A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories (21 page)
Read A Fantastic Holiday Season: The Gift of Stories Online
Authors: Kevin J. Anderson
We’d just served the pie when we heard a commotion outside. A noise somewhere between a howl and a shriek rose up among the trailers and Mama’s eyes went wide. “What was that?”
I made eye contact with Johnny Alvin. He’d tucked the pistol into his coat pocket and now he stood and went to the coat rack, pulling his jacket on and checking outside as he went. Bobby was oblivious but Pastor Frank looked nervous. Mama and my sister looked scared. Dana watched me.
Johnny checked the lock and came back to the table. “I reckon we finish the pie and after that we should all head into town. Your neighbors might be getting rowdy again.”
“Bless their hearts,” Mama said.
“Amen,” Pastor Frank agreed.
We ate the pie and as we ate it, more voices joined the other outside. Hungry voices. Hollow, aching voices. “What’s wrong with those people?” Mama asked.
I wished I could answer her but I couldn’t. Instead, I wondered just how far the world might change and what that might mean for next Thanksgiving and every Thanksgiving after. Hell, Christmas wasn’t even a month out and I wasn’t sure what the world might look like then. Of course, I wasn’t even sure what tomorrow looked like; a world done in by Great Granny’s Grateful Pie.
When my phone rang in my pocket it startled me. Uncle Auggie’s voice, muffled by the sound of the road, surprised me. “Hey Kay Ann,” he said. “The family all still there?”
“Yessir,” I said. “Just finishing pie.”
“You have situational awareness, PFC Cooper?”
“I have some, Sergeant Cooper.”
“Good. Sit tight then. We’re coming for you. Feds are establishing a bivouac at the high school. Me and the boys have been deputized.” He paused. “You too, of course.”
I had everyone into their coats and waiting by the door when we heard the loud horns indicative of a convoy. Mama and Jessie Lynn had protested, insisting that the dishes be clean, complaining the whole while about being rushed and leaving messes behind and not understanding the why of it.
I didn’t have the heart to tell them and neither did Johnny Alvin but the hand in his coat pocket told me he knew everything that needed knowing.
When Uncle Auggie and his convoy of trucks and RVs, all chained up and brightly lit, passed into the mobile park, we saw the men and women in their parkas, hunting rifles and shotguns held at the ready from their vantage points in the truck beds. I saw Auggie had modified my underpinning into a type of wind-breaker on several of the trucks.
“Why August Cooper,” my Mama declared, “what kind of hillbilly parade have you cooked up?”
He winked. “The kind that might just save your life, Betty June. If you haven’t noticed, things are going to shit at the moment. Get your things and climb in.”
My uncle held a familiar rifle—an M16A1, aged well from the days he’d shipped it home from Vietnam one piece at a time. I sidled over to him. “You should go, Mama.”
“But I don’t—”
“I’ll tell you on the way, Betty June.” She looked at me and then let someone pull her up into the open door of an RV.
There was a howl and a flash a movement followed by the crack of a rifle. Something heavy fell into the now and everyone jumped.
“So what do you know, Uncle Auggie?”
“It’s spread past Lexington now, Louisville, too. Feds are in town looking for Patient Zero. Think they have him and if they do, they might be able to sort out whatever the fuck is happening.”
I frowned. “Hank Summers ain’t patient zero.”
Auggie scratched his head. The others were all in now but Johnny Alvin who hung back, his eye on Bobby where he sat in the passenger side of Auggie’s truck. “Then who is patient zero?”
“Pig named Wilbur,” I said. “He’s been hiding under my trailer when he isn’t raising hell.”
Auggie looked at the convoy then back to my trailer. “That pig could come in handy. Maybe I’ll send y’all on and see if I can track him down.”
“Or tell the feds where he is,” Johnny suggested.
I shook my head. “They’ve got their hands full.” I looked at my uncle. “You do, too. I need you to get my people to a safe place. I can fetch us that pig just fine on my own.” I looked at Johnny. “Can I borrow your ride?”
“You want help?”
I looked at Bobby sitting there, the fear starting to pale his face. “You’re already helping, Johnny.”
Johnny Alvin handed over his keys. Then, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the pistol. “Here.”
I took both, slipping the keys into my pocket and weighing the pistol in my hand.
“You qualified on one of those, soldier?” my uncle asked.
“No sir,” I said. “But I’ll make due.”
He grinned, thumbed the safety on his rifle and then handed it over. “I know you can handle one of these.”
“Damn straight I can.” I passed the pistol back to Johnny and took the M16. It felt at home in my hands. Uncle Auggie dropped an ammo belt over my neck.
“Don’t be long,” he said. “And I want my rifle back.”
I smiled but I knew it was grim. “I’ll bring you the rifle
and
a pig.”
He put a finger in the center of his forehead. “Right in the head, Kay Ann,” he said. “Only thing that works.”
I nodded. “Got it.”
He nodded back. Then we hugged. I thought for a moment about pulling everyone back out of their respective vehicles so I could hug them, too. Even Pastor Frank. But I didn’t. I’d see them soon enough.
I looked Johnny Alvin square in the eye and shook his hand. “I’ll bring your ride back, too.”
“Don’t sweat it,” he said. “It’s the mortuary’s.”
There was another shriek and this time, two gunshots cracked open the air but I didn’t flinch. It was all coming back to me, a more familiar home than my nearby trailer. I saw Mama fussing at the window, a panicked look on her face, as they started up the convoy at Auggie’s wave. Then, he climbed back into the driver’s seat to start the caravan rolling.
I waved and watched as they made their way around the loop, back to the highway. The sun was high, a white wafer behind the softer gray of cloud. The snow was deep and a low wind rustled the nearby pines. Somewhere, something that used to be a neighbor of mine howled at the quiet of the day and underneath my porch, a pig squealed, dark and ominous.
“Hey Wilbur,” I said. “Good pig.”
And then with my belly full of turkey and my heart full of family, I clicked off the safety and took myself gratefully hunting alone.
***
Light, life, and joy tend to define the holidays, but it has its share of ghosts and shadows, too.
Bestselling author Heather Graham examines souls lost in darkness in this very spectral story, and the one power—love—that can illuminate their way.
—KO
Santa’s Mortuary
Heather Graham
Nina Danbury leaned back in the massive whirlpool tub in her room at the bed and breakfast and closed her eyes, luxuriating in the hot bubbling water around her. It was the perfect end to the perfect day. She’d never been to St. Augustine before and she and Matt had spent the day on the tourist trail, walking for miles and miles. They’d spent hours at the old fort learning about the Spanish settlers of long ago, the English takeover, the return to Spain, and the arrival of the Americans. They’d seen the Spanish Military Hospital, buildings created by Henry Flagler, the lighthouse … the beach, shops and an old school house and more. She was in love with the city.
And she was in love with Ainsworth House, their bed and breakfast.
The place was massive, she knew, and while there were ten rooms that were let each night, the house also functioned now as a Christmas venue for young and old. A playground with elves had been set up in the massive parlor below with all kinds of activities for little ones and older ones. Santa came every night to sit in a massive red chair in the “grand receiving salon” in the main section of the house. The owners here were very crafty; the house dressed up for the season. They’d learned that it was decked out differently for Valentine’s Day and Easter—when it was the Easter Bunny who sat on the chair in the “grand receiving salon”—and for the Fourth of July, Thomas Jefferson and other impersonators came to regale guests with stories from their day. For the two months preceding Halloween, the house became a maze of ghoulish delights.
It was amazing that their room—in the right wing of the building—could be so quiet and charming while all manner of activity went on in other parts of the house. But, according to Matt, they didn’t build like this anymore. The walls were wonderfully thick; the house had been planned to keep warmth in when it was winter and to be cool in summer and that called for old insulation that could still perform in a far superior manner to that slapped together today.
She smiled, easing back in the tub and closing her eyes. Her tired muscles were in certain bliss. Later that night—right at the stroke of midnight—she and Matt would take the house tour with the owner and learn about the house itself and the part it had played in St. Augustine’s history.
As she lay there, she smiled, listening to the soft whirr of the moving water the only sound in her mind. Matt had come back in. He’d sat down with such silence that she hadn’t heard him. But now, she felt him. She knew that he’d taken a seat on the rim at the back of the tub. He slipped his hand into the water and stroked her calf. There was something deliciously sensual about his touch, though she hadn’t ever thought before that her calf was the most erotic zone on her body.
“Nice,” she murmured. “Sweet.”
She kept her eyes closed, feeling the water, feeling his touch. He moved down on the floor, next to the tub on his knees and she felt both of his hands on her then, stroking and massaging both her legs. The sensation was so good it was almost … climatic.
“Matt,” she murmured. She opened her eyes.
For a moment she was so terrified her scream froze in her throat.
It wasn’t Matt.
There was a man knelt down by the side of the tub with sandy blond hair, some kind of a uniform, and a sweeping feathered hat. He looked at her. His features were well defined; he was exceedingly handsome.
But there was a bullet hole dead center in his forehead and blood spilled over the white cotton shirt he wore beneath a re-enactor’s frock coat.
At last, sound escaped her.
She screamed.
And screamed.
And leapt out of the tub and raced out of the bathroom, stark naked.
She would have raced out of the room and the house onto the streets of St. Augustine just as she was if it weren’t for the real Matt who was stretched out on the bed.
“Nina!” he called, springing up to grab her before she could open the door.
She tried to explain; she told him there was a man in the bathroom. He blinked, disbelieving.
“Nina, I’ve been here since you went in—no one went in there!” he told her.
“He was there; he touched me!” she told him.
Holding her dripping and trembling body, he half-dragged her to the bathroom door. Nina closed her eyes, shaking with terror, imagining all kinds of horrible things. The man in the bathroom had a gun or a knife. He and Matt would fight.…
He’d had a bullet hole in his head; there had been blood all over him.
“Nina, there’s no one here. No one at all,” Matt said.
She opened her eyes; Matt was right.
There was no one in the large and beautifully appointed bathroom. The water in the tub continued its soft bubble and whirr.
And that was all.
“It’s quite one thing for a house to have a few ghoulish ghosts when one is calling it
The Haunted Crypt
for Halloween,” Trinity Ainsworth said, looking desperately at Logan Raintree and Kelsey O’Brien. “And quite another when you have it open as
Santa’s Land
for Christmas!”
Trinity was a pretty young woman in her late twenties; she was tiny with enormous dark eyes and long brown hair and at the moment, she fit the image of a damsel in distress to the core.
Logan Raintree looked over at his wife, Kelsey. As friends, Trinity and Kelsey were certainly the long and short of it; Kelsey was tall and willowy, blond and very beautiful and far more sophisticated, bearing an aura of confidence. But then, Kelsey had started off her law-keeping career as a United States Marshall and she had always known what she wanted to do. Now, Kelsey and he were both Federal agents—part of a “special” unit that dealt with particular and peculiar cases nationwide, known unofficially as the Krewe of Hunters. They were there, however, in a non-official capacity because of Kelsey’s friendship with Trinity. Kelsey hailed from a far distant part of Florida—she’d grown up way, way down the peninsula in Key West. But when Trinity and Kelsey had been children—traveling up and down the state with families—they’d met, first in Key West, and then, when Kelsey’s family had taken her up to the northern end of the state and to spend time with Trinity there; they had now been friends most of their lives.
Logan hadn’t expected that he and Kelsey would spend their Christmas vacation trying to “hunt” down a lecherous ghost. It wasn’t that “ghosts” or the earthly remnants of lost souls didn’t play a large part in their lives. But they were usually concerned with hunting down the living who committed atrocious acts—and the fact that they could sometimes speak with the dead was the advantage they had over other agents who loved to mock them and hum
Twilight Zone
music when they were around.
But they had just been packing for their flights down to Miami and on to Key West when the call had come from Trinity—and so here they were. And Logan loved the fact that Kelsey could have seen some of the things she’d seen in her life and worked some of the cases she had while still retaining such a wealth of empathy and compassion for others.
And for Trinity.
A many-times great grandfather had originally built Ainsworth House but it had been lost after the Civil War. Trinity had dreamed of buying the place back her entire life. She had worked and saved and cajoled family members—bribed and pleaded—and purchased it. She’d owned it several years now.
Logan could understand her passion. The place was beautiful.
He was facing west as he saw it for the first time.
The sun was setting behind the structure and cast a blood red haze around the white-washed grandeur of the old plantation-style home and almost made it appear as if it had been painted in blood.
He’d already heard some of the history. It had never actually been a plantation—or working farm—but rather it had been built as a city dwelling for Percy Ainsworth, a Southern aristocrat, in 1833. But the Civil War had come along and Florida had been the third state in the Union to secede and by the time the war had ended, Percy Ainsworth had been in dire financial straits. Yankee Brent McNamara, ex-USA Navy lieutenant—stationed for a spell in St. Augustine when the Union invaded the city in 1862 and never let go—came in to buy the plantation from Ainsworth when all went to hell. By all accounts, he’d been a good man, and he’d allowed the family to stay for years because he was in love with Ainsworth’s young daughter. As that went, all was well—the young daughter was equally in love with him and they were soon married. But, as fate would have it, McNamara was killed in the house itself—shot and then stabbed in the middle of the night by an intruder who also made off with the family jewels—such as they were, after the war. Burt Holmsby, a banker, had been in love with Grace Ainsworth—now the widow Ainsworth—as well. But she died.
And when she died the bank came in and took the house, and sold it to a family of morticians who opened for business under the name of Fogarty and Sons Funeral Home—which the property remained until the 1990s when the last Fogarty himself was embalmed and given his last service right there where he had worked throughout his life. It was then purchased as a private family home by a fly-by-night rock star who quickly went through the money gained from his fifteen minutes of fame.
He was found dead in the embalming room—where he had often thrown lavish parties.
A stairway of thirteen steps led up to the first
ground
floor, which allowed for the foundations and basement to extend below ground level. Majestic pillars gave the house the true look of a plantation, just as the second story wraparound balcony. French doors on the balcony allowed for visitors to step out and see Matanzas Bay and other structures in the old section of town. From some areas of the balcony, Logan estimated, one could see the Plaza de la Constitución, the grand parade ground where the oldest settlers had once practiced at arms, where bands now played and where, once upon a distant time, the Spanish method of execution—garroting—had taken place.
But none of that really had to do with the house. And right now—despite the eerie cast the sun gave it, everything about the house seemed as cheery as the season. A choir of “light” angels were set up to sing carols. More lights adorned the old oak trees in the yard. A waving Santa stood on one side.
“It all looks bright and festive—truly beautiful,” Kelsey said, trying to be reassuring to her friend. “It doesn’t
look
haunted or … eerie in any way. Honestly.”
“Please, please—you’ll stay? You’ll do something?” Nina begged.
“Yes, of course, we intend to stay,” Kelsey said. She turned and looked at Logan. He nodded and forced a smile. He was lead man for the insular Krewe of Hunter units beneath Jackson Crow. Work seemed to rule their lives. He’d had visions of piña coladas on the beach—no ghosts, no bones, no dead men.
Then again, he didn’t even like piña coladas.
“Trinity, it was just one guest who was so upset?” Logan asked.
Trinity grimaced. “Come in, please, I’ll show you.”
They followed her up the steps and into the house. The door opened into a spectacular parlor with a massive fireplace and a hearth and a gorgeous curving stairway. Logan almost felt as if he’d entered into a medieval great hall.
Except that this place now reeked of the holidays. A wonderful toy train took up a large area to the far right; it was designed as if around an old English village with Tudor homes and cars that separated easily for little fingers. Another area boasted “Dancer, Prancer, Rudolph, and all! You pick, your stuff.” There was an area filled with Christmas pictures for little fingers to color in. Holly was all about; there was a giant tree. The house smelled of cinnamon and all good things.
“What wonderful work you’ve done here!” Kelsey said.
“Thank you,” Trinity murmured. “Come on upstairs; I don’t have more guests coming in until tomorrow night—if then. And my ‘elves’ aren’t due in for another hour.”
She led the way upstairs and down a hallway to the “right” wing. “The bedrooms are all on this side,” Trinity explained. “When we open the haunted house, it takes up the other rooms. There is gift-wrapping over there, a store of ‘Ten and Under Delights’ and a book nook where you can read or buy. Our entry is just a few dollars; people come in spend money and they really do it nicely—except now I don’t know.”
“Oh, Trinity, you really think that one woman being afraid in a bed and breakfast is going to ruin your business?” Kelsey asked.
“If it were Halloween …” Trinity murmured. “But it’s not!”
“What happened, exactly?” Logan asked.
“A ghost—with a bullet hole in his head and blood all over him—was touching her in the bathtub,” Trinity said.
“An amorous ghost?” Logan murmured.
Trinity looked at Kelsey wide-eyed. “Is he mocking me?”
“No, no, we’re just trying to figure out what’s going on. Okay, you’re certain it wasn’t a re-enactor? They are all over the city—especially now. Spanish soldiers, Civil War soldiers—”
“No. The two came in together; the boyfriend was on the bed while she went in to the whirlpool. Here!”
Dramatically, Trinity opened the door to a guest bedroom. It was a darned nice room. Doors opened to the balcony—which looked out over the bay. The drapes and bedspread were white; the furniture was mahogany. The room was spacious with the latest in a wide-screen television and entertainment center. A door led to the bathroom; Logan headed that way and looked in. The bathroom was enormous—something you didn’t find that often in a bed and breakfast. The whirlpool tub was large enough for two.
Kelsey had come in to stand by him. “Anything?” he asked her softly.
Kelsey looked at him and shook her head slightly. “Nothing.”
“Excuse me,” Trinity said. Her phone was ringing.
“What else do you know about the house? Deaths?” Logan asked his wife.
“It’s an old house—naturally, it’s supposed to be haunted. But, people see Osceola walking around the Castillo San Marcos all the time—headless and looking for his head, which by the way, was not lopped off; he died of natural causes and his physician took his head. Sorry, that’s not important here—it’s just that, well, haunted … people have seen a number of Civil War soldiers over time. And a beautiful young woman. I’m assuming she’s supposed to be Grace.”
