Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Christmas Wish Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

CHRISTMAS WISH

Fear had her insides liquid and aching to explode. She’d roosted much of the day by the thick, foggy, skewed glass of the kitchen window, looking over the frozen white world; now, beneath the beaming blue moon. The worn leather soles of her shoes patted against the cedar boards of the floor. This was bad and impossible.

Outside, the laneway had smoothed over with drifted snow, burying the cart tracks and footprints that might’ve suggested when their parents had left them. Sometime in the night, had to be, she would’ve heard them otherwise. Mary was the eldest and it was her job to stand watch, at least until they returned and settled the terror and guilt boiling her grey matter.

“Will they be home before morning?” David asked, the second born of the threesome. He was nine. “They will, will not they? They have to.”

Mary spied him over a shoulder, wiping a tear against the rough wool of the blanket she’d draped like a shawl. The orange candlelight flicker danced a morbid hue upon his pale cheeks. Mary shivered, partly cold, partly something else, everything else.

She sighed, tried to nod, but found her head too heavy with thoughts, and not only concerning her parents. Running and smeary and too red against the alabaster tone of her thighs. It was not her fault that she’d begged as she had. No, not at all. Mary was eleven and had recently become a woman according to those smears and those stains on her shared bedsheets.

Fingers bloody and face wet with tears, she’d gone to her mother, begging an audience and assurances. Something was so wrong, she was bleeding, and from the unspoken place. Her mother had shrugged off the news and said, “Aunt Beatrice’s came young, too.” This made Mary want to scream. Blood from within was blood she’d have to do without, and when did it stop? Did she bleed to death? That blood felt like it wanted to seep forever, streaming and lumpy with pieces of…what? Her, were those bits of her organs, perhaps her heart even.

For her that red trickle-trickle, gush-gush-trickle had ruined Christmas, at least inwardly. “Quiet, girl,” her mother had said when she persisted, terrified at how her father raised his lip and sneered at her, like she’d bled on purpose. “Quiet now. Act your age. You’re a woman now.”

Mary swallowed her emotions and assisted her brother and sister as they stringed the popped corn. She had helped with the baking and held the fattest chicken of the pen while her father removed the head and then the feathers. By candlelight, she and her siblings read from the Bible until it was time to sleep. The youngers were too giddy for steady rest on the eve of Christmas. They bounced and sang, whispered gleeful Christmas wishes of those gifts that sat beneath the tree. Mary blew out the candles and demanded their silence.

“Sorry, Mary,” Shirley said.

“Sorry, Mary,” David said.

She cried into her pillow while Shirley, seven, breathed sleepy air through the corner of their shared blanket. If David heard her, he remained quiet.

Their parents certainly did not hear, did not care.

A period was normal and even silly to cry over; her mother hissed this sentiment, but gave no explanation, and Mary did not understand. The blood continued oozing, though slowed, and what does the crimson spillage promise but pain and the eventual?

Was she good enough for Heaven? Would God accept her, despite that she could’ve been better, focused harder on her chores, been nicer to her siblings? Had she not just shouted at them?

Mary buried a wail in the cotton of her pillowcase.

The blood. Her fingers trailed and found it wet and hot. That blood was to be inside but was running free. John the stableboy who worked with the blacksmith in town had received a kick from a finicky steed one day a few months earlier and grew feverous while bandaged and bedridden. Out of options, the doctor opened the boy’s veins to let the fever run. He was dead inside three hours.

His blood ran as her blood ran.

Three hours until death. How long did Mary have? She had no way of knowing. Would it ever stop? How dare her mother ignore her, how dare her father pretend there was nothing to hear at all and worse, a sickening thing she brought upon them. How dare they not seek the doctor!

Her insides were coming out.

Tears and blood ran. Her hands were like tongues at canker sores, fingers dipping into a burning well, coming away freshly bloodied. That liquid shined under the bright moon glow streaming in through the small bedroom window.

Mary imagined all the life she’d miss once she bled to death—no marriage, no children of her own, no house to grow old within—and coupled it with how little it mattered to anyone. Her voice cracked and she buried her face deeper, dreaming that she’d inhale the cotton pillowcase so completely that her troubles and fears would meet oblivion in soft death rather than slow terror.

Death, one way or another.

Fury stung her and she quietly wished to share it all and then some. “Let them feel this pain. Let them know my terror. Let them meet indifference at the gates of the abyss.”

Warmth then, but not from the burning blood. As the world slept, invisible arms comforted her with long, almost familiar limbs. She did not lift her head when lips found her cheek, nor when those lips kissed her soiled hands as if cleaning them; sucking her slumbering fingers, tonguing beneath the fingernails as if ravenous for that terrible blood.

She remained still through it all as that form nuzzled tight and comforted her. The feeling evaporated for a moment as a voice whispered into her ear, “Does the fresh woman wish the Christmas thoughts be true? Does she wish the parents know thine pain and fear and impending demise?”

The voice was not her sister. It was not her brother. It was not her mother, nor her father. Mary shivered and licked her lips, a thrill coursed her insides. A damp mouth touched her ear and hot air drifted into her canal. The breath smelled of iron and promises.

“Follow your heart’s desires and live for many Christmases more. This needn’t be the end. Live, Mary.”

The voice was like a snake, but also like a trusted grandmother who promised a warm slice of pie before supper. Feminine and knowing of the seeping blood.

Mary closed her eyes tight as they went. “Yes,” she whispered. “Free me and pay them for their indifference. I want to live.”

Of course she did not want to die. Of course she wanted retribution for how she’d been treated.

“I take two for you. I take two for me,” the voice said and Mary shook harder. Lips touched lips and Mary tasted the blood she’d bled and something else, something earthy and old, like the scent of freshly dug potatoes and ash on the air the morning after a bonfire.

Suddenly daylight was upon them, streaming like a song through the small window and around their cracked door.

The moments after the nightmare were weighty, but short. She was alive, made it through the night to awaken a breathing girl, ready for the love and the celebration of Christmas morning.

Mary ran a hand between her legs. Dry.

She’d survived the ordeal of three days’ bloodletting.

The dream was not at all on her mind when she leapt from bed and began her wash in the large porcelain bowl fitted atop the dresser that the children shared. In the foggy mirror, she saw the bloody smears on her cheek and ear, circling her mouth. Dreams reaching beyond the walls and puppeteering her limbs, nothing more, surely.

The water was cold and clear, nearly bloodless, and the floorboards creaked beneath her feet. Mary was euphoric and the world was new around her. 

Christmas morning, Christmas morning, Christmas morning! It had come and was the most glorious day of the year.

She stepped to the door and pushed it open. The kitchen was empty. Her mother should’ve been at the stove and her father should’ve been at the table with coffee in his tin cup. They were not. Silence reigned.

The dream came back to her as she returned to the bedroom, and that voice, does the fresh woman wish the Christmas thoughts be true? The rest remained buried, for it was a dream and no more.

Pushed from mind, she donned her heavy blue dress and thick woolen socks before making for the kitchen. So strange it was that their parents made no noise and that her siblings had not yet stirred. A cut treetop with parcels wrapped in brown paper and string beneath was typically a sure recipe to summon early rising. The stringed corn and twine shapes hung in decoration, but seemed to mock in the absence of normalcy.

Maybe she was wrong, overreacting…perhaps she’d overreacted all along. The sun was up, though not high. Possibly, her parents had simply slept later than was routine. Mary crept to their door. It had not latched and it squeaked as she nudged it far enough to poke her head inside. Two lumps on a bed in the dim and shadowy room.

Of course.

Silly girl, she could almost hear her father’s voice in her mind.

She smiled at the notion of it, forgetting all the scornful thoughts and whispered wishes against them—she really had not said it all, had she? Mary returned to her room. David and Shirley slept soundly, mouths open and pressed into pillows, blankets pulled to chins. Mary dressed for the cold and stepped out, quiet as a mouse—let them sleep, ‘tis Christmas and we’re all alive and healthy—and around the side of the building toward the outhouse. So crisp, the hair of her nostrils clung like dangling icicles while her breaths came out in great steamy puffs. A grin played on her face as she turned to the clouds and tried to make sense of what she saw, but there were no dogs or mountains or faces, simply wintery wisps that floated in the light atmosphere so high above.

She pulled her jacket over her fingers before touching the handle of the outhouse door. Inside was dark, only a hint of waste scent lingered. She sat on the incredibly cold wood of the seat and pushed with a grunt to shorten the visit. Outside, footfalls crunched in the snow.

It was likely her father. “Hello? Dad?” No voices returned her call and when she opened the door, there was nobody there, only a set of tracks that ringed the outhouse to go along with the ones she’d made leading up. “Who’s there?” She said and closed the door. The sounds returned and she leaned forward to look through a crack in the frame, seeing something dark flash by, but no more. The nipping temperature pushed to the forefront of her worries and she hurried, pulling up her nickers. In the bright white world she saw nothing out of the ordinary: the house, the sky, the small barn.

Her throat ached with the cold and she stomped the frosty route between home and toilet. Inside remained still and had become foreboding. She loaded the stove without worry for quietness. It was warm from the night before and lit easily. She set the table and put ground oats into a pot with water, clanging and banging. She began humming a Sunday hymn. Twenty minutes later, the sun was high and the oatmeal was soft.

“Come and eat! It’s Christmas, you sleepyheads, get out of bed!”

Instantly, feet thumped on the floor. Two sets. Both from the same room. David and Shirley charged, fueled by reasonable excitement. Mary watched the door of their parents’ room. Quiet and still. She crossed the kitchen and pushed open the door as her siblings popped onto their chairs, elbows planted on the tabletop. Not so much as a flipped leg stirred amid the bedsheets in the shadowy room.

“Wake up.” Mary ran inside, stopping a yard short of the end of the bed. Under the brighter stream of light trailing from behind her, she saw there were only bedding lumps, and no parents.

Prattling little feet chased in after her and slowed upon seeing the curious scene.

“Where are they?” Shirley asked.

“The outhouse?” David said.

Mary simply shook her head as a modicum of understanding picked at her subconscious.

Hours passed, but they needed only minutes to ruin Christmas morning. Mary fed the youngers and ate what she could, before planting her feet by the kitchen window to watch the laneway, beginning the long day thereafter.

Lunch. They ate and worried. They sat, staring at their gifts, and worried. They complained and worried. David argued to open his gift, but Mary refused him. Shirley said nothing about it, but her eyes burned into that paper, wanton.

Mary revisited the dream a thousand times over—it was a dream, had to be a dream!—the possibility needling at her sense of guilt. Was she responsible? Somehow? Had her hard thoughts and budding terror festered a black shadow upon their home?

Evening came, looking out the window onto the cold world under the Christmas moon, Mary knew it had to be so. Her bad heart had destroyed the family. Her pain and terror opened a door to something, an other with a warm embrace and soft lips, mouth full of hard and righteous words.

David said to Mary as she gazed out the window to the frozen world beneath the blue night, “They are coming home?”

“Perhaps not tonight. There must’ve been a dire circumstance and not a moment to warn us. They’ll come home in time, worry not. It’s late, let us retreat.” Mary put a comforting hand on her brother’s shoulder and pulled him along, his head leaning against her bicep.

“Can I sleep with you and Shirley?”

Mary nodded. “Of course, it’s Christmas and we’ll be together.”

Shirley was asleep with her butt in the air, but half-woke, briefly, when the other two snuggled in next to her—Mary in the middle like an anchor for her younger siblings. Something natural had kicked in and she accepted the role. The eldest, but not mother, no…and what if they never return home?

Rest was slow coming, but their young and childish minds settled with their bodies. Even Mary slept eventually.

Hours passed, but few, and the sleep was short. Mary awoke to a nudge from her right. David’s small but strong hands. “Mary, someone’s outside. Think it’s them? Have they come home?”

“How can you—?” Mary began but shut up when she heard the faint crunching feet beyond the log wall. Strange, the pacing was uncanny, not quite normal. It went away and she strained until it came back to them only to pass by and repeat two minutes later, pacing the rear of the building.

“Someone’s walking out there,” David said. “Think it’s them? Has to be them, but how come they do not come in?”

There was logic to that question. Their parents would enter, surely. No, this was someone else. A gasp cut sharp into Mary’s throat as she remembered those bloody lips pressed against her own. Again, that voice spoke within the confines of Mary’s mind, does the fresh woman wish the Christmas thoughts be true?

It no longer carried any grandmotherly warmth. It was fully reptilian, and sinister. A female creature of another species altogether. Mary imagined an alligator from the pictures the neighbors showed her in the National Geographic magazines. Her father scorned the luxury of worldly magazines and automobiles and electric lights and indoor lavatories. She wanted to tell him that it seemed many people had those things, according to the radio, but everything she heard on the radio in town he had heard. Granted, most lived as they did and not much like the Hammonds across the field.

“If it’s not Mum and Dad, think they’ll come in?” David whispered as the footfalls crunched past once more. “Will they come in even if Mum and Dad are not here?”

Like dropping the bucket in the well, the trailing sense of doom finally met bottom with a great, wet thunk and she gagged, coughing. “No. No.” Mary slid out of the covers and then sprinted to the door, her feet dancing softly on the cedar boards. She dropped the oak bar behind the iron bracket and charged the way she’d come. Weight filled her it seemed and her feet thundered, as if someone—something—chased on her heels.

She leapt into bed. The shadows had teeth.

The heavy landing awoke Shirley. “Is Mum home?”

Her voice was too loud and the distant crunches from beyond the wall ceased for three heartbeats before crashing. Hands or a weapon, a strong thing in any event, pounded against the wall. Wump-wump-wump! The pounding changed and claws scratched at the wood.

“What’s that?” Shirley asked, her mouth smacking and sticky.

Mary latched a hand over her sister’s mouth. Shirley struggled only a moment before registering the sounds coming from beyond the wall. Skin muffled Shirley’s scream, her tongue dancing on Mary’s palm as teeth pressed deep, close to breaking skin.

The scratching continued and then thumping, followed by more scratching, and then more footfalls crunched, more than one thing, whatever was out there was not alone, the world began to rattle, a tin mug fell in the kitchen, a candelabra tumbled from next to the stove, the windows shook, throughout the entire home, they heard the scratching, it bounced and played at different heights and strengths, finding new locations, each increasing the terror.

Finally the scratching squeaked at their parents’ window before the glass shattered. Mary’s palm lifted enough that Shirley’s scream enveloped the small bedroom. More sounds, much closer, scratching coming from their right. Through a wall. Sawdust rained and floated on a frigid stream of air that seemed to suck and blow simultaneously.

Mary pressed tight again and once more Shirley screamed against her sister’s palm. David began to whimper, sounding like an injured dog, his voice pitching higher and higher. Soon he would lose it and scream, too.

“I did not mean it!” Mary shouted, the long greasy hair flowing out as she shook from side to side. “I did not mean it!”

Suddenly, as if called off, the sounds ceased.

David inhaled deeply through his nostrils, emitting a high whistle, and then exhaled heavily. He looked at Mary and a smile almost came across his face. Shirley panted, was slowing, even letting her expression soften when the renewed scratching denied their celebration and the amplified fervor of the intruders outside sent quivers inside, wind began pouring through the wall behind the bed as sawdust and wood chips began to fly, it was chaos everywhere, scritch-scritch, David whined and Shirley bit at Mary’s palm, scritch-scritch-scritch, there was action through that horrid, growing hole above the bed, things, so many things were everywhere, scritch-scritch-scritch!

“I did not mean it!” Mary shouted again. This time there was no pause, so Mary tossed the blankets aside, unwrapping her siblings’ legs. “Come, we will go to the Hammonds’.”

The Hammonds with their safe and modern things. They should’ve gone sooner, but a mile seemed so far across the snowy fields when it was unnecessary. That was before.

David pulled up his woolen socks in the deep black of night. “You did not mean what?” He was shouting to be heard over the creatures beyond the walls.

Mary ignored the question and helped Shirley.

“I want Mummy!”

“I know. I know.”

They shared tears of terror, but so far, the only sounds had come from the back half of the house, some from their parents’ side. They could still run out the door and chase over the front field to the grand home belonging to the Hammond family. They needed adults. Adults fixed problems.

“Darned thing!” Shirley cried and Mary fingered blindly for the matchbook on the shelf. It was where it always was. The light drove blue auras as her eyes cleared. She made the mistake of looking back to the gouged hole above the bed. Blazing like hot iron, a scarlet eye shined through the gap. Mary screamed, blowing out the match. Shirley screamed then, too. David whined like a bat screech.

“Move, come. Move,” Mary said. She was the eldest and had to be strong, for she had brought this upon them. “Shirley, please.”

Huffing and snuffing but moving. The brief window of light was enough for Shirley to understand her dress and to maneuver it on front-ways. There was no longer any time for mistakes.

“Come on!” David shouted from the bedroom doorway.

Mary took her sister’s hand and they ran through the moonlit kitchen and to the main entry where their boots sat awaiting them. The scratching was frantic behind them, coming at them like a wall of fury, but before them was a wonderfully quiet world. Safety.

“Take two for you! Take two for me!” a hissing feminine cry echoed through the home—Mary recognized that voice and felt the spooning of their bodies once again—entering via a gap in the wall before emitting an incredible braying sounded. It was as if a horse borrowed the voice box of a ram. A demon wail under a Christmas moon.

The remainder of the thick glass shattered in their parents’ room just as Mary lifted and flung the board from the lock bracket, David swung open the door and a cold wind blasted them, blistered at their lips and lungs, Mary held the hands of her siblings and they ran and ran and ran, the snow was knee high in some spots, and Mary could swear to hearing grunting at their heels, as if being chased by a wild hog, or a goat, the air burned them with frost and they inhaled deeply, running and running and running with those things behind them.

“Hurry…hurry,” Mary panted, pulling on Shirley’s hand.

There, amid the seemingly endless hideousness of night, a light glowed in the Hammonds’ home. They drew closer and closer. Their chests burned, yet hope danced on their minds, even with those footfalls keeping pace.

Adults fixed things. Adults mastered the world.

“Keep…running!” Mary hissed, her words barely louder than the collective fogged puffs firing from their mouths.

Shirley fell and Mary dragged her, refusing to look back as she lifted the child upright, but David could not help it. The whine he’d emitted transformed into a banshee’s wail, but his feet did not fail him and he tore his gaze from those furry she-beasts with their blazing red eyes and buxom chests, hooved feet on equine legs.

Moving.

Running.

Running.

Running.

The bulb from the front of Hammonds’ home bathed them in soft yellow light and suddenly, behind them, no more sounds chased. Mary let go of Shirley and broke, her boots found the wood of the porch. Mary leaned forward, her head down, banging her right palm against the doorframe.

“Help! Mr. Hammond…please! It’s Mary…Baker and…David and…Shirley…Baker!”

The door flung open. The wiry old farmer had a fine Winchester rifle in his hands, a tool he kept at the ready by the door all year ‘round, Christmastime notwithstanding. “Mary Baker?”

“My parents…there is a…please help…us,” Mary fought for breath as she spoke, gasping great gulps.

“Us who? Are the others at home? Was there an accident? It was not wee Shirley, was it?” Mr. Hammond asked, peering into the dark winter landscape.

“No—” Mary started to speak, looking around, but the vacancy cut her words short. They were gone. Everyone was gone.

“Speak to me, child. The others? Is it your mum, your dad?”

“I did not mean it!” Mary shouted, spinning to face the frozen world. Her voice echoing haplessly into the empty night.

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