The Dead Come for Christmas

A Very Ghostly Christmas/October 2022

The Stray Branch/Spring/Summer 2023

Polly was a pale girl with red hair who often thought about death. Her brother and sister and parents had died when she was very young. Her brother’s body in his dark suit, the first she had ever seen, frightened and intrigued her. A few years later, Polly knelt beside her sister’s casket, reached for her cool, soft hand.  Polly tried to picture what it would feel like for her own warm, familiar body to be stiff, cold. The solid fact of death followed her through her young life. She read the obituaries each week with an obsessive interest, constantly walked the cemetery, studying the names on the headstones.

At 30, after she’d married Liam and had her children, she began seeing the dead people on Christmas Eve. There were hundreds of them, different ages and styles of dress, walking a candlelit road outside her house. That first time, Polly stood at the window trembling, mouth agape. Of course, she was interested, but she was also terrified. She screamed for her son, Jarvis.

            “What do you see?” she asked him, pointing out the window.

 “Just darkness, Mommy.”

From that point forward, she claimed that Christmas Eve made her sad, and everyone expected that Polly take to her bed for the holiday.

***

The years passed, Polly found  herself to be an old woman with all of her family and friends dead. She did not know why she continued to  live, why day after day her heart beat in her chest, her skin emanated warmth, her blood trickled through stiff veins.

Her 95th  Christmas Eve, Polly got out of bed, moved to the window, and saw the dead marching their solemn march. She stared at their faces, wanting desperately to recognize one of them. Liam? Jarvis? Beatrice? Mama? Papa? Her hand spread out on the cold window, hoping one of the spirit’s own hands would mirror hers on the other side.

Polly took her walker, hobbled outside in her robe and slippers, the icy air clawing up her legs. For the first time in 65 years she walked out among her dreaded dead. They swirled, danced, swept around her, but it was not scary. Astounded by the silence, the lack of sadness, the warmth, she wanted to stay with them, always. 

“Mrs. Cantwell!” her nurse, Cynthia, appeared, interrupted Polly’s reverie, pulled her inside.

“What am I going to do with you?” she scolded.  “Am I going to have to send you to the home?” Cynthia said, directing Polly inside to bed.

 “You better be good, Mrs. C. No trouble,” she touched Polly’s cheek, shut off the light, closed and locked the door.

Polly, her blanket pulled up to her chin, listened to all the sounds, the ticking clock, the creaks and groans of the house.  Her eyes moved to the end of the bed, where a collection of spirits assembled. A cloud-like finger reached out, beckoned her forward. Polly smiled, the joy of Christmas, at last, overwhelming her.