The Doom That Came to Christmas, Part 2
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be serializing my Christmas horror story, The Doom That Came to Christmas. I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to share!
The shop’s shelves were laden with colorful glass snowbirds and holly sprigs. Wreathes, some of vibrant green, some of glittering silver or gold, adorned the walls. The smooth sound of Bing Crosby pining for Christmas blizzards drifted from speakers hidden behind festive decorative signs.
Marcy examined a display of tiny wooden figures. Each figure, meticulously carved and hand-painted, looked like a caroler singing a song. They were cute, she thought. Charming even. She picked one up and winced at the price tag that was stuck to the bottom. She quickly put the figure back where she found it. She liked the wooden carolers, but she knew she’d never be satisfied with just one. She had too much of the “collector mentality” in her, and carolers needed company when they went door to door. She couldn’t even afford one figure, though, let alone a troupe.
“What do you think of this?” Lauren emerged from around the corner. She held a snow globe in her hands. Within the globe, Santa’s sleigh rose high above the skyscrapers of a city. “It’s pretty, right? I think mom will love it.”
“I don’t know,” Marcy said. “I mean, it’s kind of weird giving someone a Christmas decoration for Christmas, isn’t it? The holiday’s over before they can put it to use.”
“Maybe.” Lauren peered deep into the snow globe and shrugged. “She could use it next year.”
Marcy returned a shrug of affirmation.
Together, the sisters made their way to the front counter, where a kind-faced woman waited next the register.
“Find everything all right?” the woman asked.
“I think so.” Lauren placed the snow globe on the counter. “We’ll take this.”
Smiling sweetly, the clerk started to wrap the prize in tissue. “Well, it’s very nice. Someone is certainly going to have a Merry Christmas.”
“We think so.”
“Isn’t it nice to hear that?” The woman asked.
“Hmm?”
“Merry Christmas.” The clerk’s sweet smile broadened a little.
“Y-yes.” Lauren cleared her throat. “Merry Christmas.”
“So nice to hear those words.” The clerk carefully pressed the crinkly tissue to the snow globe. “Especially from young people. So glad I can say it without being, you know, persecuted.”
Marcy cocked her head to the side. “Persecuted?”
Lauren sighed.
“That’s right.” The clerk looked up from her work. “So many people just get so angry when they hear it, like it isn’t the politically correct thing to say. Like it’s a nasty, filthy word. Don’t you worry, though, this shop is a safe space for Christmas lovers.”
“Sure, sure.” Marcy said. “I’m just curious, though. Who exactly is persecuted you?”
“Marcy,” Lauren warned under her breath, “don’t.”
Ignoring her sister, Marcy asked the clerk, “When have you ever not been able to wish someone a Merry Christmas?”
“You know,” the clerk said, “we’re being forced to say ‘happy holidays’ and things like that.”
“Someone is forcing you to say ‘happy holidays’?”
The clerk’s face twitched as she struggled to maintain her smile.
“You have an entire store full of silver and gold and ho-ho-ho Santa statues,” Marcy said. “Has anyone tried to run you out of town? Has anyone thrown a brick through your window?”
“Are you threatening me?” the clerk asked, the holiday cheer draining from her voice.
“No, ma’am,” Lauren said. “Of course not. My sister just gets a little—”
Marcy interrupted. “I just get a little tired of the War on Christmas conspiracies. On December 25th, I’ll be sitting around the tree with my family, wishing each and every one of them a Merry Damn Christmas, and no one is going to jackboot-kick the door in and drag me off to a rehabilitation facility.”
The clerk cleared her throat.
Her fingers fidgeted with the tissue-wrapped snow globe.
“Maybe,” Marcy said, “your problem isn’t that other people are persecuting you for celebrating Christmas. Maybe you feel persecuted by the fact that some people have different beliefs, traditions, and holidays.”
“Get off your soapbox, Marcy.” Even though she was growling under her breath, Lauren’s voice had a singsong quality. “Now is not the time nor the place.”
“Oh, come on,” Marcy said. “If she so desperately wants to be ostracized for Christmas that she needs to make up some woke boogeyman, then we might as well—“
The clerk raised the partially-wrapped snow globe over her head and brought it down onto the counter.
Glass shattered.
Lauren and Marcy staggered back in surprise.
The kindly clerk looked at the remains of the snow globe. Sharp, jagged glass rose around the base. Glittering water pooled on the countertop.
“H-Hey,” Lauren said. “We didn’t mean to—“
The clerk shoved the snow globe into Lauren’s face.
The razor-edged remains of the globe pierced through Lauren’s lips, sliced open her nose, punctured and ruptured her eye. Lauren gurgled and stagger back, blood raining down from her face. The globe was embedded in her flesh and bone, a tinkling Christmas melody playing as Lauren grasped at it feebly with trembling fingers.
Marcy shrieked.
Lauren toppled backwards, knocking over a display of silver-painted pine cones. Her remaining eye was large and full of panic. She kicked and spasmed and writhed on the floor. Marcy fell to her knees next to her, grabbing at her, trying to comfort her.
“It’s all right,” Marcy said. “You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you.”
But she knew Lauren was dead.
Before she fell still.
Knew before her sister gasped her last breath and gurgled her last words.
“Mrrrggy Chrggsstmass,” Lauren said.
The clerk—the woman who had just murdered Lauren—emerged from around the counter. She walked in stiff, shuddering steps. Her spasming fingers dripped blood.
“Why?” Marcy asked as she looked up.
And her mind reeled at what she saw.
The woman now wore a mask—an inhuman mask that gleamed like the shell of a roach’s back. The colors shifted and changed, like oil coiling across the surface of dark water, first red, then green, then gold, then silver. The mask had wide, drooping openings for the eyes and mouth. But there was no sign of the clerk’s face within. Instead, the holes opened to what looked like the cold vastness of space, where tiny stars spun in strange patterns.
A void.
She reached out with her dripping fingers.
Marcy scrabbled to her feet, slipped in her sister’s blood as it pooled on the floor, found her footing once more, and bolted for the door.
She cried for help as she threw herself out of the shop.
“Please! Please, somebody! My sister! My sister’s been murdered!”
But as she stumbled into the cold, she realized no one would be helping her.
The streets of the little shopping district were decorated with silver stars and red ribbons. A flurry of snow whipped through the air. Not enough to accumulate in any dramatic way. Just enough to dust the pavement. Lampposts were adorned with ornaments and strings of light that, come nightfall, would shine brightly. Decorated Christmas trees lined the street. Store window displays featured wrapped presents and Christmas trees.
One of the store windows across the street shattered.
A pair of people fell to the street in a shower of glass. Two men, dressed in sweaters and slacks and winter coats, rolled around in the broken glass. They pummeled each other with gloved hands.
They both wore masks.
A little further down the street, a car rolled back and forth over a man dressed in a Santa suit. Marcy had noticed the Santa as she and Lauren had walked toward the shop. He had been collecting donations for a local homeless shelter. Now, he was pulped and crushed beneath the tires of a car. The driver, Marcy saw through the windshield, wore a hideous mask.
A few yards from where she stood, a masked woman had torn stringed lights from a lamppost. She used the lights to choke a man to death. The man’s face was exposed, but his look of shock and pain was almost as awful as the mask.
In the other direction, a masked man strode down the middle of the street. He held a fire axe. The blade was caked in blood and hair and bits of flesh.
Everywhere she looked, Marcy saw masks.
Everywhere she looked, she saw acts of violence and murder.
Behind Marcy, the bloodied clerk emerged from the shop. Eyelessly, she regarded Marcy curiously. She spoke, but the voice that emerged from the emptiness of the mask was not her own. It was a perfect imitation of Lauren’s gurgling final words.
“Mrrrggy Chrggsstmass.”