Absinthe & Angels #2
“Did they just eat twenty-dollar bills?” Michael says.
“Okay, that isn’t a few beers. These guys are on something.
” He raises his voice. “Well, apparently, we’ve fed you.
Now, if you walk back a few steps, you can grab a handful of snow to wash that down.
Then it’s time to go and have yourselves a very merry—”
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“You know what this window needs?” Michael mutters. “Curtains.”
When Ava doesn’t respond, he turns and says, “Ava?”
She’s returning from the kitchen. In her hands, she holds a bag. She opens it to show a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.
“I’m giving them what they want,” she says.
“Okay, but we’re not opening that door.”
“Of course we aren’t.” She heads for the bedroom. “Just keep them busy.”
She shuts the bedroom door, and outside it, she can hear Michael talking to the mummers.
Meaningless patter—asking them where they’re from, what they want for Christmas, whether they have family plans…
Acting as if there is nothing odd going on at all.
Nothing unnerving. Certainly nothing frightening.
Michael is staying calm, cracking jokes, trying to handle an irrational situation rationally.
And so will she. She’ll forget the terror of that childhood Christmas Eve, and instead she’ll remember the day after it, when two of the mummers came to her house.
Without the costumes, she knew them from town—the couple who ran the bakery.
They apologized for frightening her. They’d had too much to drink and hadn’t realized she’d been genuinely terrified.
Not boogeymen—just regular people who’d gotten carried away with the spirit—and the spirits—of the season.
That explanation hadn’t worked for three-year-old Ava.
She’d never been able to set foot in their bakery again, and she’d spent the next two Christmas Eve nights sleeping under her bed.
Even these days, when she goes home for the holiday, if mummers come to call, she finds a reason to be out for the evening.
But Ava is not three years old anymore, and there is indeed a rational explanation here. If she can’t see eyeholes or faces, that’s the absinthe messing with her mind. The men didn’t really eat those twenties—they just shoved them into their pillowcases.
A couple of idiots who’ve had too much booze or too much dope and decided to prank the neighbors.
All she has to do now…
She opens the bedroom window, drops out the bag and walks back into the front room, where the two figures stand silent at the window. She strides up to it and raises her voice. “You want wine and food, right?”
No answer. Those unnerving masks stare at her, and as hard as she tries to spot eyeholes, she can’t.
Absinthe. Just the absinthe.
“There’s a bag beneath the back window,” she says. “It has wine and chocolates. Now, if you insist on singing us a damn song, go for it.”
Silence. Then they say in unison, “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“I did!” Ava’s voice rises. “It’s right outside the window.” She jabs her finger toward the bedroom. “Go get it.”
Neither figure moves.
“Peyton,” Michael whispers.
Ava glances at him.
“It’s Peyton or Chris,” he says. “They’re both at the chalet tonight. They know where we’re staying, and they were there when you talked about the mummers. They set this up.”
He walks to the window. “Peyton sent you, didn’t she? Or Chris.” He glances back at Ava. “Maybe Jory. Your brother knows where we’re staying, doesn’t—?”
The glass smashes. Four hands reach in and grab Michael. Grab and yank him off his feet so fast that he’s sailing out the window before Ava realizes what’s happening.
She snatches at his feet as they fly through, and she catches one, but the mummers easily rip it from her grasp.
She starts scrambling through the window, screaming for them to stop. She’ll give them what they want, whatever they want.
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
Their voices float back as they cross the snow at an impossible speed, Michael struggling and shouting as they drag him behind.
Ava wheels. Her gaze lights on the bottle. Not good enough. She flies into the kitchen and grabs a knife. Then she races out the door.
They’re gone.
Completely gone.
Ava can’t even find tracks in the snow. She’s been out here for at least twenty minutes, walking and listening and trying to hold it together.
Every whistle of the wind or cry of a bird has her jumping, knife raised.
She’s long since lost feeling in her feet, but she never considers going back for her boots or coat.
As she walks, she thinks of earlier, envisioning a moonlight walk in the snow.
The perfect cap to a perfect evening.
She swallows back a gasping sob.
When she hears a grunt, she follows it, expecting to find an animal. Instead…
She isn’t sure what she’s seeing at first. The moon has disappeared behind cloud cover, and all she can make out is three figures standing in the forest. When she blinks hard, she sees white pillowcases over the heads of the two mummers.
But it isn’t Michael between them. It’s a tree. They’re flanking a tree, and they’re…
Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.
One lifts a glass and takes a drink. The other pushes something into his mouth.
Michael. Where is—?
The cloud passes, and the moonlight shines down, and she sees Michael. He’s tied to the tree. Bound and struggling, grunting against a gag.
Blood streams down his chest, glistening in the moonlight.
The first mummer presses his glass against a cut in Michael’s neck, filling it with blood. The other chomps down on Michael’s arm, ripping out a chunk of flesh and gobbling it down.
Ava runs at them, screaming, “No!”
The mummers stop. They just stop. She’s twenty feet away, running as fast as she can through the snow, and they just stand there, watching her. She sees Michael’s eyes go wide, and he madly shakes his head, howling against the gag, telling her to go, to run.
She raises the knife and charges at the first mummer and—
Ava starts from sleep, gasping for breath, Michael’s name on her lips, her fingers aching, as if she’s still gripping the kitchen knife.
She blinks and stares at the lights of the Christmas tree. Behind her, Michael is reading from A Christmas Carol. A half-finished glass of absinthe rests by her elbow.
She pushes up, blinking harder now, trying to clear her head. The lights seem to glitter and glide, and her ears feel as if they’re stuffed with cotton, every sound distorted.
She turns and sees Michael’s empty glass beside her. And next to it…
Is that the knife? From the kitchen?
She rubs her eyes and sits up. Michael sits crosslegged, his sweatshirt hood pulled up as he reads.
“Michael?”
He turns. His hood falls back, and she sees…
A white pillowcase, crudely drawn face grinning at her.
Michael reaches for the knife.
“Give me food. Give me wine…”