It’s day six of The Quack’s Christmas Advent Calendar, and we have a short piece of Christmas–themed horror fiction by Libby Riley. We are still accepting submissions (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc.), so don’t miss the chance to send them over!
The Giver’s Grin
By Libby Riley
Shapes of stars and snowflakes and festive figures lined with bulbs decorated every house on the street, slowly becoming small–scale artefacts. Christmas was slipping away as the clock hands moved through the hours of the night. Still, they served as reminders that the date was still the twenty-fifth, and thus the holiday spirit was alive. To her, however, they all blurred into one bright shape, unidentifiable in any geometrical sense, scratching at her eyes with red and blue and yellow claws. The pavement, without any festivity apart from discarded bottles and cans from the previous night, was less harsh on the eyes, but she could not take comfort in this dullness. It was only the doll in her hands that held her attention, that reminded her that she would make the giver smile.
Her porcelain mould and material, years out of manufacture, proved unique compared to any plastic doll cloned a million times found on chain store shelves. Chestnut ringlets had been planted into the toy’s scalp, not a hair out of place. The cotton frock she wore, the colour of summer leaves, was smoothed out without a single wrinkle. Two large sea green eyes sat in her skull, peering out. Despite the doll’s childlike appearance, those eyes seemed as deep and wise as the sea itself, so much mystery and yet, she had seen it all. If so, that explained her unsmiling face.
“We’re nearly there,” she said, “down this street and we’ll be in the forest.”
The girl thought of the wrapping paper that had enclosed the doll that morning, berry red with miniature Christmas trees, complete with shiny dots for baubles. The foliage she would see would have no decorations, not a single trinket lining the branches. Whoever the gift giver was, the lack of festivity around them would be a moat with no bridge to the world outside. In the moment when the two were alone, the doll confided in the girl that she was a gift given in hopes of spreading joy to another person, even if the giver had no chance of such in their own life; never had they smiled.
All too fantastical; a doll, speaking out of that pink painted mouth, sitting on the windowsill of a child’s bedroom, especially one whose charity was never returned in life, sent from a hermit with a good heart? It must be some tall tale, made of dancing sugarplums and Yuletide sugar. Maybe a child would believe in such magic, including this one, but she had taken it further.
Memories, many barely under a month old, formed a rose tint in her vision. Hours had been spent in a corner of the school playground, like a doll herself, watching giggling children in fanciful games without a care. If she dared to ask to enter this fantasy land the others seemed to reside in, they would push her away, with varying levels of kindness. Days were filled dreading the times when partners and groups were required; anyone unfortunate to be put with her would order and lead with ignorance, almost striving to interrupt her. Never were others physical in their ways around her, except for those eyes. Whenever she entered their sight, it felt like they grew five feet and multiplied all over the room, ready to judge.
Now another person felt the same isolation. She knew that feeling well, better than she knew her family. The command to visit them in the woods had her like her short life had been leading up to this calling. Out the window she went.
They crept down darkened lanes, avoiding the street lights. Never would she normally travel down alleyways and shortcuts at night, but this, in her eyes, was an emergency, and it did not matter what she encountered down these ways; it was the people out in the light that were the most dangerous.
She would face one such enemy that almost took the giver’s present away. On the outside, it didn’t look particularly malicious; simply a middle–aged woman out with her husband, both stuffed with Christmas food. However, the doll knew that this was simply false wool, and when stripped away, would reveal a creature that would rip away the skin of their night’s goal. The woman cocked her head and asked why such a young girl was out alone on Christmas night.
“She won’t understand. No one will. It’s our secret,” the doll whispered, inaudible to the enemy. “Run.”
That was exactly what the girl did, ignoring the calls from the woman. She hurtled into the forest at the end of the road.
Her perturbation would find itself with some allies, who arrived with the hour; a family, together with a small search party consisting of neighbours and a few friends, awoken from post–festive sleepiness by the disappearance of a young girl, known to rarely speak to others. The woman’s husband asked for a description, and sure enough, the only detail that not appeared was the doll. Would he have guessed that it simply appeared on her bedroom windowsill with no label from family?
The two directed them to the forest, and off went the group to search.
They had almost prevented the giver from receiving a present. Thankfully for the figure waiting in the forest, Christmas miracles did happen, and this one was best at night.
Midnight approached, and any festivity that had remained slipped away. Turkey and alcohol stewed inside stomachs, their taste forgotten, now feeling like burning acids. A symphony of clicks of torch switches signified the end of the search.
The last drop of sweet hope had left their unsatisfied bodies when they found something tiny sitting at the base of a frosted tree.
A doll, with porcelain skin and chestnut ringlets and sea green eyes, stood smiling. Her beaming smile was the largest her face had ever shown.
In those trees, I, too, grinned; the doll had brought me my gift at last.
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