A Christmas Tale by Austin O Crawley

Author:Austin O Crawley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: horror, ghosts, christmas, supernatural, victorian, ghost stories, dickens, christmas horror, winter holiday, christmas ghost stories
Publisher: Golbin Publishing

Chapter Nine

The echo of heavy steps on the wooden floor in her half-asleep perceptions brought Lauren to the edges of wakefulness. Then the memory of where she had heard those steps before brought her to full consciousness in a surge of rising panic, yet the sound, so close beside the sofa where she slept, appeared to have no cause. There was no one there in the night and nothing to explain the aural hallucination. Lauren began to almost believe that it had only been a remnant of dreaming, playing on her greatest fears.

Her eyes shifted, moving her gaze around the room where she could see that everything looked normal in the dim streetlamp illumination spilling through the window. There was no sign of a second Christmas spirit, for which she was grateful. She had no desire to continue playing out the Dickens story to some unknown, frightening conclusion. She was not rich or greedy like old Scrooge, who'd had something to gain from the lessons bestowed upon him by the Christmas Ghosts.

Lauren would have been more than happy to change any of her behaviors that might have brought any kind of distress to another person or to go out of her way to help people. She had been the girl in school who would pick up spiders and take them outside so that the boys wouldn't squash them, or to stand between a bully and a timid student who somehow drew the wrong kind of attention from those who took pleasure in intimidating others.

A stray thought crossed her mind, that humans had become so used to lighting the dark that only those who lived in remote areas ever really saw the stars. She had a sudden urge to gaze upon the naked night sky, unpolluted by city lighting, but it was something that would have to wait until she might have a chance to drive out into the country, perhaps when it was warmer.

She began to stretch and turn over into a different position, making herself more comfortable on the hard sofa. Then just as her eyes began to close again, she heard a soft, deep chuckle coming from behind the sofa. Her eyes flew open and she sat up carefully, peering over the sofa back to determine the source of the sound.

Sitting under the Christmas tree, half buried by the mound of presents that belonged to Amber and her mother, what appeared to be a man in a tailored suit glowed softly and laughed in a high-pitched voice, stomping his feet like an excited toddler and bringing Lauren's attention to the absurd bells tied onto his shoes. He held Amber's bike chain that they had used in the ritual over his head and wiggled it like a snake attacking him and shaking it just enough to produce the chinking sound peculiar to metal chains.

Lauren noticed a strange smell in the room that she couldn't quite define, sort of like a combination of goat fur and coconut. This brought back

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