explain, but he wasn't skin and bones. He seemed to have some meat on his body, but his limbs were slender. Too slender. I'm not even sure how those stick-like legs could hold the weight of his body.

That's all I had time to see before he bolted away. I swiped my flashlight around trying to see where he went, but he was gone. My flashlight fell on Tyler, still fast asleep on the couch. The light was what woke him. What are you doing? I was breathing heavily, eyes darting from side to side in a paranoid attempt to try to catch a second glimpse of what I thought I'd seen. I must have imagined it. That kid couldn't possibly have been real. Maybe it was my cousin. Yeah, That had to be it. My cousin was trying to scare me. Nothing could go back to bed.

I went back into my room, still feeling the shaky effects of adrenaline in my blood. As I opened the door, I saw a shape on the floor and let out a scream, pointing my flashlight right at it. What the hell are you doing? I'd completely forgotten we were sharing a room. Nothing. Sorry, I just needed to pee. I backed out of my room slowly and headed to the bathroom across the hall. My bladder was getting a little full, but I was mostly going to give credence to my excuse for waking my sister up.

If I told her, sorry, I thought you were some kind of creepy monster kid. She would have blown a gasket. So I sat down and started emptying my tank. As I did my business, I heard footsteps coming from the living room, then a knock on the bathroom door. Give me a minute, Tyler. I flushed, washed my hands, and opened the door. Maybe I took too long, and Tyler decided to use the upstairs bathroom

because the hallway was empty. I returned to my room. By then, my sister was sitting up, fully awake. I closed the door only to hear my sister grunt at me. Don't be a jerk. If he wants to sleep here, let him. She shuffled a bit to make room on her mattress. What? Tyler?

Huh? He was right behind you. Goose bumps coated my arms, but did little to protect me from what I thought was behind that door. I knew Tyler hadn't been following me. I stepped away from the door nervously, refusing to open it. it. My sister let out an annoyed groan, probably rolled her eyes even though I couldn't see it in the darkness, stomped over, took the flashlight from me and reached for the doorknob. I tried to stop her, but I couldn't find the words. The most I could manage was a little groan and nothing more.

She turned the knob. My heart sank into my feet. She slowly creaked the door over. She slowly creaked the door open. I held my breath. She pointed the flashlight out into the hall. I screamed. She screamed louder. The flashlight's beam fell on the child's mud-stained face. I could better see his features now. His small button nose, his long pointed ears, his messy hair, his expressionless face and two little antlers sticking out of his head. He wasn't wearing clothes, but I don't recall thinking he was naked. Maybe it was dirt, maybe something else. I just know there was something on him that covered him up. His pupils were wide and dilated, glowing like those of a deer in the headlights. He jumped back. His movements quick and

jagged yet strangely laggy, like a stop-motion animation. He ran from the direct beam of the flashlight, but stayed close enough to its periphery that we could see him turning his head towards my parents' bedroom door. No!

His hand darted for the gnaw, and for a split second I could have sworn I'd seen a malicious grin on his small, lipless mouth. The door closed. closed behind him before I even had a chance to see him open it. Mom! Dad! My sister tried to open the door.

I don't know whether it was locked or if her panic did it, but either way, she wasn't able to get it open. I didn't think to try. I just pounded my hands on the door repeatedly, screaming for my parents to wake up. I was crying hysterically, tears filling my mouth with a taste. of salt. Finally, the lights came on, and the door flung open. The light, pouring out of the room,

blinded me for a second so I wasn't able to see the creature running down the hall. I could hear his hurried footsteps and the familiar bleats of a buck, and moments later heard the crash of a shattering glass. My parents ran past me, turning on every light along the way, The living room window was in pieces, our curtains blowing in the breeze. I staggered to the living room and sat down in shock staring at the window. My aunt and uncle soon came running down the stairs. What happened? Dad answered.

Not sure. The kids woke us up. Then we heard the window break. Must be those damn kids again. What? Hadn't mom or dad seen the creature in their room? Haven't they noticed the window had been broken from the inside? I sunk in the sofa cushion still sobbing.

I wondered whether or not I should tell them what I saw. Would they believe me if I did? Would they even hear me? They were busy talking to my aunt and uncle, swearing and cursing and coming up with various theories as to who the hooligans were. But I knew better. It was as I reached for one of the couch pillows that I realized something. I was sitting on the couch, the empty couch.

My heartbeat quickened. Tyler. Mom turned to me and quirked a brow. Where's Tyler? The adults looked at one another, puzzled at first, but the confusion quickly gave way to worry. Check upstairs! My uncle ran up the stairs. Aunt Maude turned around.

I'll check the basement. My sister was the one to stop the search of the house. Her face paled as she slowly pointed towards the woods. I wasn't tall enough to see out the window, so I climbed on the back of the couch and looked out to where she was pointing. There, hanging from a tree branch, was Tyler's blanket. They combed those woods. for weeks after, but Tyler was never found.

Whatever had taken him somehow hadn't left a single footprint. Aside from the blanket, there were no traces of my brother either. Still, for weeks and even months afterwards, my parents kept looking, kept hoping they'd find him alive somewhere out there. Eventually, they started hoping they'd be able to find his remains so he could be laid to rest and they could get closure. Needless to say, we didn't celebrate Christmas that year, nor any years since. My parents just couldn't find it in them to be cheerful, not even for our sake. As for me, I grew up, moved out, and lived my life. Life as best I could, knowing what I knew.

This year, I decided to revisit my childhood home. It's as grim around this time of year as it was the night Tyler went missing. My parents are out of town. They often spend this time somewhere else, probably fleeing the bad memories. Now, as I stand on the back porch, looking to the woods with the cold wind burrowing into my bones, I can hear something off in the distance. Two bleats, one after another in quick succession.

Over and over. When I close my eyes, concentrate and listen hard, I swear I can hear a voice behind that buck's call, a plea that cries out in anguish with two simple words. Help me. And as I open my eyes, I see two heads poking out from behind a row of coniferous trees off in the distance. Two bucks, with little antlers barely longer than the size of my hand. But bucks shouldn't be bipedal.

Bucks shouldn't move in short, twitchy motions as though under a stroll blight. Bucks shouldn't sound like my brother calling my name. Those without the means to make Christmas a jolly time of plenty, the holiday can be a stark and lonely one. In this tale from author J.M. Kendrick, we hear a man recall one Christmas when his father gave him a most unconventional gift. Performing this tale are Danzapula, Ellie Hirschman, and Kyle Lakers. So let's hear the man share the story about my dad, chuckles, and a blue-striped hat.

This Christmas will be the first that I spend without my father. And my feelings about this are mixed. Our relationship was always a complicated one. These days, I'm the epitome of suburban family life. But it hasn't always been that way. Recently, something's happened that made me reassess my life as I was growing up, and a strange incident that happened to me when I was seven years old. I suppose I should start at the beginning.

When I was a little kid, I lived in a tiny, rickety old house with my dad. My mom died during childbirth, and I had no siblings or other family. My dad was taciturn and never particularly affectionate, but as a child I always believed that he was a good man. He was massive, with sandy hair and a smile that warmed my heart. He worked as a laborer and barely made enough to keep the wolf from the door, and I spent a great deal of time home alone. I guess these days that would be frowned upon,

but back then no one interfered. I was fed, clean, and well-behaved, and I guess my teachers had other things to worry about. It was just the way things were. When I look back, I realize what a lonely little existence I had, but at the time it never occurred to me. Every day followed the same routine. We'd get up, my dad would walk me to school on his way to work,

and every evening I'd come home to an empty house. Then around 6 o'clock, I'd start peering out the front window, and eventually I'd see him across the street strolling along, carrying whatever he was bringing in for dinner. We were poor, yes, but I was always warm, and I always had enough to eat. Directly across the road from our house was a family, restaurant. It was called the Village Fair. I have no idea why, because we didn't live in a

village, just a crummy street on the outskirts of town. It was a large, bright-looking place on a lot with room for parking. All the locals called it chuckles after the restaurant mascot. He wore an all-in-one clown costume, covered in polka-dots of every color, and he had a molded, oversized head with massive blue eyes, a smiley mouth, and a small bowl of a little bit. He wore a hat with a flower sticking out of it. Now, we never had the money to go to Chuckles, but some of the richer kids in my school had children's parties there. I was never invited, but I heard stories about them. There was an indoor play area with plastic slides and a big ball pool, and at some point during the party, Chuckles would make an appearance, garnering hugs from the slightly older kids,

and tears from the younger ones who had no idea who or what he was. Even at such a young age, I was cynical about that kind of thing. Look, I knew Chuckles was just Mrs. Taylor's son, Freddie. Mrs. Taylor lived three doors along from us, and I'd see Freddy sometimes heading over to Chuckles where most of the time he worked as a waiter. Other times I'd see him standing down the side of the restaurant, his oversized head on the ground while he smoked a cigarette

and flirted with one of the waitresses. Sometimes, while my dad was at work, I'd sit at the window and watch families go in or groups of children heading into a party. I would imagine I'd been invited and how great the play area was. In my mind, the food was amazing. And it's amusing to me as an adult because I've taken my children to that kind of place regularly, and now I know the food is completely average,

and the play areas are filled with sweating children, and they smell awful. The summer after I turned seven, Chuckles caught fire. I heard Freddy telling my dad outside the house one night that it had been been an insurance job. Now, I didn't really know what that meant at the time, but the upshot was there was no money to fix it, a concept I did understand. And Chuckles was gone for good. I'd look at the burnt out building from the front window while I waited for my dad to come home. What had once been a place that seemed warm and inviting was now a cold, dark shell. The broken windows were like black eyes looking at me from across the street. The summer turned to me. The summer turned

into autumn and then winter, chuckles standing there as a sad reminder of what it used to be. Christmas morning came, and as poor as I was, I was just as excited as any other child would be. My dad got up early and made us bacon sandwiches with lots of ketchup as a special treat. I remember quite clearly I got a matching hat,

scarf, and glove set. They were striped in two shades of blue, and I suspect my father had gotten Mrs. Taylor to knit them. I also got a box of chocolate, and a yo-yo that lit up as it reeled up and down. But the best part of Christmas Day was that my dad didn't work. Once breakfast and presents were out of the way, I was keen to go outside. It had snowed a few days earlier, and there was still some slushy snow on the ground.

I donned my new woolens and went out front. My dad solemnly gave me a carrot just in case I needed a snowman's nose and headed into the kitchen to start preparing our meager Christmas dinner. I was fully absorbed in my task for almost an hour, and when I finished, I stood back and admired my work. My snowman wasn't very big, but then there wasn't much snow left. As I was standing, I glanced across the road at the restaurant, and there, standing in the doorway, much to my astonishment, was Chuckles the Clown. I was so surprised, I just stood and gaped.

He stood and looked at me for a second and then waved one of his gloved white hands. He bobbed his oversized head from side to side, and I laughed, and he waved again. He jumped up and down on the spot, and the flower in his hat waved about, and I laughed some more, and I waved back. He stepped out of the doorway a little closer to me and beckoned me over. I was seven years old, and in my young mind, Chuckles was still Freddie Taylor. and Freddie wasn't a stranger. I crossed the road curious as to what he wanted, and as I did so, he disappeared inside the building.

I walked timidly through the entrance. Freddy? Where are you, Freddy? Now, for some reason, the atmosphere of that place made me feel like I should be quiet. It's almost like that instinct you get when you walk into a library or a church. There was a small blackened lobby area and then a big set of cracked and broken glass double doors.

Through them, I could see the skeletal remains of tables and booths in the dim light. I was just thinking I should turn round and head home again, when there he was again. Standing in the middle of the burnt-out empty restaurant was chuckles. He beckoned me again and disappeared through a door to the right. I started to get a bad feeling in my stomach, but I pushed it down. It was only Freddy, and Freddy was my friend. Sometimes when I was playing, as he walked by, he'd give me candy or tell me silly jokes. I followed him through the door and immediately knew where I was.

There were several tables and a streetlight shone through the back window, casting a dim light across the play area. This room seemed slightly less damaged than the rest of the restaurant. I could see slides and tubes for climbing through, and in the corner there was a massive ballpool. There was nothing cheery about it, though. The streetlight was casting odd shadows all over the room. Hello, little boy. I jumped at the sound of his voice. Chuckles was sitting at a corner table.

Do you like my play area? He waved his hand vaguely around the room. I gulped and nodded. Would you like to play with me? Tears prickled in my eyes, and I shook my head, vigorously. No. No one comes here to play anymore, you know.

This wasn't my friend, Freddy. Even in the dim light, I could see how dirty Chuckles' oversized head was. Soot and Grime covered his entire costume, and his white gloves were patched with black. His voice was a low purr, and he slowly got up from the chair. I think you do want to play. I get lonely, and I do love little bit. boys. I turned to run, but as I did, my foot got stuck on the rubble and debris on the floor, and my ankle twisted painfully, causing me to trip and bang my head off the corner of one of

the tables. As the world blacked out, I heard myself screaming for my dad. The next thing I remembered, I was being carried through the snow in my dad's massive arms. I was freezing and could hear his feet crunching on the icy snow. I buried my face in his neck and cried, and I remember whimpering that I'd lost my new hat. When we got home, my dad laid me on the sofa, stripped off my coat and boots, and covered me in a fluffy blanket. I was feeling slightly more alert now. It was Chuckle's ghost, Dad. He tried to get me. What have I told you about playing in that building?

My father sounded suddenly really angry, and I was so surprised at his tongue. tone that it felt like a slap. I've told you it's not safe. Could have come down round your ears and flattened you. He got up and headed for the door. Where are you going, Dad? Don't leave me here on my own. His voice softened slightly.

You're perfectly safe here. I'm going to go find that hat. And anyway, ain't no such thing as ghosts. I don't know how long he was gone, but it felt like a long time. I dozed fitfully in and out of sleep while I waited for him, and when he finally returned, he smelled of whiskey. And the next day when I got up,

there on the peg in the hallway, along with my coat and scarf, hung my hat. We never spoke about that night again, and six months later, Chuckles was bulldozed to the ground. Things weren't the same between me and my dad after that. It was like he withdrew what little interaction we had.

His attention always seemed to be elsewhere, and where before he hadn't drank much, it became a regular thing. He was never abusive, and he certainly wasn't an alcoholic, but it was almost like I ceased to exist. By the time I was 16, we were like strangers living under the same roof. I was getting into trouble and dabbling in drugs, and I moved out into what was little more than a squat.

with some friends. I rarely visited my dad, and on the odd occasion that I did see him, which was generally a quick visit on one of our birthdays, God, it was painful, like trying to make conversation with someone I barely knew and had nothing in common with. Then, when I was 22, I met Elise. She was unlike anyone I had ever met. Her life hadn't been easy either, and at the time she was working two jobs with her. waitressing and putting herself through night school.

She had an inner strength I'd never seen before and was determined that hard work could make her life better. She made me believe that things could change and that I could be a better man. By the time I was 30, we were married with two children, stable jobs, and a comfortable home. Elise had spent her entire childhood in care. Talking to her about that made me realize that

Maybe I judge my dad too harshly, and she convinced me to spend more time with him. We started visiting him once a week and would take my sons around. Having my family there made those visits less awkward, and I think my dad enjoyed them. I began to understand that while I had been a lonely little boy, my dad had been a lonely man. Earlier this month, he died. He'd been ill for some time suffering from asbestosis. and the last time I saw him, he was lying in bed in his room in that rickety old house pumped full of painkillers.

Next to his bed were two photographs in frames. One of him holding me when I was about four years old, and the other in which he looked like a younger, happier man was of him and my mother. Police reminds me of your mother. You got a good one there, son. Hang on to her. Oh, I know, Dad, and I will. I smiled at him.

He grabbed my wrist with the strength I didn't know he still possessed. When I go, I know there ain't nothing in this house worth keeping, but you keep these photos. Promise me. Of course, Dad. I wouldn't dream of getting rid of them. They're precious to me. me. Good boy. Then you might understand. Understand what? After the funeral, we cleared out his house,

and as I promised, I kept the two photos. I would have, even if he hadn't asked. I put them on my bedside table, just as he had, and I stared at them. What would these photos help me to understand? There was nothing in them that gave me any clues. Both had been. been taken in my dad's old house, and everything in them was comforting and familiar. A couple of mornings ago, the dog came bounding into the bedroom and knocked one of them off with this great wagging tail. It went crashing to the floor, and the glass in the front broke. And it was only today that I got around to replacing it. And that's when I made my discovery. When I carefully removed the back, behind the picture was a small newspaper clipping.

Police have identified the body of a man found in the abandoned village fair as one William Wright. Wright was found late Thursday afternoon in a disused freezer by construction workers who were demolishing the restaurant. His death was caused by massive head trauma and is being treated as homicide. While police have no leads at this time, it has been confirmed that Wright was a known sex offender who had been linked to more than one death. Investigators suspect this may be a revenge crime. So now I do understand. I understand the grim look on his face as he carried me back home that Christmas day and why he went back for that damned hat.

My dad killed a man to protect me, and living with what he had done, changed him. When I was a little kid, I thought my dad was a good man. I still do. If you joined us in the Christmas cottage last year, you'll recall how our very own David Alt shared his story about some ghastly business when he was what we'd call a mall Santa Claus, and how he kept seeing the most monstrous little girl over and over. Well, Mr. Alt shares the sequel to his tale,

which explains the truth behind this girl, and why she is so closely connected to him. We'll let David Alt tell his own story as he's joined by Erica Sanderson, Nicole Doolan and Oliver Guiani. So try not to fear those traditional Advent calendars even though they do provide a countdown to Christmas. I should never have told my story last year.

Hell, I should never have taken that job. But I reawakened her. It's whatever it is. All I know is that people are now dead because of me, and I'm going to put a stop to it here. Three years ago, a series of events had led me to being Santa for a local shopping centre and my being terrorised by some entity leading me along the 12 days of Christmas until it brutally massacred my colleague on Christmas Eve.

And as if this year hasn't been enough of a shit store, my year has steadily got worse. I started seeing her again, the little girl that kept coming each day into the grotto, the one that only I could see in what I had assumed to be her truish form. It hadn't mattered if it was a baby, a boy, or what. I always saw her as an eight-year-old girl. But this year, I saw her in places where I had thought of going, only to have that idea cut off in a brutal fashion. It didn't matter whether it was to the shops or to another country. Something happened, and I could see her face somewhere in the reports. For example, early in the new year, I was considering taking a short drive to a nearby town to attend an

audition. It was low-paid work, but it was work. As I was mulling over my transport options, I heard that they'd been a horrible stabbing there, and it's a town not known for its knife crime. And the alert on my phone showed me the photos of the immediate aftermath. Sure enough, there she was staring back at me. I must have audibly yelped on the bus. The driver skidded to a halt and turned to see if I was okay. I asked to be let off the bus, and 30 sets of eyes watched me scuttle away, embarrassed and scared.

At Easter, I was going to do some site-specific theatre at a local manor house, but it mysteriously and catastrophically, collapsed the day before rehearsals started, along with the 90-odd tourists and staff inside, trapped by a freak set of circumstances. The child that miraculously survived, of course, was her. I wanted to travel overseas for a summer holiday, let my hair down, but everywhere I thought of going suddenly had a terrorist attack or a natural disaster. And so it continued. On and on with deaths and horror plaguing me wherever I wanted. to go. And then it came to December. I guess she'd had some sort of privileged access to my mind

on some level. How else would she know where I'd be going? And so she'd be back to her old tricks through the month. Not the 12 days of Christmas this time. No. She went further back than that. This time to the one thing that's been a beacon of happiness to me in the past, the Advent calendar. As a child, my mum had the same Advent calendar that she'd used every year just refolding the doors come January and storing it for the next year. It was a lovely tradition, and even though we knew exactly what pictures were behind the doors, yet no chocolate, Markey, it didn't matter because it was the countdown to my previously favourite day of the year. The calendar itself was in the shape of a half, and on the 24th you could pull Santa down from inside the chimney and stand him up, next to the calendar. Only this year has been subverted, horribly horrifically subverted, but,

and again, memory is a fickle thing. Like I said previously, it got to the point where I knew what pictures went with what days, and even though I don't have the calendar anymore, she has been able to tap into it to bring me my most miserable December yet. It started on the first, The calendar's picture on that day was a boiled sweet, and I had the pleasure of watching my next-door neighbor's son choke to death on just such a boiled sweet that I'd offered him a minute or so earlier. Their daughter smiled at me.

Yes, it was her, and then went back to grieving with her family. On the 2nd of December, the neighbor's cat on the other side was roaming around the rooftops when it slipped and fell into the strings of Christmas lights, again, just like the ones from the calendar, and strangled itself. On the third, the town's Christmas tree unexpectedly fell down as the market was in full swing, killing two in the fall and injuring eight in the ensuing panic, but leaving one brave girl to tell her story. I tried to stop things from happening as much as I could.

When the carolers came round, I tried desperately to warn them away, but apparently they'd already ingested the poison from the grumpy old man up the street, and they all expired on my doorstep, except one little girl. It's been almost comical at times, or at least it would have been, if it weren't so tragic. To cap it all, the girl's face, the blood, and the screams were once again impinging on my dreams just as they were in my waking life. I went to see a psychotherapist. At this point, I didn't mind if they pronounced me crazy, I just wanted it to end,

and in an institution I could at least have a bit more control over who and what I didn't see. But in fact, the sessions showed me something quite different and just as alarming. I'm not altogether sure what happened totally, but I've pieced enough together. In the first session, after talking through what I'd been experiencing, the therapist decided to try and take me into trance to try and find the source of the issue. I can't quite describe what it was like trying to go through. memories like that, but suffice to say, every time I tried to go near the idea of Christmas, my mind just slid off it as if there was something there just not allowing purchase.

A bit like when you put a screen protector on your phone and you get an air bubble in it and then you try and push it out, it just wasn't moving, but it was avoiding my probing. The therapist said this was normal with some deep trauma. She'd worked with similar cases and decided to push it. harder to focus the trance onto that area of my life. It was like trying to get two strong magnets together the wrong way round. I was pulled out of the trance upon hearing an audible yelp from the therapist. She hadn't expected my nose and ears to begin bleeding and for me to be screaming. She very generously only charged me half the usual rate for her time. On the way home,

I passed a supermarket that was burning to the ground. A fire caused by a freak reaction in the small amount of cap gun powder in a Christmas cracker, which caused a chain reaction within the boxes around it. Another 48 shoppers dead, one survivor, you can guess who. I got a call from the therapist that evening, inviting me back the following day for a complimentary session. She'd had an idea and wanted to explore it further. I wasn't thrilled at the prospect of losing more blood,

but as I didn't have anything else to do, I went. I'm glad in one sense that I did. In another, I could have done without knowing. Can you picture the little girl? As she asked, the trance became different, deeper, darker. I felt like I was standing outside my body, looking on as the room took on a scarlet hue. I'm sure that if I could feel temperature at this point, it would be cold. I made my head nod slowly as the door opened and the girls skipped in.

She's here. She had the same grin on her face, the same mole on her left cheek, the same wicked sneer in her voice. Hello, Santa. My breathing must have become shallower and faster. I want you to look at her. Properly look at her. Yes. Come on, Santa.

Look at me. I looked. It was the same face that I'd seen endlessly over and over again, and I never wanted to see it again. I don't want to. Look at me, Santa. How else are you going to find out what's going to happen? I was sweating by this point.

I could hear the therapist in the background, but I was focused on avoiding the girl. Come on, Santa. What are you? Five. It was like a giant boulder had suddenly shifted slightly. I turned. I looked once more and looked again.

Emma? Who's Emma? My sister. But I don't have a sister. I emerged from the trance with more questions and answers and less sweatiness than before. At last I had something tangible to work with a sister, and something that happened when I was five. The therapist was pleased, relieved, probably.

I was still in too much of a haze when she offered me a piece of chocolate yule log, and I didn't stop her in time to prevent the massive allergic reaction to one of the ingredients that she suffered in front of me. She was dead before the ambulance arrived. There were only two places where I could look for answers. My mum and my hometown. I thought about calling home, but after all, if my mum hadn't told me, me I'd had a sister for the last 30 years, she may not now. So I decided to get the train back to the Midlands and see if the newspaper archives would be able to throw some light

onto the whole mess. The new Birmingham Library is an impressive place, an homage to learning and performance, but it also holds the archives for the local newspapers, and I made that my first stop. The city itself continues to be remade as cities tend to be, cranes and roadworks in a ever-ending creep across the center. The library archivist greeted me. How could I help? I'm looking for any newspaper reports concerning the death of a child in the 80s, a little girl, my sister. Oh, I'm terribly sorry to hear that. Do you have the date of the death at all? Well, um, I think it was around Christmas. He gave me an odd look. Well, papers from the 80s are being digitized at the moment. but I'll pull out everything from, what, November, December and January? What year?

Just the middle ones, say 1984 to 1988? Another strange look, then calm acceptance. If you'd like to wait over there, I'll bring them out to you. They then followed five hours of reading about Thatcher, Miners and Live Aid with plenty of deaths, but none of them having any photos of a blonde cherubic girl with a mole on her left cheek. A librarian pointed me to some possible other places to look and promised to forward on anything else he came across. I headed back home on the train wondering what would happen next. It was, after all, getting late in the month, and on the grounds of what happened on Christmas Eve three years ago,

I wanted to be sure I wasn't around for it. I won't go into the gruesome specifics of the final destination-esque deaths that happened around me, or to people I was on the phone to, but it got to the point where I was a hundred, permit, no longer going out, no longer calling anyone unless absolutely necessary. And then the 20th rolled around, Mum's birthday, one time where I have to call and see how she's doing. She lives on her own and I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to ask her about my sister, especially as all the other avenues I'd tried had come up blanks. Hi, Mum, happy birthday.

Oh, it's lovely to hear from you. How are things? To be honest, not that great. Can I ask you something? Go on. Well, um, did I have a sister? There was the smallest moments pause, and then her voice came back perfectly level. I don't know what you're talking about. And just like that, it went completely out of my mind. We chatted, and that was that, no other mention of the girl or anything.

In fact, it wasn't until yesterday that I remembered that part of the conversation. and the story. I was continuing to stay inside the feeling of despair without a glimmer of hope pervading every cell of my being. The deaths kept happening, an incident with fake snow, a giant bauble killing shoppers when it rolled out from a huge display, some bell ringers crushed when dry rot in a bell tower caused the massive lumps of iron to rain down on them. And then came yesterday. The day it all changed. I was sitting inside eating another tin of suit when I got an email alert. I sat up and read the screen. It was from the librarian. I hope you don't mind my emailing you. I did promise that I passed along any further information

that came to light. As you know, the papers are being digitized at present and thus I was able to have a look at them as they went through. One caught my eye. It mentioned Christmas but took place around Easter, March, 1986. It also involved death. I have attached a scan of it. I hope it helps you with your search. I opened the attachment. It was her.

Her face looking out, along with the headline, Father Christmas Killer attacks local family. I read, and as I did so, the boulder on my brain began to move. I remembered. I remembered that that was the first Easter I really knew that something was happening. We were church-going folks, so I knew a big celebration was coming up. I did what any five-year-old would have done. I went up into the attic and brought down some

Christmas decorations. As I was putting tinsel around the various ornaments on the landing, my parents came up the stairs to ask what I was doing. When I told them I was decorating the house for Easter, they just laughed. We don't decorate the house for Easter. We do for Christmas. But that's completely different. Now put all this back in the box and back in the attic. I stamped. But I like Christmas. I wanted to be Christmas.

All I got was a slap across my legs. You don't speak to me like that, and you do as you're told. I got angrier, and I hurt. And that's when my big sister decided to poke her head around the door and laugh at me. You're so silly. Everyone knows Christmas is months away. And besides, Santa is not real. Mum and Dad put presents in the stockings for us.

I've said before that I love Christmas, and if there's one thing you don't tell a five-year-old, it's about Santa. I stood there utterly devastated, legs still stinging, heart-wounded. I don't quite remember if a trickle of anything ran down my trousers. Whatever happened, my sister just stood there, laughing her head off, as my world crumbled. I fled back up into the attic, away from the taunting, hideous shrieks of my sister, of her. And I wished, with all the passion of my childish self, all the resentment of the destruction of that piece of innocence,

and all the righteousness of my hurt feelings. There then came a knock at the front door. I heard my mother answer it. I heard a familiar, ho-ho! And then the screams began. I rushed downstairs to find the hallway covered in blood and the bodies of my sister, father and mother scattered across the floor and walls. Old St. Nick gave me a wink as he closed the door behind him.

My mother. My mother was killed on that day. I was the only survivor. So who was the person I knew as my mum? A knock at the door snapped me back to the present. I appeared out into the early evening gloom and saw no one. I opened the front door and found a big box gift wrapped with a gold bow in just the same way as the one behind door number 23 on the Advent calendar. My mum's Advent calendar.

I pulled out my phone to dial her number, but saw that she'd tried to call earlier and had left a voicemail message. Trembling, I dialed her number. Somewhere inside the present before me, her phone rang. I turned around and went. The police stopped interviewing me late last night. One accidental death in my company, the psychotherapist, was unfortunate. To have a second, the boiled sweet from next door was tragic. To have a third, your aunt dismembered and gift-wrapped on your doorstep is truly weird.

Add into that the scenes on the CCTV from three years ago and you have yourself a basket case. I haven't stopped thinking about it all day. I started writing this to get it all out of my head. This is how I've pieced it together. My mother's side of the family had some power, some gift. I picked it up. My aunt told me that. It triggered that Easter back in 86. My aunt took me in and did whatever she did to make me forget, and, crucially, to remove the trigger of Christmas from my mind. You don't get a figure more pervasive than Santa in the last third of the year, and she couldn't risk me relapsing before I was ready, before she was ready. Maybe that's why we kept the same Advent calendar as a way of training the psyche.

I don't know if she blamed me for the death of her sister, however innocent I may have been. It must have been that when I took that job in the shopping mall, actually being Father Christmas that brought it back. Something reawakened in me when I was actually playing that role and powers been working to keep me safe, isolated and inside away from harm. She probably put those constraints on me somehow too. Powerful woman, my aunt. But she never told me.

She kept me cooped up, wings clipped, unable to fly to use the power. to use the power that I may have had. It kept me like a eunuch. If I'd known, maybe I could have averted all this. But it's now late on Christmas Eve, and we all know what happens next, what happened on the Advent calendar. It's the end of the countdown,

and I know I have far too much blood on my hands. And I'm tired, tired and beaten. This document serves as something of a confession. I was behind it all, unwittingly. It probably was me or something created by me that was there three years ago murdering that family and my stand-in at the mall dog. I've been behind all those deaths,

something within me trying to keep me safe and closeted away, something with a violent streak and a thirst for revenge. And any moment now, it'll be coming down the chimney, and it's time for me to face my past and resty. receive my present. And I'm going to put a stop to all this for good. Christmas celebrations, as many of us know, have their roots in pagan traditions, the winter solstice, and many other magical and mystical tales of folklore.

Consider this story from author C.M. Scandroth. In it, we learn of a Scottish family who celebrate Christmas with a gathering of their huge clan. and the many traditions in which they partake. Unbeknownst to one woman, there are darker reasons behind their strict ceremonies. Performing this tale is Erica Sanderson, so be thankful your gifts can be simply exchanged in brightly wrapped boxes and don't have to be part of the Yule Tithe.

My grandmother had a voice that could bind words into enchanted. panting images wrought of pure imagination. Where she learned this gift, my child itself never dared ask, because, like a magician's illusion, I did not want it spoiled by knowing the secret. So instead, I stayed quiet. My huge blue eyes luminous above the lip of the counterpane as she spun fairy legends in the air about my head, losing me in fanciful worlds of things that never would and never should exist.

The stories shared common threads As though a mythic tapestry had been unraveled Then woven anew into different shapes and patterns by her voice Mixing desperate hope with high adventure Or diabolic trickery through true love While I don't remember all the words she spoke to me The themes ran true in my head Her stories lurked in the corners of my mind

Well into my adult life Especially the fable about her family wealth The distant ancestor in that tale was a charcoal burner, one of the lowest peasantly professions of all. Upon finding a hair snared in a thorn hedge, he made to kill it with his axe, but the creature spoke in a human voice, imploring him to release it.

Knowing fairy magic when he saw it, the charcoal burner hacked the beast free, whence it sprang away, shouting that the peasant should dig beneath his hut upon his return home. On his return, the man dug up the earthen floor of his mean little house, finding beneath it a jewel the size of his fist, and coloured the rich purple of a thistle's head.

There were variations on the theme from there. Sometimes the charcoal burner engaged in an unequal escapade of trickery against the local nobles. Other times he outfoxed the fairies, winning great magical favour for his family. But the end result was always the same, with the former peasant becoming a laird in his own right and winning the hand of a princess, their firstborn child was eventually to be stolen away by the Fairfolk.

And while the story seemed utterly real while my grandmother held me spellbound, I convinced myself that I did not believe a word of them when I woke in the morning. According to the same legends, the great stone house on the tour occupied the precise spot where the charcoal burner's dilapidated hut once stood. By law, the place was owned by my feeble but still lucid great-grandfather. In truth, it belonged to the whole family, to the clan, as he referred to us. It stood empty most of the year, used only sporadically by the more artistic relatives, as the police stood well beyond reach of intrusive mobile phone signals.

But when Christmas approached, some three-score of us would descend on the place, sweeping out the dusty stone corridors, cleaning cobwebs from the Great Hall, and making up dozens of beds. Because when my relatives did the whole... whole family Christmas thing. All of the clan was expected to come. Often, there would be well over a hundred of us crammed into what was essentially an old Scottish castle. It was my grandmother who organised the whole business, shouting orders and slapping the legs of underfoot children with a tea towel while she wrangled the yule celebration into a semblance of order. She refused to

call it Christmas, disapproving of the modernisation of the ancient pagan festival, and insisted that we celebrate the actual day on the winter solstice, not on the 25th. These things we let pass. As children, we certainly didn't raise complaints about getting a presence early, and as adults, we couldn't be bothered incurring her wrath, allowing the old woman her harmless eccentricities in the name of tradition. And it was a very old family tradition, she told us, passed down the matriacal line for so long

that she did not dare to be the first woman in the family. to break it. So we scurried about doing her bidding, using the three kitchens in the rambling house to cook up a storm, while the men hewed huge piles of wood to keep the enormous fire burning in the great hall. As was also custom, it was my job as one of the younger childless women to organise games and activities to keep the two dozen wee ones occupied. It's good practice. One day you'll have your own gaggle of squealing burns and you'll thank me for it. And she was right. The women in our family had always been incredibly fertile. Twins were not uncommon, and there was a running joke that all the clan pregnancies were in fact multiples, but that often only that one child was born.

Only the fittest could be born into our tough, ancient lineage, so the other was simply absorbed. But I don't think there had ever been a clan Christmas where at least one woman wasn't pregnant. numerous other traditions arose on the actual day of the solstice. The men built a bonfire outside and dared one another to leap over it while drinking far too much ale. The clan's stone was also brought out, a purple, radiant-cut jewel the size of a walnut.

In the tales my grandmother had told me, it was a fragment of the original thistle jewel upon which the family wealth had been built. On reflection, I suppose it could have been. it was certainly old enough. I'd been allowed to hold it in my hand once, failing the weight of age on the stone. I suppose it doesn't really matter whether it was true or not.

The stone was pivotal to the one tradition that nobody was allowed to mess with, and which Grandma expected everyone to treat as seriously as death itself. The jewel cake. Taking the purple gem, she would bake it into one of the enormous soot puddings which followed the Yule feast. Whomever received the serving containing the stone

would be declared king or queen of yule and would be crowned with prickly mistletoe. It hearkened back to the old traditions of the 12th night, I learned, where a bean or a coin was baked into the pudding. There wasn't really much to it other than the green crown in extra helpings of food and booze. I'd never been the Yule Queen yet, but every year I'd poke at the hot, moist pudding on my plate

and hoped to hear that clink as the unyielding surface of the jewel structure. my spoon. It had taken years of watching my grandmother like a hot in the kitchen to figure out her trick of keeping the stone-laden pudding a secret. She guarded each of them like her first one child, not letting anyone so much as eat a crumb of them around before they touched the table. On that fateful night, through careful spying, I had finally divined which cake the stone had been placed into. In an act of petty rebellion, I snared a single current from the same. I snared a single current from the edge of the platter, which vanished into my mouth before anyone could see.

Oh, I had no real intention of trying to spoil my grandmother's little tradition by throwing the odds in my favour. She did that to herself. Every adult knew it would always be one of the pregnant women who received the jewel and who would be crowned the Yule Queen. While she might have claimed it was fate, I didn't believe a word of it. In all the Christmases I could remember since I was a small child, there had never once been a Yule king. Only queens. And so it happened as it always did. My cousin Isabel, whooping in excitement as the purple jewel fell from her pudding onto the plate. I did my best to hide my jealousy as the crown was placed on her head, and they plied her with more food and drink. Being newly pregnant, she risked

grandmotherly wrath by barely sipping the latter. Some traditions do not age quite as well. As I picked up sleepy children and carried them upstairs to their bedrooms. I saw my cousin dozing in one of the huge armchairs in front of the blazing hearth. One hand on her belly, the stone cutt in the other. Her face oddly troubled. My own bed was in the old stables with the rest of the teenagers. Having turned 19 just a month before, I hardly felt I belonged there. But until I turned up to the clan Christmas with a boyfriend or a husband in tow, a sleeping bag on a store, a sleeping bag on a drawer mattress was my lord. There was a lot of chatter and silliness, but as a veteran, I was well prepared for that. The reliable airplugs went in, and as they did so, the giggling and whispering

dulled to a more tolerable level. Eventually I slept, lulled by the food in my belly, and the Christmas sherry I'd sampled from my cousin's barely touched glass. When I awoke, everything was deathly quiet. My watch informed me that it was three in the morning. and the only illumination in the stables came from a weak orange light hung over the stone courtyard. Everyone was silent, even my cousin Angus, who usually snored like a cattle beast in heat. Surrendering to vague demands from my bladder, I shucked off my sleeping bag, pulled straw from my hair, and climbed down from the loft, the old wooden ladders squeaking as my bare feet came to rest on the polished rungs. I felt strangely ill at ease, and stood gathering my wits for him.

moment in the dim light, my ears prickling. In the stillness, I thought I could hear faint sounds coming from the house, from the great hall. Instead of heading for the outhouse, I pushed through the side door of the stables and padded across the freezing courtyard, still barefoot, the frosty air making my ears hurt and my eyes blur. Through the big stone-ringed windows, I could make out the golden glow of the fireplace surrounded by armchairs, but I'd rapidly blinked the sleep out of my eyes when I realized that there were also people standing in front of the fireplace. A cluster of them, looking at the chair where Isabel still slip. None of them were my family members.

The foremost of the eleven strangers was a tall man, taller even than my uncle Michael, who my grandmother would have us believe was parched giant. A stranger's white gold hair spilled down his back like a girl's, caught at the temples by a golden crown fashioned as if from tiny antlers. His outfit was arcade, old huntsman's guard, with two old leather riding boots, grey hose, a gold-dusted red velvet jacket, and a curved hunting horn at his hip. The others were similarly dressed, all so regal and beautiful that distinguishing the men from the women was difficult.

But even from this distance, there was an aura of cruelness to them, the languid, feline arrogance that marred their features in some indiscernible way and made me shiver with something other than cold. Deep in dreams, Isabelle was none the wiser as the strange Elfin Huntsmaster bent over her and carefully stroked her belly with his fine white fingers. But then, in a moment of terrifying strangeness,

he screamed as though he had been burnt, clutching his hands to his chest. It isn't her! But she has the stone. We have been duped! Fear thrilled through me. But surely I was dreaming. In a moment of lucidity, I thought I could tell. Everything had some sort of hazy glow about it, making things slightly unreal. It was intensifying now, shining up from under my chin and tinting my shaking hands faintly lavender. And as I looked down

to see the ghostly purple gemstone hung about my neck on an insubstantial golden chain, the fairy spirits in the great hall noticed too. He lifted the gilded horn to his lips and let out three sharp blasts. Without even thinking, I turned and ran. The grassy sward on the side of the tour was stiff with frost and my feet hurt, but I ignored the pain. I didn't know exactly what was going on, but I remembered enough of my grandmother's stories to know that I didn't want to be caught.

At least I had a good head start, I thought, as I slithered down the slope and into a pile of scree, though I really wished I'd stop to put some shit. shoes on first. The rocky terrain made running difficult, but there was only a short dash to reach the woods to the west of the Tor. Then they would have a great deal of trouble catching me. When the pounding of hooves and the jingle of rains and gilded bridles sounded behind me, terror rushed into my heart and adrenaline surged through my body. If only I could dart through the rocks as swiftly as the sure-footed hairs that lived around the house. And at that thought,

with a dizzy lurch, the ground rose up to meet my face, and I was running on four muscled pawed legs, surrounded by the hazy glow of the thistle jewel. I was a hare. I sprang away, fleeter than any horse, blindly racing into the woods. As the trees closed around me, they let out a shocked laugh of elation, although nothing emerged from my whiskered mouth but a squeak.

Another three blasts came from the hunter's horn. then my triumph turned to fear again as the baying of hunting hounds echoed through the trees. My strong legs carried me over and through thickets as I dashed under branches and leaped thistle-studded hollows. But the dogs had my scent. A head, a stream glittered in the frosty starlight. A chuckling water too loud in my huge ears. Could hair swim? If only I could swim like a trout.

In midbound, my skin rippled. and I felt the chilly air slide over silver scales. I splashed down into the blessed water and jackknifed away, the swift current quickly bearing me away from the hunting dogs. I glimpsed a flash of white fur and red ears as they reached the bank of the stream. Then I was gone. My scent lost to the rushing waters. I heard the hoofbeats go distant, muffled echoes through the water.

They had lost my trail, and for now I had outwitted them. but there was still little time to rest, as I knew such hunters wouldn't give up until the sun crested the horizon. When the creek emptied abruptly into a tarn, I knew my luck as a fish had run out, and I had to force my cold-blooded brain to think quickly. If only I could fly like a rook!

Leaping out at the chilly waters of the tarn, I beat newly minted wings, cawing with delight as the air caught instantly beneath them, and I lifted into the sky, up and away from the shrinking ground. They would never catch me now. The baying of the dogs grew distant and the freezing winter winds lifted me higher,

yet I heard another three blasts on the hunter's horn. With a sudden premonition of doom, I sloughed sharply left as a huge shadow full over me. Hawk! The thing was gigantic, a predator at once elegant and utterly savage. Its curved beak missed me by inch, by inches, leaving me tumbling through the air in a spray of feathers. It banked, hovered,

then came at me again. In panic, I folded my wings and fell like an arrow speeding towards the earth below. It grazed me twice, painfully ripping out great chunks of feathers, but missing my flesh. As I hurtled towards the ground, I called upon the strange magics once again. If only I could run like the deer. Instead of colliding with the floor, floor of the forest, I hit it running, again on four legs, and so fast that I could barely take in my surroundings. I bleated in surprise, every quivering muscle working to speed me far from the baying of the hounds and the frustrated screech of the hawk. Through the trees, a faint pink light was rising, the leading edge of the breaking dawn. My pursuers must have seen it too, because the

horn peeled out again, the sound now strangely desperate. Then I was a little bit of the leading edge of the breaking dawn. Then I was on the open moors, running faster than any horse or any hound, running towards the glowing line of the rose-coloured horizon. As my hoof struck the rabbit hole in the grassy soil, I registered first a flash of panic, then the sickening snap of bones and a shock of crippling pain. I screamed through my velvet muzzle, bawling in animal agony. I thrashed, trying to rise, but my foot was trapped,

and the hunters were upon me. I closed my eyes as the huntsmaster drew his silver bow, then let fly the shining arrow. The pain I was expecting never came, and instead I felt a shifting beneath my pelt. Looking down, I saw my old familiar body, struck through my breast to the ghostly silver shaft, which dissipated into shining smoke

as the rays of the rising sun burnt it to nothing. He leapt lightly down from the sun, his horse, drew his horn-handled hunting knife, and slashed it desperately across my throat. It passed through me as though made of air. As the cry fell from his lips, the sun was snuffed out in an instant, plunging myself and the eleven hunters into darkness. Just as confused as I, the hunters called to one another, anger and surprise coloring their arrogant voices in the gloom. But when a ghostly white glow began to grow in the west, they grew soon. silent. For it illuminated a creature, a creature far more terrible than even themselves.

On two legs it walked, so long and thin that my mind rejected their existence. The very shape of those limbs represented something not of this world, of an evolutionary lineage that should never have been. They supported the emaciated body of a man, crowned by a head that was neither bat nor goat, but somehow the worst of both. Six mad eyes burned out from the sides of the malformed skull. The fairfolk dropped to their knees, whilst I simply stared, frozen. What are you? A pointed tongue flickered out from the being's mouth. Then it hissed. The elf huntmaster grovelled before it, prostrating himself and crying out for mercy. But there was none, more than they would have shown me. It seems that even the fairfolk have no power when it comes

to the truly ancient paths. As abruptly as the sun had vanished, it reappeared. The welcome golden glow suffused the moorland and illuminated only a vacant space in the grass where the huntsmaster and the creature had been. One of the fairy women turned to me. Her delicate features twisted, ugly with hatred. Your family will regret breaking faith with us, mortal. Those who betray the fay always pay dearly. And then she too was gone, taking her people, horses and hounds with her.

The hobble back to the house was long and slow. My ankle swollen and painful, dark bruises blossoming on the skin. A makeshift crutched helped a little, but by the time those familiar stone walls came into view, it was mid-afternoon and I was desperately tired. Someone must have spotted me from the house, as three of my uncles run out to help, carrying me the rest of the way. My exhaustion mingled with confusion as I noticed two police cars parked at the entrance to the courtyard and a huddle of my

relatives with blankets around them, crying and holding one another. After the police officers questioned me. I learned that at some point during the longest night, my elderly great-grandfather had quietly gathered up all the children. He had taken them to the basement garage, built into the old cellars, had closed the doors, and had gassed himself and all two dozen little ones. The family was utterly inconsolable. An entire generation had been lost to that one unthinkable app. How he had managed to do it without waking anyone, nobody was sure, but the police implied that the food or drink at the Yule Feast may have been drugged. But I knew the truth, and so did my grandmother. At the first opportunity, she shut me in her bedroom, her face white with rage.

Girl, what did you do? As I explained to her how I'd out Fox the Faye, her expression soured further. long ago we made a bargain for the peace and prosperity of a family, that every year we would make a sacrifice of a human soul to the fairfolk so that they may pay their tithe to hell the pregnant women. In a moment of pure connection, I recalled the Dower of Family joke that all of our pregnancies started out as twins. Survival of the fittest. If it had ever been funny, it certainly wasn't.

any more. Yes, and when you stole that stray crumb from the cake, you're damned both us and them. I shook my head. No, I beat them. I escaped the hunters just like in your stories. But my grandmother had nothing more to say, and the next morning, after scores of thistles bloomed purple and wild all over the tour, I knew that I would never again be welcome at the Clan Christmas. I've kept in touch with a few of my female cousins over the years, but they all report the same thing as me. No matter how hard they try, no matter what treatments they take, none of us can fall pregnant, and none of the men can impregnate their wives. As we all grow older, the family line grows thinner, smaller and weaker, and eventually the great clan will die out.

every yule I call my grandmother on the phone She does not speak Where once she would have regaled me with her stories Now all she does is weep With the colourless thistle jewel clutched in her frail fist When I'm finally glutted on guilt I hang up on her and lose myself in a bottle of sherry Trying to think of better times

But this year will be different This year I'll spend the solstice alone at the abandoned house on the tour. Once I've gathered up enough drunken courage, I'll head out to the Moors, just before sunrise, and open my veins on the spot where I should have died ten years ago.

I just hope that my sacrifice is enough. One of the many reasons children are so fond of Christmas are the tales of jolly festive places like the North Pole and Whoville and Frosty the Snowman's Town. Well, those are all well and good, but there is another place which won't be making children smile, I can assure you of that. It's told to us by author Elias Withero, and in it a young boy is transported to a magical place, which is more nightmarish than anything the Grinch could conjure. Performing this tale is Peter Lewis, so don't let the name fool you.

There is nothing festive about Christmas land. Christmas has always been a hard time for me. I've never felt the warmth of family coming together or the anticipation of opening gifts. I've never gone to midnight mass or experienced the thrill of sitting on Santa's lap and telling him what I want. I've never helped my mother make gingerbread cookies.

or gone caroling. But Christmas isn't hard because my life lacked those holiday essentials. Instead, it's because of the memories that surround that annual celebration. The reminder of what I went through, of what I've seen, I'm getting ahead of myself. It happened when I was. was six. I was living with my mother. My father was out of the picture, just a hateful name on my mother's tongue. I never met the guy, and to be honest, I never wanted to. Why would I want to develop a relationship with someone who abandoned my mother and I after I was born? So it was just the two of us,

Two quiet souls just trying to make the most of our meager lives. We lived in a small house on the edge of town. My mother worked two jobs and couldn't afford a sitter, so I spent a lot of time alone in the house. She made me swear secrecy and not tell anyone at school because she was afraid social services would take me away. Looking back, they probably would have. if they found out.

But they never did, and I spent a lot of time in a world of make-believe. I had to. We didn't have a television or even a radio, so if I wanted to escape somewhere, it had to be in my head. I didn't mind because I didn't know any better. I spun worlds and characters, imaginary friends, and silly things that little boys. fantasize about. I'd come home from school, make myself some cheese and crackers, the kind of cheese

you'd squirt from a can, and launch into my world of make-believe. I was a space warrior, a pirate, a soldier, anything I could think of. I'd run around the house fighting aliens or the enemy, shooting at them with imaginary guns, or fighting them back with invisible swords. Eventually, the sun would set and I would end up asleep in my bed. My mother would come home around ten, check on me, kiss me on the cheek, and then rush back out to her other job, which kept her busy until after 3 a.m. So, you see, she didn't have a lot of time for me.

She didn't have time to get us a Christmas tree or decorate our house or anything. Christmas was just another day for me. I wanted it to be so much more. I got so jealous listening to the kids at school talk about their presence. The sleigh ride they went on, their visit to Santa at the mall. I became hungry for those things. I wanted them more than anything else.

I wanted to play in the snow and go. Come rushing back inside to a cup of hot cocoa and listen to jingle bells while I warmed myself by the fire. It was all so festive, so magical. Now, I'm not telling you these things for you to pity me. I don't care about that. I'm telling you this so you understand why I did what I did, about why I went to Christmas land. I stirred in my bed and listened to Mom shut the front door behind her.

My cheek was still damp from her kiss, and I knew she had just left to go to her second job. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and bundled up in my covers. It was cold, my breath pluming out before me. Mom must not have been able to pay the heating bill this month. As I tried to go back to sleep, my mind. wandered. It was only a couple days until Christmas, and I dreaded, listening to everyone at school, glowed about their presence and all the cool stuff they got. Buried under my blankets, I started to drift. The house was silent and dark. My bedroom door opened to reveal the barren living room.

Hey, hey, kid! The voice shattered the surrender. like a hammer on glass and my eyes shot open. My heart began to race in my chest as I tried to determine if I had imagined the voice or not. Mom had just left. I was supposed to be alone. Hey, kid, come over here. I sat up breathing fast. I hadn't imagined it that time. It was a male voice low and deep, but inviting. It had come from the living room. It's okay. I just want to talk to you for a second. Swallowing hard, I slid off my bed and tiptoed to my door. I peaked around the corner trying to see through the black. Had mom brought a friend over and left him here? I thought about

turning on a light, but for some reason the thought scared me. What if I didn't want to see whoever was out there? What if it wasn't one of Mom's friends? Over here by the fireplace. My head spun and I squinted toward the ashy empty space against the wall. I didn't see anyone. I was a mess of trembling nerves. as I crept toward where the voice had come, keeping my head on a swivel.

I stopped in front of the fireplace, scratching my head. That's better. I'm up here. I jumped, taking a step back as the voice echoed from the chimney. As I settled myself, my mind began to spin. Who was up there and how had they gotten there? The only person I knew who went down chimneys was Santa. Fear subsiding, I knelt down and cocked my head up under the fireplace to look up the chimney. Dangling from the darkness was a long, charred hand.

It swung motionless like a dead pendulum. Long fingers hung like silent chimes, the skin as dark. as soot. The hand was attached to an incredibly thin wrist that disappeared into the black. Hey, kid. I just stared at it, mouth dropping open. What the heck was this? How was a hand talking to me? And what was it doing in my house? The hand continued. You're pretty brave, not running. away. Most kids see me and book it. Not you, though. You're a tough guy, huh? I shrugged, still not sure I was awake and listening to a hand in my chimney.

Well, let me cut to the chase. I heard you like Christmas. Is that true? I told the hand it was. Because I have a surprise for you. If you want, I can take you to a magical place called Christmas Land. In Christmas land, it's always snowing, just like the North Pole. Not only that, there's also hundreds of dazzling Christmas trees like you've never seen. And Christmas lights all through the sky. Oh, they're beautiful! Christmas land is full of little boys and girls, just like you. Doesn't that sound wonderful? Don't you want to see it. I shifted in my empty living room, curiosity, pushing aside fear. That did sound good. That sounded like exactly what I wanted. As strange as the offer was, as bizarre a circumstance

as I found myself in, I felt cold to comply. It was a nagging in my head. It was a nagging in my head. A whisper behind the voice I heard. I bit my lip and thought about my mom. She wouldn't be home for a couple hours. She didn't have to know. The hand swayed gently. I promised to have you back before your mom gets home. You want to see the lights, don't you?

You want to play in the snow? That I did. And honestly, I was so desperate to experience Christmas that it didn't take much to convince me. I told the hand I would come, making it promise to take me back home before three. It promised. Smiling, hesitantly, I reached up and grabbed the hand, which was now opening its fingers. On contact, I felt something jolt. threw me like a quick blast of icy wind. I gasped, and I heard the hand whisper something to

itself from the darkness. Take us. Before I could respond, the hand gripped mine, and I was lifted off my feet in a rush. Darkness blasted around me, and I gasped, my eyes watering. I could smell ash invade my nostrils, the chimney squeezing in tight. around my shoulders. The hand never let go, and we just kept soaring up and up and up. Up for far too long. We should have reached the end of the chimney by now. And then I audibly gasped as light exploded across my vision, and heat rushed in to wrap itself around me. I blinked, Wind tearing my eyes and I realized I was falling. I was falling fast and the hand was nowhere to be seen.

I started to scream, realizing I was falling toward the earth from high up, impossibly high up. And everything was wrong, all wrong. I expected to see my house, my neighborhood, a dark landscape. below me. But what I fell toward was nothing like that. I fell toward charred earth and dusty mountains. I fell toward pits of fire and empty wasteland. I fell toward a mass of something wriggling and screaming. As terror poured from my mouth, hair slapping across my face, I saw that I was. I was a lot. I saw that I I was falling toward a massive net dangling over the earth, filled with screaming children. When I registered what it was, I only had a second to cover my head before I smacked into them.

My breath was crushed from my lungs, and I felt bones break under me as I made contact with the other kids. I felt my shoulder scream with pain, and I wriggled on top of the pile as hands reached for me, tried to pull me under, tried to get me off of them. Faces stared up at me, terrified, tear-streaked faces. Confusion and horror crashed together in my young mind like two trains on the same track. I didn't know where I was. what was happening or what I had just fallen into. I kicked at the hands grabbing me, frantic to be free from their touch.

There were hundreds of kids below me. Most of them crushed and dead from the weight of those above. I rolled over and pressed my face against the mesh looking below us. Blood dripped from the bottom of the net, I could hear the slow grind of breaking bones in the air. And then the net began to move. I gripped it and pulled myself into a standing position face pressed against the fibers, desperate to see where I was.

The vision that awaited me still haunts me to this day. We were hanging above a vast plain of red earth. Foot hills rolled below us, empty of forest or foliage. Rock formations jutted from cuts in the dirt like emerging infections, sharp angles, and dangerous surfaces. Ash reigned from a crimson sky, a constant curtain of never-ending flakes. It looked like snow. Walking across the expansive plains were dozens of towering, naked, sexless humans. They rose hundreds of feet in the air all silent, with eyes that looked glazed over as if they were asleep.

They were rhythmic in their movement, order to their steps. They worked together all across the horizon, bringing down nets and emptying them into colossal piles. Dozens of human mountains scattered across the horrific world, bleeding cairns that screamed and howled in the wind. I watched in devastated horror as the children were emptied from the nets and... tumbled down the piles still fighting to get away. Even as they did, one of the enormous humans would come forward and kick them back, killing them in the process. When the piles were high enough, an enormous blazing rock was set at the top.

To begin a slow burn down the mountains of flesh, In a sick way, it reminded me of a star atop a Christmas tree, the orange and red stone lighting the pile with disturbing color. As it burned away the bodies, a thick black smoke wafted from the death and rose up and up high into the sky. My bloodshot eyes followed the dozens of plumes of smoke toward the heavens, and for a second time, my breath was robbed from my lungs. Stretching across the expanse of the sky from horizon to horizon was an absolutely titanic human body. It was naked like those below, but it was. Its skin was pale, almost white. Its hairless torso peaked in and out of the black smoke and cloud cover,

winking down at us from an impossible height. Its head was bald, and its moon-sized eyes were closed and unmoving. Its mouth was a long line across its face, a pasty trench of overwhelming size. And it just hung above us all, still and silent. Peaking around the colossal body was the broken remains of a destroyed galaxy. Half a light planets and stars hung miserably across the vermilion heavens. Entire worlds, cracks and crumbling through the star.

solar system like blazing comets. And that's when I noticed something. I noticed the motionless body in the sky was absorbing all the smoke and death through its nostrils, like black holes sucking in all matter. And the more it breathed in, the more it began to take on color. They were trying to wear. Wake this thing back up, revive it from whatever state it had fallen into. Before I could even digest all of this, our net dropped, and I was falling once again.

I heard my voice join the others, screaming, howling. We were being emptied onto a new pile of children. I hit the squirming mass with a thud. and felt myself slide and somersault down it. Hands clawed at me as I tumbled, rolling further down, until finally I was at the base of the Flash Mountain. The ground shook as one of the massive, sexless humans approached, carrying a blazing boulder.

Me and three other children began to run, hauling away from the pile as fast as we could, I didn't know where, but in the distance I saw spires. I headed toward them. The giant holding the boulder kicked at us, and two of my companions were destroyed instantly. Tears pouring from my face, I ran and ran and ran. I could hear roaring behind me a great bellow of fury at my escape. I didn't stop, didn't dare that I couldn't breathe, didn't notice the burning in my throat as I inhaled ash and soot.

The ground shook and fire blazed and hell was all around me. The spires formed a definition, and I realized as I sprinted closer that they were chimneys, sprouting from the earth like broken tunnels, hundreds and hundreds of, chimneys of all shapes and sizes. Together they formed a field of stone and brick stretching for acres and acres. Nets hovered above them from spikes the size of skyscrapers. As I approached the chimneys, I noticed the children were shooting out of them like bullets, only to fall into the waiting nets. I didn't have time to feel sorry for them as I reached the edge of the chimney fields. I didn't know what I was doing.

Didn't have a plan. I just needed to escape this nightmare. Tears rolling down my cheeks, I scrambled up the shortest chimney I could find brick, licking my skin and drying blood. My ruined fingers dug into tiny holes, and I pulled myself up, weeping until I was sitting at the lip and looking down into empty. Darkness below. Sobbing, I said a prayer and took one last look behind me.

The Titan in the sky had opened its eyes. Wind suddenly whipped across my face, and suddenly I was deafened by a great roar that shook the heavens. The giants below fell to their knees, hands upraised, as the vetted. very vault of the universe began to open and shift, shaking reality and an explosion of color and sound. Gripping the top of the chimney, screaming into the gale, I rolled forward into the open jaws of darkness. I fell down, down, deep into the long neck of the chimney, and listened to the world end and be reborn behind me. I fell until all I knew was darkness.

When I eventually woke, I was lying in the middle of the road, surrounded by police, paramedics, and a very concerned crowd. Red lights flashed across my blurred vision, and I blinked back black. Questions rained down on me, worried voices that became jumbled to form a roar of noise. I looked down at myself and saw I was covered in blood and ash. My clothes hanging from my body and burned shreds. I fought against paramedics trying to shove an oxygen mask over my face and screamed for my mother. Fear and horror consuming me.

I blacked out soon after. I awoke a few days later in a hospital bed. My mother's tear-streaked face staring down at me. Mercifully, she held her questions back. Instead, she hugged me tight and kissed my face, whispering her love. It wasn't until I was released a few days later. that I was told what had happened. According to the people who found me, I had suddenly appeared in the middle of a highway, a highway three states over from my house and home. It was a miracle.

Someone didn't hit me with their car. My mom took me home and for years didn't ask questions. She knew something horrible had happened to me, and I think she always suspected someone had come and snatched me from my bed and dumped me in the road. I let her believe that, despite the contradicting timeline. I've never fully recovered mentally from that night. How could I? I witnessed something no man was ever supposed to possess memory of. I saw something that defied everything. Where have I been taken?

Where was it now? Was it some distant future or some alternate plane of existence? And just what was? that thing in the sky. And where was it now? In our final festive tale, we traveled to a most unchristmas-like location. A prison?

A prison on Christmas Eve. A prison on Christmas Eve preparing to execute a most heinous killer. But as we hear from author Colin Harker, One of the corrections officers seems to have a special connection to the prisoner, and it's a secret which he'd like to remain in the dark. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado, Jessica McAvoy, Peter Lewis, Atticus Jackson, and Matthew Bradford. And so, God rest you merry, gentlemen and ladies, and please, let nothing you dismay. this Christmas Eve, Wilburn? I gave Carolyn a faint smile.

Just a quiet evening at home. Alone? Her tongue passed over her lips. At that moment, the phone rang. Glad for the interruption, I lifted it off its hook. Wilburn speaking? I glanced through the one-way mirror into the death chamber. The chair was still empty, its straps hanging loose and limp.

But that wouldn't be for long. They're still readying the prisoner, sir. I expect we'll be ready to begin the execution in five minutes. From the sound of it, Governor Guffie had been hitting the spiked eggnog a little early this Christmas Eve. I'll just... Of course, governor. Of course. I glanced into the death chamber and saw that two guards were already hauling the prisoner in. Now, look, sir, I have to help...

Because as you honest, sees all the more forward to making a public statement on television shortly. to that effect. Think of it. The Jonesville Ripper executed on Christmas Eve a true, do you think? Another tipsy chuckle. I chuckled along this time,

secretly clenching my teeth. I didn't have any journalists to preen over me after hours. I just wanted to get home before the roads iced over and here I was wasting time with empty chit-chat. Oh, for sure, sir.

Christmas miracle indeed. Now, Governor Guffy, I have to get off the phone and help the boys with the prisoner. I'll hand the phone over to another corrections officer, if you don't mind. I put the phone into Carolyn's hand. She made a face at me and I pinched your cheek before leaving the ante room and heading into the death chamber. I checked my watch, 8 p.m. We were a little behind schedule, but that was all right. One of the guards was struggling with the prisoner as he turned to me. I'm glad you finally made it here, Wilburn. We're having a bit of trouble with our friend here. Didn't you sedate him?

Mr. Wayland, Stacey Carver, otherwise known as the Jonesville Ripper, was not in the best of spirits. He had always affirmed, in spite of all the damning evidence, that he was innocent of all ten murders. Innocent, two of whatever had happened to that young couple, Corey Ross and Carla Hicks, whose disappearance had been attributed to the talents of our local butcher as well. Now he was a raving mess, sweat pouring down his cheeks, thrashing madly as the guard shoved him into the chair and began strapping down his limbs.

Carver's mad, bloodshot eyes suddenly settled on me as I knelt to secure his feet more tightly. I hesitantly met his gaze while tightening the leather straps another notch. No more bedtime stories for you, Wilburn. No more little tale. of terror. I suppose that you'll miss torturing me as well. He was referring to several rather peculiar conversations that we'd had over the course of the last

few months, conversations in which he pressed me for details on what the electric chair was like, what it could do to a man's flesh. While in return, he told me all the death row nightmares that he had suffered as he waited for his final hour. I won't deny, it was interesting stuff. I knew and told him of how a prisoner's hair would sometimes catch on fire, or an eyeball would burst from its socket, dangling cruelly on its owner's cheek. He would shudder and look sick, but he couldn't stop himself from wanting to hear more. He really couldn't. I saw him try and fail. Then he would tell me about his nightmares.

I never knew a man's own imagination could torture him so horribly, could turn an empty cell into a suffocating tomb of awful expectation. I guess I'd always thought, maybe hoped, that the imminency of death would give life a poignant sweetness, make it seem dearer somehow for its loss. But the nightmares that Carver told me of were like a slow poison, fowling up even those last months of precious life so that the chair must have come as an awful relief of sorts,

even though he's still violently resisted even this relief. Humans are perverse creatures, aren't they? I looked them in the eye. At least the nightmares will be over, Mr. Carver. What was it you said to me over and over again? The electricity lights up their insides. That's all it is, isn't it? Light?

And light doesn't hurt, does it? I straightened, standing over. him. That's right. Think of it as light. Then it won't be frightening, see? He started to cry. I guess he was thinking about all those stories I told him of what would happen to him once I pulled the switch. No, he knew it would hurt. I settled the saline-soaked sponge against his forehead and strapped the leather skull cap tightly over the crown of his head before nodding to the other two. He's ready. Enjoy the light show, Wilburn. And thanks for keeping me company these last few months.

For a convicted serial killer strapped to an electric chair, he certainly was considerate. Was it my imagination, though, or was there a look of eerie, vindictive malice on his face? I felt his eyes follow me as I left the death chamber and entered the control room where Carolyn was still on the phone with Governor Guffie. I snatched the phone from her. We are ready to proceed, sir. And let me tell you, you young lady, when you get to be mine. Indeed it is, sir. We are about ready to juice Mr. Carver, sir.

I watched Carver intently through the one-way mirror, as I gave the nod for one of the guards to pull the switch. They had dutifully covered his face with the black cloth, but as the electricity surged through him, and as his body almost lifted like magic from the seat, I could almost imagine the face behind the cloth working like a single, strained muscle, while a bloody foam began to spill from beneath the veil, covering the front of his shirt in a crimson stream. Even in the antechamber, I could smell something

like rotten meat held over a furnace. My God, I thought, my mouth dry, eyes wide. The prison doctor went to Mr. Carver to check his pulse and cursed loudly, burning his fingers on the smoking flesh of the prisoner's arm. Idiots, he's still alive. He didn't run a high enough voltage. Do it again, and this time get it right. Still alive. Carolyn stared at that burning, suffering heap of twitching flesh in the chair

while I pulled the switch one more time myself. He lifted again, his hands and legs kicking and shaking as though in the throes of some alien joy. And then he slumped down, more heads. heavily this time, obscured in the fog of his own rotten-smelling smoke. I spoke into the phone. It's done, sir. No need to tell him of our grotesque little fumble.

A detail like that would never make it to the ears of the public anyway. Let me think... Governor Guffie could be heard taking a long sip of something. A Merry Christmas to you as well, Governor. Just as I hooked the phone back into its cradle, Carolyn snuggled up to me, a stray finger brushing the hair from my forehead. Now, what was that you were saying about a lonely Christmas Eve? I was? Did I say that?

The two other officers laughed. Lay off of, Carolyn. You're making the man nervous. She visibly pouted. You have a secret girlfriend. Don't you, you tease. Now, Carolyn, you wouldn't. be jealous, would you? The truth is, after witnessing something like that, a man needs a little time on his own to relax and sort of thoughts out.

It wasn't that I hadn't overseen an execution before. This, in fact, was my fifth. But this one was different. Governor Guffrey had called it a Christmas miracle. I guess that's what it was. The stars seemed a little brighter up there in that swallowing black vastness they call heaven. There would be a lot of folks in Jonesville who would be sleeping easier tonight, too. Nothing like the execution of a monster to get the, uh, endorphance flowing, you know?

I had an apartment in town, but I figured that it was a special night. Christmas Eve, for God's sakes. And I was in the mood for a little company. Poor Carolyn, not her company. I took a little detour off the highway and from there turned down a long gravel road deep into the forest. feeling the familiar crunch of dirt beneath my tires. As I finally pulled up in front of a ramshackle cabin and turned the engine off, I thought I saw a faint movement through my rearview mirror, the dark ripple of a shadow.

But when I turned around, my heart pounding with apprehension, I saw no one outside. When a little laugh, I climbed out of the car, heading towards the front door of the cabin. That eerie look that Wayland Stacy Carver had given me. before I'd pulled the switch on him, had actually succeeded in getting on my nerves. Here I was, on my night off, already imagining things. They say it's bad luck for an executioner to look as prisoner in the eye. Perhaps I better start taking that old superstition seriously. With the six-pack in hand, I unlocked the door to the cabin and stepped inside,

switching on the light with my elbow. I called out cheerily. I'm home! I set the beer on the living room table and shouldered my coat off. If the torn, bloodied thing that I had created, hanging from hooks and wires, had something to say and reply, I didn't hear it. I was in an irrepressibly conversational mood, however. Did you miss me? Cracking open a beer with the flat of my thumb, I ran my eyes over the silent, mangled remains of the late Corey Ross.

Quite recently deceased, too. He had been alive the night before, after all. Nothing dead could make the sounds that he had made last night, especially when I had told him that the Jonesville Ripper would be executed tomorrow, and that soon the police would be calling off their dogs. Once and for all. Of course, that was a bit of a tormenting lie on my part. Until the cops found the bodies of Corey Ross and his girlfriend Carla,

they would never officially close the case. But with Carver in the ground and my own resolution to keep my proclivities under control for a good long while, the likelihood of the police putting their energies into finding two presumptive corpses was slight at best. My location was perfect, too. I had bought this decrepit cabin rather cheaply under a fake name, deliberately choosing a location far removed from the site of my earlier murders. Not that the cops would be doing much poking around in the near future anyhow. As far as they were concerned, the Jonesville Ripper was dead and buried.

Another shocking entry in the annals of crime, but one finally laid to rest. Another man might have been bothered by the thought of someone else taking credit for his handiwork. Not me. I was never in this for the headlines. I found little pleasure in their crude attempts to describe my art. The Jonesville Ripper? Really? I didn't rip my victims apart.

I remade them. I illuminated their darkness. I filled their emptiness. I gave them light. Take it Corey Ross, for example. A month ago, he and his friend Carla had a little card. trouble, not too far from my cabin. And out of the kindness of my heart, without a thought for my own pleasure, I offered to drive them to my place so that they could use my phone. I was hoping

to keep the conversation to a minimum, but I couldn't help but notice that every time the boy looked at me, his eyes didn't reflect anything back. Not the lights on my dashboard, not the dull gleam of the setting sun. They were like dead pennies. like it was all dark inside. Let me tell you, it gave me the creeps, but it was also fucking tantalizing. The kid, Corey, asked politely, turning his lightless eyes on me.

You all right, sir? Want me to turn up the heat? You're shivering. When we got to my place, I felt a little better. I couldn't keep from casting side-long glances at him while he and his girl Carla stood in my living room, waiting patiently for me to show them

the phone. This Carla didn't interest me. Her eyes were bright and boring. She didn't have that frightening, appealing darkness. Did you say something? No. But his eyes said yes. I nodded at them and smiled. Okay then. Carla asked where my phone was and I led her to the door of my basement. She didn't know, of course, that it was a basement until I kicked her legs. out from under her, sending her flying down the narrow stairs into the darkness. There was this snap of bone, a little shriek of agonized pain, and then silence. From the narrow bar of light that illuminated the basement, I could see her sprawled silent form. Corey came running and almost tripped and fell down the basement stairs himself like a damn fool. I caught him by the arm

before he lost his balance. Yeah, gee, thanks, sir. What happened to? He stopped talking when I struck the back of his head with my trusty pocket flashlight. And when he awoke a few hours later, well, he couldn't speak. He could only scream. He was too full of my light. For a month, he had been with me, trussed up and hanging from the ceiling of my living room. And oh, how he shone.

It was like those men sitting in the electric chair, but... intense, more perfect, watching their insides cook and their hair lift and smoke. I could imagine, but I couldn't see the electricity light up their dark insides. I did to Corey what I had done to the others, though with some additional, shall we say, seasonal refinements that made him all the better. I cannot presume to know what it feels like to have so much brightness within you. So much light that the grease of your heated brain drips down your twitching cheek. But I can tell you, with perfect confidence, that it feels like warmth itself to see it.

I'm hardly alone in my love for light and hatred of the dark. Why else in the depth of winter and its long nights are there so many holidays centered perversely around light? Oh, sure. The store clerk must have wondered. why I needed so many yards and yards of stringed Christmas lights. He even chuckled derisively and asserted, No tree can hold that kind of weight. I replied with a wink and said,

Oh, you'd be surprised. After all, he didn't know about the various clamps and needles that I would be using to fasten and stitch them into place. But he shouldn't have been so bewildered. I was there for the same reason that the rest of it. his customers were. We all needed something to keep us warm and to keep the darkness at bay on those long winter nights, don't we? I seated myself comfortably on the couch, beer in hand, and began to play with the switchbox connected to the lights, watching the blood-stained bulbs flicker to

life, illuminating the gleaming white bone or the exposed crimson of muscle. The lights that crowned his head, fascinated me most. I had worked on him for weeks, and I had saved his eyes up for last, those dark, beckoning eyes. My long, thick wires of electric light that entered his cracked skull, and that I had with considerable care managed to weave past the thick, difficult matter of his brain. That had fixed him. As I gazed at his torn sockets, I saw the protruding lights gleam merrily back at me. He had begged me to stop as he felt my light replaced the darkness of his brain. But I hadn't stopped.

I couldn't be stopped. Not until it was complete and his darkness was gone. I wondered in passing whether Wayland Stacey Carver had guessed during that long, awful minute when he had been half alive, half dead, whether he realized that I, had been the one who had adjusted the dial just enough so that he wouldn't die too quickly, just enough so he could feel the light before flickering out. The thought made me burn with pleasure. It was while I was playing with a switch that I thought I heard something, sound like the buzzing of a fly or a faint rattle. Then it was very brief, but I could not help but notice it.

in my cabin dimmed and flickered. Like I said, it was as brief as a blink, but I didn't like it. Shivering, I got up and checked the plugs for all my lamps, and of course my Christmas lights. They were all fine. It's strange how electricity has a way of making a place seem haunted. When you're in the business of electrocuting living men, as I am, you start to notice spooky things, popping sounds that don't make sense, little plumes of smoke, smells you can't quite place, mysteries that prison guards puzzle out for hours during their cigarette breaks, with little resolution

ever reached. Something about my living room and about the hanging thing of light and blood that I had created had that same haunted air about it. It was unsettling, but as long as the light held, I gave it little thought. So I breathed a sigh of relief when the electricity seemed to stabilize. And then it happened again. Except this time it was worse. This time the darkness was absolute for a good ten seconds. I don't know what thoughts were going through me at that moment.

All I know is that I was fumbling desperately in my pocket. And when I found my pocket flashlight, my fingers slippery with sweat, I turned it on and shone it down. desperately around. The little beam of light illuminated the broken hanging body, the windows, my case of beer. But it wasn't enough, not nearly enough. The darkness was overwhelming, and I shuddered in it. And then, again, the lights returned and my body was flooded with panicky relief. I laughed aloud, thoroughly unnerved. I had gotten as bad as car. Carver had gotten during his last few months of life on death row, with his nightmares of entombment

and lightlessness. God, I hated the dark. As the lights flickered tentatively again, I figured I'd better head out and see if there was something wrong. If a tree had fallen on the electrical wires or something, I don't know. I felt like I had to do something. Staying inside and watching my home alternate between light and darkness, it was chilling me to the bone. My coat warmed me momentarily, but the minute I stepped outside, I found myself surrounded by gales and eddies of snow. A freak blizzard had descended upon the little town

of Jonesville and had already covered the forest that surrounded my cabin in the thick blanket of impenetrable whiteness. The long branches of the trees were covered with ice, and already thick drifts were accumulating around my house. Some already nearly a-firm. foot deep. I stared out into the darkness that lay beyond the edge of the forest, at the expanse of falling snow and long shadows, feeling for the first time in a long while the way I had felt when the night terrors of childhood had assaulted me. It was a mixed sensation of helplessness, confusion, and awe. I sucked on my fingers trying to warm them, hoping that the feeling would pass. It was while I stood there in an idiotic stupor of dread, that I remembered it, that

shadow that I had seen through my rearview mirror, that little slant of darkness. That had been the trigger that had started this insidious train of paranoia. But what exactly had I seen? No one followed me by car, that much was certain, not in this weather. Was I only imagining things? An awful thought occurred to me. I tried my best to push it away, but it was irrepressible. Carla, Corey's girlfriend, the one I had pushed down the stairs, the one whose legs had splintered, and whose neck I had thought broken in the fall. I had taken her body and dropped it down into the deep abandoned well in my basement. I had assumed that she'd been dead. How could she not be dead? The truth was that I wasn't fond of visiting that basement with its dark corners and cobwebs

and hadn't really checked on her after disposing of her. After all, even if she were still alive, there was little chance that she could have escaped a well, right? I looked out again towards the forest, towards that bleak, silent darkness. I wish that I could see some beauty in those long shadows, some inkling. of comfort. Even as a kid I'd never been able to figure out whether it was the emptiness of the dark that terrified me, or the idea that it wasn't empty, that there was something hidden within those dark shadows. Were the monsters in the shadows? I had wondered, afraid of the dark too,

how I had hoped so. There was some comfort in that thought. It was when I turned back to head inside that I saw it again, that same dark, slanting shadow through the window. Before I could fully register what I was seeing or thought I saw, the lights flickered again and went out, leaving my cabin as dark as that forbidding forest. I think I stood there for a full minute in the freezing wind and snow, frozen not with the cold, but with sheer uncomprehending dread. fumbling for my flashlight I shone its thin, wavering beam, but it really only extended a few feet past where I stood. At last, my steps heavy and unwilling. I headed towards the door as stealthily as I could. My eyes fixed on the dark window where I had spied that shadow. All the while, my imagination raced with

awful, tantalizing possibilities. What the fuck would someone? who had broken their legs and crawled out of a basement well almost a month ago, even look like by now. I remembered her hideously sprawled legs and the broken sideways jaw and felt my own lip curl. I should have strung her up like I'd strung up that lovely fellow of hers, I thought. I should have brightened her dark insides. As I felt my way back into the living room, flashing my light this way and that.

It took a moment to study Corey's mangled body, his opened wounds and exposed naked guts. Had it only been the shadow of his corpse that I had seen through the window? That certainly made more sense than the horrific image of a vengeful Carla climbing out of a 40-foot deep well. I put my hand on the wires that held Corey up, studying him to compare his shape to the shadow that I had seen. and that's when I heard it from behind the door that led to the basement, the little rattling.

What is happening is impossible, I told myself. Impossible. It makes no sense. And yet its impossibility somehow made me all the more convinced that what I feared was the truth. Trying to repress the trembling fear that seized me, I clutched my flashlight and headed towards the basement door. After a pause, I opened the door and forced myself to look down into that narrow corridor of darkness that led deeper down into a more absolute realm of lightlessness. And I forced myself to go down those stairs. And all the while I heard the winter storm buffeting the walls of the cabin

and tried to put out of my head the image of that broken body sprawled spider-like at the foot of the stairs, now crawling towards me with its crooked lops. side of jaw and sightless eyes. Once bright, now dark as a doll's eyes. One of Wayland-Stacey Carver's last remarks the day before his execution kept echoing in my memory. He had said it to me during the end of our last visit, after I told him how he would smell after his roasting, and warned him that he would probably smell himself when the electricity penetrated him. Smell his insides, It's cooking, you understand. I liked explaining these things to him.

I liked seeing how he reacted to what would happen to him. Usually he would tense up and blink at me, and I could sense his very being recoil for me in terror. But this time, he just looked at me and grinned a little. You know, Mr. Wilburn, I'm right scared of what's about to happen to me. But I'm more afraid now of enduring another. night like the ones that I've been through for this last year. Oh, the chair is bad, I don't doubt it. But the worst thing in all the world is the darkness and the silence and what a man's imagination

could put into it. I've been seeing things, remembering things from my childhood that I never expected to recall. I've dreamt of things, too, that I never knew before, things that must to crawled up from the depths of some hell that I only wish was part of some childhood memory. I think that we're all afraid of the dark, but I think that most of us can ignore it, block it, shut it out. I once could before I came to this awful place. I listened to him and knew that I never had that luxury. I was born with my fear, my darkness. It had always been part of me.

I spoke softly to him. The light will make you all better. You won't be dark inside anymore. I don't know whether Carver ever realized that I was guilty of the crimes that he would go to the chair for. But he looked at me funny when I said that, kind of like that last malignant look that he gave me before I pulled the switch. Now, as I went down into the narrow darkness of the basement, His words returned to me, and I felt all the rage of embittered despair.

In spite of all my precautions, all that I had done, it had come to this. The outer darkness had left the forest and had come into my home. Come from me. I directed my flashlight this way and that, looking for any sign of life, listening for another rattling cough, if that was indeed what I had heard. I didn't even notice how close I had ventured to the circular edge of the well until I was right up against it. Though I tried to shine my light down there to see if I could make out Carla's corpse, my flashlight couldn't penetrate into that deep, swallowing darkness.

It was like dropping a penny into a pool of black ink. I turned away, feeling dizzy. And just as I did, my flashlight's beam fell on what had been behind me. one glimpse of those two mad, unblinking eyes, and I had seen enough to feel my very nerves turned to ice. In my terrified haste to back away from their awful light, I lost my balance and tripped over the low brim of that uncovered well. Cursing in a low, panic breath,

I heard my flashlight fall and shatter as I desperately clung to the edge, trying to pull myself up out of the darkness. But the edge was too cold, too slippery, and my fingers were too wet with slick, terror-stricken sweat. I lost my purchase on the edge, and with my own scream echoing in my ears, I fell deep into the well. And fell, and fell. My drop into darkness seemed to last for an eternity. I saw nothing but infinite darkness, felt nothing but an occasional bruising collision with the well's narrow stone walls.

I must have hit my head and fallen into a faint because I remember awakening and feeling breathless panic as I opened my eyes and saw nothing. I put my hand out and felt the wall of the well only three feet away from my face. I tried to move, but my legs were twisted, shattered. Feeling about for my flashlight, I found its broken plastic fragments.

But like me, it was beyond repair. There was no light left from that source. I looked up who could see nothing but infinite darkness. The old terror began to build in me, the terror that had made me sob every night into my pillow as a kid. But now it was overpowering, maddening, all-encompassing. There was no way out, no escape. I was trapped, absolutely.

I heard something awful laughing. And it was only when I put my hand to my throat to stop myself from shaking that I realized that I was the one laughing. I listened, wondering if I would hear Carla above me moving about, if it had indeed been Carla that I had seen. Had I seen the two eyes of my crippled victim? Or had I only caught the silver gleam of the tools that hung on the wall of my basement, the pliers and knives that I had used to transform Corey into a being of life?

I leaned back, listening, trying to comprehend what had happened. And as I did, I felt the shape of something beside me. There are some horrors that the mind can accept, can graft into its existing store of knowledge. And there are others that shatter the very process of thought, the very concept of wisdom gained by experience. and as I felt the broken face of Carla beside me and realized that she was absolutely and utterly dead, as I heard the wind above me howl, rattling the unsteady foundations that entombed me

with a sound that seemed for all the world like a woman's rattling cough, as I realized that all along there had been nothing to fear, nothing, nothing at all. And as I laughed with an insane and joyous relief, my mind began to fully comprehend my new reality at last. And my laughter turned to a choking scream, a plea for help from someone, anyone, even the monsters that hid themselves within the darkness, even the darkness itself. But for the first time that evening, the wind and the darkness did not reply. We're festive frights.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep podcast, we wish you and yours are healthy and happy holiday season and a very happy new year. Now run along and enjoy the darkness of the winter night. This audio production is copyright 2016 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.