Magic & Mistletoe: 15 Paranormal Stories for the Holidays Read online

  Not so long ago, I had been afraid of seeing my own twin’s face superimposed over those of any children he and I might have. But Graeson and I had done a lot of healing. We had made our peace, as much as anyone ever does when the loss is so dear, and this was a chance for us to embrace a future brighter than either of us had ever dared dream was within our reach.

  Sharing the news with him eased the tight knot of fear I had carried alone all those weeks, and I wished that I had come clean sooner. Afraid of dealing another blow to his tender heart, I had held the secret close to protect him the best way I knew how, until I was certain the girls were healthy despite their mixed heritage.

  “What did I ever do to deserve you?” He murmured against my cheek. “Tell me so I can do it again every day for the rest of my life.”

  “You were you.” I pressed a soft kiss to his jaw. “How could I resist?”

  “You resisted plenty at first,” he was quick to remind me.

  “That just proves she has good taste.” Isaac tapped me on the shoulder. “May I have this dance, coz?”

  Sure enough, someone had turned on seasonal music fit for slow dancing and several couples swayed around the tree.

  “No,” Graeson snarled, folding me even tighter against him. “Get your own mate. This one’s taken.”

  Laughing, I buried my face against his neck and breathed in the scent of pine and wood smoke. Home. “Are you going to be this snarly and overprotective for the next six months?”

  “No.” He nipped my ear. “I’m going to be this snarly and overprotective for the next eighteen years and six months.”

  Oh boy.

  Or should that be oh girls?

  About the Author

  Hailey Edwards writes about questionable applications of otherwise perfectly good magic, the transformative power of love, the family you choose for yourself, and blowing stuff up. Not necessarily all at once. That could get messy. She lives in Alabama with her husband, their daughter, and a herd of dachshunds.

  Join Hailey’s newsletter to receive updates on new releases, contests and other nifty happenings.

  Want more Cam and Cord? More Isaac and Dell? Start reading the Gemini series from the beginning.

  Simon Says

  Rachel McClellan

  Simon Says

  by Rachel McClellan

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED USA

  © 2012 Rachel McClellan

  All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Exceptions are reviewers who may quote short excerpts for review. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The characters are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.

  Simon Says

  By the age of nineteen, my brother Mark had murdered three people, and my mother had killed dozens more. As for my father, I’m not really sure. He died when I was only two days old at the hands of Simon. At least that’s what I was told.

  I’ve never seen Simon, but I’ve heard and smelled him plenty. Twice a year for as long as I can remember, my mother would blindfold my brother and me and sit us down on the cold basement floor. “Whatever you do, leave the blindfold on,” she’d tell us before leaving the darkened room. Seconds later we’d hear a scraping sound on the concrete as if a large cat with blades for claws had joined us. But I always forgot the terrifying sound the moment his scent filled the room—a little like stomach bile, decomposed flesh, and sometimes I swore I detected sulfur. For days after I’d still smell him as if his stench had been burned on the insides of my nostrils.

  My mother didn’t have to remind me that Simon would be coming tonight, the night before Christmas, but just like all the other times, I’d try to get out of it. I despised his bi-annual check-ups meant to scare us into submission.

  I found my mom in the kitchen, eyeglasses balancing at the end of her nose while she read over The List. The reindeer on her green sweater was smiling brightly.

  “I have to work tonight,” I said.

  “No, Michael. You don’t. Not on Christmas Eve.” She didn’t look up. The List may as well have been genetically attached to her hand.

  “Actually, I do. They’ll fire me if I’m not there.”

  “Then get fired. You know what today is.”

  “But why does Simon want to see me? Mark’s the one he likes.”

  She finally looked up at me with lifeless gray eyes. “Because this year he’ll need you. You’re sixteen now.”

  My throat tightened until I thought I’d choke on my own saliva. “I can’t do it. There’s no way.”

  “Then he’ll kill you.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Of course not, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  I turned my head towards the snowy world outside our kitchen window. “I’ll run away.”

  “He’ll hunt you down.”

  I looked back at her. “But why? He has you and Mark to finish The List!”

  “Because our family does what Simon Says.” She raised The List in front of her face.

  Conversation over.

  I went back to my room. Simon Says. I hated those words. In fifth grade I’d had a nervous breakdown in front of my whole class when the teacher suggested we play the childhood game. There was nothing fun about it. Only terror.

  My family has been doing what “Simon Says” for generations. No one seemed to ask why until I came along. My mother got so frustrated with my constant questioning that I was often grounded. This year she added no presents.

  I glanced at the clock on my nightstand—5:30 pm. I had until dark before Simon arrived. Just then my bedroom door opened. Mark stood in the doorway, filling the space with his tall frame and broad shoulders. He wore a sweater that matched my mother’s. I had refused to wear mine.

  “You’re such a pussy,” he said as he picked his perfectly white teeth with a toothpick.

  I turned away from him. “Get out.”

  Mark moved into my room and lifted a half-finished model airplane from off my dresser. “I don’t know why you’re being such a princess. It’s not like Simon won’t reward you.”

  “I don’t think a car is worth a person’s life.”

  He dropped the model, snapping a wing. “Believe me. A car is worth way more than a politician’s life.”

  “They weren’t just politicians, Mark. They were good people. Don’t you research the names you’re given?”

  “Why should I? Even if they had invented a cure for cancer, I’d still have to kill them. I do what Simon says.”

  “But don’t you ever feel bad?”

  He shrugged. “It’s either them or me, and personally I like my life. Have you seen my girlfriend?”

  “Simon didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Of course he did. He’s given us everything we have in return for finishing The List.”

  “But it’s never finished,” I said. “There’s always one more name.”

  “Because people keep being born, moron.”

  I stood up. “Well, I won’t do it. I’m leaving tonight.”

  “Whatever. You know the consequences.”

  “How’s he going to find me?”

  “He found Dad. You know you can’t run.” Mark turned to leave, but stopped at the door. “I know we haven’t always been close, but I hope you’ll stick around. We could have some wicked times together.” He left before I could respond.

  I stared after him, wondering how he did it. Was I seriously the only one in my family with a conscience? For almost an hour I tried to answer that question, tried to find some way to prevent myself from becoming a serial killer.

  As sunlight slowly retreated across my bedroom floor, I began to pace. This was not a life I wanted. I didn’t choose to be a De’Ath. There must be a way out…if I could just think! I kicked my wooden bedpost.

  Just then I remember
ed a book my mother had told me about: a De’Ath family journal handed down for generations since the 1700s. I’d seen the cover once when I’d interrupted my mother showing it to Mark. The leather-bound book had the silhouette of a demon burned into it and on the front it read In Service to Simon.

  That had been two years ago, and my mother had said that one day I’d be able to read it and find the answers to all of my questions. But I needed answers now.

  Very quietly I opened my bedroom door and snuck down the hall to my mother’s room. I scoured her drawers, searched her closet and looked between the mattresses and the box spring. Nothing. Where could it be? The attic.

  I stole back down the hall, ducking by the kitchen, where my mom and Mark spoke in hushed tones, and climbed up the narrow staircase to the attic. Antique furniture and boxes of clothes overwhelmed the small space. I maneuvered my way around them, disrupting layers of dust into the air.

  After searching through several unmarked boxes, I came across my grandfather’s wooden chest. I had hidden in it once when I was a child in an attempt to avoid another one of Simon’s visits. Tracing the lock with my finger, I remembered climbing into it and closing the lid. At first I’d felt relieved to be hidden away from the world, but then I’d smelled it. Simon’s rot. I screamed so loudly that my mother discovered me within minutes. She’d whisked me away, and I never got a chance to see what lay hidden in the chest.

  I carefully lifted the wooden lid and shined the flashlight onto its contents. Material of some kind, dull and gray, lay on the bottom. I reached for it, but withdrew my hand when an awful stench struck me in the face. I coughed a few times and pulled the collar of my T-shirt up over my nose.

  Reaching in again, my fingers grazed the top layer of crusty material. It felt like lizard’s skin, dotted with tiny raised bumps. I tried to push it to the side to see if anything lay beneath it, but when I did, it snapped in several places. With time against me, I quit trying to be gentle and pushed the fragile material aside. I didn’t find the book, but what I did discover made pinpricks explode all over my skin.

  A withered claw-like hand lay on the splintered wood floor of the chest. It had long thin fingers hinged by unnaturally large knuckles, and at their tips black nails ended in razor-sharp points.

  I let my shirt collar drop from my nose and looked from the reptilian material to the deteriorated hand, all the while my mind spinning like the gears of a great clock. It can’t be. She wouldn’t, couldn’t. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

  With no hesitation, I reached into the trunk and removed the small appendage. I turned it over in my hands, trying to figure out what animal it could’ve come from. A vulture perhaps. Or an enormous lizard. As for the skin—I took a big whiff and coughed—a plant of some kind, dipped in a foul-smelling concoction.

  Still gripping the claw, I straightened and went back downstairs to confront my mother. I found her at the desk in the living room, newspaper spread open while she scribbled notes for Simon. Or so she always said.

  “I know what you’ve been doing.” I dropped the claw in front of her.

  She slid her chair backwards and gasped as if I’d dropped a severed head instead of an animal’s claw. “What are you doing with that?”

  The sight of her made me sick.

  She stood up. “Answer me!”

  “I know everything, Mom. I know what you’ve been doing, and you’re not going to get away with it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mark walked into the room, but he remained silent.

  “You made the whole thing up,” I said. “There’s no Simon. You only made us believe it so we’d be part of your psychotic life!”

  She shook her head. “That’s not true.”

  “Isn’t it? How about we play a game called ‘Who’s got common sense?’ Which story sounds more believable?” I turned to Mark. “You can play, too. I know you love games.”

  He still said nothing, so I continued. “Story number one: The devil sneaks his younger brother Simon to Earth to hasten the time when he can return to power. And for some reason Simon needs our family to carry out his evil, murderous plans, because—well, I don’t know why. Because he’s too chicken shit? Or maybe he’s just lazy.”

  My mother’s frantic eyes moved to the darkening window. “He’ll be here soon.”

  “Story number two: Twice a year, a crazy mother blindfolds her two sons and convinces them with a claw and some nasty smelling material that a demon is coming into the basement to make sure they’ll obey her every command. Her delusions are so grand, she convinces the eldest son to kill people whom she doesn’t like.”

  “It’s not true,” she whispered.

  I shoved the chair she’d been sitting on across the room. It crashed into our small Christmas tree, nearly tipping it over. “Well? Which is it? Which story makes more sense, Mother?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Yes. I do. And I bet Dad discovered how crazy you were and tried to leave.”

  She was shaking her head, mouthing the word “no.”

  “And then you butchered him and probably buried him beneath the floorboards. Is that what happened?”

  She reached for me. “Please. You have to listen. It’s almost time.”

  I picked up my brother’s car keys from off the desk. “I don’t care what time it is. Tell your imaginary friend Simon to go screw himself!”

  “Please don’t go,” she begged, tears welling.

  “What? All of a sudden you care?”

  “I’ve always cared, but it’s just easier to pretend I don’t.”

  “Whatever. I’m out of here.”

  I stormed past her, but she grabbed my arm. “Don’t go! I can’t lose you too.”

  “Let go.” I jerked my arm away.

  Mark called after me, “Nice knowing you, Bro!”

  Despite the cold, I hurried out the door, my feet crunching against the frozen snow, and jogged to my brother’s 1969 Mustang. Once inside, I stomped on the clutch and shifted into reverse. The tires’ rubber tread swallowed the gravel driveway and spit it out onto the snow-covered lawn, spraying it with dirt and pebbles.

  Before I sped away, I glanced one last time at the home I’d grown to hate. My brother stood on the steps with an amused expression, arms folded across his chest. But it was my mother’s reaction that surprised me the most. She was on her knees in the middle of the snow, crying and shouting my name.

  I raced down a country road, only slightly mindful of the icy roads. I didn’t know where I was going, but I didn’t care. Arms straight, I pressed against the steering wheel and took a deep breath. I reached over and turned on the radio. A heavy metal station blared “Master of Puppets,” and I cranked the sound as loud as it would go.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement in the rearview mirror. I looked but saw no one behind me. I returned to bobbing my head up and down in time with a loud bass drum when again I saw something—only this time out my side window.

  I glanced into the darkness and swore I saw a person running across the snow. Impossible. I was going at least 60 mph. An animal? I slowed, darting my eyes between the road and the creature running at least ten yards away. Whatever it was, it ran on two legs, slightly hunched over as its huge hindquarters propelled it forward with ten-foot strides. At the end of one of its long skinny arms hung a claw-like hand, but on the other arm there was no hand, just a lengthy piece of skin that flapped in the wind.

  Its head snapped in my direction, startling me and I swerved the car, nearly hitting a tall snow bank. Gripping the steering wheel tight, I stomped on the gas and willed myself not to look to the side of the road. The car lurched forward, shooting me into the night. When the speedometer reached eighty, I exhaled.

  I turned again to look out the window. My heart froze mid-beat and a sharp pain exploded in my chest. The creature still raced, matching the Mustang’s speed, but what caused my heart to stall was the
way he ran. Though his body moved forward, his head remained sideways, glaring at me with wide black eyes sunk deep into his skull. Where there should’ve been a nose, a triangular hole revealed a black interior with white stretches of what could only be cartilage. He had no lips, only dark purple gums pulled high over razor-sharp teeth that repeatedly moved up and down as if he were chomping on metal.

  I stared straight ahead. With a shaking hand, I wiped sweat from my brow. I’m imagining it. It’s not real. Just then I heard a tap at my window.

  I turned my head slowly, my breaths coming in short gasps. The creature was bent at the waist staring at me as if he were a wolf and I a wounded lamb. Behind his back, great bat-like wings had appeared and flapped wide and strong. He raised his claw-hand and with one finger extended, shook it back and forth as if saying “no-no” to a child.

  Faster than I could blink, he punched through the window, shattering it. He gripped my shirt and lifted me out of the Mustang, but the moment my foot left the gas pedal, the car abruptly slowed, nearly taking off my legs. I cried out in pain, but when my eyes met those of the demon’s, terror paralyzed me, and my voice was snuffed out by the darkness.

  He held my limp body in front of him, head cocked to the side. I should’ve been looking for an escape, or at least trying to fight, but all I could think about was my mother’s blindfold. It had shielded me from what I’d thought were eyes, but now realized were two bottomless holes—a gateway to hell. Beyond their blackness bled chaos. Hordes of human souls wailing and gnashing their teeth, begging for release.

  Just before he sent me to join them, a sharp claw dug into my stomach and sliced towards my heart.