Authors: Tonya Hurley
Tags: #Young Adult, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Horror, #Humour
Xmas Spirit
Contents
Chapter 2: Home for the Holidaze
Chapter 3: Miracle on Hawthorne Street
Chapter 9: Have Yourself a Scary Little Christmas
Chapter 11: Up on the Grave-Top
Chapter 14: All I Want for Christmas Is You
Chapter 15: It’s a Wonderful Afterlife
For Michael and Isabelle
Acknowledgments
A heartfelt thanks to all of my readers around the globe. Merry Christmas.
Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself.
—Francis C. Farley
1
Blue Xmas
Yule Be There
Christmas isn’t just a time to make merry. It is also a time to answer the call of duty. Like salmon swimming desperately upstream, we are compelled, whether out of guilt or good intentions, to make the trip knowing full well how it is likely to end. Though we’d rather be on a beach or on the ski slopes or quite possibly anywhere else, a visit home can turn even the most sacred gathering into holy hell.
Distant stars twinkled in the cold night sky.
Music filled the air. Everyone hustled and bustled about, getting ready for the most magical time of the year. The apartment complex resembled a snow-covered ancient cemetery with thousands of tiny candles flickering. It was so beautiful. So peaceful. It was almost Christmas Eve in the Great Beyond.
Charlotte Usher was sitting at her desk, a pile of end-of-semester papers waiting patiently for her to review, as a distracting sound snuck through the opening of her barely cracked window, prompting her to leave her chair for the first time that day.
“What is that noise?!” Charlotte groused. She slammed the window shut and attempted to peer out the frosted windowpane to discover the source of the offensive tones.
She returned to her seat, just as another annoying sound from outside her door merged with the sugary drone still penetrating her window. It was a voice she recognized. She dropped her head into her hands and shook it. “Doesn’t anybody around here realize I’m working?” she huffed.
“Open up!”
Apparently not, she concluded, as a fearsome but rhythmic knocking began, adding a 3/4 backbeat to the din surrounding her.
Charlotte reluctantly rose again from her chair and walked to the door slowly, not particularly excited about what or whom she might find on the other side. She reached for the knob and pulled it open.
“It’s Christmas Eve. Are you going to work all day?” Eric asked, decked out in a studded leather jacket, jeans, and black engineer boots, with a slicked-back ducktail and a black Santa hat on his head.
“Oh, look!” Charlotte muttered with fake surprise. “It’s Elvis Claus.”
“Ah-hal have a ba-lew Chrustmus without you . . .”
Eric sang in his best Elvis voice, swaying his hips, trying his best to taunt Charlotte.
“Isn’t it a crime against humanity to impersonate the King during Christmas?” Charlotte asked.
Eric smiled warmly and strutted in, parking himself in her chair and throwing his boots up on her desk carelessly, knocking some of her papers to the floor.
“C’mon, Charlotte. We’ve worked really hard to get here. You can’t blame everyone for wanting to have some fun.”
“Everyone except me.”
“Listen, I just came here to see if you wanted to take a break and do some decorating with us. Maybe bring a little Christmas cheer. I had no idea I’d be running into Ebenezer Usher.”
“I have too much work to do,” she snipped.
“Still cranky, I see,” Eric said, pretending to check an imaginary wristwatch. “What are we going on, a month now? If you weren’t dead, I’d swear you were PMSing.”
He obviously knew how to press Charlotte’s buttons.
“Or maybe you have a case of the SADs—Seasonal Affective Disorder.”
“Season Affective Dead, maybe,” she said. Charlotte was peeved. “Look, you’d be cranky too if you had my workload and my responsibility. Trying to get the next Dead Ed class prepared for eternity. And the next. And the next! Just try and get anything done with that awful noise constantly coming through the window!”
“Awful noise?” Eric chided her. “Those are the angels singing, Charlotte. Practicing for Christmas. It’s almost here, not that you noticed.”
“Who has time for Christmas, Eric?”
“Who doesn’t?” Eric stared back. “What’s with you, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Charlotte said softly. “Maybe it’s all this work. I can’t see past it. Or . . .”
“Or what?” Eric interrupted. “Or maybe because we aren’t alive? Is that what you meant to say?”
“It’s just not the same.”
“You’re right,” he agreed, getting up and walking toward her. “It’s better.”
His enthusiasm was almost infectious. Almost.
“Look, Charlotte.” Eric motioned for the window.
Charlotte walked over and peered out and heard Deadhead Jerry singing,
“Angels we have heard when high . . .”
“Hey, Charlotte!” Green Gary cried. “Can you spot me while I hoist Call Me Kim on top of this evergreen? I have a pretty bad tree phobia. You know, after swerving my car to save that tree and, well, dying and all.”
“The reception is so much better up there.” Kim giggled, dialing the North Pole. She was still unable to give up her holiday cell phone calls, even though no one could really hear her, at least not in the obvious way. It seemed as if all their “vices,”
what had taken their lives, reared their heads at this time of year. But it was okay because it was Christmas, she thought.
“I can’t. I’m working!” Charlotte called out sternly. “What’s with the calls? I thought we were past that?”
“We’re just playing, Charlotte.” Kim smiled. “Everyone’s a kid at Christmas.”