Season’s greetings, humans. So just as I was lamenting the switch from Halloween themed entertainment to the joyful, happy, “miracle of the season” theme (If I hear one more Christmas song…), I remembered the *true* tradition of the holiday season: ghost stories! Here is a totally true (it happened to a friend of a friend of mine, or so I’m told) tale of the season to appease the restless spirits.
Now, there are a lot of theories about ghosts, about whether or not they really exist, and about why some of us, from time to time, suddenly cast off the veil of our own doubt and see the shadows that exist around us. What causes that moment of sight? Is it the strike of midnight on the clock? That walk home past the graveyard at night? Or perhaps even the things we read in a book? Which of these factors caused our protagonist’s experience? I leave that to you to decide.
It was already dark when work wrapped up for the evening, and it was darker still when the office Christmas party finally ended. Our protagonist would have been one of the first to leave. He was normally the one to excuse himself from the party early. On this particular evening, however, he remembered he had forgotten to submit a document for a case he’d been working on closing, and he knew it couldn’t wait until the office re-opened in the new year.
It seemed only to take him a few minutes to finish up, but as he gathered his coat and tossed into his briefcase the book a colleague had lent him, he noticed that the party’s jumbled laughter had faded into silence. A few paper plates and cups, still scattered across the tables, were all the evidence that remained of their gathering. He clicked the light switch as he made his way to the door, and one by one, each bank of lights flickered the building into darkness. Only the dim red glow of the exit sign remained to illuminate his shadow as he armed the alarm and locked the door behind him.
He had an uneasy feeling, and as he walked through the empty parking lot toward his car, he tried to reason it away. It was a dark night. There was no moon, and the fog bank seemed to smother the glow of the nearby streetlights. He was tired. He would feel better when he got home and put his favourite movie on.
His drive home was oddly quiet. There was next to no traffic. The last-minute holiday shoppers must have already gone home to do their wrapping. Happily, this meant his drive home was quicker than usual, and he smiled softly to himself as he pulled into his driveway, locked his car, and quickly stepped onto his back deck.
It was really dark. He fumbled for his keys, wondered why his security light didn’t click on. He reached his hand into his house first, feeling for the light switch as he stepped inside. Click. The darkness persisted. He clicked the switch again. Still nothing. Power’s out. Were the lights on at his neighbour’s when he drove by? He couldn’t remember. He locked the door behind him and felt his way along the hallway and into his living room. It was dark enough outside that he could just make out the pattern of his blinds across the floor, but it was enough to lead him to his desk—and the flashlight he kept in the drawer.
He felt the familiar click under his thumb and the light flashed on, and he cast it over the room, his uneasiness increasing with ever distorted shadow the beam threw onto the floor. He made his way over to his couch, oddly aware of how each footstep shook his nerves, as though he should be tiptoeing through the silence of the darkness.
He sat down gently and pulled the afghan his mother had bought him (he needed to make the room look a little homey, after all) around him. Then, looking for a way to calm his nerves, he remembered his briefcase, still clutched tightly in his fingers, and the book he’d tossed inside. He pulled it out and flashed the light over its cover: Beyond the Fifth Dimension: Examining the Possibility of Ghosts.
He laughed as he tossed it onto the coffee table. That certainly won’t help, he thought, curling his feet under himself and sinking down further onto his couch—and under his blanket.
What seemed like a few moments later, he startled awake, a feeling of cold dread quickly spreading over him. He must have dozed off, he decided, wondering at the sudden feeling of terror that had awakened him, and his desperate unwillingness to peer out over his blanket.
When he looked up, there was a man standing over him, a knife clutched in his left hand, his eyes, cold and unyielding, staring straight at him as he trembled on the couch, frozen in terror and hardly able to breathe.
The two stared at each other, neither moving, neither speaking, neither seeming even to breathe, for what felt like hours, until the flashlight, which had unwittingly slipped from our protagonist’s hand, thunked onto the floor, flickered briefly, and went out.
It was back in our protagonist’s hands before he even knew he’d reached for it, and when he looked back toward the figure, it was gone. He shone the flashlight around the room, then around the house, searching for the man. When he reached the back door, he noticed that the lock was still latched. He was reaching for it when a flash of light startled him. The security light. He heard a loud click and the hall light buzzed on.
The power was back. He felt reassured, the light affirming that he was indeed alone in his house. As his uneasiness faded, he wondered if the man had been the last waking piece of a nightmare that had startled him awake, but as he stepped into the living room, his eyes fell upon the coffee table. The book was gone.
If you’re looking to get into the Christmas spirit (and off the topic of those Christmas spirits), come check out The Night Market this Thursday night!
Thoughts from the Gallery 