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 Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 1:06 pm
Quote: Caroling has been a tradition for years, so it’s really no surprise when you hear a soft chorus from outside. What is a surprise is the fact that it’s three in the morning, and the moment they start singing you feel a chill in the air. It’s a song you’ve heard a hundred times before, but something about this version makes you go cold. If you move to the window, you will find no carolers, but the song is loud enough that you know you should be able to see them. They sing one song, and then there is silence. An eerie chill lingers, and your dreams are haunted by strange voices. You’ll probably never be able to hear that song again without feeling a chill.
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Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 1:07 pm
It was the winter break before her last semester, and traditional wisdom told Katie that she should be using the time to rest before the new year. But traditional wisdom was a square that didn’t think of how choice the holiday pizza tips could be, and Katie wasn’t afraid of a little cold as long as she could keep moving. In the span of a single shift, she delivered to two holiday office parties, a grumpy old man eating pizza alone who had taken the time to write ‘0’ on the tip line, a group of young teenagers who were experiencing the rite of passage of ordering takeout themselves for the first time, a red-eyed couple who were obviously pretty invested in bundling up together for warmth, and a smattering of other smaller festive events that dotted the night.
The bars stayed open until 2, which meant Katie was out until almost 3, pulling into the driveway of the Catigern home with the lights on her mom van dimmed. She hopped her way across the path from driveway to front porch, humming lowly to keep her distracted from the cold while she fumbled for her keys with gloved hands. When she stepped into the warmth of the foyer, she sloughed off a sigh and her coat, rubbing at the redness in her face until her nose and cheeks started to feel alive again. Katie used the light of her phone screen to climb the dark stairs up to her bedroom, followed by the persistent smell of garlic and cheese that clung to her clothes. Traditional wisdom told Katie that she should be heading to shower, or straight to bed, but her mind was awake and her thoughts were racing and trying to sleep would lead to nothing except endless idea spirals. She sent out a couple of texts to people who might possibly be awake, just in case someone wanted to hang, then settled down in her desk chair, prepared to watch russian meme videos until exhaustion caught her or the sun rose, whichever happened first.
It was about the second forklift video that Katie noticed the voices.
They had been soft at first, muffled by natural house noises and the persistent breath of the heater, but Katie could hear them as distinctly other than the video playing in the background. She leaned towards her computer, just to double-check that some ad hadn’t popped up, but even with her tabs closed she still heard them, somewhere vaguely past the hallway leading back towards the stairs and the front door. They called to her, sweet as melancholy could be:
...Please have snow…
...and mistletoe…
...and presents by the tree…
It sounded more real than recording, a certain hollowed out space in the notes that couldn’t be matched by a speaker. But she had just come from the front door, wouldn’t she have noticed carolers if they were at another house? She grabbed her phone and moved slowly for the door, her expression knotted by confusion and her footsteps soft, to make sure she wasn’t the one who woke anyone up. Some of the voices almost sounded familiar, drained of their warmth as they were. Did someone on the team set this up as a joke? Katie was already thinking of possible suspects, but something wasn’t right. In the absence of any kind of backup instrumentals, the voices sounded empty, almost sinister. And even though she’d only moved a few feet into the hallway, they sounded imminently closer, less muffled.
Christmas Eve...will find me…
...where the lovelight gleams…
Reaching the top of the stairs, Katie paused, eyes trained on the dark glass leading to outside. It couldn’t have come from further away from the porch, but it was empty, devoid of any of the company of carolers it would take to have such a chorus, men and women and boys and girls and among them something that tugged at her heartstrings and bit at her eyes. Now that she was listening, there was no doubting the acoustics. They couldn’t be outside. But it wasn’t a recording. No one else was awake.
Katie felt colder than she’d been all night, but she still took a step down the stairs.
I’ll be home...for Christ...mas…
They had to be just beyond the foyer. Katie couldn’t breathe. But just as she reached for the bannister, all of the voices cut to nothing but the softness of her shuddered breathing. In the quiet, she couldn’t possibly feel more surrounded. And from nothingness, a singular voice broke from the crowd of others, so close that she felt the passing warmth on the back of her neck:
“If only in my dreams.”
Katie felt it more than she heard it, and clung to the railing as she whirled on her feet, staring wide-eyed at the nothingness behind her. She knew the voice, she knew it, and before she realized what she was doing she was scrambling wildly up the banister, frantic hands desperate, clawing for the top of the stairs. “Gwen, wait, Gwennie please--”
In her flight from the ghost chorus, Katie nearly bowled over the youngest Catigern, catching the scream in her throat. Beau sleepily stood at the center of the hallway, rubbing his nose with one hand and cradling something against his chest with the other. “I heard her too,” he murmured, voice froggy, and then he leaned his head against the threshold of the closed door beside him and let his shoulders sink. By the time Katie padded over to him, trying herself to breathe, she could see how his wiry frame shook in the darkness and the cold, and under his bent head she heard a soft hiccuped sniff.
Once upon a time, Beau had been short enough for Katie to kneel down to hug him, but at ten he was already pushing five feet on a frame of skin and bones. Instead, she opted to surround him in her best bear hug, resting her chin on the top of his head. No words fixed the ache in her chest, and so she said nothing, brushing the softness of his hair while she swayed. It was bad enough for her to bear. She couldn’t imagine what he could be thinking.
Beau shuffled, and when Katie glanced down she finally saw what he’d been holding: a white ball, gilded with a six pointed star. Her heart caught in her throat. “Where did you get that,” she whispered, glancing back to the open door of her room. Had he gone in there while she was sneaking? While she was at work?
“It was next to Gwen’s door,” the boy murmured, shuffling out of the embrace so he could set the trinket down, just outside the threshold. “Just like that. What is it?”
Katie knelt down, staring at the ball, and then the door. It was the only one in the hallway to not have a name monogrammed on it with painted wooden letters, but if she looked carefully she could still see the four stripped spots of paint where there used to be glue. She considered what to say, how to piece things together, and in the meanwhile she picked up the ball.
“Can you keep a secret?” Katie asked, trying to smile.
Beau wiped at his eyes, looked at the ball, frowned, sniffed. “I don’t wanna.”
Katie paused, tilting her head. Beau would have loved Chauvet. “It’s not a scary secret, I promise.”
“No,” the boy insisted, louder than their nighttime whispers. “Gwen got a secret and then she went missing, I don’t want any more secrets!”
Something snapped, like a bone being set, and suddenly the world was too sharp, too in focus. Katie’s expression dropped. The ball dropped, her hands useless to hold it. She hugged him again, this time selfishly so.
“Okay,” Katie whispered, overtaken by the hot ribbons of tears rolling down her face. She didn’t try to sniffle or sob or fight it, but the more she raced through the possibilities, the more she clinged to Beau, nodding her head. Her mind combed over the only possible conclusion, running over it like she was examining a fresh scab begging to get peeled away. “No secrets, then. Okay?”
Beau hesitated, but Katie could feel him nod in her grasp. “Okay.”
Slowly, Katie untangled herself from her kid cousin, ending their contact with a ruffle of his hair. “Go back to bed,” she murmured, reaching reluctantly for the ball in his hands. It passed wordlessly between them, and then he nodded, turning back towards his own bedroom door.
“Don’t go missing, too,” he whispered sadly, and then he closed the door, leaving Katie alone in the hallway with her thoughts.
Time ticked forward, after it had felt still for so long. Katie’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She ignored it, kneeling in front of the door with the ball of Chauvet in her hands.
She had to know.
“I pledge my life and my loyalty to Cosmos, and to Chauvet,” she began, her head bowing low. “I humbly request your aid...so that in return I may give you mine.” Chauvet came to her with little of the glitz or shimmer she’d grown accustomed to, and in her limbs she felt a lightness--
--and then the page was gone, stolen by starlight.
(1558 words)
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