ABSINTHE & ANGELS
KELLEY ARMSTRONG
“A proper reading of Dickens requires absinthe,” Michael says as he lifts his glass. “The nectar of the muses.”
Ava shakes her head. “There’s no way anyone could drink this and still write.”
“All those old writers did. How do you think they penned prose like this?” He lifts the book and reads a few lines from the arrival of the first ghost. “Trust me. That required chemical intervention.”
“Just tell me our Christmas tree isn’t actually on fire,” she says.
He chuckles. “Nope, just your brain.” He refills her glass. “Unless the tree really is on fire, and I’m hallucinating that it’s not.”
She tugs out her gifts, saying, “Just in case,” and he laughs and kisses her cheek before he resumes reading.
The absinthe isn’t actually so bad. It makes things clearer, sharper…and occasionally weirder. Nothing wrong with a little head tripping for the holidays.
Ava takes another sip and rolls onto her side to watch Michael read A Christmas Carol. Her favorite holiday story, proving perhaps that she does indeed enjoy the weird. But right now, the words float past, and she just watches him as she basks in the warmth of the fire and the gift he’s given her.
Whatever is in the boxes under the tree, they aren’t her real presents. This is. Her perfect holiday getaway.
Start with a cabin in the snow. It can’t be some resort-property cottage, either. Out here, their nearest neighbor is a mile away. They’re even far enough from the road that they’d never have made it without four-wheel drive.
No neighbors. No Wi-Fi. No cell service. Just peace and quiet.
The isolation is Michael’s way of making this holiday season easier on her. As a child, Ava had wonderful family Christmases. Even after Dad took off, Mom held it together, especially at the holidays. Now Mom’s gone, stolen by cancer two months ago, and Ava’s brother, Jory, called last month to say he wouldn’t be flying home for Christmas.
So Michael gave her this—a quiet cabin ten miles from the ski chalet where their friends are staying.
It’s Christmas Eve; snow is falling; the fire’s blazing; absinthe is making her head spin, and her fiancé is reading A Christmas Carol.
It doesn’t get better than that.
Ava looks out the window. As snow swirls through the darkness, she envisions a moonlight stroll through the woods, the perfect cap for their evening. Maybe even more than a stroll, if it isn’t too cold.
She smiles at the thought and sips her drink and watches the dancing snow and imagines endless evergreens laced in white. Their own private winter wonderland. When Michael pauses to turn the page, she thinks she hears…music? Singing?
Oh, angels we have heard on high…
Angels or absinthe, singing through her veins.
Michael raises his voice to play the part of Scrooge and then lowers it for—
A sharp rap sounds, and Ava jumps, absinthe spilling. Michael frowns at the cabin door.
“Did you hear…?” he says.
She nods, clutching her glass.
“A bird?” Michael says as he gets to his feet.
When he heads for the door, Ava scrambles up and grabs him. “Don’t. Please.”
He lifts his brows. “Pretty sure it’s not the Ghost of Christmas Past. And if it is, it must be for you. I’ve been a very good boy.”
He smiles, and she relaxes her hold on his sleeve. “Just…be careful.”
He continues toward the door. “Let’s lay bets. A bird or the wind?”
The rap comes again, and this time there is no mistaking it for bird or wind. It’s three distinct raps, knuckles on wood.
Ava creeps to the side window and peers out. She can see their truck, alone in the lane, covered in snow. She tries to get a look at the front door, but the angle is wrong.
She turns to find Michael behind her, looking out and frowning. The knock comes again. Three raps.
“Don’t answer,” she says.
“The fact we don’t see another vehicle might explain why someone’s at our door,” he says. “Roadside trouble, and they followed the lights to the cabin. Or hikers who’ve lost their way. Are we going to leave them out there on Christmas Eve?”
She calls, “Who is it?”
No answer. Michael strides to the door. “Who’s there?”
Silence.
“I asked, who’s there?” His voice booms through the tiny cabin.
Still nothing. Ava sidesteps toward the front window. All she can see is the falling snow. She cups her hand to the glass and—
A white face appears. Stark white with blackened eyeholes and a red slash of a mouth. Ava staggers back with a shriek as Michael races over. Then he sees what she sees, and he stops.
“What the hell?” he says.
It’s a man in an old suit—a jacket and tie. Over his head, he wears a pillowcase painted with a grotesque face. A second man appears beside him, also masked with a painted pillowcase. Beneath it, he’s dressed in old-fashioned pajamas.
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Michael whispers.
Ava doesn’t answer. She wants to tell herself they aren’tseeing the same thing, that she’s imagining these figures, conjured from her oldest nightmare.
Before Michael can speak again, one of the men presses his pillowcased face to the window and says, “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
His voice is eerie and unnatural, wheezy, as if he’s inhaling as he speaks.
Ava takes a step backward and smacks into Michael. He wraps his arms around her and whispers, “There are two men at our window, wearing old clothing and pillowcases, right?”
She nods and finds her voice. “They’re mummers.”
“Mum—?”
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine,” the two men say in unison.
“Mummers,” Ava whispers.
“You told me about…” He trails off and gives a ragged laugh. “Well, now I understand what you meant, and I don’t blame you one bit.”
Last year, they’d been drinking with Ava’s college friends, comparing Christmas horror stories. It was mostly the usual jokes about terrifying post-Christmas credit-card bills and having to suffer through dinner with drunk relatives. Michael, though, Michael had one-upped them with Belsnickel, the old-world boogeyman from his German grandmother’s stories. He did that for Ava, after she confessed to her real holiday fear: mummers. Her friends had laughed and teased her, and Michael had come to her rescue with his story, even if secretly, she suspected, he’d been fighting the urge to join her friends’ laughter.
Michael had never heard of mummers—no more than she’d heard of Belsnickel. Michael was from Ontario, where they seemed, thankfully, mummer-free. Ava grew up in Newfoundland, and most of her friends were familiar with the tradition…and thought it was cool.
It was not cool. It was being three years old, waking up Christmas Eve to the sound of bells, running to the window, expecting to see Santa’s sleigh, and instead spotting a group of passing mummers with their strange costumes and horrifying pillowcase heads. Ava had ducked fast, but not before one saw her. They’d come to her window and crowded in and asked her—in those wheezing voices—if she’d been a good girl. If not, they said, they’d come back. Even after she’d hidden under the bed, they stayed at her window, taunting and tormenting her.
And now there are mummers at her window again. Which cannot be. Absolutely cannot be.
“So I’m going to admit—even at my age—they’re kinda freaking me out,” Michael whispers. “At three, I’d have pissed my pants.” He takes a step forward. “I’ll just tell them we’re not interested, give them a few bucks for their trouble and…”
He stops, finally realizing what she has already.
“What are they doing out here?” he says. “The nearest town is—”
“Ten miles away.”
Michael takes a deep breath. He eyes the mummers and then says, “They must be from one of the neighboring cabins. I’ll handle this.”
He steps to the window. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming by but—”
They slap their gloved hands against the glass. Michael jumps, but his shoulders square, as if steeling himself not to inch back.
“I’m having a quiet, romantic Christmas with my fiancée,” he says, “which I’m sure you guys can understand. If you want a more appreciative audience, there’s another cabin—”
They push their faces against the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“Yeah, thanks, but no.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a twenty. “I’m going to slip this through, and you guys have a great Christmas—”
In unison, four gloved hands thump the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
Michael adds another twenty and holds the bills up. “You can buy your own.” He walks to the window and unlocks it.
Ava struggles against the urge to stop him. But he’s being careful, and she’s overreacting. It’s just a couple of guys from a nearby cabin, who got loaded and decided to go a-mummering, grabbing old clothes and a couple of pillowcases.
Michael eases the window up a half inch and pushes out the bills. One man reaches out…and grabs the window instead. He wrenches up, and Ava leaps to help Michael get it shut.
The window slams down, catching the man’s fingers. The mummer only withdraws his fingers slowly. Then he stares at them.
Both men stare with their painted eyes, and this close, Ava should be able to see the holes. But there are none. Below the noses, the red mouths have openings, but she sees only darkness behind them.
One man bends, his mask sliding down the glass as he disappears. When he rises, he holds the two bills in his hand. Painted gaze still fixed on the window, he rolls the bills. Then he gives one to his companion. They lift them to their mouth holes and push them through, jaws working behind the masks as…
“Did they just eat twenty-dollar bills?” Michael says. “Okay, that isn’t a few beers. These guys are on something.” He raises his voice. “Well, apparently, we’ve fed you. Now, if you walk back a few steps, you can grab a handful of snow to wash that down. Then it’s time to go and have yourselves a very merry—”
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“You know what this window needs?” Michael mutters. “Curtains.”
When Ava doesn’t respond, he turns and says, “Ava?”
She’s returning from the kitchen. In her hands, she holds a bag. She opens it to show a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.
“I’m giving them what they want,” she says.
“Okay, but we’re not opening that door.”
“Of course we aren’t.” She heads for the bedroom. “Just keep them busy.”
She shuts the bedroom door, and outside it, she can hear Michael talking to the mummers. Meaningless patter—asking them where they’re from, what they want for Christmas, whether they have family plans…acting as if there is nothing odd going on at all. Nothing unnerving. Certainly nothing frightening.
Michael is staying calm, cracking jokes, trying to handle an irrational situation rationally. And so will she. She’ll forget the terror of that childhood Christmas Eve, and instead she’ll remember the day after it, when two of the mummers came to her house. Without the costumes, she knew them from town—the couple who ran the bakery. They apologized for frightening her. They’d had too much to drink and hadn’t realized she’d been genuinely terrified.
Not boogeymen: just regular people who’d gotten carried away with the spirit—and the spirits—of the season.
That explanation hadn’t worked for three-year-old Ava. She’d never been able to set foot in their bakery again, and she’d spent the next two Christmas Eve nights sleeping under her bed. Even these days, when she goes home for the holiday, if mummers come to call, she finds a reason to be out for the evening.
But Ava is not three years old anymore, and there is indeed a rational explanation here. If she can’t see eyeholes or faces, that’s the absinthe messing with her mind. The men didn’t really eat those twenties—they just shoved them into their pillowcases.
A couple of idiots who’ve had too much booze or too much dope and decided to prank the neighbors.
All she has to do now…
She opens the bedroom window, drops out the bag, and walks back into the front room, where the two figures stand silent at the window. She strides up to it and raises her voice. “You want wine and food, right?”
No answer. Those unnerving masks stare at her, and as hard as she tries to spot eyeholes, she can’t.
Absinthe. Just the absinthe.
“There’s a bag beneath the back window,” she says. “It has wine and chocolates. Now, if you insist on singing us a damn song, go for it.”
Silence. Then they say in unison, “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
“I did!” Ava’s voice rises. “It’s right outside the window.” She jabs her finger toward the bedroom. “Go get it.”
Neither figure moves.
“Peyton,” Michael whispers.
Ava glances at him.
“It’s Peyton or Chris,” he says. “They’re both at the chalet tonight. They know where we’re staying, and they were there when you talked about the mummers. They set this up.”
He walks to the window. “Peyton sent you, didn’t she? Or Chris.” He glances back at Ava. “Maybe Jory. Your brother knows where we’re staying, doesn’t—?”
The glass smashes. Four hands reach in and grab Michael. Grab and yank him off his feet so fast that he’s sailing out the window before Ava realizes what’s happening.
She snatches at his feet as they fly through, and she catches one, but the mummers easily rip it from her grasp.
She starts scrambling through the window, screaming for them to stop. She’ll give them what they want, whatever they want.
“Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”
Their voices float back as they cross the snow at an impossible speed, Michael struggling and shouting as they drag him behind.
Ava wheels. Her gaze lights on the bottle. Not good enough. She flies into the kitchen and grabs a knife. Then she races out the door.
—
They’re gone.
Completely gone.
Ava can’t even find tracks in the snow. She’s been out here for at least twenty minutes, walking and listening and trying to hold it together. Every whistle of the wind or cry of a bird has her jumping, knife raised. She’s long since lost feeling in her feet, but she never considers going back for her boots or coat.
As she walks, she thinks of earlier, envisioning a moonlight walk in the snow.
The perfect cap to a perfect evening.
She swallows back a gasping sob.
When she hears a grunt, she follows it, expecting to find an animal. Instead…
She isn’t sure what she’s seeing at first. The moon has disappeared behind cloud cover, and all she can make out is three figures standing in the forest. When she blinks hard, she sees white pillowcases over the heads of the two mummers. But it isn’t Michael between them. It’s a tree. They’re flanking a tree, and they’re…
Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.
One lifts a glass and takes a drink. The other pushes something into his mouth.
Michael. Where is—?
The cloud passes, and the moonlight shines down, and she sees Michael. He’s tied to the tree. Bound and struggling, grunting against a gag.
Blood streams down his chest, glistening in the moonlight.
The first mummer presses his glass against a cut in Michael’s neck, filling it with blood. The other chomps down on Michael’s arm, ripping out a chunk of flesh and gobbling it down.
Ava runs at them, screaming, “No!”
The mummers stop. They just stop. She’s twenty feet away, running as fast as she can through the snow, and they just stand there, watching her. She sees Michael’s eyes go wide, and he madly shakes his head, howling against the gag, telling her to go, to run.
She raises the knife and charges at the first mummer and—
—
Ava starts from sleep, gasping for breath, Michael’s name on her lips, her fingers aching, as if she’s still gripping the kitchen knife.
She blinks and stares at the lights of the Christmas tree. Behind her, Michael is reading from A Christmas Carol. A half-finished glass of absinthe rests by her elbow.
She pushes up, blinking harder now, trying to clear her head. The lights seem to glitter and glide, and her ears feel as if they’re stuffed with cotton, every sound distorted.
She turns and sees Michael’s empty glass beside her. And next to it…
Is that the knife? From the kitchen?
She rubs her eyes and sits up. Michael sits cross-legged, his sweatshirt hood pulled up as he reads.
“Michael?”
He turns. His hood falls back, and she sees…
A white pillowcase, crudely drawn face grinning at her.
Michael reaches for the knife.
“Give me food. Give me wine….”
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