Desire: The Dark Christmases

by Z. L. Arkadie

  As soon as I entered my room, I turned on my MacBook Pro and set it on top of the bed. Then I stripped out of my clothes, including my underwear, wrapped myself in the complimentary fluffy white robe, and slid my feet into the slippers. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and fought the urge to take a warm bath before working. I knew if I lay in the water, my exhaustion would turn into sleepiness, and I had to stay awake for a while.

  After wrapping my hair in a messy bun on top of my head, I cuddled up against the headboard with my computer and logged into my hot spot. My search alerts dinged once I was connected to the Internet, notifying me of recent news.

  One story was about Jasper Christmas and Christmas Industries Incorporated.

  “How in the hell…” I muttered. Then I remembered I had set the alert at Bryn’s request while engaged in my initial investigation. For a moment, I questioned why I was even continuing the exploration into the Christmases’ past. Jasper never explained why they all had different mothers. I could understand why Amelia and Randolph had kept the truth of Bryn, Asher, and Spencer’s parentage a secret, but then I couldn’t. They were a family who traveled through veiled hallways in their creepy mansion. Spencer got off on beating his prostitute girlfriend for fun, and Asher enjoyed the humiliation of being cheated on. They were not the sort of people who needed to be lied to in order to keep up appearances. They were a powerful and duplicitous family with enough secrets to fill a stadium.

  “So why not tell Asher, Spencer, and Bryn the truth?” I whispered.

  The Christmases had secrets beneath secrets and then a million more beneath those. That was why I continued pursuing the investigation. My natural inclination to be inquisitive wouldn’t let me drop it. And for that reason, I clicked the link to the news story about Jasper Christmas. I started reading about how he had used a special clause to dissolve the entire board of directors at Christmas Industries Incorporated. According to the bylaw, he had seven days to replace each member, or previous members could resume their seats. He’d also fired sixteen executives, all of whom had previously burdened the company with sexual harassment lawsuits that were settled in arbitration. There was a quote from Jasper, who stated that he vowed to change the culture of Christmas Industries. He sounded like a man who had no intentions of abandoning the family business. Then he mentioned his fiancée, Julia Valentine, would be taking over as vice president of communications.

  I felt as if a solid ball of cement formed in my heart as I read on. Jasper went on to say that he and Julia had been dating for nearly a year and that they planned to marry in the spring.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pressed my hand over my queasy belly. I could’ve thrown up. And just like that, the pain of rejection rose to the surface. My tears started to fall. My sobbing began slowly then increased in intensity. There was a lesson to be learned. However, at the moment, I had no idea what that was.

  A jolt of reality hit me. I sat on the side of the bed. It was time to be the person I was before the day I’d stepped into the Christmas mansion. I forced myself to smile and rose to my feet. First, I ordered dinner through room service, an Angus beef burger and garden salad. I finally checked my voice mail, no longer hoping Jasper had called to beg for forgiveness. Most calls were from editors wanting to know what I’d been working on lately or pitching possible stories of interest they wanted me to look into. Three of the messages were a moment of silence before the call ended. For some reason, I felt Jasper on the other end of the line, or maybe it was wishful thinking.

  My ex-boss, Rachel Givens, had called four times. “I have an offer you can’t refuse. Call me,” she said in her first message.

  “Holly, why haven’t you returned my call?” she sang in her second message. “Call me.”

  The next two were in the same vein as the first two.

  Hearing her voice made me smile and firmly grounded me in the life I’d had before allowing Jasper Christmas to ruin it. I decided to call Rachel first thing in the morning. I felt back to myself after room service dropped off my dinner. I ate, bathed, then did some preliminary research on a few possible articles to pitch to Rachel when we spoke the next day. The hours ticked by, and by the time I yawned, I had selected three promising news items to dig into deeper. With Jasper Christmas on my mind, I finally fell asleep.

  The morning went by fast. My alarm played “The Star-Spangled Banner,” one of my favorite rise-and-shine theme songs when I was working. I made a cup of coffee in the hotel’s K-Cup coffee maker. It was terrible, so I picked up another cup of coffee at the Starbucks in the lobby along with a breakfast sandwich and two bottled waters before hitting the road.

  That was two hours ago, and now I was staring at a small house in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that reminded me of one of the many hovels my parents had moved us into years ago. Snow sat heavily on what appeared to be a weak roof. Dead trees lined the rusted fence. Just for a moment, I saw my eight-year-old self shivering on the old porch, happy to freeze my ass off rather than be inside with my parents yelling at each other about not having enough money and how it was all my father’s fault.

  “Be a man!” my mother would scream.

  “Be a woman!” my father would yell back.

  She would throw things at him until he got tired of dodging shit that wasn’t even hers to break. Then he would race right past me, and the next time I would see him, which was often days later, he would be drunk but have a wad of new money, and that made my mother happier.

  That memory felt like pure hell, which was probably why I didn’t want to leave the warmth and security of my vehicle to go knock on the door to see if anyone lived in the house. A black film covered the windows, so I couldn’t tell if the lights were on inside. My instincts told me the house was abandoned. Surely, Kylie had seen the house before she’d urged me to take the trip. Perhaps she had seen some activity that wasn’t visible today.

  “Let’s get to it, Holls,” I muttered and grabbed my coat. It was time to rally.

  Bundled up and ready to mingle with the cold, I stepped one foot out of the vehicle, careful not to slip on snow.

  I walked carefully to the front gate and pushed it open, moving the snow out of the way. The sidewalk hadn’t been shoveled. Either my intuition was right, and the house was abandoned, or the caretakers were the negligent type. Regardless, I chose to move forward with the task at hand. My feet sank into the snow as I made my way to the front door and knocked on the tattered screen.

  “Can I help you?” a female voice called in a regional accent.

  Startled, I quickly turned to see a stout woman standing between my vehicle and the gate.

  “A family named the Greers used to live here,” I said, walking toward her.

  The woman nodded. “But they don’t live there anymore, thank the Lord. Why? Is one of them in trouble or something?”

  I smiled at her now that we were face-to-face. However, her expression hadn’t changed from an intense frown.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” I said. “I just have a few questions for them.”

  “Are you a police officer?”

  I shook my head. “An investigator.”

  Her eyes narrowed as she studied me more intensely.

  I pressed my hand over my heart. “By the way, I’m Holly Henderson.”

  She hesitated. “I’m Nel Banks.”

  My hands were getting cold, so I shoved them into my coat pockets. “Did you know the Greers?”

  “Not in the personal sense. They were strange people. The girls were always in and out of the house, but they never talked to anyone in the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, then they were loners?”

  “Very much so. But my daughter used to have some dealings with one of the girls.”

  Excitement raced through me. I’d thought I would have to knock on several doors to inquire about the Greers. It was looking as if that was no longer the case.

  “Oh yeah? Do you think your daughter would mind talking to me abo
ut the Greer girl?”

  Nel narrowed an eye. “I don’t want my daughter to get caught up in any trouble.”

  “I promise you that won’t happen. I’m a journalist. I won’t print her name. I just want to know if she could point me in the right direction.”

  She grunted thoughtfully. “You want her to be a deep background source.”

  I grinned from ear to ear, impressed she knew how to speak the language of my trade. “Yes. That’s exactly right.”

  Her body seemed to relax some. “Well… Alexia, my daughter, doesn’t live here anymore. She used to be in the dark, but now she found the light.” Nel must’ve read my expression because she explained, “Drugs.”

  “Oh.” I nodded. “Good for her.”

  “Yes indeed.” The hard-earned memories of going through hell with an addicted child moistened her eyes. “Today, she works as a librarian in New York City.”

  I knew the genuine warmth in my heart was reflected in my smile. “That’s nice to hear. Congratulations.” I turned to glare at the house the Greers used to live in. “I know what the darkness feels like.” A chill ran over me, and it wasn’t because of the cold.

  Nel Banks invited me into her house so that she could make a call to her daughter, Alexia. Nel was a divorced woman who made her residence with three cats. The more comfortable she became with me, the more she began to reveal about the Greers. For instance, she would only see the girls and a man she assumed was their father, but never a mother. Sometimes, the father would pull up into the driveway late at night with only one girl in the car. Often, it appeared as though no one was home at all. The Greers had an intimidating way about them, which made it easy for them to keep to themselves.

  “Nobody wanted to bother them,” Nel said.

  She also revealed that she’d learned years after Alexia’s sobriety that her daughter used to meet one of them in the woods to get high. Nel had never asked her daughter to elaborate, because the drugs were behind Alexia, and she hadn’t wanted to stir old memories or cravings. However, she believed Alexia was strong enough to talk about the past today.

  “Sometimes she volunteers at treatment programs to mentor young girls who are battling addiction,” Nel said before placing a call to Alexia, who agreed to speak to me in person. It was Tuesday, so we planned to meet on Thursday in the East Village, near the library in which she worked.

  I wanted to canvas the area to talk to more neighbors, but I was quickly losing interest in whatever secrets Randolph and Amelia Christmas had kept. Plus, not only was Jasper marrying Julia Valentine, but he’d given her a promotion. As I plugged my meeting with Alexia into the calendar on my cell phone, I wondered how often Jasper and Julia had sex.

  “Screw him,” I huffed. I would never let his big fat penis get anywhere near my pussy ever again, and I meant it.

  Right?

  I groaned at my feeble vow to erase the one man my body desired even at that moment as I reached for my seat belt. My cell phone rang, and just like that, my hope that it was Jasper calling to beg for forgiveness filled my head.

  I turned on the engine and pressed the button on the steering wheel to answer the call hands-free. “Hello,” I said as I finished strapping myself in.

  “What’s wrong with you? You never put me off like this. Four calls, Holls. And now you’ve forced me to make a fifth. I’ll forgive you if you make it worth my while.” It was Rachel, my old boss.

  I sighed, annoyed mainly at myself for allowing my work to suffer while letting Jasper Christmas play with my head and heart. “Sorry, Rach. I’ve been busy.”

  “Oh.” She sounded intrigued. “You’re working on something new?” Her tone clued me into the fact that she wanted to call first dibs on the future story.

  “Nothing major,” I said, downplaying what could possibly be the seeds for the sort of story that could ruin the Christmases’ reputation forever.

  “All right, keep it to yourself, then. Listen…” I pictured her big blue eyes widening with excitement.

  “I’m listening.”

  “I have a new job.”

  “Oh yeah? Do tell.”

  “I’m the executive producer of a new show called Deep Source Real News.”

  “What’s Deep Source Real News?” I asked as I performed an Internet search on my phone to see whether or not the airport had a drop-off for my rental. Instead of driving all the way back to Philadelphia, I’d decided to hop on an airplane instead.

  “It’ll be two one-hour shows every night on BCN. I’m hiring fifteen of the top journalists in the country to deliver current and thoroughly investigated news. No story will go unchecked, and every story will have several sources. And you, my darling, are going to be one of my lead reporters in your specialty.”

  I smiled, not because of her offer but because I’d found what I was searching for.

  “Ah…” I scrunched one side of my face. “I’m not interested in TV. You know that.”

  “But you have a face and figure for TV.”

  I rolled my eyes as I drove away from the curb and carefully headed to the airport. “That sounded superficial.”

  “You have the brains too. You’re tough, humble, and respected. Viewers will come back night after night to eat you up.”

  “Wow, Rach, thanks. You don’t hand out those sorts of compliments often. But it sounds as if you want to make me a television host.” I knew I sounded just as offended as I felt.

  “No, I don’t give out those sorts of compliments often, and no, I don’t want to make you into a television host.”

  “Then why does my face and figure matter?”

  “You’ll appear on camera as—”

  “Ugh,” I pictured how those sorts of news shows went on BCN. “The talking heads, the opposing positions arguing for the sake of argument, and the overly emotional host who discusses shit that should appall us all with a slight smirk—it’s not that kind of show, is it?”

  “Oh God, Holly. Why do you make shit so difficult? Do you really think I’ll produce that kind of garbage? Especially at a time such as this? I’m making real news for TV, tried and tested and all from the best journalists in the world.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, even though I suddenly found myself slightly interested.

  “It pays well.”

  “How well?” I asked before realizing it.

  She told me the figure, and my mouth fell open. “What? Really?”

  “That’s the kind of cash television has to offer.”

  Suddenly, another face came to mind, one I had avoided conjuring for the longest time. It was that of my father, Harper Henderson. He was in prison, but after getting released, he would be sure to look for me. If I were on TV every day, he would know exactly where to find me.

  When I lived in Boston, I’d received a phone call out of nowhere from a loan shark threatening to break my father’s neck if he didn’t pay the fifteen thousand dollars he owed. I had to use most of the money I’d saved for my first real vacation, a gift to myself. I didn’t even know my father was in Boston, but it seemed like he got into new trouble every month. I bailed him out of jail more times than I could count. When he got sloppy drunk, I would hightail it across town and over to the bar to take care of him. I had never brought him back to my place, though. Instead, I’d put him up in a hotel.

  As far as I knew, my father had no idea I lived in Philadelphia. He hated the city, which was why I’d settled there. I didn’t know how he felt about New York, and if I were on BCN every night, Harper would know exactly where to find me. But maybe I was finally strong enough to not allow him to drag me into his newest layer of bullshit.

  “Holls? Are you still there?” Rachel asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, I am.”

  “Is your hesitation about your father?” She knew all about my issues with Harper.

  “Yes.” The tightness in my throat made me barely audible.

  “You can’t run from him forever.”

  I
groaned. “Why not?”

  “Because you’re not fifteen anymore.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to carry the monkey that was glued to my back.

  “Plus, I have a story you might be interested in. You’re friends with Bryn Christmas, aren’t you?”

  I adjusted, sitting straight up in my seat. “Yes. Have they found her?”

  “No, not yet, but this is about the whole shebang.”

  I felt my face collapsing into a severe frown. “The whole shebang?”

  “Ah, ah, ah…” she said as if she were scolding me. “I can’t tell you what I know until you sign my contract.”

  My sigh was driven by anxiety. “But TV? Are you for real, Rach?”

  “You know it’s your next big step, Holls. Listen, come to New York and let me woo you.”

  I chuckled. “Woo me?”

  “Woo you. At least give me a chance to convince you to say yes.”

  I sighed again.

  “How about tomorrow at ten?” she asked.

  I focused on the trees and the snow melting on perfectly manicured fields of winter-brown grass as I drove up the highway. The hustle and bustle of New York City seemed millions of miles away. I had planned to make a trip to the city to sit down with Alexia anyway, but that was two days away. However, I liked the idea of keeping busy, moving, and not sitting still to cry over Jasper.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “I’ll let you woo me.”

  “Yes,” Rachel said victoriously. “Okay then, I’ll send your flight details. We’ll also have a car take you to the airport and pick you up. As I said, I’m going to woo you.”

  I chuckled, welcoming the lightness between us. “Then let me be wooed.”

  “And now I’m going to hang up before you change your mind.”

  I laughed some more after the line went dead.

  Dropping off the rental car and purchasing a ticket to fly home went smoothly. After landing at Philadelphia International Airport, I called an Uber. Now I was standing in my living room, feeling relieved to be surrounded by my things. But also, something was in the air. I couldn’t quite put a finger on what, but it felt as though someone had been in my place recently. My glower fell on my furniture then on the big, wide windows, which were the reason I’d purchased the place. I always kept them open, but now I scurried over to pull them closed.