Unholy Nights: A Twisted Christmas Anthology (34 page)

“That’s cute,” Gabe says.

“Yes,” I say quickly. I can’t pull my eyes away from them. I wonder if they are waltzing. My fingers grow ice cold.

Nearly beyond my hearing, I sense—no, feel—something. A sound. Humming. A melody. A whisper soft voice hums “What Child Is This” in broken measures.

When Gabe goes to the kitchen, I quickly gather the figures up and place them precisely on the mantle, where they belong. “I got the Russian dolls from a foreign exchange student I dated in high school,” I offer.

“Really?” Gabe emerges from the kitchen, two glasses and an open bottle of white wine in his hands.

“Yes. He said Americans need only one girl, but Russians need five.” I touched the chipped paint on the largest doll. “We broke up soon after that.”

“Because of what he said?” Gabe set the glasses on the coffee table.

“No, there were other reasons.” I shrug and kneel down beside the unopened boxes of ornaments. “He didn’t understand my afterschool schedule.” Meaning: Going immediately home and doing absolutely nothing besides making dinner, washing dishes, saying the rosary, and finishing my homework. The life of a nun.

“Does what he said bother you?”

I look up at Gabe towering above me, his expression hidden from the light. Suddenly I understand what he is asking me. He wonders how I feel about the other women in his life. I stay silent and truly think on it.

“I’m not jealous,” I admit. It’s the truth. “I just fear rejection.”

It hurts to admit that last part. I will accept almost anything a person offers me, but rejection kills me inside.

Gabe touches the top of my head. “I will never turn away from you, Kathryn.”

I grasp his hand and entwine my fingers with his, lower his hand to my lips and kiss his knuckles. He pulls me up. Together we start a fire in the hearth to match the one now glowing in my heart.

I turn the TV to holiday music and we decorate my pitiful Christmas tree, the evergreen bonsai. I fasten hooks on tiny blue, green and red bulbs and hand these over to Gabe. He carefully places them on the branches. Finally we wrap a thin ribbon of red mesh around the small tree.

Gabe and I drink the last of the wine and look at our handiwork.

“I think I’ve seen you in a cartoon somewhere,” he says to the tree. I laugh and wrap my arms around his waist.

Everything is perfect. Too perfect, almost. How could the next day and the next be any better than this?

But then it starts. Just above the crackle of the fire and the soft Christmas music, a wail lifts up and fades. A sob and soft frantic jabbering follow, rising in pitch and volume then crumbling to sputters and gasps.

Gabe looks at me sharply. I pull away from him. “It’s coming from the bathroom,” he says.

I avoid his eyes. He reaches for the remote control and turns the TV off, leaving behind silence, which is eventually filled by whimpers and crying.

Gabe clenches his jaw as he lifts to his feet. I grab his hand and tug him back. “Don’t go in there.”

“What is it?” he asks me pointedly.

I let go of him and clasp my hands together in my lap. “It started...after my father died. I think.”

“Kathryn,” he says lowly, then combs his fingers through his hair. He’s trying to be patient. With this fact, I begin to tremble. “I know it is a haunting, but of what?”

I swallow, my tongue suddenly thick.

A wail pierces the awkward silence, electrifying the air. Quick muffled gasps erupt, echoing off the ceiling. Then a sob. A clear voice speaks.

...Bury it in the back...

My words. I gasp, bending over as a sharp pain grips my abdomen. Gabe is next to me, rubbing my back. “Talk to me,” he softly coaxes.

I cannot lie to him. I will not. I am the one in tears, then and now. They stream down my face, wash my cheeks. I taste salt as they roll into my mouth. They fall like rain into my hands.

I tell him. Everything. I tell him about the day I came home early from college and faced my father. I tell him how my father’s face crumpled when I admitted I was pregnant.

My father forbade me from leaving the house. Mercy brought me things and shopped for me. Together we planned for the baby’s arrival. But my father would have no part in helping me in any way, shape or form. I would have starved if not for Mercy.

I tell Gabe about the day I came downstairs to find my father burning my financial aid letter from college. My old adviser had sent a schedule for the coming year and a newly revised financial plan including a special grant designed for single mothers with good grades.

I pleaded for him to stop burning those documents.

“Did you think you could just return to college? Behind my back?” my father hollered at me. I had never seen him angry, ever. His face was a network of expanded veins, harsh angles, and bared teeth—and utterly terrifying. It was horrible.

It took everything out of me to push down my fear. I told my father he had no right to refuse those offers for me.

“I have every right!” he snapped back. “You will not humiliate me. Going back to school next year? With a child, out of wedlock?”

He’s rules were archaic and cruel. I told him so. His hands bunched into fists at his sides.

“I have a right to make my own decisions,” I insisted.

“Your only decision is to grow up. That means giving up any more foolish ideas. Keeping this—this baby? And taking it to college like a toy? A doll?”

His words shocked me. “All this time you’ve expected me to give my baby up? Pretend it never happened? It’s my choice, not yours!”

“You are my daughter and will do as I say.”

“I’ve never been your daughter,” I spat out. “You’ve never been anything close to being my father!”

He backhanded me. I was nearly six months pregnant, but that didn’t matter to him.

I fell against the hearth and staggered to my feet. I raced up the stairs but he followed behind me, taking them two at a time. Desperately I clutched my protruding stomach. I reached the fourth step to the top when I felt his hand gouge into my shoulder and pull me back.

“I fell against him,” I whisper to Gabe. “We fell together. He landed on the last step and hit his head. I hit the rounded newel. Mercy heard my cries for help.”

Gabe doesn’t speak. I wipe my face and push forward. “They took my father to emergency. Mercy and I were going to follow behind but then...the baby started to come out.”

Memories flood over me.

As the sirens faded in the distance, I grabbed my father’s shaving case and medicines. Mercy came around with her car. I didn’t get farther than the porch.

A white hot pain seared my lower abdomen and I lost my balance, almost fell over. Mercy helped me back into the house. She lifted my bloodied skirt and looked between my buckling legs. “The baby’s coming,” she said, her face pale and stretched taut with dread.

No warning contractions. In the following minute I felt the baby’s head push through. I didn’t have time to call anyone or go anywhere, only crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom. I was so afraid

Mercy helped me into the bathroom tub. I gave birth to a stillborn girl, too young to breathe on her own. Emotionally crushed, I could not even look at the baby. I would lose my mind if I did.

“I told her to bury it,” I say, my voice hushed. “In the back...the backyard. Under a tree.”

Gabe enfolds me in his arms and I sob against his shoulder. All the pain I have pushed down shudders out of me, battering my body, trembling my bones. When I think I’ll be overcome by grief, Gabe gently presses my head between my legs and coaxes me to breathe slowly.

I spent the next year watching over my father whose mental state was unclear. I fed him, dressed him, and bathed him. I changed his sheets. When he couldn’t eat on his own, I fixed his IV. He became a child. His eyes spoke to me, sometimes damned me, and sometimes just cried. I had done this to him. Everyday was a day when the wish to flee was overpowered by my fear of what leaving him would make me.

And so I read to him, while wondering if these were books he might enjoy. Or hate. And did it matter to me, anyway? I questioned my own motives. Was I punishing him? Was I punishing myself? Eventually I set up a small TV in his room and let it play continuously.

“It’s over now,” Gabe whispers in my ear as he holds me close. “I have no doubt in my mind that you did the best you could, Kathryn. That you loved as best you could and showed more care for him than he showed you.”

“I don’t...” I stammer. “I just don’t know.”

“I do,” he says. Cradling me in his arms, he strokes my hair. The gesture is tender and fills me with peace. He takes away my pain. Selflessly, he soothes me until I fall asleep.

*

I
awake to the delicious smell of freshly brewed coffee. Sitting up on the couch, I stretch out my muscles. Then the events of the previous night return to me. I brush them aside. There will be enough time to worry about such things when I am alone.

The kitchen door swings open and Gabe enters the living room with two steaming mugs. He hands one to me, then kisses me.

“Sleep okay?” he asks.

I nod before taking a sip from my mug. The coffee is heavenly. I tell him so.

He grins and sits down next to me. The couch cushion squeaks under his weight, then the room settles into silence. The absence of sound is thick with potential as my thoughts and worries fill the space between us.

“I think what you have here is a psychic imprint,” Gabe finally says. “But I sense it’s just one of many anomalies in this house.”

“What can I do?”

Gabe brushes back my sleep snarled hair. “With a psychic imprint? Aside from removing all crystal, glass, light bulbs, and electric devices?”

I laugh nervously. “In other words—”

“Not much you can do,” Gabe finishes for me. “But I will need more time to figure out just what is happening upstairs.”

A shiver trembles through me, settling in my arms as an uncomfortable ache. His words scare me yet comfort me at the same time. They scare me with the same creepy feeling everyone gets watching horror movies. They comfort me because I know he intends to stick around.

The sharp staccato of knuckles on the doorframe reaches us. “Ah, that’s Sandy.” Gabe gets up and strides to the door. I take advantage of the moment and drink in his wide back muscles that ripple beneath his T-shirt and his taut buttocks.

“Hello, sleepy head,” Sandy almost sings. In her hands is what I think is a crockpot; but as she gets closer, I can tell it’s a paraffin bath. She hops over to me and kisses my cheek. “Spa time!”

Gabe scratches the back of his head, his face a touch bewildered. Funny that he feels comfortable talking about ghosts and psychic imprints, but he’s clearly out of his comfort zone now. “I’ll leave you to it,” he says and makes a leisurely, but obvious, retreat.

I get Sandy a cup of coffee to match mine before we settle into our beauty treatment. She soaks my hands and fusses over my bitten nails, broken cuticles and thick calluses. “What have you been doing? Rock climbing?”

“Yeah, that’s me.”

She purses her lips and her eyes turn regretful, like she’s said something wrong. She bends over my fingernail. “Gabe says you don’t get out much.”

“Not really,” I answer. “I’m pretty much of a homebody.”

“Uh-huh,” Sandy pulls up my hand, bites her lip and closes an eye. “You’ve bitten down to the pink.”

“I know.”

“Taste good?”

I grin. “Not really.”

“Well you’re Gabe’s type, that’s for sure.”

I pull my hand back, “What do you mean?”

Sandy smiles broadly, her eyes twinkling. “Haven’t you figured it out? Gabe’s a healer. So is Molly. He’s a fixer-upper. And you’re a basket case.”

I eye her warily, not sure I like what she’s saying.

Seeing my look she shakes her head. “We all are.” She snorts. “Basket cases. Messed up. Who says a girl doesn’t need saving once in awhile? Everyone does.”

“I can’t disagree with that,” I admit.

Sandy carefully files what’s left of my nails. “Take Molly. Gabe helped her escape an abusive relationship. From what I’ve heard, that was a big mess. Boston cops got involved. But Gabe helped her, and her ex-girlfriend’s in jail now.”

“Wow,” I don’t know what to say really. I imagine Gabe’s bravery and Molly’s fear.

Sandy shuddered. “That gal really screwed Molly up until Raven came along.”

“Raven and she are together?”

“Used to be,” Sandy tilts her head. “They’re both bisexual, but aren’t we all?” She stops in mid-saw, emery board pinched between thumb and middle finger. “Molly has taken to celibacy. Hopes it will strengthen her healing abilities. Raven is Raven.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I admit.

“Of course you don’t. You just met us,” Sandy looks perturbed and starts filing again. “Raven is a little promiscuous. But her emotional loyalty is always with the coven. Gabe found her bartending in Salt Lake City. He and Molly took her to Arizona and spent two years with her there while she learned more about her Hopi and Navajo roots. After that they traveled to San Francisco and found me.” Sandy jumps up from the dining room table. “Let me check the paraffin.”

“So how did they find you?” I ask.

With measured steps, Sandy brings the paraffin pot over. “I forgot the towel,” she says. “Can you spread it out for me on the table?” She sets the pot down and takes my hand.

“See,” she continues, “Gabe always knows where to go. He gets hunches. Like buying our house.”

She dips my hand in quick. The wax is hot on my skin but cools very quickly. I watch as Sandy places plastic wrap around my hand. “So that’s how he found you?” I ask.

Her voice lowered. “I was more tricky to find.” She guided my other hand into the bath. The heat was intense but not painful. Cool air took away any remaining sting. “Crack house.” She darted a look at me before pulling the plastic wrap off the roll.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her, my heart twisting for her.

“Gabe paid my medical bills, my rehab. He visited me at the halfway house. Even paid for my beautician school.” She shrugged. “That was over a year ago. I’ve been clean for sixteen months, ten days, and,” she looks at her watch, “three hours.” Her grin is like a beacon of hope. I want to hug her.