Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  “Wait, what?” Laurence gaped.

  “Yeah, crazy right?” she went on. “But yes. We’re talking the blackest of souls, here. Murderers, rapists, the lowest of the low. Subhuman in their life and so subspirit in their death. It’s not clear how their souls devolve after crossing over and didn’t end up in Hell with the others. But a few things are for sure.” She held up three fingers and pointed to them as she spoke. “They are weaker on this side of the veil—how it got here, I don’t know—but can still pack one hell of a punch. Two, they usually attach themselves to living host to drain their life energy—”

  “Like a parasite?” Laurence asked, and I grimaced even at that wording.

  “You could say that,” Arianna said. “And my guess is that this one has picked you, Kay. Being a Medium, you’re like a magnet to normal spirits, so it makes sense.”

  I tried swallowing the knot in my throat. She may not know how this poltergeist found me, but I had a pretty good idea—that abandoned Victorian house and the amateur paranormal investigators that ripped a hole in the veil. I’d thought I’d stopped them from opening? Apparently, I hadn’t been quick enough.

  All those shivers and uneasiness I was feeling then? This poltergeist must have crawled out of the hole and followed me home.

  My gifts had been trying to warn me.

  “And what’s the last thing?” Laurence asked, pointing to her last upheld finger.

  Arianna’s expression changed, suddenly taking on a very serious look. “And lastly…they are, unfortunately, extremely difficult to get rid of.”

  Chapter 4

  I couldn’t do this again. An evil spirit after me, able to hurt me, Laurence, and Zach?

  No way. I couldn’t do it again.

  Heat crawled up my neck, and my head whirled. My body grew heavy, too heavy for my legs to hold, and I felt myself falling but was unable to stop it.

  Someone’s hands grasped me as I collapsed, holding me up. I struggled to keep my eyes focused and not give in to the darkness creeping along the edges of my vision.

  Arianna’s voice echoed in my ears. “Here’s a chair. Sit her down.”

  Something slid under my backside, hitting my legs, and Laurence slowly lowered me onto it. The chair.

  “I’m okay…” The words formed in my mind, but I wasn’t sure if they came out of my mouth. Everything was still woozy.

  “Here, drink this.” It was Arianna again, and this time, she was pressing something wet against my lips. I let the unknown liquid slide down my throat.

  When the taste of sugar and sour berries hit my tongue, I coughed and sputtered, spitting part of it back up. My senses rushed back to me in an instant, my mind clearing.

  Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I glanced between the worried faces of my boyfriend and friend, my eyes taking a moment to focus fully.

  “What was that?” I choked out. “Some kind of potion?”

  Arianna laughed and put the cup on the counter. “Fruit punch. Flavored sugar water. I thought maybe your blood sugar had gone low or something. It had always worked for a school friend of mine who had diabetes.”

  “Good thinking.” I rubbed my temples. My pulse thumped against my fingers there, and my head ached terribly, even more than before.

  “You’ve been through a lot today,” Laurence said. He knelt by my chair, looking at me with concern. “Maybe we should go back home and you can lay down.”

  “Not a good idea. It’s only a matter of time before the poltergeist will find her again and attack,” Arianna said.

  “She’s right,” I agreed. “Going back to the shop and the apartment may not be the wisest idea.”

  “It will find you no matter where you are eventually,” she went on. “You can’t outrun it. But at least here, there are wards and things to protect you. Including me.”

  “And me,” Laurence chimed in, rising to stand again.

  “Yes. That, too,” she said. “There is a small one room apartment upstairs that my aunt, and now I, stay in sometimes whenever we have late nights or early meetings here. You both are welcome to use it.”

  That was super kind of her to offer, but I really didn’t want to impose.

  “What about you? Where are you going to stay then?” I asked her.

  “Don’t worry about me. I can sleep on two chairs pushed together. Or the floor. And I have, too.” She smiled. “Hunting for magical artifacts in underground caves and ancient ruins has made me stay overnight in some pretty unideal places.”

  “That’s so cool,” Laurence gushed. “You’re like a real-life Laura Croft, Tomb Raider.”

  Arianna smiled sheepishly at that. “You and your pop culture references.”

  It was nonstop. I couldn’t keep up.

  “Although Tomb Raider isn’t one I’ve been called before, I’ll take it. It’s better than what I was calling it. A magical artifacts enthusiast.” Arianna chuckled.

  I tried to share in her happiness, but it was hard to rip my thoughts away from the fear humming through me. What was I going to do? We couldn’t just camp out here forever? That was unrealistic.

  “Kay, are you feeling okay? You’ve gone pale again,” Laurence asked as he leaned close to search my face.

  I looked away and turned to Arianna. If I tried to answer his question, I was afraid I’d lose it and start crying. The tears were already pressing against the back of my eyes as it was.

  “You said there is a way to stop this spirit?” I asked her, my throat tight.

  “Yes, it’s possible, just not an easy feat. We’re going to need help though. From a necromancer.”

  I hesitated, unsure I had heard her right.

  Laurence’s eyes widened. “Wait, did you just say…”

  “Necromancer. Right.”

  “Like zombies?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No. Not at all. There’s no such thing.”

  Laurence glanced at me. “Really? With everything supernatural in this world, zombies are where they draw the line?” He huffed a laugh. “I don’t believe it.”

  I fiddled with the cross around my neck nervously. I wasn’t sure I liked where this was heading.

  Arianna turned to me. “Do you not know about this, Kay?”

  I shook my head. Why would I? I only knew the general things—whatever were in shows or movies. Necromancers were supposed to be able to raise the dead. Like Laurence had said, zombies. Just thinking about walking corpses made me cringe.

  “Hmm…” Arianna rubbed her lips together in thought. “Figured you would, being a Medium and all.”

  I stood. Laurence grabbed my arm to help me, but I waved him away. “I don’t understand. What do they have to do with me?”

  She stayed quiet for a few tense moments. Conflict flitted across her face as she debated how to say her next words. “Mediums are rare. Necromancers are even more so. And that’s because only the most powerful Mediums can become necromancers.”

  The words sank in slowly, and I stared at her until the reality of what she had said hit. Necromancers—people I didn’t know existed until a second ago—were actually Mediums? Not like me. Powerful, super Mediums but still. It was a shocking bit of news to hear.

  Another thing my grandmother hadn’t shared with me about my Medium gifts.

  I stopped myself from thinking ill on her. It was possible she simply didn’t know about it. That was a real explanation to it. Or maybe, she didn’t want to frighten me further. Having the ability to see dead people was scary as it was. Especially as a child. It took me a while to come to terms with what I was, and after the mishap with my first and last attempt of channeling a spirit through Grandma Abigail’s teachings, there were still parts of my gift I refused to tap into.

  “How is being able to raise the dead and communicating with spirits the same thing?” Laurence asked, taking the question right out of my head.

  “For one thing, necromancers don’t ‘raise the dead’ in the sense you’re thinking. Remember, no
zombies,” she replied. “But when you think about it, it’s actually kinda common sense. Mediums can see, communicate, and channel spirits. A necromancer is just the next step of that. They can force the spirit back into its earthly form—back into its body—where it can then be eradicated by burning or cleansing it with fire.”

  “Woah,” was all he said.

  Woah was right.

  Arianna walked around the counter and bent down to retrieve something under the register. “But lucky for us, Aunt Marla has a leger of all the customers and sales she’s done over the years, along with their contact information. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” I asked, curious.

  Arianna’s head popped back up, and she smiled. “Don’t ask.”

  Laurence and I exchanged looks.

  She plopped a heavy, leather-faced book on the wood, everything shaking from its massive weight. This leger was thicker than most dictionaries.

  That’s a lot of customers.

  Should I be worried that so many supernaturals were taking advantage of Divine Magic’s underground magical enterprise? Probably. But like most things in this world, you have to push it aside and keep on going. Otherwise, it’d keep you up every night.

  Catching us staring, she laughed. “It’s a lot, right?”

  We nodded in unison.

  “And out of all these names, only one is a necromancer. That tells you something.” She opened it and started flipping through the pages. On each side, there was a long list of names, addresses, items, and their costs in tiny but neat cursive handwriting. Quickly, she flipped through the pages and scrolled through for a few minutes. Then, she stopped, pulled out her cellphone from her jean pocket, and dialed.

  “Rhys? Hi, this is Arianna from Divine Magic. Yes, Marla’s niece.” She pointed to the phone and nodded our way, telling us Rhys was just the man she’d hope would pick up. “You’re all caught up on payments. That’s not why I’m calling. I have a job for you.”

  She was quiet for a bit as he responded.

  “Yep, poltergeist,” she said. “Really? I’m not surprised. There’s some crazy shit going on lately.” Another pause. “Uh-huh. Okay. I’ll tell them. But is there any way you can come sooner? This one is extra feisty.” More mumbles on the other end. “Okay. I’ll call you back.”

  She hung up and pocketed the phone again.

  “So?” Laurence asked, eager.

  My chest hurt from the erratic beating of my heart. Breathing was getting harder, too.

  She sighed. “He said he’s been extremely busy lately. Haunts have been running amok.”

  “Which is true,” I said. “It’s from the veil thinning.”

  She nodded. “He can come in two days at the earliest.”

  “Two days?” I gasped. “That’s the twenty-third. The day before Christmas Eve.”

  “Christmas Eve Eve,” Laurence added as a poor excuse to lighten the mood. But when he turned to me, his smile quickly vanished and he cleared his throat.

  Suddenly two days felt like years away.

  We were in the middle of the Christmas rush. How was I going to run my business if I was being tormented by an evil spirit? I’d have to close until after the holidays…

  “And there’s one more thing…” Arianna continued with a grimace. “The cost of Rhys’s services is pretty steep…”

  “How steep we talking?” Laurence asked.

  “Three large.”

  I choked on my next inhale. “As in three thousand dollars?” That was all the money I just got from Mrs. Harris’s party, plus all of our savings, and that meant no company van. No expanding. I had just started climbing toward my dreams, and now I was sliding backward. And fast.

  “Call him back and tell him it’s a deal,” Laurence said, tone stern.

  “Laurence…” I mumbled. “I don’t know.”

  “What?”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I said. We hadn’t even been able to get Zach’s Christmas gifts yet. With everything going on with the shop, I just hadn’t had the time.

  “This is your life we’re talking about, Kay. The money doesn’t matter. I’d pay anything to protect you.”

  His voice shook a bit at the end, and I knew why. During the fiasco with Xaver, he’d felt powerless. Hopeless when trying to save me. When the protection spells he’d put on the apartment had failed, he’d taken it personally.

  I meant, he did have a point. If I was being sensible, the money wouldn’t matter if I was gone. Or anything else around me that I cared about, for that matter.

  “I’ll do more overtime at the hospital if I have to,” he added.

  Again, it was a sweet gesture, but an unrealistic one. Laurence worked in maintenance at St. Joseph’s Hospital, and his hours were long and unpredictable as it was. With studying for his sorcerer leveling test, I’d never see him.

  “And when do you expect to sleep?” I asked him. “You work like a dog as it is.”

  “Look who’s talking,” he teased.

  That made me clamp my mouth shut. He had me there. I was probably the worst person to be preaching to him about working too hard and not sleeping.

  Laurence took my hand and stepped closer to me. His dark brown eyes captured mine, and his expression turned grave. “Kay, listen to me. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  He glanced down, and when I followed his gaze, I realized that he was staring at the carrier where Zach was still snuggled under blankets and napping. I heard the meaning of his words loud and clear. Our run-in with Xaver had changed both of us—he’d possessed Laurence to trick me, after all—but out of something so terrible, we’d gotten our little Zachary.

  And with this new bump in the road, we’d come out the other side. We would. Together.

  “The money doesn’t matter to me. You do,” he went on and used our linked hands to pull me against him. Wrapping his arms around me, he leaned down and pressed his lips against mine with a sweet kiss.

  How many nights had he held me just like this to calm me whenever my anxiety reached a new high or when the long nights with Zach caught up with me? Laying my head on his shoulder, feeling his arms holding me firmly, and inhaling the clean scent of his body wash seemed to be the only way to comfort me. Even now, I could feel my muscles loosening and the pain in my chest easing.

  “So?” Arianna’s voice jolted me back to the present. Laurence and I stepped back to find her waving her cellphone at us from the other side of the counter. “Am I calling Rhys or…?”

  “Yes, call him,” I said, certain this time. Although the thought of dropping that much money in one sitting was a bit sickening to think about, it had to be done.

  As Arianna went to hit the redial button, I asked, “But what are we supposed to do in the mean time? Two days…that’s a long time to just sit around and wait.”

  She held the phone to her ear. “Are there any other Mediums you know that may be able to give you some insight on what you can do? Maybe with a way of blocking a dark spirit from draining your energy? At least temporarily?”

  “No.” The word was out of my mouth, but it was a lie. I did know another Medium actually. I just didn’t know what help she could give…

  I sighed. I guess I didn’t have a choice at this point, did I? I needed help.

  “Actually, I do know someone,” I said. Gosh, how long had it been since I’d visited her? A year? Maybe it was two.

  Arianna threw me the thumbs up, and when murmurs came from the other end of the phone—Rhys picking up—she said in the receiving end, “Hey, Rhys, it’s me again. Arianna. Yeah, as I thought, they’re in. See you in two days.” Then, she clicked the end button and stared at us, determination in her heavily makeup-lined eyes. “Let’s get this party started.”

  Chapter 5

  As I closed the car door and looked at the single-floor cement building, my stomach churned and bile pushed its way up my esophagus. Too lost in the heightened feelings of uncertainty, trepidation, and embarrassm
ent spinning through me, I hadn’t heard Laurence get out of the car or walk to my side. Like me, he stared at the sign along the top of the entry’s overhang.

  Dayton Mental Wellness Center & Residential Living Facility.

  I cringed, imagining what he was thinking now that my secret was out. There was a reason I never talked about my mother to anyone, even to him. My grandmother had to raise me and my siblings because my mother—as my grandmother explained it—couldn’t handle the responsibility of what being a Medium entailed. She went on to say that communicating with the dead was not a gift for the weak, otherwise it could make an unstable person finally crack. And that was exactly what had happened to my mother.

  Since my gift arose young, Grandmother Abigail started teaching me right away. I had always assumed it was to prevent me from ending up like my mom. And there was always that fear—even now—that one day, I wouldn’t be able to handle it either and end up here in a bed right next to hers.

  When I got old enough, I started visiting her by myself, but it didn’t take long to see what my grandmother was talking about. If she wasn’t fully sedated, she was either babbling nonsense about seeing spirits even I couldn’t see—phantoms of her mind—or thrashing violently, unable to control herself.

  If you could imagine, it was hard seeing my mother that way, and so, the visits became further and far in between. The weeks turned to months, which turned to years… I saw her less and less, and it became easier to keep my mother a separate and secret that way.

  But that brought guilt. And shame. Even now, heat burned my cheeks, as I waited for Laurence to say something, too conflicted to say anything first.

  When his hand slid in mine, he looked over at me and said, “Are you ready to go inside?”

  That surprised me. No comment on where we were? No question as to why?

  He gave my hand a light squeeze, telling me he understood my reservations and wouldn’t push if I didn’t want to. And in that moment, I thought I couldn’t love him any more than I did right then. His support was what I needed, and that was one thing he always had to offer me.