Foggy scene with evergreen trees in foreground and blurred house in background lit with Christmas lights

Beginning of an as-yet-unnamed Christmas horror story (#WeWriWa #2)

September 26, 2021 /

Good morning, and welcome to my second post for the Weekend Writing Warriors blog hop (see all my Weekend Writing Warriors posts here). Right now I’m revising the first draft of a Christmas horror story I hope to submit to the Deathlehem anthology–if I can get it done quickly enough. I’m horribly slow at revising. Here are the first 10 sentences:

Lully, lullah, thou little tiny child.
Billy Foraker lifted the little boy off his lap, gave him a half-hearted, “Ho, ho, ho,” and rubbed his temples.
Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Ugh, that song again. He’d heard some version of it at least six times since his shift started at Stockton Galleria Mall. Nothing said Christmas cheer like a children’s choir singing about babies about to be murdered.
A voice over the PA system announced, “Attention, shoppers, the Stockton Galleria will be closing in five minutes. We wish you and yours a very merry Christmas.”
Billy looked around Santa’s Winter Wonderland, the space in the center of the mall where he sat on an overdecorated and uncomfortable throne surrounded by potted holly bushes, fake snow, and enough tinsel to choke a herd of reindeer. No more kids in line, finally.

And here’s a bit more, if you’d like to read on:

You’d think parents would get the annual Santa visit done before Christmas Eve, but he’d had at least two hundred kids on his lap since the mall opened.
Thou little tiny child.
He stood, pulled down his red face mask in spite of the mall’s COVID rules, and stretched his aching back. His lumbar discs had started going bad right after his fiftieth birthday, and two years of sleeping on a prison mattress hadn’t improved them.
“Hi, Santa.”
He sighed, he hoped not audibly, and pulled his mask back up. A little girl, maybe six or seven years old, stood alone under a holly-and-tinsel-covered arbor at the entrance to Santa’s Winter Wonderland. She had dark brown hair in a single braid down her back, deep-set, almost hollow eyes, and a pink face mask dotted with sequins. “Hello, little one. Where’s your mommy?”
“She’s not here. Can I tell you what I want for Christmas?”
This time he stifled the sigh. “Sure, come on up.” He sat, and she climbed on his lap.
“What do you want for Christmas?” He should have asked her name and how old she was, but he was too tired to care.
She grinned up at him, revealing dimples and a missing front tooth. “It’s a secret.”

I’d love to know what you think. Would you keep reading?

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