Volume 2017 Issue 39 Article 22 7-15-2017 Haunting Christmas Marina Favila Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mcircle Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Favila, Marina (2017) "Haunting Christmas," The Mythic Circle: Vol. 2017 : Iss. 39 , Article 22. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mcircle/vol2017/iss39/22 This Fiction is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Mythic Circle by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm This fiction is available in The Mythic Circle: https://dc.swosu.edu/mcircle/vol2017/iss39/22 Haunting Christmas By Marina Favila I At first they were only irritated, the squeaked horribly; and the spirits, especially ghosts of Manorville Manor, seven souls the young ones, could play those stairs like a haunting the house they died in, or wandered violin. Ghostie-music, little Devin called it, by, in the process of dying, some restless, when he first squeaked out “The Water is some pining, as ghosts are wont to be, but Wide” in mid-July, when the boards were mostly content to call the manor home. And dry and weak. He’d learned the old song that makes sense. For who knows what right before catching a cold and dying of awaits us after death, the where or why or influenza in 1899; and his parents, two how of it? But here, in this beautiful old earnest do-gooders, who ran the Down on barn of a house, with its old-fashioned Your Luck Soup Kitchen for the town’s gabled roof and tall cathedral ceilings, its down on their luck, were so devastated by imposing stone fireplace and hanging the loss of their fat-cheeked Devvy, they chandelier, with the tiny frosted bulbs the packed up and moved away within weeks of shape of tiny frosted flames, and one large the little boy’s death, leaving him window, set at the top of a spiral staircase, inconsolable. Those wheezing, whining, where the ghosts could float up and turn wood-turned tunes, drawn out from the round and look out at the town they were manor’s creaking stairs, did much to distract born in, twinkling black and gold at night or the young spirit. washed pale grey at dawn—life could be So you see, up until then, the manor worse, they all knew. boasted a sterling reputation, for the living Then she moved in. and the dead. There’d even been talk of a Up until now they’d had a fine time, or a listing in the Northeast Haunted House good enough time, for they were dead, after Registry. Especially after Prof. Hautboy, the all, but before her, why, before her there’d eldest spirit in human years, had organized been plenty to do, and they’d done it all and the ghosts into performance sections: bumps they’d done it well. The house was a in the night, staircase interludes, whirlwinds veritable gold mine for ghosts. The attic and cold spots, and flashing lights—a wailed liked a banshee, drafty and cold, and specialty of the house on Halloween night, easy to manipulate. A quick turnabout by when Manorville Manor lit up like a Star one or two ghosts could create a mini- Wars laser show, shooting red and blue cyclone within seconds, rattling the attic across the sky. And those spritely inhabitants windows and shoving around old trunks of might have gone on forever, flashing their clothes and hatboxes and hat racks and lights and moving their trunks and moaning stacks of National Geographics, left long in the dark, had the girl moved into another ago by previous frightened owners. And the old house and not their lovely manor. stairs in the front and the stairs in the back But that girl, that girl, that slip of a girl, The Mythic Circle #39, pg. 12 with her college sweatshirt and skinny blue so oblivious to their presence? That’s what jeans. She’d arrived last spring on a warm rattled the ghosts. For no matter how hard afternoon, unloading a trunk full of antique they rapped or knocked or thumped or mirrors and faux fur rugs. She’d not even flickered the lights, she never gave them the bothered to check out the attic before time of day, not a backward glance or a signing the lease. Even the realtor seemed second look or a shiver or shock or a shocked that the girl knew nothing of the nervous tick—nothing. house’s legendary past. Or perhaps she “Youse think we didn’t exist!” Mrs. didn’t care. Her smile was as wide as the Spartini exclaimed, after the first few days. Mississippi, and her pearl-pink cheeks She was particularly perturbed, for the house flushed English rose at the thought she could was originally hers, built by a doting banker be so lucky to live here, in this castle-like for his Ten Cents a Dance bride. He’d stolen home, with its bad heat and faulty wires and Mabeleen from “The Orange Peel” creaky floor and leaky roof and that terribly speakeasy, just before midnight on New romantic staircase, with its wrought iron Year’s Eve, and the former dancehall hostess railing twirling round and round and up and took pride in reminding the ghosts that she out, to the large picture window set so high was the original mistress of the manor, and you could see the whole town and the river still ordered them about to knock on the beyond, its dark waters lit by sun and by door with a menacing rap or streak the old star, or just slow-moving under slate-grey walls with their skeletal hands. “I’se been clouds. She knew life could be worse. So doin’ this for over a century,” she huffed, she signed on the dotted line. Alone, she “and I don’t take kindly to being ignored in signed, no mother or father beside her, not me own home!” even a great aunt Lil or Uncle Joe. And the “There, there,” Prof. Hautboy soothed realtor placed the key in her hand, and her. He was by far the most educated of the rushed out the door, leaving the ghosts ghosts, with a PhD in musicology. “She’s amazed at her presumption. young. I saw it in many of my students,” Not much past twenty, maybe not that— and they all nodded, if ghosts can nod, that tall and thin, with the gangly stance of a is. Even the Farmer Boy twins shimmered in newborn foal, all knees and elbows in agreement, two oafish white shadows, constant motion. Hanging her curtains, blustery and pale, with a touch of stocking her fridge, pirouetting in the hall in aquamarine swirling around. They’d never front of the mirror, her honey-blonde hair said a word, nor left each other’s side, these gave a melodic bounce around her heart- past forty years. shaped face. Something there, too, in her “Yes, yes,” the professor continued, eyes, an open edge, a rawness that perplexed “she’s inattentive, with her iPod and the ghosts. For every so often she’d abruptly smartphone glued to her ear. But she’ll come stop whatever she was doing, cooking or around.” singing or banister-hopping, and stare into And they promised each other to give space for minutes on end. her a month, and took bets that such But still, to think the house would youthful self-centeredness would wear thin welcome her and her knick-knacks and her after two or three weeks. Give her time to multiple cans of turquoise paint— lug in her Goodwill sofa and flea market preposterous! And for someone so alert to lamps, and that god-awful basket of every detail of the house, how could she be marbleized eggs to clutter the fireplace The Mythic Circle #39, pg. 13 mantel. They’d even endured her initial children’s children, who held her hand and cleaning. The fumes alone should have patted her cheek, though they’d already sold driven them out, but they knew, they just everything in the house, save the bed where knew, once she settled down, they would she lay dying. have her attention, then send her packing to “I hid her keys in the refrigerator—my some sterile apartment in the suburbs! refrigerator, under the moldy lettuce in the But that was nearly nine months ago. vegetable bin.” Petunia fingered She’d arrived in April, a gorgeous yellowy remembered pearls, with the air of a duchess month, which turned bright green in early who’d suddenly found the maid in her May and emerald-green the next. But those brocade gown. “She looked for them alright, glorious colors faded fast to sage and gold but when she found them in the fridge she by summer’s end, then golded themselves to merely laughed—laughed! As if I’d done it a ruby fall and fell to the ground with a wrong!” silent crunch, quilting the earth in cranberry, “She’s a mess,” Prof.