Never Fear (19 page)

“
I’m just saying. If he
were my husband, he’d never have to worry about any of that. I’d
keep him happy every day, in every way, if you know what I mean.”
Carol’s voice began to fade as the women headed back inside through
the back door.

Enraged, Holly flung the trash bag
into the dumpster and stalked back inside. She made her way into
the living room and found that people had begun collecting their
coats and saying happy goodbyes. The party had been a success in
spite of all their troubles, and inwardly Holly congratulated
herself on pulling off what had seemed impossible only a day
ago.

She plastered on a smile and exchanged
Christmas wishes with the exiting party-goers. Still fuming, she
couldn’t wait for Carol’s turn. She was really going to give the
woman a piece of her mind! Chris stood beside her, oblivious to the
drama about to unfold, yet still icy cold toward her. But Carol
hung back, obviously trying to be the last to leave. That was fine
with Holly, who never liked to make a scene.

Then, as the last group of people
parted, Carol made her way toward the door, smiling coquettishly at
Chris. Impulsively, Holly leapt in front of her, and, not even
knowing what came over her, she spoke sweetly to the other woman.
“Carol! Before you go, Chris and I wanted to give you a little
something just to say how much we appreciate your help all year
long.” She reached beneath the tree and grabbed the box. Turning to
hand it to his assistant, she noticed Chris’s eyes grow as large as
saucers. He shook his head frantically, but she calmly looked into
the other woman’s eyes. “We hope you like this small token of our
gratitude. Merry Christmas!”

“
Thank you. And Merry
Christmas to you, too, Hol— Mrs. Marshall. Mr. Marshall,” Carol
sputtered. She took the gift and quickly headed out the
door.

As the final strains
of
Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas
drifted out of the sound system,
Chris and Holly stood arm in arm in the doorway, waving goodbye to
their friends, and more importantly, to the curse that had nearly
destroyed their family.

“
There goes your Christmas
gift,” Holly said. “From now on, you’re getting a subscription to
the cheese-of-the-month club,” she joked.

“
I love cheese,” Chris
said. “And I love you. Let’s go get the kids first thing tomorrow.”
And with that, they closed the door and, feeling lighter than air,
they headed for bed where they slept peacefully through the silent
night.

A FAMILY CHRISTMAS
TERROR

CHAPTER 6

“
This is awesome!” Nick
slurred.

“
No, it’s not. That story
was sick. Would someone really do that to someone else?” Nancy
scolded. “Are you drunk? At one in the afternoon?”

“
Hey!” Nick said, sitting
up then slumping back. “I’m just tired, ‘s all.”

Judy shook her head. “I knew I
shouldn’t have given you that last drink.”

“
He’ll learn,” Dan told
her. “Experience is the best teacher.”

“
I know, but I don’t want
him to get sick on Christmas. He’ll ruin dinner.”

“
He won’t get sick. Will
you, Nick?” Dan looked meaningfully at Nick and held out the book.
“You read the next one.”

“
I’ll be fine,” Nick said,
opening the book. He hiccupped.

“
Oh Jesus. Give me the
book.” Jack snatched the book away.

“
Hey—
hic
—I can do—
hic
— it,” Nick fell back on the
sofa.

“
You’re such a loser,”
Jack hissed.

“
I’ll—
hic
—read the next
one—
hic
—”

“
Hold your breath,” Judy
said.

“
Yeah, like for an hour,”
Nancy stage-whispered to Grandpa, who guffawed.

Nick looked at them.
“You’re not nice—
hic
—either of you.”

Dan had had enough. His hand tightened
on his mug. “Jack, just read the goddam story.”

“
Okay,
Dad
.
Calm down.”
He looked at his mother, who was studying her hands, and then
turned back to the book.
“The Little
Helper
.” He glared at his younger brother.
“Guess it’s not about you, Nicky boy.”

“
Shut
up—
hic
—and
read.”

THE LITTLE
HELPER

E.
MCCARTHY

He sees you when you’re
sleeping. He knows when you’re awake.

Grace Boggs rubbed her eyes as she
walked down the hall of the psychiatric ward of Charity Hospital,
the Christmas song blaring over the PA system. It was a jarring and
ironic jingle in a wing where half her patients were paranoid. All
she needed was a single patient to stop and listen to the cheerful
lyrics about Santa stalking and she was in for a hell of a night.
She’d been working this wing for twelve years and she knew the
drill. Christmas was infused here for the morale of the staff, not
the patients, many of whom never seemed to notice that suddenly
there was an explosion of garland and blinking lights after every
Thanksgiving.

Walking into Mr. Jefferson’s room, she
assessed him. He was standing in front of the window with his eyes
closed. He wasn’t a patient who needed to be restrained, merely
locked in. He had been brought in for wandering onto a playground
in his bathrobe, touching the back of the heads of several small
children, trying to access their brains, per his explanation. “You
okay, Mr. Jefferson?”

He turned, but didn’t open his eyes.
“Go away.”

“
It’s time for your
medication. Can you open your eyes for me?” Despite a constant
weariness after the dozen years on the job, Grace still cared about
her patients somewhat. She just didn’t have a lot of energy left
for bullshit. It was two days before Christmas and she wanted to be
at home with her vodka.

“
No. If Santa thinks I’m
sleeping, he’ll come down the chimney. If I’m awake, he won’t show
and I have a thing or two I want to say to that fat fuck about what
he owes me for the Christmas of ’59, when he no-showed.”

Running her tongue over her teeth,
Grace longed again for a drink, but instead spoke in low and
soothing tones to Mr. Jefferson, encouraging him to take his
medication. Ten minutes later, she was back in the hallway, behind
on her rounds, and pissed off to see the new hire, Maisey, sitting
on her young and perky ass, blond head bent over.

“
What are you doing?” she
snapped, resenting Maisey’s smile and pert tits. She had waltzed
onto the ward only a week earlier, all bouncy breasts and backside,
charming the doctors and patients alike, with an infectious laugh
and a total lack of respect for personal space. She was a hugger
and a thigh-toucher and Grace looked at her and saw not her own
youth, but what she had never been. She’d never been particularly
pretty or sexy or charming and Maisey reminded her of that
fact.

“
Oh, hi, Grace.” Despite
the fact that Grace’s tone had been sharp, Maisey still looked up
and smiled at her. “Look what I found in the storage closet in the
empty Christmas tub! Why isn’t this out? I think it would be fun.”
She held up a toy in her hand.

Grace’s eyebrows went up. It was a
skinny elf wearing a perpetual grin as annoying as Maisey’s. He had
on striped leggings and had the kind of figure Grace could only
dream of— all long limbs and flat stomach. She knew what it was.
The Elf on the Shelf, a marketing trend that had taken off in the
last decade with parents who needed to outshine other parents on
social media with all the creative ways they could display their
family elf on the shelf. It was a bullshit made up tradition that
merely gave parents one more way to lie to their children in the
name of Christmas.

Not that she was cynical or
anything.

“
Why would we want to do
that elf thing? We’re already doing a Secret Santa gift exchange.”
Which was pointless. Every year someone gave Grace hand cream or a
candle and every year she was forced to do the same for a
co-worker. Just once she wanted to request her secret Santa get her
vodka, but her love of the bottle was a heavily guarded secret.
Secrets, secrets, everywhere.

“
It’s for the patients. I
think they would get a kick out of it.” Maisey stood up and
pretended to make the elf talk. “Merry Christmas, friends! Let’s
sing some carols.”

Grace had tried to hide her disdain of
Maisey, but this time she couldn’t prevent a snort from slipping
out. “Are you serious? The whole point of the elf on the shelf is
that he moves around while everyone is sleeping. Do you honestly
think that is a good idea where half the patients are paranoid and
the other half are afraid of their own shadow? There’s a reason it
was still in the storage closet—it’s a bad idea.”

“
I …” The blood drained
from Maisey’s face. “I just thought it would be fun.”

Annoyed beyond reason, Grace snatched
the toy from Maisey’s hand and tossed it into a drawer behind the
nurse’s station where they kept their communal candy stash and
Grace’s Virginia Slims. “Just use a little more sense next time,
honestly. Don’t show that to any of the patients or I’ll write you
up.”

She stomped away and went into Rose
Litwinksi’s room. Rose was only thirty-two but looked like she was
twenty years older, mental illness weaving lines of worry and fear
into her once smooth face. A veritable roadmap of mental illness.
“Hi, Rose, how are you tonight?” Grace asked.

“
The elf made me do it,”
Rose said, looking ashamed and embarrassed.

Now it was Grace’s turn to furrow her
brow. A shiver rolled up her spine. “Do what, Rose? What
elf?”

But Rose looked away and smiled, a
secret, sly smile. “Never mind.”

Then Grace saw the dark stain at the
waist of Rose’s hospital gown, the blood spreading across her
abdomen.

“
The elf did
it.”

*

Maisey thought Grace was a grumpy old
poop, bitter because she probably hadn’t had a date since the
eighties, and sex— never. The older nurse struck her as someone who
needed a good pounding. Okay, so Maisey understood that the
patients weren’t exactly going to understand the concept behind the
elf on the shelf, but if anything, they needed a little magic in
their lives. They needed a voice of hope, a cheeky joke. It would
bring some smiles, she was sure of it, and obviously someone else
in the past had thought the same thing since the elf had been with
the other Christmas decorations.

But whatever. Grumpy Grace had put the
brakes on fun.

When she heard Grace yell, for a split
second, she hoped the old bat had fallen, but then she felt
immediately guilty. Grace wasn’t that bad. Plus she was actually
calling for help with a patient. So Maisey hot-footed it out of the
nurse’s station but the other nurse on duty, Patrick, waved her
off.

“
I’ve got it,” he said.
“Just finish your rounds, please.”

“
Okey doke.” Maisey
checked the board and started down the hall. She smiled at Sam, the
man in his sixties who had been the janitor at the hospital for
thirty years. “Hi, Sam.”

“
Hello, Maisey. What are
your Christmas plans this year?”

Sam was the kind of guy who always
smiled back, who made small talk, who asked Maisey how her day was
and meant it. He was a nice person, so in short, the opposite of
Grace. Grace thought no one noticed she was sour or that she
sometimes looked at her purse with a little too much longing.
Maisey wasn’t an idiot. She knew there was a flask in
there.

It was clear Grace was a crank because
she missed her boozing when she was at work.

“
Oh, you know, just eating
too much food.” She laughed. “How about you?”

“
The wife’s family is
coming over. I’m looking forward to ham and football games.” He
waved as he went on down the hallway.

When Maisey went in to Bob Davenport’s
room, she grabbed his chart off the door and started glancing
through it. When she looked up she let out a shriek, totally caught
off guard. Bob was sitting in a chair.

With the Elf on the Shelf on his lap.
What the hell?

“
Where did you get that?”
she asked, annoyed. Was Grace messing with her? She wouldn’t put it
past the old bitch.

Bob just stared at her like he had no
idea who she was or what she was talking about. He was young, only
in his mid-twenties, so her age, but he looked like hell. He
nervously tugged at his hair and he had scabs on his face from
chronically picking. She immediately felt bad for snapping at him.
He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“
Hey,” she said in a more
gentle tone, sinking down into a squat in front of him so they
would be more at eye level. She tapped the elf on Bob’s lap. “Where
did you get this?”