Five Stories for the Dark Months Read Free Page A

if it had
been wiped out with cotton balls. Adie swallowed, but couldn’t get
rid of the sour taste that lingered in the corners. She took one
last, deep breath and pulled the blanket off her face.
    Cool air rushed over her skin,
drying her sweat and giving her goosebumps. She peered into the
dark, trying to assure herself that nothing was amiss. The night
was dark and still, and the neighborhood was silent. Even the
crickets had stopped chirping. It had to be late—maybe three or
four in the morning. Adie turned over uneasily. She meant to go
back to sleep, but quickly discovered that she desperately had to
pee.
    She thought, for a split second, of
waiting until morning. The house was vast and black and
frightening, but in her nest of blankets she felt relatively safe.
The pressure on her bladder, however, became too powerful to
ignore, so at last she relinquished her safety and staggered to her
feet. Clumsy with sleep, she toddled toward the bathroom. The
hardwood floors were chilly, and she wished that she’d thought to
bring socks. In the kitchen she heard the hum and groan of the
refrigerator, and was startled by the the rattle of ice falling
into the dispenser.
    It wasn’t until she had almost
reached the bathroom that she remembered: Her own bathroom had no
mirror anymore, but this one certainly did.
    Frost crept up Adie’s spine as she
stared through the pitch-dark doorway. She almost retreated right
then and there, but she knew that she’d never be able to make it
until morning. A brief notion of going back upstairs was quashed by
the memory of her nightmare, and of what she’d seen in her room.
Downstairs it was.
    Anyway, if the thing was in her
bedroom now, then maybe it hadn’t come downstairs yet.
    Somewhat cheered by this thought,
Adie reached through the doorway and turned on the bathroom light.
Its cheerful yellow glow spilled into the hallway, shrinking and
clarifying everything it touched. Now Adie could see that the
bathroom was, in fact, just a bathroom. There was the striped
wallpaper that her parents had picked out together. There were the
gleaming brass fixtures her mother polished with frightening
regularity, and the white tile floor that her father had laid one
sweaty afternoon when Adie was nine. An unlit purple candle among
the hand towels filled the room with the scent of lavender and
roses.
    Just to be on the safe side, Adie
kept her eyes lowered and stepped quickly past the mirror. Nothing
flickered in the corners of her vision, and nothing hissed or
muttered when she raised the toilet lid and sat down on the icy
seat. She concluded her business without incident and got up to
wash her hands.
    Morbid curiosity compelled her to
look up this time. She raised her eyes fearfully to look at her
reflection—but there seemed to be nothing to fear. She saw only
herself—the same old Adie, frizzy hair and awkward nose and all.
When she smiled, her own shy smile came back to her. She lifted her
arms, and her reflection’s arms went up, as well. She even did a
little dance, and the mirror mirrored it without a trace of
mockery.
    The thing must somehow have been
confined to the upstairs—or maybe she’d even defeated it when she’d
trapped it in her dream. Tomorrow she would ask her dad to take the
mirror out of her room. Maybe a priest could even come and bless
the house. She’d ask her mother about it.
    Happy that the end was in sight,
Adie grinned at her reflection.
    Her reflection grinned back, and
turned off the light.
     
    ~}*{~
     
    Warmth in Winter
    January 2012
    Table of Contents
     
    Jenna was glad they’d taken Peter’s
body back to town to bury. Eerie as the silence was, the moaning of
his ghost would have been much worse. Even so, she wasn’t sure how
much more of this cabin and this winter she could stand.
    She picked up her
mother’s letter again. I don’t suppose
you’ll have a proper burning tree this year , it read, but maybe you can put this
ornament on your fire .
    The