An unexpected gift from a secret Santa arrived on the anniversary of Sarah’s daughter's disappearance. She looked at the small package wrapped in bright red paper for a long time before picking it up off her porch. The vibrant crimson paper stood out in contrast to the pale-ashen color of her hands as she read the small tag taped on top. 


TO: Sarah

From: Your Secret Santa


Sarah did not know why the image of the small seemingly innocent box sent her heart racing and her hands fluttering, but it did. The loud ba-boom ba-boom of her heart drowned out all other sounds as she set the gift on the counter in her empty home. Smiling pictures of the family she used to have mocked her from frames where they gathered dust. Her daughter's bright blue eyes seemed to accuse her as she moved through the house and begged Sarah to find her. The box seemed too vibrant and bright for the depressing space. Even her husband had left, unable to handle the sobbing broken woman his wife had become. 

Slowly she ran one long fingernail under the tape holding the paper closed watching it stiffly fall away from a simple brown box. Her fingers were shaking, which made no sense. It was just a box, after all. Maybe it was even a gift from her husband or sister trying to pull her out of her depression ahead of Christmas. Last Christmas she had trudged through the woods in her town searching in vain for her daughter. This year she planned to lose herself alone in a bottle. Not anymore, the box seemed to say as she pulled the tape holding it closed away. It came off with the light sound of the top layer of cardboard ripping away, clinging to the adhesive.

Looking inside the box, she began to shake violently, staring at the bright pink hand-knitted hat nestled inside, with a blinding white lily splattered in red on top. Sarah felt bile rise in her throat, and she staggered back, fighting the urge to gag and sob as recognition hit her. 

As she gazed at her shaking fingers, her hands recalled the sensation of the knitting needles sliding across each other with a soft metallic click, weaving the yarn into the very hat that now lay before her. The image of her daughter's smile filled her eyes. She had instantly pulled the hat on when Sarah had given it to her, declaring it was the most perfect thing in the world. She had watched her daughter slide that very same hat over her chestnut-colored hair a year ago today before bounding out to play in the snow. 

Sarah lost the battle as she leaned over and vomited, sobs ripping through her body with the pain. It was a full 30 minutes before she could control the broken sounds coming from her and rise on shaking legs. She crossed the room and pulled out a pair of disposable gloves she kept to clean with, and a trash bag, sliding the paper in the bag and then gingerly closing the box, replacing the tape and putting it on top, careful that she did not shift the contents inside. 

The portraits of her daughter and husband seemed to watch her as she grabbed her keys and marched out, determined to make someone understand. She placed the bag gently on her passenger seat and then drove down the silent streets to the police department. Snow began to fall lightly, melting as it touched the gray asphalt of the road. Sarah's hands vibrated with tension as she pulled into the precinct and collected her gift. The parking lot was relatively empty and she did not register the cold snowflakes that landed on her skin. 

Inside a stout man in a police uniform greeted her from behind a desk.“Mrs. Rasmen, how can I help you this evening?" Sarah did not bother smiling or greeting Officer Mandridge pleasantly. Sliding the bag onto the desk she held his gaze with her haunted gray eyes and spoke.

“I need to see Detective Mobin,” The officer swallowed hard at Sarah’s tone. The town’s understanding of her lack of courtesy had ended about six months ago, around the time everyone had moved on with their lives. Sarah could not bring herself to care. 

“Right away ma’am, I will get him,” The pudgy man waddled off and Sarah remained motionless, willing the pounding of her heart to slow and calm. She watched the second hand drag itself around the clock as she waited. 

“Sarah?” a familiar gruff voice caught her attention and she jerked her head away from the clock. Detective Mobin was exactly what anyone would imagine the only detective in a small town’s police force would look like. He was of average height with graying brown hair. Perpetual five o’clock shadow and the scent of coffee and cigarettes followed him. He had a slightly descended beer gut but was in otherwise good shape. Sarah had called him a friend before Miya had gone missing.

“Chris, someone left this for me.” Sarah grabbed the white trash bag and thrust it out at the detective, holding the box through it so the contents could not tip out. Eyeing her with trepidation Chris moved forward and took the offering from her.

“What exactly is this?” He raised an eyebrow at Sarah. 

“Open it and see. It was left for me.” Sarah seemed to be unable to say much more than that. Chris sighed and turned around, walking to the precinct's conference room in the back. Sarah followed, mildly aware of the three other officers watching her with pitying glances and turning to whisper to one another. She did not care if they thought she was crazy, she did not care about anything but finding Miya and giving her justice. 

Chris put on gloves opened the bag, pulled the innocuous box out, and looked over the wrapping paper.

“Secret Santa?” he asked. All Sarah could do was shrug, her hands sweaty as she watched the detective. He pulled the tape off and peered inside before retrieving the hat and flower.

“What is this Sarah?” He asked, his tone laced with restrained emotion. 

“That is the hat she was wearing Chris.” Looking up at her, Sarah registered a look of disappointment and something akin to fear on his face. The silence in the room stretched as the two adults watched each other. Dread pooled in her stomach as resolution crept into Chris's eyes. It was as if she could feel the last bands of friendship between them being deliberately severed.

“Sarah, there is no way you could know that.” His gruff voice bounded around in her skull, making no sense.

“Yes, there is! I made the damned thing for her!” She felt her anger rising, he could not deny this evidence.

“Sarah, that was a long time ago, you must be mistaken.” Chris's tone grew hard and she could see him deliberately hiding the emotion in his eyes.

“It was a year ago! I know how long ago it was! I hear her calling for me to find her every night in my dreams! IT IS HER FUCKING HAT CHRISTOPHER!” "Her voice, raw with grief and anger, rose with each word. She slammed her fist on the table, the sharp crack echoing in the tense silence of the room." She knew the emotion was not helping her plead her case, she knew it would be used to dismiss her, but she was utterly powerless to stop it from washing over her and claiming control of her limbs and mind. 

“I am going to call Hector to come pick you up, Sarah.” The detective's voice was strained as he turned his back on the grieving woman.

“NO! LISTEN TO ME! It's her hat! I fucking know that hat! I made that hat! She wore it every day! JUST LISTEN TO ME!” Chris gave her one last pitying look and then walked out of the conference room, shutting the door. Sarah began to shake as she watched him walk to his desk through the large glass windows that faced the rest of the building. She met the eyes of a young deputy who looked quickly away. 

A shuddering sob escaped her mouth as she lifted her hands to her hair and pulled, coming away with a few strands in her thin hands. Chris walked back into the room.

“Hector agreed to take you home. You need to rest, Sarah. It was just some stupid teenagers playing a prank.” Chris said the words like a script, without conviction. She watched the man she had known most of her life with implacable scrutiny. He wasn’t just not listening to her, he was feeding her a line not even the most gullible of people would believe. She watched him and he watched her.

The staring contest broke as the sound of male laughter echoed around the precinct and Chris jerked his head in the direction of the noise. Sarah turned and watched as Jason, the 18-year-old son of the police chief exited his father's office, chuckling at something his dad said as he followed out of the room. Chris's face turned strained and hard as Sarah watched. He shot a worried look at her and then back at the chief and his son. 

Jason looked up as if he could feel eyes on him and gazed directly at Sarah. Her skin turned cold as she watched the young man's grin turn into something dark and sinister. A knowing glint entered his light blue eyes and he winked deliberately at her before reaching back and brushing his messy brown hair out of his face. He turned to his dad and Sarah heard his words clear as a bell as they reached her.

“Hey Dad, you should stop and get Mom some lilies on the way home. She loves them.” Jason turned and looked at her again and Sarah found herself forgetting to breathe. She was transported to a scene eleven months earlier. Her husband Hector was clutching her hand as they watched people placing flowers, teddy bears, and other toys for Miya on a shrine lit by candlelight. She watched Jason approach with a large bouquet of brilliant white lilies and place them on the ground before looking at her with that same look. A look that taunted ‘I know something you don’t know’. Sarah’s breath came back to her in hyperventilating gasps as Jason walked outside.

Chris was grasping her arms and shaking her, saying something but Sarah could only watch as the door slowly closed behind Jason. Reality seemed to move in real time again and she snapped her attention back at Chris.

“SARAH! SARAH ARE YOU OK!” Chris's voice was loud and panicked.

“It was Jason,” She gasped. Chris's face went white and he gave a small imperceptible shake of his head.

“Yeah Jason just left,” Chris said pointedly. Sarah shook her head, her limbs feeling heavy and her mind spiraling to connect dots she had not seen before. The memory of a dark pickup truck circling her house the morning Miya had disappeared, the way Jason had looked at Sarah, Miya telling her about how the big kids from the high school got to come to her class and help teach them how to read, how Jason Culvert had been so nice he had even given her a flower. A lilly. BA-BOOM BA-BOOM her heartbeat in her ears was deafening again. She watched the chief walk back into his office.

She was right, it wasn’t that Chris didn’t believe her. He knew that was Miya’s hat. He even knew who took her daughter. But he was ordered to do nothing about it. The chief or Jason had made sure that no matter how hard Sarah pushed nothing would be done. Jason was the untouchable golden boy of the town, he wasn’t capable of that. Except Sarah was now sure he was, and more than that she was sure that not a single person would do anything to bring her daughter justice.

Sarah moved, shoving Chris aside, and he grabbed her arm.

“Sarah, don’t be stupid,” Chris hissed, low. Disgust roiled in Sarah’s gut as she looked at the pathetic excuse for a detective before her.

“Let go of me you bastard,” She growled through clenched teeth. Chris dropped his arm, shocked by the look of menace on Sarah’s face as she rushed outside. She watched the truck she had seen that morning pull out of the parking lot and down the main street. Irrational and all-encompassing anger filled her, numbing her to the cold snow still falling. A hurricane of rage and mistrust roared inside her as she walked to her car. 

Jason had taken her baby and he was going to suffer no consequences at all. Sarah saw her husband pull into the parking lot. Did he know too? Was Hector aware of the cover-up? Icy dread filled her with the idea. What if he did? Could she live with that knowledge? Shaking, she started her car and decided that no, she could not live with that knowledge. She could not live with the knowledge she already had as she drove home and crushing despair suffocated her. 

Inside she sat staring at a handful of sleeping pills on the counter. The only sound in the empty house was the soft clicking of the second hand on the clock as she watched the pills. She could end it. So easily she could go and be with her daughter again. She could escape the people who looked at her with pity wherever she went, the friends who lied to her face, and the town she had called home that conspired to protect the man who took her daughter. No one would miss her at this point. Hector wanted to move on, he needed to find happiness. That was what he had said when he walked out four months ago. 

If she died the only person invested in seeing Jason pay would be gone. He would continue with his life, with the years her daughter no longer had. He might even do it again, take some other little girl from her mother. Sarah shook as she looked at the pills. If she did this she was no better than Chris, the Chief, or anyone else involved. Her eyes moved from the pile of pills on the counter to the steak knives in a wooden block next to the stove.

The madness must have already consumed her as she walked over and pulled out the largest knife, a massive butcher knife honed to a dangerously sharp edge. Finally, the shaking stopped as she looked at it and a plan formed. She could take herself out of the equation, or she could take him out. The last hand-drawn picture from her daughter on the fridge caught her eye. It was the two of them with a heart and the letters M-o-m scrawled in an uneven font. Help me Mommy she seemed to hear the ghostly plea of her daughter echoing in her mind. 

“I will baby,” Sarah answered the ghost of a memory as she turned to leave. The sun had set as Sarah got in her car and drove. She did not have a plan, just a need propelling her forward. She stopped at the long driveway to the chief's house and idled. It was difficult to see in the dark but the front porch light illuminated a black pickup truck. She saw no other cars as she turned off her headlights and eased the car up the drive. 

A burning rage kept her steady, so hot it had shot past the shaking mess she was in earlier and landed on cold and numb. The massive barn loomed behind the farmhouse, a single bare bulb casting a sickly yellow light across the snow-covered yard. She heard music as she pulled in, not bothering to hide her car from view. BA-BOOM! BA-BOOM! Her heartbeat rang out again as she grabbed her knife and angled it up inside the sleeve of her coat, wrapping her hand around the base of the handle. The yellow light pooling out of the barn became the only thing she could see as she moved forward, silent as the death she intended to deliver. 

She came to the barn entrance and froze. Jason was standing in the empty shelter, a small pink sweater held up to his face as he inhaled it deeply. Miya’s sweater. Sarah found she could not move, watching him inhale the scent of her daughter's clothes with relish. Then Jason stopped and looked up as if her gaze was a physical weight. His cruel blue eyes conjured visions of ice on the lake when it was too thin to walk on, deceptive and deadly. He grinned wickedly.

“Oh, I hoped you would take the bait!” His tone was maniacal “I hoped my little gift and my comment would be enough,” Sarah said nothing, she had not anticipated to find him basking in what he had done. “Come on Sarah, did you come to play? I wonder if you will scream as sweetly as little Miya did,” He took a step forward. “She screamed so deliciously, she begged me to stop, you know. She cried for you the whole time and begged me to stop!” He laughed and the sound made Sarah's stomach turn. Jason took one more step. He contorted his face into a grotesque mockery of a child's plea, "Mommy, help me! Mommy, please help!". Sara’s breaths came quickly and tears fell from her eyes as her knees threatened to give out. “I just hope you last longer. Poor little Miya, she only made it three days.” 

Three days! Her daughter had screamed and pleaded with this monster to stop for three days! Clarity clicked into Sarah's mind, a detached voice whispering instructions. Don't move until he is right on you. He is bigger. You need the element of surprise. So Sarah held it, feeling the cool handle of the knife in her palm. She let the shaking in her limbs show as Jason advanced.

“Why?” Sarah managed to hiss out.

“Why? Mostly because I can! Who is going to stop me? Not my dad, not the cops. I wanted to hear her screams, wanted to know what it felt like to cut her pretty skin off bit by tiny bit as she thrashed!” Jason’s teeth flashed “and now I get to see if Mommy can handle the same games. Oh, what games little Miya and I played.” He was so close she could smell the scent of him, “wanna know a secret? Miya wasn’t even the first. She definitely won't be the last. Even you won't get that honor.” His voice was low and dangerous as he moved to grab Sarah's throat. In a flash of movement, she grabbed the knife out of her sleeve from behind her back with the opposite hand, gasping as she sliced lightly into her arm in the process. Then in one slashing movement, she brought it down, feeling the resistance of his flesh as it slashed through his eye and across his face, spraying a hot arch of blood across her. 

Jason staggered back, his hand going to his face as blood gushed through his fingers. 

“AHH YOU FUCKING BITCH!” He lunged at Sarah, one arm out to grasp at her. She twisted out of the way, bringing the knife down across his forearm.

“What is the matter JASON? Not ready for someone able to fight back!” Sarah hissed as he cradled his arm to his chest panting, his one good eye filling with fear as he backed up. Sarah moved forward, feeling a hysterical grin stretch across her blood-splattered face. 

“P-Please I was just joking! I wasn't going to do anything,” His cruel confident tone from before was replaced with a new one, full of fear and pain. Sarah brought the knife down on him again, slicing the other side of his arm as he cried out.

“Oh Like you were not going to do anything when you took my daughter,” Sarah's voice was inhuman as a fierce joy suffused her limbs with energy and strength. Another slash, this one across his shoulder, the blade sticking in his flesh slightly. Blood soaked his shirt as it poured out of him. 

“No-no it wasn't me! It wasn't me, it was just a joke!" Sarah laughed a bone-chilling chuckle as she moved the knife like she was going to stab down only to twist her hand away at the last second before she sliced into his arm again and plunged it into his gut, pulling his body close to her. She felt the resistance of his flesh give way as the knife sunk into the hilt.

For a moment time seemed to freeze. Jason looked into Sarah’s eyes with his one good one, fear and pain were the only emotions she could see. They both breathed heavily and she savored knowing that her face would be the last face he would see before she delivered him to hell. The coppery smell of blood mixed with the scents of winter, hay, and gasoline was already present in the barn. She could taste it in her mouth, the adrenaline and blood. 

“This is for Miya," She whispered, twisting the knife inside of him. He screamed and fell to his knees. Sarah ripped the knife free of him and then with a frenzied strength began bringing it down on him anywhere she could. His face, his throat, his chest. Her arms ached in exhaustion as she laughed, his blood spraying her and the barn around her. Each plunge she felt the slight resistance of his flesh before it gave away. Occasionally her arm vibrated with the force of the impact as she struck bone. His screams and cries slowly faded to silence as she worked. 

Sarah did not know how much longer it was before she kneeled, panting and exhausted beside Jason’s unrecognizable corpse. The knife had snapped on her last thrust and the blade still lay buried in his mutilated chest. The scent of gore and sweat now overpowered all others in the cool barn. She dropped the handle from her sore hand and rose to her shaky feet. The room was soaked in blood. She bent down and picked up the small gore-covered sweater that belonged to Miya and walked numbly back to her car. 

Her arms stung with a pleasant exhaustion and she pulled out of the driveway, and down the street. She passed the police chief on her way and her grin grew wider and more maniacal. Finally, her daughter's voice in her head was silent, and relief washed through her skin and bones. Still soaked in the sanguine fluid and clutching Miya’s sweater she pulled into the police precinct. 

Looking like an image from a horror movie she stumbled into the building with that same smile on her face, inhaling the scents of old coffee and paperwork that seemed so opposite the coppery animalistic smell of the barn. 

“SARAH!” Officer Mandridge gasped as she entered. She continued past the frozen officer and walked up to Chris's desk as he worked, staring down at paperwork, he did not seem to hear her approach. She dropped the blood-soaked sweater before him. He looked at her and his eyes bulged.

“SARAH! What did you do!” Chris gasped

“Detective, I would like to report a murder," Her even voice echoed through the room.