“So what’s going on?” Joe was finishing hanging the last of the stockings over the mantel. He turned as I entered the room, then frowned. “You look as though you’ve seen a… Damn it, you have, haven’t you?”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. How was I going to tell him that Santa was hanging out in our basement? Pardon me, Santa’s ghost. And that he seemed a lot more naughty than nice.
“What is it this time? Or should I ask, who? And do they want you to solve their murder?”
I shook my head, still trying to make heads or tails of what had happened.
“Then what is it? Em, you’re making me nervous, honey.” He put down the hammer and nails and crossed to my side, where he pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. “It’s not like you to be so quiet.”
That I did respond to. “You think I talk a lot, huh?” But I laughed, grateful for the break in tension. I let out a deep breath as I leaned against his chest, his musky scent making me feel safe and protected.
He laughed. “No, but you usually don’t look white as a sheet, either. Now tell me, what was down there? Do we have to worry?” He led me over to the sofa and I followed him, holding his hand. As we sat down, I gave him a long look.
“How much do you love me?”
He frowned. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to want to hear what you have to say?”
“Because you aren’t going to want to hear what I have to say. And there’s no good way to tell you what I saw so I’m just going to come out with it. I warn you, you’re going to think your wife’s gone off the deep end and you might just be right.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.” Joe slowly disentangled himself and took my hands. “What is it? We can handle whatever it is together.”
“I hope so!” I let out a short laugh. “We have a very mean ghost in our basement who looks like Santa Claus.”
A pause. Then, Joe blinked once, twice, and a third time.
“It gets better,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “Oh? I’m not sure if I can handle better.”
“Well, shoulder up, dude, because you have to.”
“What else, then?”
“There’s also a ghostly elf down there who intervened when Santa Ghost tried to barrel through me. He gave me time to get away. He looks a lot like Hermey, the dentist elf from Rudolph.”
“Hermey?”
“The elf. Remember? He wanted to be a dentist. He was a misfit.”
The look on Joe’s face was priceless. I wished I’d had my cell phone with me because I would have snapped a picture and uploaded it to our family Instagram account. I told him everything that had happened. When I finished, he cleared his throat again before responding.
“Let me get this straight. We have two ghosts in the basement, Santa and an elf. And Santa tried to attack you and the elf darted in and gave you the chance to escape?”
“That’s about right.”
“Okay, then. Well, you’re right. That’s not something you hear everyday. Should I go down and take a look?” Joe’s psychic abilities had come into play more than once, though he still maintained he was head-blind. But he knew that I didn’t joke about the supernatural and, even though he was obviously dumbfounded by my news, he accepted what I said. I could always count on him to believe me.
I shrugged. “I think you should wait until I can figure out what these things are. Obviously, it can’t be the actual Santa Claus, if there is one. And as for elves, I doubt they look like that. They have to be something else. But I have no clue of how powerful either one of these spirits are, and we don’t want to find out the hard way.”
And with that, I headed upstairs. I had work to do.
My maternal grandmother had taught me the family traditions from the time I could reach her knees. Nanna had been a witch by birth, although she seldom uttered the word “magic” and never once called herself that. But our traditions went back a long way, and she had left me her trunk full of tools and trinkets. Nanna had taught me to read the cards when I was a teenager, and now I read for my customers down at the Chintz ‘n China.
I pulled out the trunk she had left me. It had a false bottom in it. As I unlocked the case I remembered the first time I had seen it.
Nanna had lived with my parents when I was little. My mother had gone to work in my father’s store, and Grandma took care of my sister Rose and me. My father had constantly complained about what he called the peasant-food smell, but beneath all the griping, he was grateful for her help. But his mother had gone to war against her. The War of the Grandmothers, I called it. Grandma McGrady was lace-curtain Catholic, and she was certain that Nanna was going to ruin us and send us all to hell, if she didn’t poison us first with her cooking. Rose had taken after the McGradys, but I had clung to Nanna. And Nanna was my champion.
One day, Nanna had called me into her room and she pressed her finger against her lips. “Hush, and shut the door.”
I did, then wandered over to her bed, where she was sitting with a beautiful trunk next to her feet. She motioned for me to sit down beside her. “Watch.” She carefully reached inside the trunk—which held several folded aprons—and pointed to a spot near the corner. Another moment and she had triggered a hidden latch. She lifted the bottom out of the trunk and I saw several beautiful pendants, a dagger, and other odds and ends.
“Emerald, you must remember this. One day, this trunk will belong to you, along with everything in it. If you’re still young, you must never show your parents what’s inside the secret compartment, and you must never let anybody else see it until you are out on your own. You know what these things are, don’t you?”
I nodded, solemn and wide-eyed. “They’re your charm tools.”
“Right. They’re for charming and bewitchery. But you don’t touch them till you’re grown, except when I ask you to. All right?”
I nodded, feeling grateful to be in on a secret Rose wasn’t privy to. And I had followed through. Nanna hadn’t left us till after I was grown, and when the trunk came to me, I had kept it apart, kept it safe where no one but me could touch it. One day, the trunk would pass on to Kip, if he still loved working magic. Or maybe one of my grandchildren, if I ever had any.
I carefully removed the false bottom of the trunk, exposing the tools she had left to me. I smiled. Out of all my paraphernalia, the dagger was most dear. It was an old seax single-edged blade that was twelve inches long, the hilt carved from antler horn, and knotwork wove its way along the steel. I gently removed it from the case and set it on the bed next to me. Then I pulled out a crystal spike. The smoky quartz had been my most recent addition to my magical tools, one I used solely for cleansing. The crystal was almost long enough to be a small wand. I closed up the trunk and carried the dagger and crystal downstairs. Magical tools were to be respected, they weren’t toys nor were they props. They had energy and a sentience of their own, built up through the layers of time and use.
Once I was back in the kitchen, I opened the cupboard in which I kept my herbs. There were all the culinary ones, yes, but also sweetgrass and lavender, and sage and cedar smudge sticks. I decided on a smudge stick to start. Perhaps the smoke would be enough to clear out these spirits. I fixed the dagger’s sheath on my belt, then stuck the crystal in my pocket. Lighting the smudge stick, I slowly headed to the basement, with Joe taking the lead.
Joe stopped at the base of the steps, staring toward the back where I had encountered the Christmas spirits. I paused when I was almost to the bottom.
There they were again. Santa Ghost was rumbling around, looking agitated. The elf was trying to tug on his arm.
“Oh joy, they’re back.” I was being sarcastic but, as I joined Joe, I realized he was really freaked. “You okay? Did they try to attack you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never told you this, but when I was a kid, I had a deathly fear of Santa Claus. The thought that some stranger was able to climb down our chimney was scary enough, but I kept thinking he’d catch on fire and burn up. Then when I was five, my father decided it would be fun to dress up and surprise me. What he didn’t realize is that a neighbor boy had recently exacerbated my fear by telling me that yes, Santa brought presents to the good kids, but that he murdered bad little boys on Christmas Eve and fed them to his reindeer.”
That stopped me short. “What kind of a little freak would do that?”
“One who grew up to become a moderately successful horror writer, actually. At least he put his sadism to good use.” Joe was slowly backing up the steps. “The truth is, I never got over the fear and the only thing that helped me ignore it was realizing that Santa doesn’t exist. But now we’re staring at his ghost and all of those night terrors are flooding back. Are you coming with me or am I racing back up those stairs by myself?”
“I think I’ll try a few things first.” I held up the smudge stick. “You go on, I’m not worried about being alone. What’s the worst he can do? Put a lump of coal in my stocking?” I laughed then, but that just elicited a nasty look from Santa Ghost, who once again took aim and headed in my direction.
Joe yelped and stumbled back up the stairs, stopping to glance back at me as I raised the smudge stick, letting the fumes wash over the ghost.
Apparently Santa decided that he didn’t like being smudged because the next moment he sideswiped us, slamming against Joe, who twisted to get out of the way. As he lurched to the side, Joe caught his ankle on a board jutting out from beneath the steps.
I cringed as an audible snap broke the silence. In slow motion, Joe went tumbling down the stairs past me. Staring, horrified, I realized that Santa Ghost was leaning over him. The ghost let out an infernal laugh. “I’ll drag you back to my lair and feed you to my reindeer, little boy!”
Joe was screaming—whether from the pain or the fear, I wasn’t sure.
I dropped the smudge stick and scrambled to his side just as the elf lowered his head and raced toward Santa, body slamming into the jolly dark spirit’s butt. A moment later, they both vanished. As Joe lay there, moaning, and I hurriedly tamped out the smudge stick and reached for my cell phone, I decided this just really wasn’t our day.
“You’ve got to be kidding.” Murray stared at me as we waited in the waiting room. Dr. Arnold had taken Joe back ten minutes after we arrived. I opted to stay in the waiting room because I had seen the insides of too many ER rooms over the past few years, and because Joe reassured me that he’d be fine.
“I tell you, they were there, life size and bright as any neon holiday display.” I glanced around, making sure I wasn’t being overheard. I really didn’t want word to get around that I was running a whacked-out Santa Land in my basement.
“So, I have to ask. Is it really Santa?” Murray’s skepticism was tinged with a hint of wistfulness. I could see it in her eyes. Anna Murray was my best friend. Native American, she was the head detective on the Chiqetaw police force. Tall and sturdy, she had hazel skin and rich brown eyes that mirrored her hair. And right now, she wanted to believe in Santa.
I snorted. “No, I do not have Santa’s ghost in my basement. That would mean that Santa was dead and that would be a bitter pill to swallow for children all over the world. But we have something that’s mimicking him. The elf seems to be trying to keep him in control, but he’s not doing a very good job of it.” I glanced at my watch. Kip should be getting home about now. I pulled out my phone and called the house.
Three rings. Four. Five, and I started to worry. It was twenty minutes past his curfew and Kip was usually really good about being on time. Though come to think about it, the past couple of times, he had been a little surly when he returned home. On the sixth ring, Randa picked up.
“Mom? Where are you? I just came through the door.”
“Joe had a little accident, honey. We’re at the hospital, but we should be home in thirty minutes or so. He’ll be okay. He broke an ankle.”
She snickered. “What kind of sex moves were you two trying out in the shower?”
I blinked. I still wasn’t used to my teenaged daughter actually talking about sex to me. Especially about my sex life. “Randa! Just hush. You’re messing with me, aren’t you?” I sighed, then continued. “Listen, is Kip home? Will you check and call me back? His curfew was eight-thirty and it’s almost nine now.”
“Sure thing.” She hung up.
I set down my phone. “I cannot believe how old they’re getting. Can you believe that Miranda’s already hearing back from colleges? I wasn’t sure about letting her take the accelerated program Mrs. Mendoza suggested, but she’s blossomed. She’ll be leaving home next year and I’m petrified.”
A sudden wash of fear raced over me. I wasn’t ready to lose her yet—to see her go off into the wide, wild world. But she would have her high school diploma by the time she was almost seventeen and I wouldn’t make her hang around the house for another year before letting her attend college. Randa was a genius, and she was going to do grand things someday. I knew it, and my premonitions were seldom wrong. My daughter would make history.
Murray cleared her throat. I always knew when she was getting choked up because she would clear her throat and blink really fast. “Yeah, it’s hard to believe. But Kip. No, I have a feeling he won’t leave home early, Em. He’ll be around for you.”
“I hope so.” I stood as the doctor walked toward us. “How’s Joe?”
“He’s almost ready to go home. We’ll have to X-ray it again when the swelling goes down before we can cast it. But the ankle is broken, that much I can tell. You keep him off of it the next few days. I’d rather he not even use crutches till we get the cast on. Too much chance of bumping it and doing more damage. Do you have a ramp for your house so he can go home with a wheelchair?”
I had been on crutches for a while, and we still had a ramp in the shed from then.
“Yeah, but it’s not going up tonight. I barely have enough energy to drag my ass into the house.”
“Hold on.” Murray touched my arm. “Let me call Jimbo.” Her boyfriend, Jimbo, was a rough and tumble biker. She moved away to the side while the doctor told me what to do for Joe over the next few days. When she returned, she was smiling. “Jimbo’s on his way. He’ll get it set up in no time. And between him and me, we can lift Joe’s chair up the porch steps so he won’t have to wait outside.”
With the matter settled, I went to sign the release papers, and then we were on our way home. But the entire way, I kept thinking about the ghosts in my basement, and what they might do next.