Chapter 19 Sam
SAM
Christmas Eve dinner was surprisingly pleasant. The only food in the emergency kit was some vaguely cardboard-flavored ration bars, so a picnic of fruit and packaged chips and chocolate-covered nuts, spread out in front of the fireplace, was more than welcome.
Cara brought down her sleeping bag, along with a couple of sheets that she had found in one of the rooms being used as drop cloths. They were paint-splattered but otherwise reasonably clean.
It made a relatively comfortable nest in front of the fire. Charlie snuggled down against Sam, but when Maggie cautiously found a place on his other side, he put his arm around her, and Charlie made no objections. Maggie’s hair spilled across his shoulder, smelling wonderful.
In spite of being stranded in a storm, now that he was warm and mostly dry again, Sam felt much better. The only thing this evening needed was popcorn and maybe a few pieces of furniture.
The lights flickered a few times, so when they finally went out for good, it was less surprising than it otherwise would have been. The gas-powered fireplace remained on, filling the room with a flickering, bluish light, and the corners with shadows.
“Okay, this is kind of creepy now,” Charlie murmured, snuggling closer to her dad.
Wind continued to shake the house. Maggie asked quietly, “Do you think the power being out will affect the heat?”
“It probably depends on what the furnace runs on, and whether there’s some kind of backup for its electrical components,” Sam said. “Obviously the gas is still on. I don’t think we’ll be too uncomfortable by morning, and we do have outdoor gear and the ability to shift, just in case.”
“This is the weirdest Christmas Eve ever,” Charlie said. “I feel like we should tell ghost stories.”
Sam laughed. “Let’s do that. Except it has to have a holiday story element.”
“Oh, not fair! I don’t know any holiday ghost stories.”
“Don’t you? Isn’t that what the Scrooge story is?”
“That doesn’t count and you know it.”
“I’ll go first,” Maggie suggested, sounding as if she had surprised herself by offering. “Have you ever heard of the Yule Cat?”
She told them a story of a monstrous, spectral cat whose job at the holidays was to visit households and eat anyone who had received new clothes for Christmas but wouldn’t wear them.
One of those people was a woman whose terrible aunt gave her a series of horrible sweaters that she knew she had to wear to keep the Yule Cat away, but one of them was just so awful that “when she put it on, even the dog laughed at her” and so, she refused to wear it and the Yule Cat came and . ..
“Ate her?” Charlie volunteered, with bloodthirsty eagerness.
“No, the Yule Cat took one look at the sweater and saw that she was totally right, it really was too awful to wear. So the Yule Cat ate her aunt and all her knitting instead.”
Charlie snort-laughed, and Cara said, “The Yule Cat is a real story, isn’t it? I think I’ve heard of that from somewhere.”
“Yeah, it’s an Icelandic fable, I think. The real story is that it eats people who don’t have new clothes to wear on Christmas, but I thought that was kind of unfair, because it’s not really their fault.” Maggie smiled at Charlie across Sam’s chest. “You want to go next?”
“Hmm.” Charlie thought for a moment. “Okay, I’ve got one.
So let me set the scene. It’s Christmas Eve.
There is a terrible storm, and these hikers, they were out hiking and they got lost in the snow.
They wandered and wandered, and just when all hope was gone and they were afraid they were going to freeze to death, finally they found an abandoned old house, appearing out of the snow like the answer to their prayers—”
“There’s something vaguely familiar about this story,” Sam remarked. “Can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Charlie grabbed her gloves, toasting by the fire, to gently smack him. “Hush up, I’m telling this.”
She went on to tell the story of a creepy abandoned house, the hikers huddling around a fire that was slowly going out, vanishing one by one (“leaving behind only blood and some scraps of clothes and hair”) and one of them, the last person by the fire, ended up tearfully dictating a last message into her phone to her mother as she recorded it on video.
“And then, in the selfie screen, she saw her friend, her dead friend, standing in the corner with his back to her. Very slowly, afraid of what she was going to see, she turned around ....”
“I’ve definitely seen this movie,” Sam said. “I didn’t think you’d seen this movie.”
“I do have YouTok, Dad, and now hush up, I’m not done. She turned around, and he was facing her, and—” Charlie paused dramatically. “His entire face was a bloody ruin.”
“What kind of movies are you watching? How concerned do I need to be?”
“And then he lunged at her, and the last thing she saw was his teeth lengthening into sharp fangs like the icicles outside. And then, darkness. The only thing that remained was her phone, still recording ... the darkness, only the darkness, as the shadows crept closer, and swallowed everything.”
There was a brief silence.
“Well, I’m creeped out now,” Maggie said, inching a little closer to Sam.
“So what killed the hikers, exactly?” Sam asked. “Did they kill each other, or was it something in the house that just made itself look like them?”
“It’s ambiguous, Dad. It’s scarier that way. Anyone could be the killer, even me.” Charlie looked up at her dad. “I know I’m a tough act to follow, but it’s your turn.”
“Once there was an old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge—” Sam began, and Charlie smacked him with her gloves again.
“No, Dad, you have to make something up.”
“I am making it up. I can assure you, you’ve never heard the Scrooge story quite like this before.”
He went on improvising a tale of a resourceful Scrooge who was determined not to let the ghosts run the story this time.
“So then he called the Ghostbusters, or I mean—” Sam wasn’t sure exactly when the telephone had been invented. “He sent Marley with a note—”
“I think you mean Bob Cratchit,” Maggie murmured. “Marley’s the other ghost.”
“Right. He sent Cratchit to fetch the Ghostbusters, who came in a hurry—”
“Are the Ghostbusters ghosts too? Because this is like a hundred years too early for them,” Charlie complained.
“These were the Victorian era Ghostbusters. They were in great demand, on account of all the creaky, ancient haunted mansions that were absolutely everywhere on every fog-shrouded piece of real estate back in those times. The reason why there are so few ghosts today is because of the efforts of those early ghost hunters.”
“Is this story ever going to turn scary?”
The meandering tale led into an off-the-cuff climax involving ghost traps, all the different ghosts from the various versions of A Christmas Carol that Sam could remember seeing, including the Muppet one, and more than a little influence from Die Hard.
“.... and as the last shots died away, the final ghost faded with the coming of the daylight, and Tiny Tim reached down with the hand not holding the shotgun and clasped Scrooge’s hand with his small, surprisingly strong one, and helped him to his feet.”
From her sleeping bag nest, Cara asked sleepily, “Isn’t Scrooge supposed to learn a lesson about being a better person?”
“He did,” Sam said. “He learned a very important lesson about cooperation, the value of teamwork, and the importance of determination in achieving your dreams. After that, they used Scrooge’s fortune to found Scrooge & Cratchit Ghost Hunters Ltd—” He pronounced the individual letters LTD, on purpose, making Charlie groan.
“—which is now international, with branch offices in twenty-nine countries. Motto: Hasta la vista and God bless us every one.”
“Well, you’re absolutely right,” Maggie said. “I have never heard the story told exactly like that before.”
“Do you want to tell a story, Cara?” Charlie asked. “It couldn’t possibly be any worse than that one.”
Cara didn’t reply, and Maggie sat up to look over at her. “I think she fell asleep.”
Sam laughed softly. “Let her sleep. We’ll just keep our voices down.”
It was pleasant with just the three of them.
The fire was warm, casting its flickering light through the room.
As strange and improvised a Christmas Eve as this had been, Sam found himself content.
He had his daughter on one side of him, and the woman he was pretty sure he was falling in love with nestled up soft and snug against his other side.
Both of them, all three of them, were safe and warm.
Whatever awaited them in the morning, he couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than to relax in this moment and simply exist.