I knew something was wrong when my mother started turning the family photos face-down. We hadn’t decorated. We didn’t bake cookies. A week before the 25th, I saw her huddled next to the fireplace in the middle of the night with a pad of paper in front of her. She was making phone calls, whispering quietly over the receiver to one family member at a time as if sharing a piece of terrible news.
I lingered in the hallway, listening in secret as she spoke to my uncle Cormac. “Grandma’s coming home this Christmas,” she said to him. In the light of the flames, I could see her hands shaking.
My mother was always a superstitious person. She taught me plenty of tricks to avoid misfortune growing up: don’t pick up a comb you find on the ground, don’t send out Christmas cards after a funeral, never put your shoes on the furniture. But the most specific and dire rule in our household was always this: do not ask questions about Grandma Eileen. I tried once and only once as a young child. Mother closed all the curtains and kept the doors and windows locked for days, refusing to even speak to me until Sunday.
We didn’t talk much, my mother and I. But every year, I came home for Christmas to help her host a family gathering of relatives both near and distant. Last year, when I stepped into the old and drafty house I grew up in, I noticed she looked much older. Her hair turned white, her face had grown pale, her freckles disappeared into the deep lines on her face. She grew tired, slow, and sad. I think it’s because she never sleeps.
A day before Christmas Eve, I spent the night rolling out cookie dough for our growing list of visitors. It was snowing, the glow of the street lamps making the flakes shine like glitter as they fell from the sky. Frost was collecting on the kitchen window in intricate designs that stretched a little bigger as the night grew colder.
“You found the old recipe book.” My mother’s voice came from behind me. I jumped slightly, then turned to see her shape standing in the darkened doorway.
“Figured we needed just a little holiday spirit, right?” I said, chopping up a handful of walnuts. “You know Uncle Sean won’t forgive us if we don’t have his favorites. Peanut butter cookies, shortbreads…”
There was a creak in the floorboards. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see my mother’s shadow stepping up behind me almost out of sight. I felt her near, strands of her long pale hair falling onto my shoulder as she peered over at the counter. She put a thin hand on my arm, but her skin felt like cold clay.
“Pecans.” She said quietly. Her breath was like a freezing wind against my neck. “…Grandma Eileen always made them with pecans, not walnuts.”
The sound of that name sent a shiver up my spine. It had been years since I had heard it or even thought of it, and hearing it from my mother’s lips felt like a curse crawling up my back.
“What did you–?”
I turned, squinting over my shoulder. She was gone, leaving hardly a trace behind: no creaks in the floorboards, no shadows on the wall. All that remained was a single long, white hair on the floor at my feet.
I didn’t tell my mother about that night. When she came down from her room on Christmas Eve, she was surprised to see what I had done. An artificial tree was pulled out of storage, still smelling like the shed and decorated with mismatched antique baubles. A bit of garland was placed on the mantle, cookies laid out on a porcelain platter. She didn’t say anything, but I could see the disappointment in her eyes as she refused to humor my feeble attempt of bringing the holiday spirit into our miserable, drafty home.
When the day grew dark and the sun began to set in the late afternoon, family arrived. One at a time, they filed in, shaking off the snow on their coats and hanging up their scarves in the hall. There were no gifts, no smiling faces. My Uncle Sean brought two bottles of whiskey, which he set down on the table with a hard ‘clunk’.
“Let’s get the night over with.” He said in a gruff voice, rubbing his hands together by the fireplace.
A dozen of us were gathered in total. My aunts and uncles had started drinking early, becoming more cranky as the hour grew late. My young cousin Bree had an expression of wide-eyed worry as she stood near the flames, arms crossed to keep away the chill. No one looked happy to be here, but she looked especially bothered.
“…Dad said that Grandma Eileen is–”
“Shh!” My mother put a finger to her lips, shushing the girl.
My Uncle Cormac laughed, holding his fourth glass of whiskey up to his lips. “Nora, she’s on her way whether you say her name or not.” His eyes were dark and surrounded by circles. He hadn’t been sleeping either. “It’s just a question of ‘when’.”
Bree put her head back down, making herself small. I vaguely remembered the last time we had a solemn Christmas like this, years before my cousin was ever born. It was a night like this one: a quietly crackling fire, the lights turned off, curtains shut. Back then, mother made a game out of it. “Count all of the heads in the room before you go to sleep,” she told me. Perhaps I was just too young to know my numbers, but I swore there were less people in the room the next morning.
“Is it true?” Bree whispered, standing near me. “That when she comes, someone else has to leave?”
I opened my mouth to answer, trying to think of something comforting to say, before our cousin Liam answered for me.
“They don’t leave, she takes them.” He said bitterly. He was sitting far away from the fire, but even in the dark I could see the way he scowled. We were the same age, but he never outgrew his sour mood. “The last time it happened, it was Great Aunt Myrna. And a couple years before that, it was her husband. And before that–”
“Liam, enough.” My mother spoke sternly to him, getting up to put another log on the fire. “You’re getting everyone nervous.”
Cormac downed the rest of his whiskey in one big gulp, slamming his glass down on the coffee table. “Should be nervous,” he said with a loud burp. “Nights like these, when the snow is fallin’ and the wind blows in from the north, it’s a good night to be scared of what might be out there. Out in the cold.”
The fire crackled loudly, the flames rising high in an instant. We all watched it burst with light and then dim once more, the embers seeming paler now. The windows rattled in the wind and something upstairs fell and rolled across the floor. We all looked up, then shared a glance around the room, waiting for someone to speak.
“Almost midnight.” Uncle Cormac said, pouring himself another glass. “Merry Christmas, everyone.”
We all murmured in response and raised our glasses in a miserable excuse for a cheer, hushed under our breath.
A minute passed, then another. And finally, the grandfather clock chimed its eerie, slow chords when the midnight hour arrived. On the final note, the hand stopped and the pendulum froze in place. There was an uncomfortable stillness in the room, every single one of us going silent as the fire continued to burn down to only embers.
“Come on.” I put an arm around Bree’s shoulders, leading her over to the couch. She sat next to me, looking tense. “We’re going to make a game out of it, okay? Until you fall asleep, every five minutes you have to run through the house and find everyone. And when you count all 12 of us, including yourself, you shout it out. Sound fun?”
She nodded her head, but still looked unsure. I gave her a little tickle under her chin just to get her to smile, which finally did the trick.
“Okay, okay.” She stood up, patting me on the top of my head. “One!”
Bree was finally occupied, going from person to person and giving them all a pat to count them. By the time she was chasing Liam around the room, trying to pat him while he evaded her, I left the couch to go stand by my mother’s side. She was watching one of the curtains move in a nonexistent wind, worry written on the lines of her face.
“I’m going upstairs.” I told her. “Something fell. I want to make sure there’s no broken glass up there before Bree finds it first.”
My mother grabbed my wrist before I could leave, holding it in a tight vice. She looked up at me with wide eyes and handed me a candle to light my way. “Quickly.” Was all she said.
The old staircase seemed to creak more than it used to. I held onto the railing, being careful as I reached the loose stair that always used to trip me as a child. As I got to the top, I became aware of a bitter chill that tickled my left side. My mother’s bedroom door was slowly drifting open, the hinges squeaking.
One of her windows was cracked just enough to push in a freezing wind. Protecting my candle from the breeze, I marched in and closed it quickly. I could see how the tree branches scraped against the sides of the house, tapping on the windows like cold finger bones. Lingering at the window for only a moment, I glanced outside to look at the rolling hills covered in snow and the distant lights of town. The old willow tree I used to play under as a child was waving its bare branches like a lace curtain. I looked closer at the base of the tree. Somewhere, behind the weeping branches, there was a shape. It looked like legs, floating perfectly still just an inch above the snow with bare, pale feet.
I was afraid to let my gaze wander upwards. If there was a face behind those dead leaves and twigs, I did not want to see it.
Moving away from the window, my heart racing and my hand shaking, I spotted something sitting in the middle of the floor. It was a hairbrush. I realized quite quickly that the wind must have pushed it off my mother’s vanity table, sending it clattering to the floor just before midnight. I leaned over to pick it up, my fingers just barely grazing the wood handle, before I saw another one of those long white hairs.
Usually, I didn’t listen to my mother’s old superstitions. But just this once, I felt it should be left where it was.
“Twelve! That’s everyone!” I heard Bree exclaim while I stepped back down the staircase. My Aunt Orla and Uncle Sean were playing a card game by candlelight, bickering back and forth as the siblings often did. Liam’s little twin sisters were resting on the couch side-by-side while he and Uncle Cormac were huddled together near the fire, trying to get the flame to come back to life with some difficulty.
“Who do you think it’s gonna’ be?” Liam whispered to him.
Cormac shook his head with a dissatisfied click of the tongue. “You’ve got a dark mind to be thinkin’ that sort of thing, son. We don’t take bets on family.”
“I’m just saying,” Liam continued. “When it was Great Aunt Myrna, she was sick, so that made sense. This time–” He stopped speaking when he noticed me standing behind him. I gave him a cold stare, nudging my head discreetly to his young siblings who were within ear-shot. He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “Fire’s not lighting.”
I crouched next to him. “Did you put more wood on?”
“Yeah.” He nodded towards the pile against the wall. “Even tried cleaning away the ash.”
I stood up straight and took a candle over to the wood pile, putting my hand on the top-most pieces. With a grimace, I felt a cold, damp sensation on my palm that left an unpleasant sticky texture on the skin. I stuck my tongue out in disgust, seeing a reddish-brown residue left behind.
“That’s why,” I said. “Wood’s damp. Looks like it’s covered in sap. We’ve got more out in the shed, if you wanna’ take the sling and go get some.”
Liam looked up at me with a scowl, thin blonde eyebrows scrunched together. “Why do I have to go? I don’t even know where it is.”
“You’d know if you used your eyes,” I groaned at him. I was already grabbing the wood sling and holding it out for him to grab. He eventually did so, but with ornery reluctance.
“It’s dark out. I can’t carry the sling and a flashlight, so you have to come with me.”
“Jesus Christ, Liam, just go get the damn wood. Your sisters are turnin’ blue.” Cormac grumbled, poking at the embers without any success. Liam opened his mouth to argue, but quickly decided against it. Probably for the best.
“It’s fine.” I was already grabbing a flashlight from the toolbox we kept in the closet. “I’ll show you where it’s at. Let’s make it quick, though. I’m freezing.”
As we left the room, we both got a pat from Bree, who excitedly exclaimed “One! Two!” while we were putting on our coats and gloves. Liam whined and mumbled the whole way, following me out into the blustering wind and snow. As soon as it hit my face, I felt a sting against my eyes from the bitter, dry air.
“Colder than a dead man’s toes out here, ain’t it?” I chuckled, earning a grumpy side-eye from my cousin. “…Oh come on, you can afford to lighten up for just a second.”
Liam looked back at me, stumbling over a hidden tree root in the process. I snickered and he kicked snow at my ankles in response. “There’s nothing to laugh about,” he said angrily. “You know what’s going to happen tonight. In the morning, someone will be gone, and it could be any of us. It could be you, it could be my dad–”
“Or,” I interrupted, shining the light on Liam’s face. He squinted at me with an expression like a sour lemon. “It could be no one. You said it yourself, Aunt Myrna was sick. Grandpa was, like, a thousand and one years old.”
We stopped at the door to the shed, both of us putting our strength together to force it open. It was stuck in the ice and heavy piles of snow on the ground. When it finally cracked open, hinges squeaking, I shined the light into the mess of old woodworking tools and yard supplies.
“Doesn’t matter what happens tonight,” Liam continued, waiting for me to enter the shed first. “We always have bad luck on Christmas, and that’s that. Ghost or no ghost…”
I handed him the flashlight while I worked on getting a hefty pile of wood into the sling. “I thought you liked ghost stories,” I said. “You were always the little creep growing up.”
He flashed the light down at my hands. “Yeah, well…I like ghost stories when I’m not involved in them.”
“You know what? Fair.” I checked each piece of wood, making sure they were dry before piling them on with the rest. Eventually, I noticed my view becoming dark as Liam moved the flashlight away. “Hey buddy, I can’t see. Give me some light.”
He wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. I heard a soft, shaking breath beside me and looked up to see Liam’s face turning white as paper, the flashlight held limply in his hand and pointed toward the ground. He was looking out the window now, eyes forward and mouth open in an expression of frozen terror.
When I saw it for myself, I jumped back, smacking my head into my dad’s old saw table. A pair of withered, gray feet were dangling outside the window, connected to a figure hovering just beside the shed but mostly out of sight. It was swaying slightly, strands of long, thin hair floating around it like a figure in water. And though we couldn’t see a face, I felt confident that she knew we were there.
We could hear her breathing. The voice was a dry rattle, like a throat full of grave dirt struggling to pull in air. Every now and then, her legs would twitch with small convulsions or she’d begin to move, circling around the shed but always coming back to hover next to us. I braved a quick glance once and saw her slowly begin to sink, a dead and withered hand scraping the window. Her nails scratched the walls whenever she circled us: a reminder that she was still here.
I don’t know how long we waited, huddled together under the table. We were silent at first, until he was the first to whisper.
“You think she’s waiting for us?” he asked, his voice trembling with fear.
I looked at him and shook my head, the cold making my teeth chatter. “If she wanted one of us, she’d do it by now.”
I turned my eyes back to the window. The dangling legs were gone. There was an eerie silence that surrounded us, the wind no longer blowing and the snowfall beginning to calm. I was the first to creep out from under the table, looking one way and then another before getting to my feet. She was gone.
But only for a moment. Liam and I both jumped out of our skin when we heard a heavy bang on the roof above us, followed by the sound of an old woman’s voice wailing in misery and anger. Two more heavy thumps shook the dusty ceiling over our heads, as if the spirit was banging her fists against the roof.
We ran for it without a moment’s hesitation. Liam grabbed the sling full of wood, dropping a few pieces as he flailed his way towards the door. I was right behind him, the flashlight abandoned on the floor as we raced one right after the other back into the house. We slammed the door behind us, the wind picking up again and trying to blow it back open. In that split second when the door was wide open to the world, I saw her - pale and rotten, floating above the shed and dragging her toes across the snow-covered roof.
When the door was closed and tightly locked, Liam and I shared a fearful glance. We said nothing, but the pact was sealed with expressions alone - we wouldn’t tell the family about this.
“Twelve! That’s everyone!” Bree yelled out from the living room. She was still running back and forth, getting out that late night energy. Liam’s little sisters were sleeping soundly now on the couch, while Sean and Orla had given up their game of cards.
“Thought you two got lost,” Cormac grumbled, drunk and tired. Liam dropped the sling full of wood, still fighting to catch his breath.
“Shed door was frozen shut.” He said shakily, kneeling down in front of the fireplace. He was trying to put a stack of wood in the center, but his fingers were clumsy and shaking. Cormac, seeing the way his son struggled, heaved a frustrated sigh and knelt down to help him. A shiver ran up all of our spines when we heard a thump coming from above, like something heavy stomping on the roof. The floorboards on the second story began to creak, a cold wind coming from upstairs.
We didn’t know what time it was anymore. My phone had died long ago, the clocks all stopped working, the power was out. But once the fireplace roared back to life, casting a comforting warmth over the living room, we all fell into a tense, exhausted silence. We tried to disregard the sounds lurking through the upstairs halls: footsteps against the wooden floors, the clatter of items pushed off the shelves, wheezing breaths from old and rotten lungs. My mother closed the doors, containing us to one room so we could ignore it.
A few times an hour, Bree would run around the room and count everybody one at a time, always ending up with the same number. I sat near the door, listening to the floorboards creak and glass shatter from an upstairs bedroom. This time, I didn’t go up to check. Only once, I felt a cold breeze from beneath the door, and I heard the shrill scrape of nails against the wood as if she were standing on the other side and asking to be let in.
My mother and I sat side-by-side. She leaned toward me, putting her head on my shoulder.
“How do you know?” I asked quietly, watching my aunt as she nibbled one of the cookies from the kitchen. She made a face and put it aside - guess she didn’t like the walnuts. “How did you know grandma was coming home this year?”
Mother stared into the fire, saying nothing for a long moment. When she finally answered, her voice was a weak little whimper. “She visits me at night sometimes,” she said. “Under the willow tree, sometimes floating above the garden or circling the house for hours. When I tried to sleep, I heard her crying outside the window. She taps against the glass when she wants to come inside. I just knew.”
I put my arm around her. She was cold and shivering, her shoulders rigid and thin. “Why don’t you sit closer to the fire?” I offered. “You’re freezing…”
She seemed to think about it for a moment, but ultimately shook her head, curling up closer to my side. “No, I don’t want to move.” she said. “I think I just want to close my eyes instead.”
Watching the fire was hypnotic. The house had grown calm and still, Bree having fallen asleep on the couch next to her little cousins. Uncle Cormac was snoring while sitting propped up against the wall, using his coat as a pillow. Eventually, my mother fell asleep on my shoulder and Liam and I were the only ones left awake.
He was looking out the window, his head peering through the curtain and watching the snowfall. He had been standing there for a while, just waiting for something to happen, searching for what might be out there in the cold.
I leaned my head back against the chair, listening to the fire crackle and my mother breathe slowly in her sleep. Finally, I closed my eyes. I drifted into a sleep that was dreamless and brief, ending as soon as the first light of morning started to show through the cracks between the curtains.
“One, two…” I heard Bree before I even opened my eyes. She was going around the room, patting every groggy, tired family member on the head as she passed. When she got to me, I grumbled quietly, my back sore from the terrible posture I had fallen into sometime in the night.
Uncle Cormac was still snoring, sleeping off those heavy glasses of whiskey from the night before. Liam had fallen asleep on the floor near the fireplace at some point and was covering his eyes with one arm.
“Six, seven…”
Aunt Orla yawned and headed toward the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. Liam’s twin sisters were following after her and asking about breakfast.
“Nine, ten…”
Uncle Sean was opening up the curtains, letting the light flood into the dusty old room. He let out a sigh of long-held relief as we all got the first good glimpse of Christmas morning sunrise. His eyes darted around the room at all of us, one at a time. “…Where’s Nora?”
“Eleven!” Bree called out, her hand on her own head. “That’s everyone!”
It’s been almost one year since grandma came home. In that time, I’ve been cleaning up my mother’s old house, sifting through family heirlooms and old Christmas memories from before I was born. I’ve started making a list of phone numbers. No cards, though. It’s bad luck to send out Christmas cards after a funeral.
Liam and I never told anyone in the family about what we saw that night. I suspect we’re not the only ones who are keeping the same secret held close to our chests, hoping someone else says it first. All I know is that the vision has changed since then. I see a different figure floating now, out under the willow tree and over the garden, her face always covered by her long silver hair. Sometimes she cries, tapping her cold fingers against the windows and begging for me to let her in.
On top of it all, I think the stress of the holidays must be getting to me. Every time I look in the mirror, I think I look older. Even my hair is turning white.
I’ve been keeping the lights off lately, turning the family photos face-down. I think tonight I’ll start making the calls. I need to let everyone in the family know that Mother is coming home this Christmas.