![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Christmas Tale
In answer to the gauntlet laid down by 
Pax_Draconis, I offer you, gentle reader, this Christmas ghost story:
Look carefully at the Eastern horizon at midnight on Christmas Eve and you may just make out a greenish blur, very faint, like a gentle mist that touches every place a child sleeps and then moves on. Listen carefully and you might even catch, just on the edge of hearing, a distant hissing. But if one could, perhaps, slow time to a fraction of its speed; if one could behold what no waking eye could ... what might one see?
One might see a bedroom, with a brightly coloured stocking strung hopefully at the end of a smallish bed. One might also see a shadow at the door, a shadow that seems larger than the doorway, or even the room, could accommodate. And, as the door opens, one might wonder how such a man could cast such a shadow. A large man, to be sure, whose bushy, salt-and-pepper beard blends animatedly with the wolf-fur that lines and trims his great green cloak; whose hair seems almost to be woven into his tall, reindeer-hide hat. A man whose face remains deep in shadow, though one can easily see the eldritch glinting of his eyes. A man? Certainly he has the shape of a man, though his robe billows strangely at shoulders and hips. For the robe seems to conceal more than merely two arms and two legs, a suspicion confirmed by the muted "clop" sounds as the figure approaches the bed. One might see such a creature bending over the bed, bending over the tiny occupant. And one might see such a creature’s face, still curiously shadowed, glowing like a freshly-blown coal as it kisses the child. At least, one might mistake such a sight for a kiss; were it not for the bubbling, wheezing, sucking noises rising from where the infant’s head had lain. Then one might chance to blink ... and the room would be as it was, with child sleeping perhaps more peacefully than before ... and, perhaps, the distant soughing of great predatory wings beating their way toward the next victim.
Later that night, the child’s parents will go to his room and will fill the hopeful stocking with shiny gifts. Toys and games to assuage the guilt they feel; for they too received their yearly visits, many Christmases ago. And still they remember; deep within what tattered, wounded remnants of their dreams are left uneaten, they remember.
Pax_Draconis, I offer you, gentle reader, this Christmas ghost story:Look carefully at the Eastern horizon at midnight on Christmas Eve and you may just make out a greenish blur, very faint, like a gentle mist that touches every place a child sleeps and then moves on. Listen carefully and you might even catch, just on the edge of hearing, a distant hissing. But if one could, perhaps, slow time to a fraction of its speed; if one could behold what no waking eye could ... what might one see?
One might see a bedroom, with a brightly coloured stocking strung hopefully at the end of a smallish bed. One might also see a shadow at the door, a shadow that seems larger than the doorway, or even the room, could accommodate. And, as the door opens, one might wonder how such a man could cast such a shadow. A large man, to be sure, whose bushy, salt-and-pepper beard blends animatedly with the wolf-fur that lines and trims his great green cloak; whose hair seems almost to be woven into his tall, reindeer-hide hat. A man whose face remains deep in shadow, though one can easily see the eldritch glinting of his eyes. A man? Certainly he has the shape of a man, though his robe billows strangely at shoulders and hips. For the robe seems to conceal more than merely two arms and two legs, a suspicion confirmed by the muted "clop" sounds as the figure approaches the bed. One might see such a creature bending over the bed, bending over the tiny occupant. And one might see such a creature’s face, still curiously shadowed, glowing like a freshly-blown coal as it kisses the child. At least, one might mistake such a sight for a kiss; were it not for the bubbling, wheezing, sucking noises rising from where the infant’s head had lain. Then one might chance to blink ... and the room would be as it was, with child sleeping perhaps more peacefully than before ... and, perhaps, the distant soughing of great predatory wings beating their way toward the next victim.
Later that night, the child’s parents will go to his room and will fill the hopeful stocking with shiny gifts. Toys and games to assuage the guilt they feel; for they too received their yearly visits, many Christmases ago. And still they remember; deep within what tattered, wounded remnants of their dreams are left uneaten, they remember.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Good stuff.
no subject
no subject