I know it’s almost cliché at this point to say the holidays are a nightmare, but for me and my family, we truly have been going through hell.
The last few days I’ve felt like Scrooge being visited by the three ghosts, only when my husband and I wake up screaming, we’re not filled with some new profound Christmas cheer or good will towards men. And the things visiting at night, well they’re far more terrifying than some Victorian ghoul wrapped in chains.
We’ve been watching our nieces, my sister’s kids. We don’t have kids of our own, except the two cats, our “fur babies” as we call them.
My sister and brother-in-law have been going through some very understandable personal issues after losing their son. I say losing in the literal sense, since we still don’t know where he is. Let’s just call him “Adam” since I don’t want their family dealing with anymore from the press.
When Adam went missing there was a media circus around his disappearance and let’s just say you’ve probably heard about it on multiple major news outlets. The sad thing is I think most of these talking heads on TV didn’t give a shit about Adam or his parents, it was just another “True Crime” story to get obsessed with and boost ratings, most of the audience just tuning in for a small distraction from the misery of their own lives.
If that sounds bitter, it’s because I am. People spent so much time sensationalizing the story they didn’t stop to ask if they should. They rarely do. The circumstances of the case are strange, but this isn’t entertainment, it’s our lives.
Anyway, my point is this year Christmas was going to suck either way, and now I’m just trying to hold it together for the girls and pray that what we’re experiencing is some weird PTSD, collective psychosis or dream or something that can be solved with a pill and some therapy, because if it’s real, well I don’t know what to do. They’re not my kids, but I would die for these girls. I just hope it doesn’t come to that.
It all started the other night. My husband, let’s call him “Greg”, wanted to drive me and the kids around the neighborhood to look at all the lights and decorations. The girls, “Sammy and Taylor”, perked up for the first time that week. We had tried all sorts of arts and crafts, baked some cookies (I was sure sugar would work!), but nothing seemed to do the trick. But finally, we got a smile out of them.
The house on the corner has always given the Griswold’s from Christmas Vacation (classic) a run for their money, and the last few years they inspired everyone on the block into a fun, sort of competition with each other. It draws a pretty big crowd, which can be a pain in the ass at times, but the kids love it and they raise money for charity so… who am I to complain? I say this while having not decorated the outside of the house this year with all the Adam drama and now we look like the Grinch. Anyway… point is, we drove the girls around.
It was pretty late, Greg’s work had him doing overtime, and so the streets were pretty empty. I remember that distinctly. We were playing some good ole’ Santa tunes on Spotify, singing along, the girls actually giggling for the first time in ages, and then the music cut out. Cell service sucks around here, so it wasn’t much of a shock. I just turned on the radio. I tried tuning around some horrible static for a minute and then the radio shut off. Weird.
Then the car died.
Now, I said a few of what the girls would call “Naughty List” words. We have AAA, but this is a new car and a dead engine was about the last thing we felt like dealing with in the middle of a winter night. They just kept laughing and screaming in our ears about getting coal in my stocking, as one by one all the houses in the neighborhood started going dark.
“Shut up girls!” Greg yelled.
Greg never yells. He rarely even gets mad. He’s like a zen master. But he wasn’t zen at all right then. He was shaking, and when I turned and looked I knew why. He was terrified.
The object moved with near total silence, except for a hum that, was more felt than heard.
As it passed over the houses, each dazzling display, millions of lights and blow up characters and animatronic North Poles, just shut off like the flip of a switch. And in the dark, the glow from this thing took their place. It was like… Rockefeller Center had just flown in and was hovering above our little street, just above the chimney tops. For some reason I thought about Adam and started to just sob uncontrollably and then -
We were driving down the highway.
I had snot running down my face. It was freezing because Greg was driving with all the windows open.
“What are you doing? The kids are gonna get sick!”
I looked back and they were sound asleep.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“How’s Denny’s sound?” Greg said.
“I guess I could eat… but could we go somewhere else?”
“I think they’re the only ones open.”
I looked down at the clock. 3:30am.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right”.
We went and had waffles. All four of us. The waitress didn’t question us dragging two small children out for a buttery, sugary feast at the witching hour, and neither did I. Not until the next afternoon.
We all slept in and Greg called out of work.
We had left to look at the lights around 9:30pm, maybe quarter of ten at a push, and there were at least five hours I couldn’t remember at all. Greg and I didn’t even recall the car issues or the other “light display” in the sky until later the following night. It was as if we were all just in a kind of weird daze. I’ve heard of “Covid” brain, and thought maybe we just all were coming down with something, or maybe it was just some seasonal depression. Lord knows with everything going on we had every right to be…
And then I saw Adam.
A flash in my mind of his face. Not one of my many cherished memories of him growing up, or one of the pictures plastered on flyers I couldn’t bear to look at anymore. This was something different.
I knew in that moment… Adam may be lost, but he’s alive!
Greg thought I was being hysterical. Maybe he still does. It’s hard to say.
We both agreed we had seen something weird the night before, but we live less than twenty miles from a pretty big Air Force base. It’s not unusual to get huge low lying planes rumbling over the neighborhood, and if they are doing some sort of practice drills, forget it. I’ve had fighter jets scream by so close to my house that one time a picture frame fell off the wall.
But this wasn’t that. I knew it and Greg knew it, even though he didn’t want to admit it. And as for my feeling about Adam, well that was just chalked up to an aunt and her grief.
But the next two nights were harder to just explain away.
After the whole ordeal out on our ride, we decided to just hunker down and watch about a million movies and eat our weight in chocolate. This is my method and it’s always worked for me when I’m down. Don’t judge.
“Sammy” is ten and getting a little harder to keep convinced about the “Big Guy in Red”, while “Taylor” is sweet and seven and still so trusting, even though the world is working super hard to change that about her.
So when Taylor ran in to tell us she had just seen an elf in the backyard, Sammy rolled her eyes.
“Oh really?” I said.
While I have no personal experience with it, I know my sister does that “Elf on a Shelf’ thing with the kids, so I figured this was all part of that game.
“Yeah! Come and see!” she yelled.
“Are you sure that’s what you saw?” I asked hoping not to have to get up. Marv and Harry were on the big screen about to take a beating from Kevin McCallister and I had a warm cat on my lap.
That’s when I heard one of the planters on our back porch fall over and smash.
Greg looked over at me with eyes that were moving far quicker to fear then they normally would. He was still more shaken than he let on.
“I guess I should check it out.” he said.
“I told you! Come on!”
She dragged a still very reluctant Greg to the sliding glass window, and he let out a noise I don’t even know quite how to describe. It wasn’t a scream, but it was something close.
“Get the girls and go to the basement.”
“What do you mean? You’re scaring-“
“Now!”
I leaped up, scooped the girls, and was down the basement stairs so fast I nearly fell and broke all three of our necks. I could hear shuffling around upstairs, and then a heavy scraping as it sounded like Greg dragged the kitchen table. There was a ringing growing in my ears and this… tingle. Like my skin was the outside of a power box, just humming with unseen energy… and then, black.
I heard a scratching at the door, then a “MEOW”.
I stood up so fast I hit my head. I reached for the basement door to let my cat in, upset that in my rush I had forgotten my other babies, and when I opened, I saw my bedroom.
I had been crammed in our closet, it was morning now, and the girls were GONE.
I started screaming.
Greg rushed in as our cat ran out.
“Babe!”
His eyes were bloodshot, not just like hung-over bloodshot, but like he had actually ruptured all the capillaries. It was horrifying.
“What happened?!” I couldn’t stop screaming. Then we heard the girls.
There was a wailing coming from under the guest bed that was like ice in the veins. We ran in and found them clutching each other under the mattress, their nightgowns soaked in urine. I grabbed a wastebasket just in time before vomiting all over myself. We were all delirious and if I had had my phone on hand I would have called 9-1-1. But I didn’t, and as it was I could barely stand. It was like the world was upside down.
We all just lay there together for, I couldn’t even say how long. Crying and whimpering until eventually we found a baseline of anguish that was tolerable enough to sit up and eventually walk.
We creeped through our home as if in a carnival fun house, totally unsure of what awaited around every corner. What we saw told a story that was equally confusing and disturbing.
The TV was still on and stuck on the DVD menu for Home Alone, so that the normally heartwarming music playing on loop, just hung eerily over the scene. The scraping I heard had indeed been the kitchen table, which now rested on its side, blocking the sliding glass door to the backyard. I looked to Greg.
“Why did you do that?”
He didn’t answer, wouldn’t even look at me. His eyes had found something else.
When he flipped the table, there had been a large collection of holiday activities in various stages, still in progress. The floor was now covered in flour and glitter and the shattered remains of a gingerbread house, a metaphor perhaps from the universe that was a bit too on the nose, but there it was anyway. And all through this mess, were dozens of small footprints.
It was like there had been a party of tiny people that we hadn’t been invited to, or worse still, that we had been and couldn’t remember.
Greg ran and checked the house alarm, which was still armed. When he finally found his phone, he checked the handy app for our security cameras meant to keep us safe, and… nothing but static.
Someone, or more likely, many someones, had been in our house, not set off the alarm, scattered us all over and we couldn’t remember a fucking thing.
Sammy and Taylor looked at us with the same fear and anxiety that had us ready to explode, looking for answers, desperate to know the truth, and so we did what any good adult would do in that situation.
We lied. We lied right through our fucking teeth.
Since the last thing anyone remembered was Taylor’s elf sighting, we just leaned into this…hard.
Santa’s elves had been doing a reconnaissance mission. Making sure that a certain two little girls were holding up their end of the holiday contract and staying well behaved.
So as we swept up the traces of “cute little boots” we just turned it into an insane game. That ringing in all our ears that wouldn’t seem to go away? That must have been from hearing the sleigh bells! The huge scorch mark we found on our back lawn? Rudolph’s nose SO BRIGHT! Our collective amnesia? Too much egg nog!
My sister called later that afternoon to check in, and since I was already on a roll, I just kept lying. All is well!
Greg and I thought about calling the police but what was the point? A bereaved family thinks an alien saucer came to visit last night? That would sound as believable to them as our friends coming down from the North Pole. There was nothing we could do.
So we just did our best to “Keep Calm and Carry On” as the Brits say, poured a very stiff glass of holiday cheer, and tried to forget. But the more I tried, the less it worked… and then there was Adam.
Somehow, I knew this was all related.
I left Greg to watch the kids so I could take a walk around the block and try to clear my head.
Now, I’m not the praying type. It’s been a long time since me and the other “Big Guy” of Christmas spoke. But seeing as his birthday was coming up, and I was getting pretty tipsy, and beyond desperate, I gave it a shot.
I looked at the stars, so so many stars. Each point of light a star, a galaxy, a possibility…
We are just… so small. In that moment I surrendered to God, the universe, whatever… it is so much bigger than me and you and any of our problems.
I felt a peace, a true peace wash over me. I felt warm, and it wasn’t just the booze, or the glory of all the festive displays, it was a feeling of true balance.
Bad things had happened, and they always will. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t good too. Whatever mechanism that allowed this, all of this around us, existence itself, well it’s brought order from chaos, beauty from nothingness, and somehow you and me and everything else gets to be a part of it. If that’s not something for the angels to sing about, well I don’t know what is.
I suddenly felt myself surrounded by light. It was like I was glowing, wrapped up in pure love. I looked through the blinding white, as a shape started to form and approach me.
“Adam?”
My eyes began to weep, and through the blur of my tears I saw the tender lines of a young boy. He stood before me, a hand outstretched that I snatched up in my own, as I kneeled to gaze in his face…
His hand was so cold.
I pulled away, wiping my eyes and clearing my vision.
“Adam?”
His skin was lifeless and grey, his wide eyes, so so wide and black. There was no humanity there.
“Adam?!”
It wasn’t Adam. No. Not at all.