Silent Night, Haunted Night

by Terri Garey

  “You’re welcome. I’ll sort through the clothes and see what needs what,” he went on. Nobody could sew a hem or a button better than Evan, and if we ever needed anything major sewn, we knew a great seamstress down in Little Five who always gave us a deal. “You want to tackle the handbags and the shoes?”

  We’d found three fabulous bags this trip: a Judith Leiber coin purse with only a few missing rhinestones, and a couple of satin clutches with the original Coro clasps, all in need of cleaning. The shoes weren’t going to need much work; some gorgeous designer pumps and sandals that had been worn once, maybe twice, if ever. The wealthy ladies of Buckhead could afford fabulous shoes, and were always replacing them with new ones.

  “Sure, I’ll get them cleaned up,” I said, looking forward to it. I needed something to do the rest of the afternoon anyway. Working on the chair and the bags would keep me from moping over Joe.

  “We can unload the rest of this stuff at my apartment,” he said, “and then we’ll go pick out the tree.”

  I made a groaning noise, having forgotten about getting a Christmas tree, and not really up for it.

  “What?” Evan gave me an exasperated look.

  “Why don’t we do it tomorrow?” I suggested quickly. “It’s Monday, the shop’s closed, and Butch will still be around. We’ll make a day of it, do it tomorrow afternoon.”

  He frowned at me, knowing weaseling when he saw it. “Monday afternoon early,” he stressed, willing to compromise. “No excuses.”

  “No excuses,” I said, glad to be off the hook today. I did feel better, but I wasn’t quite in the Christmas mood just yet.

  “Butchie’s making vegetable lasagna tonight,” Evan said hopefully. “Why don’t you dump these things in the house and come have some with us?”

  “Yeah, Nicki.” Butch had come back, and was rearranging the trunk. He found the box with the purses and pulled it out. “Come on over and have a glass of wine with us while I put it together.”

  “Thanks, guys, but no.” I shook my head, knowing I’d reached the limit of my desire to socialize at the moment, and not wanting to take up their evening. “You’ve done enough babysitting today. Go home and relax.”

  Evan gave me a worried look and Butch gave me a sheepish one.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted. “Really.” I took the box from Butch, and standing on my tiptoes, gave him a kiss on the cheek, too. “You’re sweet. I love you both. Go home.”

  I waved them good-bye from the front porch as I let myself in. The high-pitched whine of the alarm, the gleaming hardwood floors, the ensuing quiet—all so familiar. I loved my house, even if it was a bit messy at the moment. I’d been in such a funk that I hadn’t done the dishes, and my blanket and pillow were still on the couch. Empty glasses and cereal bowls littered the coffee table.

  With a shrug, I ignored the mess. I wasn’t ready to clean it up, and besides, who was going to see it? Instead I took the box of bags and shoes to the dining room table, where I laid them out, one by one. What we’d bought for under three hundred dollars could easily be sold for double that, if we were patient. The coin purse alone was worth three times what we’d paid for it.

  That done, what I really wanted to do was get to work on the rocker. I’d changed my mind about putting it on the porch, and was thinking it might look great in front of the fireplace—I could use all the good karma vibes I could get inside the house.

  So I went outside and down the back porch steps. Butch had left the rocker on the concrete patio just outside the garden shed, which was right where I wanted it.

  I had everything I needed inside the shed; sandpaper and a small hand sander, rubber gloves, and a hard bristle brush.

  As soon as I stepped inside, though, I knew something was wrong. The air in the shed felt different somehow, far colder than the outside, where it was only slightly chilly. Darker, too, with only one small window to let in the late afternoon light.

  “Shut the door”—said a panicky voice from the corner, as I nearly jumped out of my skin—“before it finds me.”

  Angie Rayburn was crouched on the floor behind an upturned wheelbarrow and a bunch of old boxes. Her frightened face peered at me from behind the wheelbarrow, then disappeared as she ducked. “Please,” she urged in a loud whisper, “please shut the door.”

  “Oh, Angie.” I sighed. “What are you doing here?”

  I’d hoped beyond hope that Josh’s safe return and her very big funeral at St. Patrick the Divine had put her to rest. My focus had been on Joe the last few days, and there’d been no weird occurrences, until today.

  “I’m begging you,” she whimpered, still cowering, “please shut the door.”

  So I did, knowing I’d come to regret it.

  Evil wins when good does nothing.

  Why, oh why, was it always up to me to do something?

  “Angie, listen to me.” I crouched down on the floor of the shed, right where I was. “You need to stop this. You need to stop hiding and go into the Light.”

  “I can’t,” she keened softly. “I’m damned. I’m damned to Hell for what I did.”

  “No, you’re not.” This whole notion of being damned for being mentally ill at the time of your death made no sense to me. “It didn’t take you, did it?”

  It being the Dark, of course.

  “It wants me,” she whispered urgently. “It didn’t take me, but it wants me…I can feel it out there, waiting.”

  The hair rose on the back of my neck. I knew exactly what she was talking about, and turned up my collar to drive away the image of that evil black mass, patiently waiting…

  “Then beat it to the punch,” I said firmly, “and go into the Light—it can’t follow you there. Look for the Light, Angie. Look up, look past what you see around you.”

  The sound of crying came from the corner.

  “Stop it,” I said sharply. There’d been enough crying around here lately. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You did what you did, and now you have to live with the consequences.” Well, not really live with the consequences…“Josh is home safe, David will take care of him, and everything is going to be all right.” I hoped.

  “Josh is safe?” I could barely see the outline of her head in the dimness of the shed. “How do you know?”

  “He was here, just the other day.” Didn’t she know that? “I took him to your funeral service myself.”

  “My funeral service?” She seemed honestly shocked. “That can’t be possible.”

  I was beginning to get annoyed. My legs were cramping, the shed was cold, and I was losing daylight while I argued with a ghost.

  “St. Patrick the Divine,” I offered, by way of proof, “two days ago. Lots of people came—”

  “But the church doesn’t sanction suicide,” she interrupted.

  I shook my head, though she probably couldn’t see it. “I’m telling you that you had a funeral service at the cathedral two days ago. The sign out front said something about the Mass of Christian Burial. There were tons of people there.”

  She started crying again, while I crouched on the floor, feeling helpless.

  “I didn’t think—I didn’t expect that,” she quavered. “David would’ve had to get a special dispensation from the diocese.”

  A lightbulb went off. “So you thought you were damned because you couldn’t have a service in the church?”

  “Of course,” she said, sniffling.

  I wasn’t Catholic, so it made no sense to me, but whatever.

  “But you did have a service”—deliberately making my voice more upbeat—“so you’re not damned.” I started to smile. “You don’t have to hide anymore.”

  And that’s when it began. The room became very dark all of a sudden. I glanced toward the window to see if dusk had fallen, and saw instead a rising shadow that nearly froze my heart with terror.

  My cramped knees gave out, and I landed hard on my butt. I heard a moaning sound, and realized it was coming from my own throat.

/>   The Dark loomed, slowly growing until it filled one side of the shed. My dad’s gardening tools—his rake, his shovel, the lawn mower—all became gradually obscured by the deepening darkness. Scrabbling backward on my hands and ass, I came up hard against the door, and realized I could go no further.

  “It’s here,” Angie whispered, in a voice filled with horror. “Do you see it?”

  Wishing desperately for a wheelbarrow of my own to hide behind, all I could do was nod.

  “It still wants me,” she said. “The Mass did no good.”

  “Nicki.” I heard a voice, inside my head. “You already know the secret, my love. It has only as much power as you give it.”

  It was Sammy, calling me “my love” and offering advice. If I wasn’t already on the verge of a heart attack, I would’ve passed out.

  Holy crap on a freakin’ cracker. Should I trust him?

  The atmosphere in the shed turned heavy, pervasive, as the last of the light from the window faded, leaving nothing but shadows and shades of gray.

  “It’ll never leave me alone,” Angie said despondently, from the corner. “Who was I fooling? I committed the ultimate sin. I abandoned my son, I abandoned my husband.” She was no longer crying. “I’m worthless. I deserve to go to Hell.”

  “No, you don’t!” I felt a surge of energy, and was afraid to ask myself where it came from. “It wants you to think that!” Gathering my feet beneath me again, I prepared to stand. “That’s where it gets its power.”

  Doomed, either way I was doomed.

  “Don’t look at it, Angie,” I urged her. “Think about how David got that special dispensation so you could have a Mass. Think about all those people who came, because they loved you. Think about Josh, who loves you, even though he didn’t understand at first why you did it.”

  “Josh,” she murmured. “I’m so sorry I did this to him.”

  “He knows,” I said hurriedly, one eye on the Dark. “I told him.” And then I played my trump card. “Don’t you want to see him again? If you let the Dark have you, you never will.”

  For that’s how it worked. I understood it now. The Dark didn’t take you, you let it take you. It didn’t come roaring out of closet or under the bed and swallow you whole; it was far more insidious than that. It waited, it lingered, it hypnotized, it mesmerized—and only the strong could resist it.

  “Don’t let it win, Angie.” I said, rising to stand on my own two feet. “Ignore it, and look for the Light. I promise it will be there. Do it for Josh.”

  “I—I’ll try,” she answered, voice wavering. “For Josh.” I heard a quick intake of breath from behind the wheelbarrow. “Oh, my God,” she murmured, awestruck. “I see it. I see the Light.” And then there was silence.

  I wished I could see it. I stared in the direction of the wheelbarrow but caught just a tiny flicker, like a flashlight had been turned on, then off.

  Leaving me alone in the darkness.

  With it.

  “Angie?” I whispered, knowing I wasn’t going to get an answer. I’d done my job too well, it seemed, and my timing sucked.

  “Get away from me,” I said to the growing Darkness, scrabbling behind me for the door handle. I found it, but it wouldn’t turn. I risked trying it with both hands, which meant I had to momentarily turn my back on the Dark, but I kept an eye on it over my shoulder. It was definitely getting bigger.

  “Dammit.” The doorknob wouldn’t turn. I spun around again, resting my back against the door. The only window was behind the…the thing…and it was completely obscured. I had nowhere to go.

  The Dark began to boil, right before my eyes. Black billows of soot, shifting and roiling in a constantly changing pattern. Horrified, I watched it, aware as I did it that I shouldn’t, but unable to help myself. It was like staring into a fire and seeing faces in the flames, only these faces were far more frightening. I thought I was imagining them, until one of the faces rose out of the darkness on a billow of black smoke, coming far too close to me for comfort. Slitted eyes, pointed ears; it hovered there, at eye level, and gave me a good, solid wink.

  I couldn’t help it—I shrieked, loud and long, just before everything went black.

  CHAPTER 22

  I woke up on the floor of the shed sometime later, unsure of how long I’d lain there. It was still daylight, sun coming high in the window to make an angled patch on the floor. The shed was empty except for me.

  Getting to my feet, I took stock; nothing bleeding, nothing broken, nothing hurt. I could hardly believe my good luck. Wasting no time, I grabbed the doorknob, which turned easily in my hand, and I was outta there.

  The rocker was sitting on the patio, right in front of me, and for a split second I was sure I saw someone sitting in it. I blinked, and there was nothing, but I felt oddly comforted, nonetheless, as though I hadn’t been alone during my ordeal in the shed.

  My brief sense of peace vanished, however, as I heard a loud crash, followed by a woman’s angry voice. Both noises came from inside the house—my house.

  “You lying bastard,” I heard her shriek, and then another crash. Without conscious thought, I ran up the back steps and into the house, knowing that whatever what being broken was mine.

  “I knew it!” Another shriek, another particularly loud crash. “You helped her! You chose her over me and you helped her!”

  I came into the living room to find an enraged Selene and a smirking Sammy, facing each other from opposite sides of the room. The mess I’d left the living room in earlier was nothing to the mess it was in now; the coffee table had been overturned, cereal bowls and empty glasses broken on the floor. My snowman collection had been decimated, it appeared, by the sweep of an angry hand; eighty percent of them lay scattered all over the floor.

  Speechless, I could only stand there, and try to keep a grip on my sanity.

  “Come now,” Sammy said smoothly to Selene, ignoring my entrance. “You didn’t expect me to do otherwise, did you? When have you ever known me to give in to blackmail?”

  “The rest of the ethereals will hear of this,” Selene shouted, plucking up my favorite snow globe off the mantel and pitching it at his head.

  He ducked, smiling, and I couldn’t keep silent anymore.

  “Hey!”

  Neither one of them looked at me. Selene kicked a wicker snowman out of her way, glaring at Sammy.

  “Cut it out!” I shouted.

  I might as well have been invisible.

  If looks could kill, he’d be dead, but Sammy was unconcerned. “Calm down, Lil. Why must you always be such a drama queen?”

  Selene’s shriek of rage made me want to cover my ears. She went for him with her bare hands, but he danced out of her reach, ducking behind the couch and keeping it between them.

  It would’ve been funny, if she had been anyone else. The Prince of Darkness, trying to avoid getting his ass kicked by an angry woman.

  “Hello?” I said, risking getting hit by a lightning bolt. The way the sparks were flying, I wouldn’t be surprised. “Could you two take this someplace else, please?”

  There was a silence. Sammy and Selene stared at each other over the couch, seemingly at a stalemate. Then Selene turned her head and looked at me, and instantly I knew I was in trouble.

  “This is all your fault,” she hissed, in a voice filled with venom. “I don’t see it, personally. You’re not nearly as clever as I expected. You’re not even very pretty.”

  I’m fairly sure my jaw dropped.

  Her contemptuous gaze flicked to Sammy. “No accounting for taste, I suppose.”

  Sammy, who’d given every indication of being amused by Selene’s anger up to this point, was no longer smiling. I watched him straighten, moving slowly, as though any sudden move might set her off again.

  “Give me one good reason why I don’t smother her in her sleep tonight,” she said to him, a cruel light gleaming in her eye.

  I could sense his tension, see it in the set of his shoulders, and wondere
d if she could see it, too. “Because you know I’d never forgive you,” he said gently. “Never. In all eternity.”

  My mouth was so dry I could barely swallow. He wasn’t looking at me, but I could feel him willing me to stay quiet, to stay calm.

  “Can you live with that?” he asked her softly. “To know that you’ve given me reason—yet again—to hate you?”

  The light in Selene’s eyes began to fade.

  “You already hate me,” she said, tonelessly, “so what does it matter?”

  And that’s when it clicked.

  Selene was in love with Sammy. Had obviously been in love with him for some time, probably from the beginning.

  The two original fallen, doomed to be together forever, yet forever apart.

  Oh, Sammy was far more diabolical than I ever imagined. I shuddered at the cruelty of it.

  I hated her, and so I granted her wish, he’d said, though I hadn’t understood what he’d meant at the time.

  “You’ve grown weak,” she spat, getting ugly again. “Over a puny little mortal.”

  “Much as I did with you,” Sammy shot back. “You didn’t seem it to mind at the time.”

  Holy shit.

  She gave him a look that scared the crap out of me, but he was undaunted. “All this trouble just to get my attention.” He sighed. “Really, darling, you could’ve just waved a fig leaf, like you did the first time. I’d have come running.”

  Darling?

  Selene’s tension seemed to ease, just a tiny bit. “So you do remember,” she said, watching him closely.

  “How could I forget?” he said smoothly. “I’ve dreamed of it for eons.”

  She eyed him warily. “You’ve never said.”

  “Ah, well,” he answered, spreading his hands. “You’ve never seemed wanting for male companionship.” He smiled at her ruefully, turning on the charm. “Understandably so.”

  And damned if it didn’t work.

  She tossed her head, giving him a small smile beneath her lashes. “Yours was the only companionship I ever wanted, darling, you know that.”