Hark! the Herald Angels Scream Read online

  Christopher Golden

  HARK! THE HERALD ANGELS SCREAM

  Christopher Golden is the New York Times number one bestselling, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of such novels as Snowblind, Ararat, Of Saints and Shadows, and Tin Men. He cocreated (with Mike Mignola) two cult favorite comic book series, Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective. As an editor, he has worked on the short story anthologies Seize the Night, Dark Cities, and The New Dead, among others, and has also written and cowritten comic books, video games, screenplays, and a network television pilot. A frequent lecturer and speaker at libraries, schools, and conferences, Golden is one-half of River City Writers (with James A. Moore), providing writing workshops, seminars, and editorial services. He cohosts the pop-culture podcast Three Guys with Beards with Moore and Jonathan Maberry and Defenders Dialogue with Brian Keene. He was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fifteen languages in countries around the world.

  www.christophergolden.com

  ALSO BY CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  Ararat

  Dead Ringers

  Tin Men

  Snowblind

  Seize the Night

  (as editor)

  Dark Cities

  (as editor)

  King of Hell

  The Graves of Saints

  Baltimore

  (graphic novel series with Mike Mignola)

  Joe Golem: Occult Detective

  (graphic novel series with Mike Mignola)

  Cemetery Girl

  (graphic novel series with Charlaine Harris)

  A BLUMHOUSE BOOKS/ANCHOR BOOKS ORIGINAL, OCTOBER 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Daring Greatly Corporation

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Blumhouse and colophon are trademarks of Blumhouse Productions, LLC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This page constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Golden, Christopher, editor, author.

  Title: Hark! the herald angels scream / edited by Christopher Golden.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Blumhouse Books/Anchor Books, 2018. | “A Blumhouse Books/Anchor Books original”—Verso title page.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017025363 | ISBN 9780525433163 (trade pbk.) | ISBN 9780525433170 (ebk)

  Subjects: LCSH: Horror tales, American. | Christmas stories, American. | Paranormal fiction, American.

  Classification: LCC PS648.H6 H37 2018 | DDC 813/.0873808—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2017025363

  Anchor Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780525433163

  Ebook ISBN 9780525433170

  Cover design by Mark Abrams

  Cover illustrations © Vincente Segrelles/www.segrelles.com

  www.anchorbooks.com

  v5.3.2

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Editor

  Also by Christopher Golden

  Title Page

  Copyright

  ABSINTHE & ANGELS

  Kelley Armstrong

  CHRISTMAS IN BARCELONA

  Scott Smith

  FRESH AS THE NEW-FALLEN SNOW

  Seanan McGuire

  LOVE ME

  Thomas E. Sniegoski

  NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS

  Sarah Lotz

  TENETS

  Josh Malerman

  GOOD DEEDS

  Jeff Strand

  IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE

  Christopher Golden

  MISTLETOE AND HOLLY

  James A. Moore

  SNAKE’S TAIL

  Sarah Langan

  THE SECOND FLOOR OF THE CHRISTMAS HOTEL

  Joe R. Lansdale

  FARROW STREET

  Elizabeth Hand

  DOCTOR VELOCITY: A STORY OF THE FIRE ZONE

  Jonathan Maberry

  YANKEE SWAP

  John McIlveen

  HONOR THY MOTHER

  Angela Slatter

  HOME

  Tim Lebbon

  HIKING THROUGH

  Michael Koryta

  THE HANGMAN’S BRIDE

  Sarah Pinborough

  About the Authors

  Permissions

  ABSINTHE & ANGELS

  KELLEY ARMSTRONG

  “A proper reading of Dickens requires absinthe,” Michael says as he lifts his glass. “The nectar of the muses.”

  Ava shakes her head. “There’s no way anyone could drink this and still write.”

  “All those old writers did. How do you think they penned prose like this?” He lifts the book and reads a few lines from the arrival of the first ghost. “Trust me. That required chemical intervention.”

  “Just tell me our Christmas tree isn’t actually on fire,” she says.

  He chuckles. “Nope, just your brain.” He refills her glass. “Unless the tree really is on fire, and I’m hallucinating that it’s not.”

  She tugs out her gifts, saying, “Just in case,” and he laughs and kisses her cheek before he resumes reading.

  The absinthe isn’t actually so bad. It makes things clearer, sharper…and occasionally weirder. Nothing wrong with a little head tripping for the holidays.

  Ava takes another sip and rolls onto her side to watch Michael read A Christmas Carol. Her favorite holiday story, proving perhaps that she does indeed enjoy the weird. But right now, the words float past, and she just watches him as she basks in the warmth of the fire and the gift he’s given her.

  Whatever is in the boxes under the tree, they aren’t her real presents. This is. Her perfect holiday getaway.

  Start with a cabin in the snow. It can’t be some resort-property cottage, either. Out here, their nearest neighbor is a mile away. They’re even far enough from the road that they’d never have made it without four-wheel drive.

  No neighbors. No Wi-Fi. No cell service. Just peace and quiet.

  The isolation is Michael’s way of making this holiday season easier on her. As a child, Ava had wonderful family Christmases. Even after Dad took off, Mom held it together, especially at the holidays. Now Mom’s gone, stolen by cancer two months ago, and Ava’s brother, Jory, called last month to say he wouldn’t be flying home for Christmas.

  So Michael gave her this—a quiet cabin ten miles from the ski chalet where their friends are staying.

  It’s Christmas Eve; snow is falling; the fire’s blazing; absinthe is making her head spin, and her fiancé is reading A Christmas Carol.

  It doesn’t get better than that.

  Ava looks out the window. As snow swirls through the darkness, she envisions a moonlight stroll through the woods, the perfect cap for their evening. Maybe even more
than a stroll, if it isn’t too cold.

  She smiles at the thought and sips her drink and watches the dancing snow and imagines endless evergreens laced in white. Their own private winter wonderland. When Michael pauses to turn the page, she thinks she hears…music? Singing?

  Oh, angels we have heard on high…

  Angels or absinthe, singing through her veins.

  Michael raises his voice to play the part of Scrooge and then lowers it for—

  A sharp rap sounds, and Ava jumps, absinthe spilling. Michael frowns at the cabin door.

  “Did you hear…?” he says.

  She nods, clutching her glass.

  “A bird?” Michael says as he gets to his feet.

  When he heads for the door, Ava scrambles up and grabs him. “Don’t. Please.”

  He lifts his brows. “Pretty sure it’s not the Ghost of Christmas Past. And if it is, it must be for you. I’ve been a very good boy.”

  He smiles, and she relaxes her hold on his sleeve. “Just…be careful.”

  He continues toward the door. “Let’s lay bets. A bird or the wind?”

  The rap comes again, and this time there is no mistaking it for bird or wind. It’s three distinct raps, knuckles on wood.

  Ava creeps to the side window and peers out. She can see their truck, alone in the lane, covered in snow. She tries to get a look at the front door, but the angle is wrong.

  She turns to find Michael behind her, looking out and frowning. The knock comes again. Three raps.

  “Don’t answer,” she says.

  “The fact we don’t see another vehicle might explain why someone’s at our door,” he says. “Roadside trouble, and they followed the lights to the cabin. Or hikers who’ve lost their way. Are we going to leave them out there on Christmas Eve?”

  She calls, “Who is it?”

  No answer. Michael strides to the door. “Who’s there?”

  Silence.

  “I asked, who’s there?” His voice booms through the tiny cabin.

  Still nothing. Ava sidesteps toward the front window. All she can see is the falling snow. She cups her hand to the glass and—

  A white face appears. Stark white with blackened eyeholes and a red slash of a mouth. Ava staggers back with a shriek as Michael races over. Then he sees what she sees, and he stops.

  “What the hell?” he says.

  It’s a man in an old suit—a jacket and tie. Over his head, he wears a pillowcase painted with a grotesque face. A second man appears beside him, also masked with a painted pillowcase. Beneath it, he’s dressed in old-fashioned pajamas.

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Michael whispers.

  Ava doesn’t answer. She wants to tell herself they aren’t seeing the same thing, that she’s imagining these figures, conjured from her oldest nightmare.

  Before Michael can speak again, one of the men presses his pillowcased face to the window and says, “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”

  His voice is eerie and unnatural, wheezy, as if he’s inhaling as he speaks.

  Ava takes a step backward and smacks into Michael. He wraps his arms around her and whispers, “There are two men at our window, wearing old clothing and pillowcases, right?”

  She nods and finds her voice. “They’re mummers.”

  “Mum—?”

  “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine,” the two men say in unison.

  “Mummers,” Ava whispers.

  “You told me about…” He trails off and gives a ragged laugh. “Well, now I understand what you meant, and I don’t blame you one bit.”

  Last year, they’d been drinking with Ava’s college friends, comparing Christmas horror stories. It was mostly the usual jokes about terrifying post-Christmas credit-card bills and having to suffer through dinner with drunk relatives. Michael, though, Michael had one-upped them with Belsnickel, the old-world boogeyman from his German grandmother’s stories. He did that for Ava, after she confessed to her real holiday fear: mummers. Her friends had laughed and teased her, and Michael had come to her rescue with his story, even if secretly, she suspected, he’d been fighting the urge to join her friends’ laughter.

  Michael had never heard of mummers—no more than she’d heard of Belsnickel. Michael was from Ontario, where they seemed, thankfully, mummer-free. Ava grew up in Newfoundland, and most of her friends were familiar with the tradition…and thought it was cool.

  It was not cool. It was being three years old, waking up Christmas Eve to the sound of bells, running to the window, expecting to see Santa’s sleigh, and instead spotting a group of passing mummers with their strange costumes and horrifying pillowcase heads. Ava had ducked fast, but not before one saw her. They’d come to her window and crowded in and asked her—in those wheezing voices—if she’d been a good girl. If not, they said, they’d come back. Even after she’d hidden under the bed, they stayed at her window, taunting and tormenting her.

  And now there are mummers at her window again. Which cannot be. Absolutely cannot be.

  “So I’m going to admit—even at my age—they’re kinda freaking me out,” Michael whispers. “At three, I’d have pissed my pants.” He takes a step forward. “I’ll just tell them we’re not interested, give them a few bucks for their trouble and…”

  He stops, finally realizing what she has already.

  “What are they doing out here?” he says. “The nearest town is—”

  “Ten miles away.”

  Michael takes a deep breath. He eyes the mummers and then says, “They must be from one of the neighboring cabins. I’ll handle this.”

  He steps to the window. “Hey, guys. Thanks for coming by but—”

  They slap their gloved hands against the glass. Michael jumps, but his shoulders square, as if steeling himself not to inch back.

  “I’m having a quiet, romantic Christmas with my fiancée,” he says, “which I’m sure you guys can understand. If you want a more appreciative audience, there’s another cabin—”

  They push their faces against the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”

  “Yeah, thanks, but no.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a twenty. “I’m going to slip this through, and you guys have a great Christmas—”

  In unison, four gloved hands thump the glass. “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”

  Michael adds another twenty and holds the bills up. “You can buy your own.” He walks to the window and unlocks it.

  Ava struggles against the urge to stop him. But he’s being careful, and she’s overreacting. It’s just a couple of guys from a nearby cabin, who got loaded and decided to go a-mummering, grabbing old clothes and a couple of pillowcases.

  Michael eases the window up a half inch and pushes out the bills. One man reaches out…and grabs the window instead. He wrenches up, and Ava leaps to help Michael get it shut.

  The window slams down, catching the man’s fingers. The mummer only withdraws his fingers slowly. Then he stares at them.

  Both men stare with their painted eyes, and this close, Ava should be able to see the holes. But there are none. Below the noses, the red mouths have openings, but she sees only darkness behind them.

  One man bends, his mask sliding down the glass as he disappears. When he rises, he holds the two bills in his hand. Painted gaze still fixed on the window, he rolls the bills. Then he gives one to his companion. They lift them to their mouth holes and push them through, jaws working behind the masks as…

  “Did they just eat twenty-dollar bills?” Michael says. “Okay, that isn’t a few beers. These guys are on something.” He raises his voice. “Well, apparently, we’ve fed you. Now, if you walk back a few steps, you can grab a handful of snow to wash that down. Then it’s time t
o go and have yourselves a very merry—”

  “Give us food. Give us wine. Then our song shall be thine.”

  “You know what this window needs?” Michael mutters. “Curtains.”

  When Ava doesn’t respond, he turns and says, “Ava?”

  She’s returning from the kitchen. In her hands, she holds a bag. She opens it to show a bottle of wine and a box of chocolates.

  “I’m giving them what they want,” she says.

  “Okay, but we’re not opening that door.”

  “Of course we aren’t.” She heads for the bedroom. “Just keep them busy.”

  She shuts the bedroom door, and outside it, she can hear Michael talking to the mummers. Meaningless patter—asking them where they’re from, what they want for Christmas, whether they have family plans…acting as if there is nothing odd going on at all. Nothing unnerving. Certainly nothing frightening.

  Michael is staying calm, cracking jokes, trying to handle an irrational situation rationally. And so will she. She’ll forget the terror of that childhood Christmas Eve, and instead she’ll remember the day after it, when two of the mummers came to her house. Without the costumes, she knew them from town—the couple who ran the bakery. They apologized for frightening her. They’d had too much to drink and hadn’t realized she’d been genuinely terrified.

  Not boogeymen: just regular people who’d gotten carried away with the spirit—and the spirits—of the season.

  That explanation hadn’t worked for three-year-old Ava. She’d never been able to set foot in their bakery again, and she’d spent the next two Christmas Eve nights sleeping under her bed. Even these days, when she goes home for the holiday, if mummers come to call, she finds a reason to be out for the evening.

  But Ava is not three years old anymore, and there is indeed a rational explanation here. If she can’t see eyeholes or faces, that’s the absinthe messing with her mind. The men didn’t really eat those twenties—they just shoved them into their pillowcases.