Xmas Spirit

“Merry Gothmas,” Charlotte murmured.

  “I know,” Scarlet said. “I’m kind of a holiday whore.”

  “Since I never get what I want for Christmas, I figured I might as well grow the gift-giving pie.”

  “Why don’t you just drop hints?” Charlotte suggested. “Isn’t that what people do?”

  “Maybe, but it’s not what I do.”

  Charlotte understood.

  “So, what are you doing creeping my house?” Scarlet asked. “My sister isn’t even here.”

  “I’m just on my way to, ah, pick up some Christmas money.”

  “That stunt thing at FunCon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I hope whoever you are spending that money on is worth it.”

  “She is,” Charlotte replied.

  “What is it exactly that you have to do?” Scarlet asked suspiciously.

  “I’m not really sure.”

  “And you agreed?”

  “Yep. Speaking of which, I’m late.”

  “Haven’t you figured this out yet?” Scarlet said. “Who these people are?”

  “Yes, they are my friends,” Charlotte said proudly.

  “I’ve got some last-minute shopping to do,” Scarlet said. “I’m coming with you.”

  13

  Silent Knight

  ChristMiss

  Christmas is a time of renewal and rebirth but also a time for remembrance, especially of the ones we have loved and lost. A time when we reconnect not only with the living but with the dead. A time for keeping them close and honoring them through our holiday traditions, in our festivities and family photo albums. A time when they still have a place at the table. A time when we bring them back to life through our memories. A time when we miss them most of all.

  “No luck?” Prue asked glumly.

  “Lump of coal,” Pam answered. “I think we’d better tell everyone.”

  Prue dug down deep and barked out her version of reveille.

  “Listen up, dead people. Pam has an announcement to make.”

  The Dead Ed kids assembled dutifully, slowly, and hopefully. All except for Eric.

  “Did you bring Charlotte back, Pam?” Suzy asked.

  “Is she here?” Mike added.

  Pam just hung her head.

  “Charlotte has forgotten us,” Violet said.

  “How gauche,” CoCo said.

  “That’s buggin’!” DJ moaned.

  “For realz,” Mike whimpered, the volume nearly drained completely from his roof-raising wail.

  “Some Christmas present Charlotte gave us,” Gary said.

  “It was a good run,” Prue said, putting her arm around Pam’s shoulder, comforting her. “We almost got there.”

  They all looked up joylessly, heavenward, to the destination they’d been working toward, which now appeared to them to be forever out of reach.

  “All this work for nothing.” Kim sighed, pushing the END CALL button on the phone embedded in her spectral skull.

  “Told you so.” Maddy smiled.

  None of them had the energy to argue. The lights and trimmings were looking even more dour, wilting just like them.

  “Our first Christmas together. And our last,” Pam whispered.

  “It’s been great knowing you, dudes,” DJ said, trying to rally up some energy.

  “How about a chorus of ‘Auld Lang Syne’?” Mike said.

  Everyone joined hands.

  A lone shadow in the distance approached. It was Mr. Brain, limping toward them. He was greeted with long faces and short tempers. Even from Pam.

  “You could have stopped this!” Prue accused, the anger and bitterness in her voice familiar to him from time long past.

  “Sometimes these things need to happen, Prue,” Brain explained. “Even here, nothing and no one is perfect. There is always more to learn.”

  “You mean things like sending us all back to Limbo?” Pam said sadly. “What good does that do for her or us? She’s returning to a miserable life, and we’re returning to a miserable afterlife.”

  “The call of the past, of memory, is powerful,” Brain said. “Will it be now or then?”

  “Us or them,” Jerry said, stripping the decision down to its bare bones.

  They all knew that was the essence of it and the reason it hurt so badly.

  “It’s a matter of choice,” Brain advised. “Only Charlotte knows.”

  “You were the one who made this girl a teacher,” Prue railed. “Look where it got us.”

  “The best teacher leads you back to yourself,” Brain said.

  A sudden rumble shook the compound. Lights flickered and wreaths and bunting fell to the ground. Cracks began to appear in the façades of the buildings, and the Dead Ed kids stood wide, as if it were a sign of some calamitous natural disaster about to befall them.

  Eric listened carefully to Brain and stepped to the center of the crowd as their world began to crumble.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not going out like this,” Eric rallied. “How about a little Christmas cheer?”

  With that, Electric Eric slung his trusty guitar from the back to the front of his body and began to play. DJ and Mike quickly chimed in.

  “Play us out, Eric!” Gary cheered.

  “If you can still hear me, Charlotte, this is for you. Roll credits!”

  “I don’t need a lot of presents

  To make my Christmas bright,

  I just need my baby’s arms

  Wound up round me tight

  Oh, Santa hear my plea,

  Santa Bring my baby back to me . . .”

  Eric sang his heart out. He could feel every note; it was exactly how he felt about Charlotte. He was singing a song, but at the same time, he was admitting to everyone how miserable he was without her. The love of his afterlife.

  Hands clapped in time, and the girls joined in on backup vocals. Mr. Brain tapped his toe to the glorious beat, and even the angels in the far-off distance crooned their approval in harmony. A more joyful noise had never been heard in Heaven or on Earth. The song was over, and a dead silence replaced the applause Eric would normally have expected. A determined look fell over him.

  “Why wait for Santa to bring her home?” Eric mumbled.

  “What?” Prue asked.

  “I’m going,” Eric said, his mind made up.

  “Where?” Pam asked wearily.

  “To get my girlfriend.”

  Petula and The Wendys huddled closely under a single lamppost in the parking lot, which shone brightly, brighter than the twinkling stars that had suddenly become obscured by fluffy clouds, brimming with moisture. It was the only source of warmth available.

  “Here she comes,” Petula said through chattering teeth. “Finally.”

  “Yeah, I’d know that bird’s nest of a ’do anywhere,” Wendy Thomas agreed.

  “But who’s that with her?” Wendy A. wondered.

  “Oh no!” Petula shrieked. “The nightmare before Christmas!”

  “Look what the bat dragged in.” Wendy A. giggled. “Scary Christmas.”

  Scarlet walked up and pointed at each of them.

  “Hoe, hoe, hoe,” she sniped, turning Santa’s chortle into a monumental dis.

  Scarlet shot them each a nasty look. Standing there shivering under the lamp, clutching their expensive purses and holiday finery, they reminded her of nothing so much as the magi in reverse.

  “Behold! The Three Dumb Girls,” Scarlet cracked.

  “I didn’t know you two were friends, but seeing you both together makes a weird kind of sense,” Petula opined sarcastically to Scarlet and Charlotte.

  Charlotte smiled proudly, taking it as a compliment.

  “What is going on here?” Scarlet asked sternly.

  “Just doing a good deed for Christmas,” Wendy A. answered.

  “Saving lives,” Wendy T. added.

  “Yeah, theirs,” Petula said smugly.

  The air was thick was tension and cold
, waiting for someone to break the ice.

  “Why don’t we go inside and check things out?” Damen suggested.

  Damen led the way through the circular doors in the entranceway, which opened into a massive lobby, filled with Christmas decorations and signs for all manner of mortician products and funeral home services. The contrast couldn’t have been starker. Celebrations of birth and renewal, death and decay, occurring side by side. They followed signs to the convention floor, stopping occasionally to gawk into one booth or another.

  They strode by “green” crematorium services, vanity urn manufacturers, dead rose suppliers, hearse keychain displays, designer dressing and casketing vendors, memorial DVD producers, Grief Lit publishers, even funeral-themed cooking and baking utensils. A black crepe Christmas tree stood in the center hall, decorated with row after row of ornamental powdered-sugared casket cookies.

  “Look,” Damen said of frown-faced treats with candy-cane nooses around their necks. “A gingerdead man!”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not funny,” Petula said, and whimpered, drying a tear about to fall from her eye while staring down Scarlet, who happened to be laughing right along with Damen.

  “This must be like Disneyland for you!” Wendy A. said to Scarlet.

  “Where are all the vampires, zombies, and werewolves?” Wendy T. asked cluelessly.

  “This isn’t a comic convention, Wendy,” Wendy A. chided. “This is for narcissists.”

  “You mean narcoleptics,” Petula huffed. “Don’t you know anything?!”

  Booth after booth was more amazing—and creepier—than the last. Definitely not your mother’s FunCon. This was high-tech and totally cool. At least for Scarlet, anyway.

  They passed a casket intercom system. “Look, so your loved ones can talk to you . . . long-distance. Now that’s staying connected,” Wendy A. said.

  “I totally need this,” Scarlet said, eyeing an Eternal Tunes package that pipes your favorite tunes into your coffin forever. “Check out this sound system. It’s to die for!”

  Damen couldn’t help but wander over to check it out with her.

  “Look at this,” Charlotte said, calling their attention away. “Rest Assured—they deliver flowers anonymously to your final resting place for every holiday so that you’re never forgotten. How romantic.”

  “A killer way to make someone jealous from beyond the grave,” Petula said, picking up a pamphlet.

  “Check it,” Wendy Anderson said, pointing up to a flat-screen with Petula on it. “Obituary TV! A new cable channel that runs obits of real people all day and night!”

  “Let’s go tape our Yulogy!” Wendy A. said.

  “We don’t have time for that now,” Wendy T. said.

  “Well, I do have time for the postmortem Facebook status and tweets package. They update everything on a regular basis after you’re dead so that you never go away. Virtually.”

  “Worth every penny,” Wendy A. said. “So sad that people in the olden days used to just die.”

  “Cool cemetery apps,” Damen said. “GPS—grave positioning system, where you can find the location of any dead body in your vicinity. And this living headstone one, where you can scan the stone with your smartphone and link to a video of the person in the grave!”

  “Well, I am definitely going to see the Coffin Cam,” Scarlet said, trying to break off. “Why don’t you guys go check out the casket stylist? And don’t forget your funeral swag bags,” Scarlet said, twirling a necklace with a vial of embalming fluid for a pendant.

  “She’s sick,” Petula said. “Wait, swag?”

  “We should check this stuff out. I mean, it is the second most important day of your life. A day all about you, and you’re not even there.”

  Scarlet and Charlotte were the most in awe, their heads spinning in every direction, determined not to miss a thing.

  “I really want to check out the latest autopsy accessories,” Scarlet said. “We can stop by the Coffins ’n Cream coffee kiosk on the way.”

  “That’s usually over there,” Charlotte pointed.

  “You’ve been here before?”

  “There’s nothing else to do, and it’s right by my house,” Charlotte said. “So I come. Every Christmas Eve.”

  “Me too!” Scarlet’s eyes lit up. “I would have never guessed.”

  “There are a lot of things you don’t know about me,” Charlotte said, and smiled.

  “There are a lot of things I don’t want to know about either of you,” Petula criticized. “This place is creeping me out, Satan.”

  Scarlet reached spitefully for the giveaway chocolate human brain samples.

  “Yum,” she reported, letting it melt in her mouth. “Death by chocolate. Have one?”

  Petula looked ready to puke.

  “Did you know ‘Satan’ is an anagram for ‘Santa’?” The whole thing was lost on Petula.

  Suddenly, The Wendys looked up and saw a sign that really appealed to them and pointed it out to Petula, who quickly regained her composure.

  “Makeup!” they shouted. “We’ll meet you at Wormhole’s booth in ten minutes.”

  Scarlet and Charlotte broke for the latest model Grossing Stations while Petula and The Wendys took a detour to the cosmetics booth.

  “His booth is under the tree,” Damen shouted after them, uncertain if he had been heard by any of them. “I’ll wait there for you.”

  Scarlet used the unexpected alone time with Charlotte to voice her concerns privately. “I don’t like this at all. You don’t need to go through with it.”

  “I want to. I’m not afraid. And I need the money.”

  “You stay here,” Scarlet ordered. “I want to talk to Damen.”

  Scarlet turned and practically marched away.

  “Scarlet!” Charlotte called out. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  “You are a good friend.”

  Scarlet smiled.

  “I’m not your friend,” Scarlet said, walking away.

  “Yet,” Charlotte said under her breath.

  Petula, Wendy Anderson, and Wendy Thomas made their way around the tightly packed convention hall with such determination they might as well have been searching for the Holy Grail. And then they saw it. An entire booth filled with state-of-the-art beauty products. Foundation, concealers, lipsticks, glosses. They had it all. The girls were stunned at the sight. Immobilized.

  They looked at a line of heads. Replicas of people. All lined up in a row. The sign said FACE DESTROYED IN AN ACCIDENT? PICK THE FACE OF YOUR DREAMS! IT’S CHEAPER THAN PLASTIC SURGERY, AND IT LASTS LONGER!

  “So this is what they do when you crush your noggin?” Wendy A. said.

  “Petula, you should totally model for one of these! People would die to look like you! Now they can!”

  “Yeah, you can, like, start your own perfect underground society of people who look just like you!”

  As Petula pondered the thought, she was interrupted by a woman’s voice. “Look alive!”

  “Huh?” was all Petula could muster.

  “Look Alive,” the woman said once more. “That’s the name of our cosmetic brand.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Petula said. “That’s pretty funny, ’cause your customers are, like, dead, right?”

  The salesperson ignored her. She was on a roll.

  “What’s the first thing people say when they come to a wake and see a dead loved one lying there?”

  “I don’t know? Get me out of here?”

  “Was there a will?” Wendy A. added.

  “No, they say Doesn’t he or she look good? Right?”

  “I guess?”

  “Now, why do they look so good?” the woman asked.

  Three blank faces stared back at her.

  “Same reason you do.”

  “Makeup?” Petula asked uncertainly.

  “Makeup,” the woman replied. “And they’ll look even better with our new Look Alive package.”

  “
Tell us more,” Wendy Anderson requested, like an audience plant in an infomercial.

  “In this one kit you get wound filler, glue, lip wax, makeup in every possible skin color, including adult, peach, suntan, elderly, newborn, and deep flesh.”

  “This stuff is industrial strength,” Petula said, fiddling with the package. “Made to last forever.”

  “Indeed it is, young lady. In fact, it was created for the new see-through coffins that Wormsmoth Funeral Home will be offering next season.”

  The lightbulbs going off over each of their heads simultaneously were blinding.

  “You know, Charlotte could use a little sprucing up,” Wendy T. offered. “I mean, if it can make a dead person look good, it can certainly do something for her.”

  “We’ll take it,” Petula said. “Give me my hearse!” She grabbed a black patent-leather makeup bag in the shape of a hearse, filled with Look Alive products, before making a beeline for the Wormsmoth booth.

  14

  All I Want for Christmas Is You

  Merry Markdown

  Like a bargain found while rummaging through some last-minute Christmas sales bin, the phrase “Merry Christmas”—like “I love you”—can be said so many times that it becomes cheap. A marked-down expression with little worth. It rolls off the tongue without any thought or effort, like an obligatory gift. But when it is said from the heart, said to someone while you look in their eyes and touch their hand, it can mean the world. It can change the world.

  Scarlet approached Damen in the crowded hall from behind, surprising him.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you were over there somewhere checking out the latest bone saw.”

  “It is so uncool what you guys are doing to her,” Scarlet chided.

  “She’s making a choice, Scarlet,” Damen rebutted. “Nobody’s forcing her to do anything.”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Scarlet pushed back. “You guys know how she idolizes all of you. She’d do anything you asked.”

  “Then why don’t you talk to her about it?” Damen said. “I’m just in it for a little extra Christmas money.”

  “She won’t listen to reason.”

  “No, you mean she won’t listen to you.”