Christmas Carol Page 3

  “Four? Four ghosts?”

  “'fraid so. Well, consider me the ambassador. The friendly face—to prepare you for the rest of it. Though, truth be told, nothing could prepare you...” She tut-tuts sympathetically. “Oh, I do pity you, dear girl, but it's for your own good. And I can only hope that you'll come to understand that, in the end. Now...” She pats the pockets of her dress. “Where did I leave that notepad? Oh!” With a sly grin, she dips a hand into her ample cleavage and draws out a small spiral-bound notebook. With deft fingers, she flips it open and begins to scan one of the handwritten pages. “Right. Your first visitor should be arriving in about half an hour, and my time with you is, sadly, nearly up...”

  She takes a step closer to me and positions her hands beneath my (bearded) chin, as if to cradle it, though she can't physically touch me at all. Her warm eyes meet mine, and she smiles softly, affectionately. “But before I vanish, I just wanted you to know that I love you, and I'm proud of you, and”—her gaze narrows—“for Rudolph's sake, make the right choice!”

  With that, she pops out of sight.

  She doesn't walk away or fade, or even subtly dissipate.

  She's just...gone.

  Poof.

  And I'm left alone in my dark office, wobbly on my legs, mouth hanging open.

  “Um...” I murmur to the darkness.

  Then, without another thought, I grab my bag and my car keys, and I hightail it to the parking lot, faster than a reindeer with a flaming nose.

  Part Two: Christmas Past

  It was a dream.

  It was definitely, definitely a dream.

  Or so I keep telling myself—nonstop, and sometimes aloud—as I drive away from Christmasland and aim, squinting through the snowflakes on my windshield, for home.

  To distract myself, I turn on the radio, but on Christmas Eve, good luck finding any auditory entertainment aside from religious services or Christmas carols.

  Oh, you better watch out!

  You better not cry!

  Groaning, I crank down the volume and clench the steering wheel tightly. So tightly that, by the time I pull into my parking space, my fingers are stiff and sore; they ache when I stretch them out. Glumly, I walk up the stairs to my second-story apartment and slide my key into the lock of my door.

  “Merry Christmas, Elizabeth.”

  For a moment, I freeze; has Aunt Maura's ghost returned?

  But, no, I recognized that sweet, shaky voice—so different from my great aunt's confident alto. Pasting on a smile, I turn around to face my across-the-hall neighbor, Millie, who's standing in her doorway wearing a fuzzy red bathrobe.

  “I heard you in the hallway and wanted to wish you merry Christmas,” the elderly woman explains, nodding at me.

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  “Will you be spending the morning with family?”

  “Oh, no, I have to work.”

  “Working on Christmas day?” She shakes her head of pink curlers, mouth downturned. Though I've reminded Millie more than a dozen times that I own and operate Christmasland, she never seems to remember what I do for a living, and I'm too tired to go through it all again now. “Pity. Well, I hope you have a nice time, anyway.”

  I smile weakly. “Good night, Millie.”

  “Good night. Oh! Before I forget—your friend is in your apartment. She asked me not to tell you. I guess she wanted it to be a surprise. But I've always hated surprises, so I thought I should give you a heads up before you go in.”

  I stare. “My...friend?” If I'm honest, I don't really have friends, not anymore—only acquaintances and co-workers and a “how are you?” thing with the building's mail lady—and I certainly don't have any friends who “surprise” me with late-night visits. I clear my throat, stomach churning. “Um, what did my friend look like?”

  Millie makes a face. “I don't mean to be judgmental, of course, but she looked kind of like—oh, what's her name? That singer with the...” She gestures with her hands, drawing them both out from her robe-covered chest, as if to indicate...large breasts? “She's named after someone religious—oh, that's it!” She smiles brightly. “Madonna.”

  “Madonna?” I laugh, despite myself. “My friend looks like Madonna?”

  “Well, she's shorter, I think, and younger, but other than that...”

  I glance toward my door dubiously. Millie is forgetful and easily confused. Maybe she saw Madonna on TV and then had a dream that the singer went into my apartment? Hey, stranger things have happened tonight. Still, after Millie ducks into her own place and I swing open my door, a tremor of expectation makes my heart beat triple-time.

  But everything seems to be in order. The lights are off—until I flick the switch in the kitchen. My dirty dishes are lying—still dirty—in the sink. There are books and magazines strewn messily all over the coffee table. And there isn't a damned Christmas decoration in sight.

  “Home sweet home,” I exhale, falling backward onto the beige sofa.

  And then all hell breaks loose.

  First, the music: a cacophony of songs that sound vaguely familiar but discordant, like a mashup of every female pop song from the 1980s. Assaulted, I leap to my feet, cover my ears, and gape at the strange, petite figure standing next to my vintage stereo setup.

  “Too loud?” she asks.

  I nod involuntarily.

  The woman shrugs her bare shoulders, snaps her fingers, and the music shuts off.

  Weird. How'd she do that? Wait—who cares? Why is she here? Who is she?

  “Oh, my God, did you break into my apartment?” A rhetorical question, obviously.

  I fumble for my cell phone in my jacket pocket. So Millie was telling the truth. This woman pretended to be my friend so that she could break in right under my neighbor's nose. What the hell? I'm no robber, but I would think it wise to avoid chatting up potential witnesses...

  She must've flunked out of Breaking and Entering 101.

  I fist my hands at my sides. “Okay, I don't know who you are, but you have about two seconds to get out before I call the police—”

  “Chill.” The young woman—she looks to be in her early twenties—juts out her tulle-swathed hip and offers me an open-mouthed wink. Is she flirting now? “C'mon, buttercup. Put down the phone. I'd hate to see you embarrass yourself.”

  “Embarrass myself?” My temples throb; I can feel a migraine coming on.

  “Well,” she begins, cracking the gum in her mouth, “the coppers'll get here, take one look at your empty place, and toss you in the loony bin. Neither of us wants that to happen, so just calm your caboose”—she takes a step nearer, resting her hands on the back of the sofa—“and gimme a chance to explain myself, geez. I mean, Maura told me you were uptight, but I never thought—”

  “Uptight? I'm not uptight!” I shrill—then I draw in a deep breath and try to relax. Okay, so the woman might be hiding a weapon under her—hmm. Well, what is that? A tutu? She kind of looks like a goth ballerina. She's wearing a tight-fitting black tank top with a short skirt of neon pink netting over wide-knit fishnet tights, and her feet are shoved into untied purple high-tops. Her dirty blonde hair has been teased about six inches out from her head, and her eyes are caked with mascara and sparkly blue powder.

  I guess I understand why Millie compared her to Madonna. She does resemble her—or, rather, she looks like someone trying to resemble Madonna, for a costume party or something. But why is she dressed like this? '80s fashions have come back into style, sure, but it's thirty degrees outside, and not much warmer indoors, since I turn the furnace down to fifty when I'm away from home. She must be freezing. But...she doesn't look cold at all.

  My eyes rake over her length a couple of times, and I purse my lips as a realization dawns: I'm not afraid of her. I should be—shouldn't I? But I'm not, not at all. I'm annoyed, and angry, and confused, and exhausted, but I don't feel threatened by Little Miss Like a Virgin. I've never seen her before in my life, but she almost...reminds me of someone I
used to know.

  On silent feet, she rounds the sofa and seats herself on the corner cushion. “Join me, ladybug? Promise I won't bite—'less you want me to.” Her grin is wide, wolfish, as she crosses her legs at the ankles on the edge of my coffee table, regarding me with twinkling blue eyes.

  “I...don't want you to, thanks.” Against all logic, I sit down on the couch, though I'm careful to maintain a cushion's distance between us.

  “All righty, then!” She claps her hands, startling me. “Down to business! Ugh, I hate that word, don't you? Business. So boring. But I promise you, this ain't gonna be boring at all. We're going on a trip!”

  “A trip? What are you—what—who—”

  “Spit it out, sugar. We don't have all night. Time's a-wastin'. Tick-tock, tick-tock...”

  I glare at her, all patience lost. “You're a housebreaker. And I'm...tired. So I'm not going anywhere with you—”

  “Ah, but we aren't going somewhere.” She arches a brow. “We're going somewhen.”

  I close my eyes, willing this intruder to disappear. Just poof, like Aunt Maura's ghost. When she doesn't poof, though, I swallow the lump in my throat and lean toward her, squinting at her glossy lips, her shiny, perpetually amused (and yet somehow sultry) eyes. I fall back into place, head on my hand. “You're one of them, aren't you?” I sigh miserably.

  She tilts her head, pretending at confusion. “Why, whatever do you mean?” Her lashes bat prettily.

  Gritting my teeth, I reach out and touch her. Or try to touch her. But my hand sails straight through her arm...and her tulle skirt.

  “Boo!” she laughs.

  I sulk.

  “Your aunt Maura also said you might try to get fresh with me. Happy to find out she was right about that!”

  “No... No, no, no.” I shake my head, hunching over the arm of the sofa. “This can't be happening...”

  “But it is happening, so what do you say we dive right in, hmm?”

  “Huh-uh. It doesn't make any sense.” I shift my gaze to hers. “How're you sitting on the couch, if you're a ghost? Why don't you just sink through it? Why don't you sink through the floor?”

  She points to her rump.

  I look at her rump.

  Oh.

  She isn't sitting, after all. She's floating.

  Of course.

  “Well...I still might be dreaming,” I murmur to myself hopefully, shoving up the Santa coat sleeve and pinching my arm hard. “Ow.”

  The woman watches me, smiling widely, as if she's holding back a laugh.

  “Okay.” I lift my hands in surrender. “So what's your name?”

  “My friends call me Deedee. But my official title—for the purposes of this assignment—is the Ghost of Christmas Past.” She pronounces the words in a low, reverent tone. Then she giggles. “But like I said, you can call me Deedee.”

  I mull this over, frowning. “Did you...well...die in the '80s? Is that why you look like, um, this?”

  “As if!” Deedee giggles again. “No, silly! I've been dead for, like, two hundred years! But my appearance was inspired by you.”

  “Me? I never wore—”

  “No, but you were attracted to an awful lot of gals who did. Weren't you?”

  Cheeks flushed, I shift my gaze toward the window and watch a flurry of snowflakes gust past. So that's why Deedee looks kind of familiar. I exhale a deep breath and then slant her a halfhearted smile. “Hey, I was a teenage lesbian in the '80s, so...”

  “Exactly. Just thought I'd stir up a little nostalgia for you with my ensemble. Anyway, if you're through pinching yourself, we'd better get started.” She draws one of her knees up onto the couch and stares deeply into my eyes. “Ebbie, I need you to know that this is for your own good. Trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Whatever. Now,” she says, her sky blue gaze intense, “I want you to remember the last time you were happy, truly happy. You know when that was, don't you? You know exactly when it was. I can tell that you do. Good. Well, that's where we're headed.”

  “What? How—”

  But before I can finish my sentence, my living room is gone. My whole apartment is gone.

  Instead, I'm sitting on a different couch in a different apartment altogether.

  I recognize it immediately, as familiar as my own face: it's the tiny apartment that Carol and I rented during grad school, with its ugly paneled walls and red shag carpeting and the dingy view of the brick building next door.

  I glance toward Deedee, seated beside me on the sofa, and, without a word, she nods at the kitchenette directly in front of us.

  And I see...

  Huh.

  I see myself. I'm younger. More than a decade younger. My white-blonde hair is long, grazing my shoulder blades, and I'm wearing that Yankees hoodie that Carol bought me after we saw our first game together. (Carol hated baseball, but she went to the home games with me, anyway.) The other me is wearing nothing besides the thigh-length hoodie—no pants, long legs bare. And she—I mean, I am making breakfast, pancakes, in the old, orange-enameled frying pan that Carol and I found on one of our Dumpster-diving excursions.

  “Almost ready, babe!” I yell, smiling as I flip one of the heart-shaped pancakes onto a chipped plate.

  And then I see her—Carol.

  She comes out of the bedroom in a white t-shirt, her golden hair braided loosely over her shoulder. “Smells amazing, Eb,” she smiles, wrapping her arms around my waist from behind, trailing warm kisses over the back of my neck...

  I drop the spatula on the stove and turn around, resting my hands on her hips (I loved the way her hipbones felt against my palms), and I kiss her. She tastes like toothpaste and Carol; she tastes like mornings, like love. Her mouth laughs against mine, and our teeth clatter together.

  “Hey, don't start, you. We've got an appointment to keep, and if we—ahhh...” She sighs as my hand slides beneath the hem of her t-shirt, cupping the bare curve of her thigh. “Ebbie, be good,” she protests, still laughing, but then she's wheeling me around, pressing me against the counter, her own hand under my hoodie, brazenly seeking the warmth between my legs.

  “What about the appointment?” I whisper into her ear, grinning, breathing hard.

  Carol laughs again. “We'll reschedule.” Then she tugs me back into the bedroom, and we fall onto our never-made mattress, flinging off our clothes, colliding together—hot, laughing, all lips and legs... My mouth covers Carol's breast, my tongue teasing her nipple, as my hand glides over her smooth stomach, following the planes of her abdomen, her thigh.

  When my fingers slip inside of her, she laughs and gasps at the same time, and then her face smooths, and I claim her mouth, her lovely mouth with the freckle at the corner. I touch her, taste her, move with her until she stills and then cries out, her nails—painted red, always red—digging into my shoulder blades.

  “I love you, Carol,” I whisper against her, heartbeat to heartbeat.

  She draws back, lips swollen, chest heaving. Long black lashes shadow those icicle-blue eyes. “I love you more.”

  “Enough.” I wince and shake my head, willing my racing, aching heart to slow. And when I glance around again, the apartment has vanished. Deedee and I are still seated on a couch, but we're floating in a haze of nothingness, surrounded by black, black...

  I lift my brows and swallow.

  Well, this is as creepy as hell.

  It's almost as creepy as Christmasland.

  “Where are we now?” My throat is so tight, my voice is barely a whisper.

  “In between,” Deedee says matter-of-factly, chipping at one of her bubblegum pink nails. “Nowhere, really. A place to pause.”

  I inhale; my heart is still pounding madly in my chest. When we first arrived in the apartment, I was an outsider, watching the old me work in the kitchen, but at some point, the two mes melded, joined up, and suddenly I felt everything she felt—everything I felt ten years ago, when Carol and I were still together.

&nbsp
; And it was unbearable.

  The love, the pain... Just too much.

  I locked all of that away so long ago. I shut it up in a vault, never to be opened. I can't... I can't go through this, not again.

  “Take me home.”

  “No.”

  “Now.”

  “No.” Deedee casts me a sympathetic stare, but her voice is firm: “I have my orders, cupcake. We've got two more time frames to visit. Best if we don't drag any of this out, doncha think?” Again, her eyes bore deep inside of me, and the world shifts, changes, the darkness giving way to—

  “Lights, camera, action!”

  Hannah's Polaroid camera flashes in my face, and I blink, then gape, disbelieving. I take a step back, bumping into Deedee; I stare at her. “This is—this was when—”

  “Yes,” Deedee says, pressing a hand to my shoulder. “It'll be okay. I'm right beside you.”

  “But I can't—”

  “It's important,” she insists. “Trust me.”

  And then I lose all sense of space and time; I forget the last decade, forget everything that has happened since the accident, because my dad—my dad—is looking right at me. He's grinning at me through his snow-white beard, reaching for me with his arm. Red. He's dressed all in red, wearing a Santa suit, because this is our annual Christmas Eve party, held this year at my sister's house. Dad always dresses up for the party, always.

  “What's wrong with you, Ebbie?” His eyes crinkle at the corners as he laughs merrily. “You look like you've seen a ghost!”

  “Aw, she's probably just mooning over Carol,” Hannah, my sister, teases, winking in my direction as she aims her camera toward me again. Dad swings his arm around my shoulder and tilts his head against mine. I can feel his whiskers, the warmth of his skin—

  But he was cold, so cold when—

  The camera flashes.

  “Aunt Ebbie, will you read to me?” Hannah's oldest daughter, Holly, tugs at my hand and holds up a copy of 'Twas the Night before Christmas. I smile and nod, and we cuddle together in Dad's old armchair, worn thin after twenty years of use. The familiar words begin to fall from my lips, and with each one, I feel calmer, more grounded. More...here.