Monsters: Fiction

Holly Jolly Christmas is mine again

The story that started with episode 75, and, before that, with gently making fun of my mother’s love for Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies, was my first published horror short story. And now it’s not.

The indie press that published it in its anthology Monsters vol. 1 and promised it would be out for spooky season last year pushed it to November, then December (which was fine with me—it’s Christmas horror, after all)…then their website was hacked. Fine, things happen. Preorders had been made, and I had received my first paycheck for horror. I’m still going to frame that bitch, never fear.

It took asking them to tell us writers that they had been hacked, but okay, perhaps it was a new experience for a small staff.

I just found out via their blog that they are shutting down. No direct contact with me, their contracted author. Yes, I have a contract.

I immediately emailed them to request a formal release from contract—which I consider null and void but I want it in writing, you know, like professionals do—and to inquire about preorder refunds…you know, like for my elderly parents?!

But I’m okay. It’s an amazing story. I do say so myself. I workshopped it thanks to Bob Ford’s class on reading aloud at a horror convention, and he raved about it to everyone he saw. Seriously. I wheeled into an elevator—with my long grey hair and my wheelchair, I was easily recognizable at this small convention—and these strangers said

oh my God you’re the one with that story I can’t wait to read it when it’s published.

They gushed over me until they got out. This was the next day, so all I could think during the long wheel to my room was what were you up to in the hotel bar last night, Bob?

Yes, this story also made Bob and I friends. So there’s that wonderful that. He and I are working on that new secret project that I am so excited about. He is likely reading my first portion today, after he finishes his deadline, and I have, dare I say it, that Christmas morning feeling about it.

It also opened the door to membership into the HWA (which I need to renew, so thanks for reminding me, unprofessional press, I will send my dues payment this afternoon). So so many good things came from this scary parody of a pretty white woman saving Christmas explicably for a small town and finding a Ken Doll boyfriend as her reward for being a Christmas Angel. I made fun of them with my mom (“Stop it! They’re sweet.”) enough, I might as well put my clowning to work.

And I did.

So since I am no longer under contract, I am going to share it here with you. So, without further ado, I present “Holly Jolly Christmas”, which is perfectly timed, because we are halfway to Christmas. Be careful visiting people you’ve met on the web, not everything that glistens is tinsel, and not every gift is for you.

And if you notice the subtle historical name puns, let me know. Bob didn’t. When I revealed their connections to the workshop, he exclaimed, “You son of a bitch!” and that’s when we became friends.

Holly Jolly Christmas

by Carla Pettigrew

Christmas lights keep away the monsters. Everyone knows that. Along with porch lights. 

The Victorians knew it when they mounted candles on their Christmas firs in their dim parlors. And Thomas Edison knew it when he created the first strand of electric lights, stringing them up and down Menlo Park to illuminate the Yule season of 1880. And the good citizens of the small town of Petitville, New York, most certainly know it, when they deck their inner and outer halls with both the teeny white fairy lights and the chunky red, blue and green bulbs of yore.

The name of their town actually means “Small Town”, named, so the story goes, by a success-drunk French furrier and trapper who hunkered down to hunt and fish in the area for the winter and decided to stay when his haul of fish, pelts, and meat was surprisingly bountiful that year. That chap’s name was Jean-Pierre de Rais, and there were many John, Jean, and Peters named for him amongst the good folks of Petitville. Also many related de Rais, which had become Anglicized and bastardized through the three centuries into DeRay, Derais, and Derails. 

Petitville is in the shape of a bowl on three sides, a valley hemmed in on those three sides by impassable mountains. In that bowl is Petitville proper, one Wal-Mart, one movie theater, one library, five churches, St. Gabriel Hospital, and St. Joan Hospital for the Insane and Training School for the Feeble, usually just called St. Joan’s. The full name of St. Joan’s has never been altered in the name of political correctness, because one, no one ever comes to Petitville unless you have kin there, and two, Petit-ites value tradition over kindness. It is what it is, c’est la vie. Ca n’a pas d’importance.

One of those traditions is lighting up the entire valley with Christmas lights, starting on 1 am on All Saints Day for the most intrepid all the way to Epiphany, January 6. Christmas lights keep away the gloom. And the monsters. 

And every porch light is lit. If someone forgets, or the porch lightbulb burns out, that person will get a friendly knock on the door, a firm but smiling reminder to light up, now would be good neighbor. The knock and reminder and most definitely stand and wait, of course, is accompanied by a hot casserole or fresh-baked Christmas cookies, or, in the case of older Petit-ites, perhaps a real plum pudding. 

One other tradition that Petitville loves at Christmas to keep away the gloom is the Christmas guest. It feels like an outsider really saves Christmas, so to speak. Each year, one family or bachelor (or bachelorette!) will invite someone from outside Petitville to spend the holiday season in their cozy village, and to enjoy their quaint traditions, like stringing all those lights through the town square and baking the town’s version of Moravian molasses cookies in tree and snowflake shapes to hand out during the work.

The outsider will always be delighted to find, all bundled up in their big city puffy coats and faux fur topped hats, that they get to flip the switch on the giant Christmas tree in front of the bandstand and the gazebo in the square. Their delighted smile is one of the best parts of the season. One can tell they can feel that they are right in the middle of those TV Christmas movies, with the perfect snow falling all around and the townspeople needing their help, well, not needing them, but wanting them, so kinda needing them…

This year, it’s Holly Davidson. Her first name gave a little thrill and some hushed and guilty giggles when the announcement email circulated. She was coming to visit Gilbert Derails, and since she was an anthropology grad student studying insular communities, she had cleared it with her professors that she could come All Saints Day and work on her thesis remotely from Gilbert’s house. She wanted to see it all, the dismantling of Halloween, the lighting of the lights 

To keep away the monsters

Apparently she had some feelings for him, they had met online—he had courted her especially for Christmas, the entire town knew, but Holly did not—and she was so excited to meet everyone and participate as much as she could. She confessed to Gil, who told everyone else via the emailserv, that she had downloaded some Lifetime and Hallmark Christmas movies to “get into the mood”. “Not that I am ‘saving Christmas’ by showing up and opening a bookstore and getting a boyfriend lol” she had sent and Gil had dutifully re-sent to everyone, “but it makes me feel bubbly inside, it has that weird element to it. I will be the only person not from Petitville, right?”

Yes, he answered, o yes. Holly Jolly Christmas. In case you didn’t hear.

“Can I bring champagne?”

Definitely warranted.

So Holly arrived with her laptop and her champagne and her downloaded silly happy movies, and the light stringing began. To keep away the monsters. And the gloom.

Days passed with hot chocolate and cookies and so many strung lights and snowball fights and fires in the fireplace. No room was ever quite dark, ever. And Holly got used to that, sort of. She also got used to how everyone was always smiling at her, sort of. They always seemed to be looking at her as if she was a present.

She drove home for Thanksgiving via the only route out of town, and it felt like half the town came to see her off. The mayor himself, Peter DeRay, paused at her car window and made her promise to return. “We’ve all just fallen in love with you, Holly. And we just can’t light the town Christmas tree without you. You have to flip the ceremonial switch for Yule.”

“Me? Are you sure? I’d be honored.” Heads behind his bobbled happily. Yes, yes, please yes.

“I promise. I’m going to my parents for Thanksgiving then meeting with my advisor to review my thesis, exchanging some research materials at the university library, then I’ll be back. So Wednesday.”

“We will be counting the days.” And as Holly drove away, she felt they actually would. But it also felt nice. Really nice to be needed so badly. As if Christmas wouldn’t happen without her. And she was excited to experience a community that combined their celebrations of Yule and Christmas.

Wednesday morning, Holly returned, and was serenaded by the St. Perpetua Catholic Church’s children’s choir singing “The Holly and the Ivy”. And Gilbert’s open arms. She really felt like a pretty actress in a Christmas movie, saving Christmas for a small town. And she began to neglect her thesis as she strung more lights into the outskirts of town, reaching into the gloomy mountains.

Yule dawned cold and crisp. Gilbert asked her to wear her white cabled sweater, he said it accentuated her pretty red hair. And did she have white slacks or a skirt? She put on her cream-colored corduroy pants, feeling oddly like a snow bunny, or a human stop sign, wondering why casual Gil suddenly cared what she wore. Yule traditions? Maybe he was just nervous about everything being just so for the tree lighting.

They sat before the fireplace all day, her in his arms, drinking hot toddys. The whiskey tasted a little bitter, kind of strange, but Holly didn’t complain. She was two weeks behind on her thesis, and she just wanted to lose herself in the crackling fire and the alcohol and the nice man with his arm around her and the lovely Christmas music softly playing and the twinkling lights all the twinkling lights twinkling twinkling twinkling twinkling

It was so cold. The back of her head was cold. Why was her hair so cold? Holly could hear the children singing again. “Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown.” Her hair was cold and wet, and Holly couldn’t move. And the lights were so bright behind her eyelids.

She opened her eyes, and she was looking up into the branches of the largest pine tree she had ever seen. It was saturated in lights: the chunky, old-fashioned red blue greens, and the white, twinkly fairy lights, all intentangled in a Christmas glory of chaos.

She tried to raise her head to look around, and her head jerked back into place with an icy jolt. The children changed to a French chorale song that sounded medieval and the crowd joined in, swaying and holding hands, looking out of the corner of Holly’s eye like the Whos down in Whoville. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t move. “Gilbert! Gilbert!”

“I’m right here, babe.” He kneeled beside her, crunching in the snow, smiling that sweet holiday smile that she had fallen in crush with. “We promised you you would do the honors of the ceremonial throwing of the switch, and here you are.”

“What are you talking about? The tree’s lit! Am I tied up? Help me!”

He smiled proudly. “Yes, tied up with Christmas lights that don’t work any more and good old-fashioned twine and staked to the ground. And I wet your hair after the drugs took hold, so it’s iced good and proper in place to the snow. But the light switch is right by your left hand, here, feel it, baby.” He put his hand over hers, and, even though she jerked away, he gently guided her touch to the switch that controlled the tree. “When we give the signal, you’ll turn the Christmas tree’s lights off.”

Holly struggled in vain, bucking against the ground. Gil, continuing to smile proudly at her, placed one strong hand again her shoulder, pressing down hard. 

“You said you felt like you were saving Christmas. You are, baby. The lights keep the monsters away.”

“You’re mad!” She writhed in vain in the snow, whimpering, ashamed of the sounds she was making, angry at her shame. “You’re crazy!”

“But monsters have to be pacified. Relationships are symbiotic, you see, at their very core. Give and take. Dis donc! Pay attention!” He pressed down harder and pinched her brachial nerve. She screamed and stopped fighting, simultaneously feeling numbness and electrical pain. “Good girl. See, our founder, Jean-Pierre de Rais, was so excited by the bounty of this valley’s rivers and forest that he over-trapped and over-fished. He was so grateful to be alive and to be making money that he nearly killed off the beavers and trout. He made enough money to found this beautiful town but the—animals—that also live off those animals were not pleased. Not pleased at all.” He chuckled as if at a slightly mortifying family holiday memory. “So they came down out of their dark mountains, the mountains that surround our little town, and made him a little deal that he, well, couldn’t refuse. Once a year, he would lower all the lights, so they feel comfortable, and he and his descendants would leave them an offering to make up for the depleted game. We owe so much for this happy, lovely home we have.” Murmurs of assent from the happy crowd. “Someone in his line decided Christmas was a symbolic time, gifts, you know, and the…well, monsters, let’s be honest, that’s not a mean word, and we’re not a PC people you know…anyway, someone agreed, since winter is a lean time, Christmas was perfect. And we can’t offer up one of our own. We are too insular of a community. We tried once or twice, and it went—badly.” He looked around for affirmation, and the now silent crowd agreed. Yes, o, yes. Ugly. Wrong. Badly.

“So one year someone watched one of those Hallmark or Lifetime movies about some outsider fluffy perky chick from the Big City saving some little town’s Christmas for some dumb reason and—” he clapped his hands joyfully right in her face like a proud little boy, and she hated herself for flinching—“Bingo!”

“So you are going to, as our guest, turn off the tree, and the surrounding lights, as tradition dictates. We will all quietly return to our homes to give some…privacy. And the monsters will receive their reparations for the year. Because,” and he leaned close to her ear so that his cute hipster beard tickled her neck, “the lights keep the gloom and the monsters away.”

Then he grabbed her hand, everyone began to cheer and shout Blessed Yule, the button depressed under her frost-crusted fingers, and the town square the bandstand and the gazebo went dark so dark so deep. She could feel the Petit-ites move away and leave her in the mountain gloom in the bowl of Petitville.

And the rustling and snuffling and the growling started. The seeking began. In case you didn’t hear.

To: asubisatti@anthro.columbia.edu, mbockoven@anthro.columbia.edu

From: hdavidson@students.columbia.edu

Subject: Withdrawal From Program

I have decided at this time to withdraw my thesis for consideration, and am withdrawing from the master’s program for personal reasons. I need to take a sabbatical. Please forward me the withdrawal forms that I need to send to the registrar. I apologize for the inconvenience, and thank you for working with me as my advisors.

Holly Davidson